Not everyone has been as lazy as I’ve been this summer! Last week Megan Kelley Hall released The Lost Sister, a follow-up to her 2008 YA suspense novel about mean girls, Sisters of Misery. But before you read Megan’s amazing path to publication, you should know that she started out writing freelance for Elle, Glamour, …Read More

Earlier this month I was in California and had the most amazing chance to indulge in one of my childhood wishes: to visit the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California. I expect it isn’t a surprise to anyone who knows me (or who has read my fiction) that I adore scary stuff–scary books, films, …Read More

Last Thursday night, I had the privilege of being a part of the celebration for Josh Woods’s new VERSUS Anthology. The party wasn’t in NYC, and neither Paris nor Perez nor Page Six were in in attendance. Josh developed his totally fresh anthology idea when he was teaching at SIU’s Young Writers Workshop last year …Read More

In the spring of 1989, my life was a mess. The details aren’t particularly important. But for the sake of this story, I’ll tell you that by summer I was more than ready to leave it completely behind for a week. I’d been taking writing classes and writing short stories for almost a year while …Read More

I spent pretty much all of yesterday in my front yard, planting flowers. It’s not much of a garden: a four-foot deep strip of dirt and mulch that follows the length of the house. When we moved in three years ago, it was edged with tacky scalloped bricks and contained two rose bushes and three …Read More

I don’t much like to sleep, but I love to dream. Last night I dreamed about one of the apartments I return to again and again in my dreams. The outer hallway is drab and carpeted and vaguely reminds me of the place I lived when I first left home when I was eighteen. But …Read More

UPDATE: If you’re here, you’re probably looking for a good definition of an inland hurricane aka a derecho. The link will take you to a good Wikipedia description. Having lived through the one I wrote about here, I can tell you that it was utterly terrifying, like the biggest, wettest tornado you can imagine. If you …Read More