Tonight (Monday) I’ll be at St. Louis’s Contemporary Art Museum, doing a reading/appearance with poet Matthew Olzmann (whom I haven’t yet met) as part of the River Styx Reading series. I haven’t been to the Contemporary Art Museum yet, so I’m very much looking forward to it. Museums of all sorts attract me, so I suspect I’ll be …Read More
Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence. –Helen Keller Sometimes it’s hard to have confidence. Optimism and even a tentative faith in ourselves goes a long way to the getting of it. Have a blessed week! March 18th Words Journal: 0 words Long …Read More
We’re all over the place this week. So much serendipity… Sleep. It’s a Very Good Thing. We love the show, Broadchurch, and I can’t wait for the next season to get over here. But apparently there is a huge tea kerfuffle brewing. I read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods years ago, …Read More
Have you ever taken a Myers-Briggs Personality Test? The test used to be a complete mystery to me, administered by therapists and researchers. But with the Great God Internet, it’s now available to anyone who wants to do a bit of self-psychoanalysis and personality study often for free, or for just a few …Read More
My dears, I’ve been so excited to surprise you with this interview. Excellent friend and wonderful writer Carolyn Haines is here to answer some fun questions for us. I’ve included her official bio below, but you should know she’s written seventy-plus books during her career, and as a teacher of writing she’s mentored many, many students as …Read More
Doesn’t flattery crack you up? The other day I went to my favorite skin care store, L’Occitane (said Lox-Ee-Tahn, according to their website), to resupply my daily, ridiculously expensive regimen. The regimen is one of my luxuries/vices. I don’t drink, smoke, or shop for fun–we all have to indulge in something, right? …Read More
Coming home can be a wonderful thing. One of the places that always speaks to my heart is the Cincinnati Art Museum. When I was a child, it seemed like a rather dark, forbidding place. I’m not sure why. Maybe because it looked to me like a forbidden castle of some sort. Confidentially, as a …Read More
Once upon a time, I imagined I was a patient person, but it really was just my imagination. I’m impulsive. I want things now, now, now. Particularly I want to be able to change my life, change my circumstances, change my appearance, or change my career to respond to any desire I might have. …Read More
The same way that you are the main character of your story, you are only a secondary character in everybody else’s story. —Don Miguel Ruiz We have a saying in our house that everyone is the star of his/her own show. I like this Ruiz saying because it’s a reminder that it’s often our egos …Read More
One of the reasons I write stories with crimes in them is that I have, in my life, been afraid of many things. Fears evolve: the things that frighten us when we are children often turn out to not have been a big deal at all. Children are a small presence in a big, alarming …Read More