“Guess what? We had Coke and biscuits for breakfast.” Charlie, my firstborn, was eight. His birthday present from my mother was an airplane trip with her to Smithfield, North Carolina, the small town where her brother lived. The breakfast menu, as astonished Charlie reported to his younger, envious brothers, had been approved by the same […]
Readers sometimes ask me why I write from a woman’s point of view, the assumption apparently being that it’s an odd choice. To me it’s not odd at all. I grew up on a farm in Mississippi, an only child, with a mother who had four sisters and a father who had two. My paternal […]
I would have voted for him even had I known he was in a wheelchair. But when deciding whether to return FDR to the White House for an unprecedented fourth term, would I have wanted to know that he had high blood pressure, long-term heart disease, and was likely, according to a doctor at the […]
Because they’ve been talking about Bouchercon and Left Coast Crime on DorothyL and the rules that can keep authors who aren’t published by MWA approved publishers off panels, I thought I’d put out my two cents worth here. The people who run these things can certainly make whatever rules they want. Bouchercon committee voted down […]
Retailers are worried. Me too. Already economists are predicting a coal-in-the-stocking kind of holiday shopping season. There won’t be much Ho, Ho, Ho this Christmas. We know that the economy is in the tank and that it’s not just Wall Street Fat Cats who are suffering. The only thing grinning this Halloween may be the […]
More than 60 percent of women with children under the age of one are in the workforce. In this country, the average length of maternity leave is six weeks. I don’t know about you, but when my firstborn was six weeks old I couldn’t wash my hair and brush my teeth on the same day. […]
This weekend I was at the Wizards of Words Conference in Scottsdale AZ. I was a presenter, but like at any conference I attend, I learned quite a bit. David Morrell (First Blood, the introduction of Rambo and many other thrillers) was the keynote speaker for the dinner and he had some gems to share. […]
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Writers understand that the first amendment is the backbone of […]
Do you remember the first time you realized that books contained stories that could transport you to different times and places? I think I was about seven. Of course I’d been read to before that critical moment, but I don’t think I actually understood until then that there were stories on those pages that I […]
None of this has much to do with writing–just what’s been happening the last week. I was supposed to have a booksigning in Ventura, but heard from the owner that it had to be cancelled. We had planned to visit the Reagan Library while we were there and decided to go anyway. We had daughters […]