Women Who Don’t Burn

Not that long ago a friend pulled me aside and said, “You know, if you lived a few centuries ago, I think you’d have been burned at the stake.” It was meant as a compliment, and I took it as one. Because what he meant was that outspoken women, loud women, women who didn’t sit…

I’m With the Banned

Somewhere out there right now is a child or a teenager or young adult about to pick up a book which will change their lives. Maybe it will be the book which cements a love of reading. Maybe it will be the book which opens new worlds, or sheds light on something they’re struggling with. Maybe within those…

Dear Reader…

If I were Ms. Austen or a Bronte sister, this is the point at which I would say: Dear Reader… After two decades of procrastination, fifteen months of on and off again writing, one month of manic non-stop writing, sixty index cards, and several weeks of juggling scenes until I thought my brain was going…

Goodnight Nobody, Goodnight Mush

If you asked people in the know to describe me, the list would be over represented with synonyms of “efficient”. I like to think there would be a ‘clever’ or a ‘witty’ thrown in here and there, maybe a ‘thoughtful’ or ‘insightful’, but you would almost certainly not find the word ‘sentimental’. Yet though my husband sometimes describes…