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

Even now I should be pounding out pages for submission of book number three. Agent Susan is waiting, and I just have a very few paragraphs to go. But I’ve been neglectful of the Handbasket for weeks–and while I have a long list of things I want/need to write about, today’s subject jumped to the …Read More

Pinckney and I don’t get much of a chance to collaborate–well, except for the whole having kids together thing. We loved editing the first volume of Surreal South: An Anthology of Short Fiction and Poetry back in 2007. For this second volume of the series, we had to choose from over two hundred submissions. Here’s …Read More

I was all set to write at length about my latest dorky obsession, The Duchess of Duke Street, which originally aired in the 1970s on Masterpiece Theater. Unlike P’s family, my family never watched Masterpiece Theater on PBS. I was always vaguely suspicious of Public Television because I thought it was just for the American …Read More

This is what I didn’t write today on my Facebook page: (Laura Benedict) has discovered Word Counter–she’ll never repeat the word “soft” three times in a chapter again! http://www.wordcounter.com/ (Laura Benedict) thinks Phil Spector should have been prosecuted years ago for his hellish hairstyle. At least his victim would still be alive. (Laura Benedict) will …Read More

I used to cook a lot more than I do now–particularly at holidays. But we’re far from our extended family here in Southern Illinois and so our holiday celebrations tend to be small. I loved to do Easter feasts with baked ham, scalloped potatoes, homemade sourdough hard rolls, veggies (none particular–usually broccoli or asparagus if …Read More

(Lady Gaga photo via) I expect I’ve written here before about how important music is to me when I’m writing. Each story has two soundtracks: the one that fits the plot and tone of the story, and the one I listen to as I write. Sometimes they’re the same, mostly they’re different. But, really, would …Read More