It wasn’t until we were cleaning up the dinner dishes last Thursday night, and my husband mentioned that there were only three months left until Christmas, that I remembered that September 25th was a special anniversary for me. On September 25th, 2007, Isabella Moon, my debut novel, was published in hardcover. I took me eight years …Read More

When I think of topics for this blog, I type them onto a green digital sticky note on my desktop. (Spoiler alert: Look for blogs on Perry Mason, portals, terra preta, copperhead snakes climbing trees, and the (puzzling) topic loosely known as “I’m going to make everything all right.” Whatever that means.) This topic was listed as …Read More

    Taking long drives is one of my passions. It doesn’t matter if I’m alone or with someone else. Either way, I feel renewed as the highway unspools behind me. Traveling lets me divide my life into small, manageable sections, like a timeline of events that’s always moving forward. This weekend Husband and I returned …Read More

  Chocolate Won’t Get You Unstuck: This Writer’s Internal Dialogue About Food.   Me: You have this weird habit that I don’t understand. Me, too: Which one? I have a lot of weird habits. Me: You’ll be sitting there at your desk, concentrating on a paragraph or a page or on whatever it is that …Read More

Somewhere back in my years’ worth of blogs, I know I’ve written about Julia Cameron’s classic book on creativity, THE ARTIST’S WAY. It’s been a few years since I read the book and completed its intense series of exercises, but the habits I learned from it have stuck with me for the most part. One habit …Read More

      I spend a lot of time evaluating the relative value/usefulness of things. I want just the right tool at the proper time–but it shouldn’t be extravagant or wasteful. Comparison and criticism are nasty bedfellows. In the past I have silently judged infrequent cooks for buying $300 dutch ovens, when I know my …Read More

  I have one Instagram account and I’ve been thinking about making another one just for photographs of the 12 acres on which we live. There is so much richness in even just a single acre—in even a few square feet—that it would be cheating, because even if I tried, I would never be able to take …Read More

  I have friends who worry about Halloween, and I take their concerns seriously. If one has a strong sense that there is evil in the world, one usually wants to stay as far away from it–and to keep one’s children as far away from it–as one can. But the Halloween I see when I look …Read More

  What? Aren’t you already a professional? you might say, if we were sitting down for a cup of tea together. Haven’t you been publishing for more than two decades? When I think about how long I’ve been writing and publishing, I feel slightly embarrassed about how little I’ve actually published. I’ve written six novels (but published only …Read More

  It’s no secret that I have organizational issues. ADD/ADHD is a real thing and I struggle with it every day. My memory is pretty terrible, and I can’t prioritize my way out of a wet paper bag. It’s also an amazing gift. But some gifts are hard to live with. “Why don’t you just …Read More