These Are MY Reasons For Spring Cleaning

These Are MY Reasons For Spring Cleaning by @BarbaraDelinsky, Cleaning, Spring, Family

Are you into this? Such a cliché, the expression “spring cleaning,” and I never consciously set out to do it. But here I am, again this March as I do every March, sorting through unnecessary paper on my desk, disposing of expired food in my pantry, weeding winter-weary clothes from my closet. I tell myself…

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The Truth About Why I Don’t Own a Gun

The Truth About Why I Don't Own a Gun by @BarbaraDelinsky, Guns, Government

Why I Don’t Own a Gun It goes back to my childhood when I never had a toy gun. For one thing, I was a girl, and guns were considered improper toys for girls. For another, my parents never owned guns – largely because their parents had grown up in the shadow of Hitler, a…

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I’m incubating …

Incubating.  What does that mean, someone recently asked.  This person had first asked if I was taking a break, now that my new book is finished and in production.  Lord, no, I said.  Writing is what I do.  It’s what I think about when I’m up the creek without a paddle – e.g., in the…

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I remember seven spectacular summers …

This summer of 2017 has been amazing for me in a totally unexpected way.  My nine-year-old granddaughter went to sleep-away camp for the very first time – 3½  weeks at a girls’ camp in Vermont.  Every night, her camp posts several hundred photos taken that day, so that parents can see their daughters in action. …

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Why I just joined Instagram

I swore I wouldn’t.  Social media is only good if you do it well, but how many social media sites can one writer do well and still write her book?  I’ve done Facebook for a long while and have a healthy following.  For posting news, sharing events, offering contests, and simply getting the opinions of…

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BD does the island

Think “energy of women.” I did not come up with this phrase. My agent did when, yesterday, I was telling her about spending last week on a tiny island with seven other women. The island in question is part of the Thousand Islands archipelago in the St. Lawrence River in Canada. At the tippy top…

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When books mirror life

I have a childhood friend, living far away now, who swears she knows what’s going on in my life from my newest book. She is certainly right where Blueprints is concerned.  During the early months of the writing, in real life I was gutting and redoing the bathroom off my bedroom – totally fitting when…

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My Maine Childhood

I’m a Maine-summer girl. Some of my earliest memories are from visiting my dad’s sister’s place on Lake Sebago or my mom’s father’s cooperage in Portland. Then my mother died, and I was sent away to camp.  If that sounds cruel, listen up. I was eight when my mother died. And back then, believe it…

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What does art do for you?

My husband and I recently visited the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA, to see an exhibit of Impressionist art.  I’ve always adored Impressionism, but I wasn’t prepared for what I found – and I’m not talking about the art itself, though that was breathtaking.  I’m talking about my reaction to it. I was enchanted,…

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When I write about home construction

Does life imitate art?  Not for me.  For me, it’s the other way around.  When life happens, I write about it.  For instance, after my husband and I built our house, I wrote about home construction in the Crosslyn Rise Trilogy.  When we began spending time in small New Hampshire towns, I wrote Lake News. …

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