Novelist as shrink

So I’m re-reading Sweet Salt Air and seeing remarks about my characters’ emotional baggage.  Take this brief excerpt.  Charlotte, the main voice in Sweet Salt Air, is trying to explain to her BFF Nicole why she has never married. “What terrifies me,” Charlotte said in a measured way, speaking from the heart as she couldn’t…

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A watershed moment for SWEET SALT AIR

I do try to blog several times a week, but it’s been ten days since my last post, and you loyal readers have Sweet Salt Air to blame.  I’ve reached a critical point in the book – three hundred pages done, with the final climactic hundred ready to go.  But … but … but ……

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Why do I blog?

Let me make one thing clear.  I don’t blog to express a political opinion.  As a novelist, my taking a stand on anything political or religious is disastrous.  When I talked here last week about civil discourse, it was to vent not about what we say but how we say it. So there you go…

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Why is everyone talking at once?

Call me old fashioned, but I want to hear what other people have to say, which is why I hate it when I hear voices talking over each other.  It’s disrespectful.  It’s impolite.  It’s deafening. But, of course, that’s the point.  Those voices don’t want to hear other voices.  They think theirs is the only…

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The how-to of collecting maple sap

Have you ever had pure maple syrup?  Once you have, the other never quite works for you again.  Pure maple syrup is deep in color, rich in taste, goes down slowwwww-ly, and lingers wherever it lands.  It is sweet without containing the kinds of processed sugars we’re told to avoid, which makes it a super…

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