A shrug and a smile
Ahah! Bet you thought I haven’t been knitting, since I’ve been blogging about everything but that. You would be wrong. When writing days are the longest, I need my knitting the most. I’m shrugging – no, not doing the bobbing thing with the shoulders, but knitting a shrug. Remember, I mentioned it in my blog…
Read MoreFiddleheads!
They’re back! DH and I were strolling through Whole Foods the other night when I spotted a precious sign. Fiddlehead Ferns, it read – and there they were, packed in a bin with tiny ice chips to keep them crisp. For the uninitiated, fiddleheads are the immature, unopened fronds of a fern that, when harvested…
Read MoreThe pre-reqs of public speaking
What makes a good public speaker? A strong voice? Lotsa guts? The gift of gab? If you guessed any of these, you’d be right, but they’re the tip of the iceberg – literally, only the part you see. When I talk before a group, there’s much more involved, and since I’m flying across the country…
Read MoreWhat, me? Preorder?
Well, I don’t do it all the time, but here I am, asking you to preorder the paperback of Escape, which goes on sale Tuesday. So let’s take a minute to discuss the pros and cons of preordering. Pro. You don’t risk forgetting; the book is on your doorstep the day it goes on sale.…
Read MoreWhen characters are name-callers
Here’s another thought for those of you who are interested in the kinds of things a writer has to consider. In a single stretch of dialogue, how often should the characters call each other by name? I’ve been hypersensitive about this lately, because I just read another book that, IMHO, did it very wrong. Here’s…
Read MoreWhy I love FIFTY SHADES OF GREY
Surely by now you’ve heard friends talk of this book, and if you haven’t yet, you will. Consider me a friend. And here’s my talk. I love the characters. Ana may be sexually naïve at the start of the book, but she has spunk and wit. She takes on Christian as no other woman has;…
Read MoreNovelist 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…
Read MoreA 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 ……
Read MoreWhy 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…
Read MoreWhy 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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