Behind The Book – What Is Found, What Is Lost
Available Here What Is Found, What Is Lost, like most, if not all novels, is about a number of different things. First, it gives us four generations of women who are related by blood, but often know very little about one another. Daughters are ignorant of their own mothers’ hearts; mothers find their daughters mysterious […]
Art + Social Media = Penned
I’ve got a new book coming out in October, my debut novel, What Is Found, What Is Lost. I’ve been working social media like crazy in an effort to build interest and gain exposure. Most of this has been on Twitter, where I’m happy to report I’ve now got over 17,000 […]
Leaving Yourself Behind – A Writer’s Story
Lake Cayuga, Ithaca, New York It’s been said that if you’re related to a writer, you’ll see yourself on her pages sooner or later. The idea of being not only depicted, but laid bare for strangers to consume in a spirit of pity, mirth, or even annoyance, can be distressing. […]
When The Line Becomes A Circle – A Writer’s Story
In my new novel, What Is Found, What Is Lost, one of the main protagonists (there are four) reflects that “time was a loop, from now to then and back again.” Freddie, who changed her name at age twenty-one, and moved Heaven and earth to put a troubled past behind her, finds that the past […]
William The Poet
Seattle is a city of neighborhoods, and each seems to have a farmers market. While we don’t live in Ballard (we’re on Queen Anne), we do a lot there – work out at the gym, dine, shop, marvel at how much that particular quarter has changed in the years we’ve made the Northwest our home […]
Guest Post – Attorney John R Christiansen Analyses the Hobby Lobby Decision
If You Don’t Profess a Mainstream Religion, Hobby Lobby Just Made You a Second-Class Citizen The most important thing about the Hobby Lobby ruling wasn’t that it allowed the owners of a closely held corporations to opt out of including contraceptives in the health benefits available to their employees. The most important thing about […]
Dear Women: Velma Wiley
Before she was my landlady, Velma Wiley was my co-worker. We were housekeepers in a retirement home. I was nineteen. Velma was in her sixties. Although there were six of us on staff, I was usually paired with her, because the steady stream of chatter she kept up drove the other housekeepers nuts. […]
Author Interview: Leesa Cross-Smith
I’m pleased to share my interview with author Leesa Cross-Smith, whose debut story collection, Every Kiss A War, was just published by Mojave River Press. Please tell us about the origin of your book’s title! It’s a wonderful name. Thank you so much! It comes from a story in the collection called “Sometimes […]
Dear Women – A Series on Women I’ve Known. Today: Mrs. Collins
Ours was a middle-class family. We weren’t poor. We didn’t struggle. That came later, after my parents divorced and my mother, lacking financial savvy, exchanged child support payments for having my father’s name removed from our home’s deed of trust. In the 1960’s married women didn’t manage household money, and were often at […]
Dear Women – The first in a series of posts on women I used to know
How funny it is to suddenly remember someone you’ve not thought of for decades! There I was, having dinner in front of the television (a nightly affair), when someone I worked with back in the Seventies crossed my mind. Her name was Virginia Farrell. We worked in the lingerie department of a small clothing […]