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 […]
Writing is Hard Work. So is Reviewing
I hear a lot about bad writing these days. Bad writing is what the surge in self-publishing has created. Without gatekeepers, anyone can be a published author; anyone can throw his hat in the ring alongside Hemingway and Virginia Woolf. Anyone can publish. I won’t get into the trouble that self-publishing can cause […]
Review of Nostalgia, a novel by Dennis McFarland
Dennis McFarland’s novel, Nostalgia, is an elegant, tortuous journey into the darkest corners of the human soul. The year is 1864. America is torn by its bloody Civil War. Young Summerfield Hayes, of Brooklyn, New York, alone in the world with his older sister, Sarah, since the tragic death of their parents in an […]
Talking Yourself Through It
My good friend and writing colleague, Nina Lorraine, has been having a hard time lately. She’s down in the dumps, uninspired, looking for a way forward. My heart went out to her, and I tried to give her some words of advice, consolation, at the very least, a helping hand. Before I continue, I think […]
The Year in Review – A Look Back at 2013
2013 was very good to me. I brought out a new book, learned a lot about how to use social media, and finished my novel, What is Found, What is Lost, which will be published by She Writes Press late in 2014. I had some individual short stories published, too. […]
The Honest Writer: Is a self-published book as worthy as a traditionally published one?
Recently, author Jonathan Franzen told The Guardian just what he thought of Amazon and what it’s done to both writers and book publishing. Suffice it to say, he wasn’t flattering. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, is “decimating literary culture in favor of the yakkers and tweeters and braggers.” Serious writers are being undermined, Franzen says. […]
The Honest Writer: Nancy Hill’s “It Could Have Happened”
It Could Have Happened, by Nancy Hill is a gorgeous collection of short stories, each inspired by equally gorgeous black and white photographs, taken by the author herself. Consider these, as the book’s subtitle says, fairy-tales for grownups. Love lost, love found, fortunes gained, fortunes lost, evil parents, evil children, women full of joy […]