2013 International Book Awards

        Our Love Could Light The World is named as a Finalist in the short story category of the 2013 International Book Awards!

City Lights Bookstore, San Francisco, California

I love Amazon.  I can find any book I want there.  I can sell my own works there, too.  I can buy so many other things besides books – lap top computers, cameras, shoes, spring and summer dresses.  What I can’t do is browse, wander, soak up atmosphere, and appreciate the strange folks who stroll […]

Excerpt From “Our Love Could Light The World”

        Mrs. Dugan came home from work tired.  She was often crabby, too.  She worked in the sales department for a small company that sold manufactured homes.  Her job was to walk clients through their purchase options.  The people she dealt with had all fallen on hard times, or were old and […]

Dear Sirs, Please Tell Us What’s Wrong

  Before anyone gets up in arms about what I’m going to say, please consider that I address this commentary to the very small number of men who lose it every year and shoot people dead.  It’s always men, isn’t it?  A comedian once asked, “Have you ever noticed how all these mass murderers are […]

A Surveillance Society

We live in a free society, more or less.  We come and go without restriction or interference, unless we’re getting on an airplane and find ourselves suddenly in the undignified stance of padding shoeless through an x-ray machine.  Our movements are observed, though, via cameras, particularly at busy traffic intersections.  How clever police departments were […]

Maybe a Feminist After All

I’m not a political person. That doesn’t mean I have no interest in politics, just that I don’t see the world purely in political terms. Some do. A writer whose name I can’t recall said that all writing, one way or another, is political writing. I never believed that, and still don’t. I’m also not […]

Beauty, Elegance, and Grace

I seem to drive a lot between Seattle and Olympia these days – and for those of you unfamiliar with our state, Olympia is the capital, and it’s also home the Evergreen State College where both of my children go to school. My son has his own car, and drives up when he wants. My […]

Spend and Spend Well

When I started writing and sending out my stories for consideration, they went in envelopes that took a lot of stamps. Then journals accepted submissions by email, and I save a lot of money, even when a small reading fee was charged. The traditional print journals, usually associated with an English department somewhere, often pay […]