To be a writer is to court two things: a) rejection and b) people who want to sell you promotion services. As sure as dead bodies attract blow flies, both encounters are inescapable.  Believe me, no one knows a sure way to shatter the glass barrier between wannabe authors and top sel

On Facebook I’ve connected with a few students from India, most of them studying to be engineers. When they write, they address me as “mam,” and their concerns are almost exclusively about girls. Most recently, one of them contacted me for advice. He’s in love with a young wom

I was reading an article about how the “upper crust” lives, recently. The report concerned a training school for domestic staff who were destined to serve the super rich. (“You Rang?” by John P. Davidson, Harper’s, Jan. 2014 pgs. 41-56) What caught my eye was the reason behi

During the Christmas holidays, I had coffee with a woman who marveled that I had time to read the many articles and books I refer to in my daily blogs. My response was to shrug and say that using other people’s ideas as a basis for my own was easier than being original.  I wasn’t