THE FEMININE ASPECT A friend recently put a new author’s work in my hand… that is to say new to me though the writer, C. L. Moore was born in 1911 and died a victim of Alzheimer’s in 1987.  C.L. stands for Catherine Lucille and she was the first American woman to write in the s

TO PUBLISH OR PERISH, THAT IS THE QUESTION I confess I am on the cusp of a question: whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of working with Independent publishers or to take arms against them and become an entrepreneur of my work. It’s a question that som

THE ALLEGORY OF LIFE I’ve written an allegory that’s been rejected by a number of periodicals. Still, I persist in sending it out because I have such faith in the piece. The other day I received another rejection from a newly established publication. This one included comments f

SINNER, KNOW THYSELF More than once I have written blog posts in praise of complex sentences. By combining several ideas between a capital and a period, a writer creates relationships among thoughts that wouldn’t be as successful if each was confined to its own subject and verb. Co

FALLING IN LOVE AGAIN…I CAN’T HELP IT* In the November issue of “Vanity Fair” Robert Loomis, a recently retired book editor with Random House, tells a story about the author Jackie Collins. When asked why she became a writer she retorted the reason was because her husband gav

SWAN SONG FOR THE LONE WOLVES In the September issue of “Harper’s” magazine, Garret Keizer, a contributing editor and author writes about his recent one year stint as a teacher at a high school where he’d been an instructor thirty years before. Some things hadn’t changed. 

OF MAUS AND MEN The Arab Spring released a season of discontent around the globe. People barred from their dreams are beginning to look beyond themselves to explain that failure and are questioning the structure of societies as a whole. As a result, gatekeepers are being challenged

WHY WE SHOULD RULE BY THE BOOK I quoted the writer Philip Roth last year who said great writing in the United States was on the decline. He didn’t say why and I’ve been speculating on the question ever since. Is it true, for example? Certainly the number of self-published books is

A COSMIC LAUGH I recently received a note from one of my Facebook pals who wrote he’d had a letter to the editor printed in a local newspaper. Could he say he was a published author now, he wondered. My response was to congratulate him and add an “amen” to his comment that he w

WHEN THE MOON IS A GHOSTLY GALLEON “Heart Land” has a chapter entitled “Of Ghost, Goblins and Little Green Men.”  In this Halloween story, the children of my fictional town avoid knocking at the dentist’s door because he treats them to bundles of sliced carrots and