During lunch with a resident at the retirement center, we talked about art and its effect on the aging brain. Both of us thought any form art challenged people’s perceptions and kept that organ active. From there, we took a short hop to various types of writing: fiction, non-fictio
Some friends dropped by the other day with a book for me to read, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Published in 1937 by a Zora Neal Huston, the tribute on the cover was written by Alice Walker: There is no book more important to me than this one. I’d never heard of the author so, b
I admit it. I can’t talk and chew gum at the same time. Keeping my blog afloat while I finish the third edit of my memoir is beyond me. I have 60 pages to go and at the glacial rate of 3 pages a day, I need to devote another 20 days of uninterrupted time to complete this versi
Without a doubt, the digital world is taking us where no man or woman has gone before. The universe of the mind is rapidly melding with the natural one, creating infinite possibilities. Having reached the edge of the new frontier, we’re about to face unanticipated challenges, the
While I’ve been away, no one in Washington has been sleeping. Unlike my memoir, which makes slow progress, politics never has writer’s block or worries about stopping to research facts. I’ll write some opinions about the world stage over the next few days. Then I’ll retu
During my stay in England in my early twenties, I came down with a second attack of measles. While I was in quarantine, my fiancé left a novel outside my door, a favorite of his which he thought would ease my convalescence. The book was The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey, a
After 4 years of flogging my allegory, “Agent of God,” it was selected for Under a Dark Sign, an anthology to be published in October 2015 by WolfSinger Press. The novelette had been given an honorable mention in 2012 in Allegory Magazine but otherwise had been passed over. I unde
The time has come to begin the third rewrite of my memoir. The manuscript has laid fallow for a month, so I will look at it with fresh eyes, correcting imperfections and doing my best to serve my readers. When it reaches print, it will be the best effort I can make at this stage of my
I’ve written more than once about the games people play to get their books on The New York Times best-seller list. (Blog 4/10/14). The direct route, used for years by Evangelical writers, politicians, (Blog 1/14/16)) and well-known authors, like Jaqueline Suzanne and Wayne Dyer, i
Picking up on yesterday’s comments about where to publish a short story — in a periodical or an anthology – let me take a step back. Writers should recognize they are living in a time of significant change in short-story publishing. Fewer high-circulation magazines publish