The would-be author asked me how to publish her book.  I should have replied, do you know your market?  Instead, I gave her the name of someone who might help. Why point to the pitfalls ahead?  The woman had completed a book. She deserved kudos instead of advice. I wasn’t the one

I’ve been trying to forestall this announcement for a while but can delay it no longer.  Earlier this year I hinted that the demands of self-publishing and promoting my memoir, Getting Lost to Find Home next November might require me to publish these blogs less frequently for a whi

I felt as if I’d dropped down Alice’s rabbit hole. The daughter of friends I’d known for years had one name, but I’d called her by another. I even invented a tag to remember it as we seldom meet: “M is for music.”  As it turns out, the girl’s name doesn’t start with �

Getting Lost to Find Home, my upcoming memoir, will reveal my childhood relationship with my father was a rocky one.  We didn’t make our separate peace until I’d graduated from college.  Even then, communication wasn’t easy.  He was an Indiana farm boy with an 8th-grade educa

“Politician Won’t Seek Higher Office,” the headline screamed. The reference was to an interview where I’d said I wasn’t moving my office to a 17th-floor high rise along with my fellow county commissioners.  I hated elevators and worried about public access. The newspaper ba

A year ago, I threw in the towel.  By then my memoir had received more than 100 agent rejections.  Presuming the fault was mine, I decided to rewrite the manuscript. The editor I’d hired to critique the original draft had called that version “literature.” She and I were the on

The woman sitting in the coffee shop opposite me had once been my English student.  She’s in her seventies now and I am halfway through my eighties.  From time to time, she assists me with some of my writing projects. Recently, she did a final edit of my memoir which I began in 20

In my upcoming memoir, Getting Lost to Find Home, I describe a scene outside a Kenyan village where I was seated in a first-class train compartment opposite an Indian man. We were waiting for other passengers to board, time enough for me to take the measure of my traveling companion.