In seventh grade, in the back of my parents’ car, on the way home from another disastrous school-wide dance, my friend Rebekah and I lied to each other in the nicest possible way. “Nerds,” we told ourselves, “Are awesome.” They were the...
Considering a career change? Need a job for a character in your next novel? No need to ask an actual person for his or her job description. Just watch movies. According to Hollywood, here’s what a variety of different jobs entail: Subway/Train Conductor: Look...
When my brother and I were children, my parents believed in nurturing our talents and helping us become whatever we wanted to be. Kindergarteners have a very small skill set, but they get to paint a lot, so one September day I brought home a roll of manila paper. It...
Please welcome Liz Reinhardt! Not only is she one of my favorite bloggers, but I’m lucky to have her as a critique partner, too. She just published her first novel, a YA romance featuring snappy dialogue, a love triangle, to-die-for heroes (two of them!), and...
Warning: Moderately explicit imagery ahead. If you are young and impressionable, easily shocked, or my parents, feel free to move along. This morning I kicked off my list of errands with a stop at the fitness center, where I pounded out a 55-minute suffer fest on...
Last winter, as my daughter and I spent another chilly afternoon lounging around indoors, Sunshine babbling and me responding as if she had spoken in actual sentences, I pictured all the conversations we might have when she was old enough to string more than two real...
Before Sunshine was born, the only portraits I had taken were candids at family gatherings and a few newsy items for my high school paper. Well, plus that one ill-advised attempt at senior portraits, a cheesy set of shots of my best friend leaping over a stream in the...
Somewhere between buying thirty-six cloth diapers for Sunshine and committing to what our local Target calls ‘natural feeding’ (because some people consider ‘breast’ a terrible word) I heard about the wonders of making your own baby food. The...
Please welcome super-talented author Marilyn Brant, who’s here to talk about her newest book, Friday Mornings at Nine. I finished it recently, and I loved it – possibly even more than her first book, According to Jane, which won the prestigious RWA Golden...
I’m working on a new novel. To be clear, by “working on” I mostly mean “gazing into space” and “playing computer solitaire”. On occasion, though, I do actual plotting. I’ve even created a few characters and half a...
