Confession: I don’t know where the refresh button is on my computer, or what it does. I only know I’ve been told to “refresh” a page for up-to-date information (I think). I just click out of the Internet and start over. Don’t laugh. In 1982, when my husband bought my first PC (an Osborne we
About this time 25 years ago a box of books landed with a thud on my front porch. Comp copies of my first picture book. The idea for this book came to me in the summer of 1981. We were living in our Greenbrier rental house. My niece Susan was staying with us for the
The November afternoon I took Atticus to the SPCA, I didn’t leave empty-handed. I brought home two boys because a house without a cat isn’t a home. They were in the same condo at the shelter, but their stories are very different. This is Edison (my name—at the shelter he was called Yogi Bear). His
It’s been a long while since I’ve posted any funny pictures of Atticus on Facebook, or even mentioned him. The truth is, Atticus hasn’t lived with us since November. Here is a look back at two years with Atticus, and what happened. I got him from the SPCA in December 2014 at age five months.
Inauguration Day. Except for exercise class, I stayed home. We have no TV and my husband took the newspapers with him to work. But the Internet sprayed me with the day’s events. People would not stop talking. Talk, talk, talk. By the time I went to bed, my stomach was in knots. Saturday I left
Today is the launch day of my newest–and first 2017–book, Tooth Fairy’s Night. It’s a Level 1 Step into Reading, written for the newest readers. And here is how it came about. In the spring of 2015, I was restless and in need of “filling the well,” as most long-term career writers must do from
I’m late putting up a New Year’s post, owing to the fact I had a book due, I was hospitalized, and there were all those holidays. Being in the hospital for three days (and three mostly sleepless nights) gave me plenty of time to think about the coming year and change. A new year usually
It starts in late October when I pick up special-issue Christmas magazines. Something fires in my brain. Visions of cut-out sugar cookies, homemade breads for neighbors, our house turned into a picture-perfect vintage winter wonderland . . . For Type-A control-freaks like me, Christmas represents the pinnacle of overachievement. Pull out garland, lights, and mistletoe!
Last week I wrote about being “between selves,” referencing an essay by writing teacher, Heather Sellers. I’m still mining that essay, “The Wizard in the Closet,” which is about how Sellers’ FSU writing mentor, Jerome Stern, shaped her into a writer (and a person). As Stern’s grad assistant, Sellers often ran errands for him: “picking
Recently I attended our regional SCBWI conference. It was a great conference, as always, and like old home week. Lots of people came up to me: Hollins students, retreat attendees, critique clients, workshop attendees, even someone who heard me speak at a romance writers panel in 1982 (“You were a girl!”). I was pleased that
As you grow older, you realize there are a great many things you can’t get back: your childhood home, your size two body, your mother’s moonstone pendant you lost in the front yard and never found no matter how many times you raked through the grass. In this era of ever-facing forward, you may think
When I think about the stars and how far away they are and how many, I get so I have to sit down. And then I remember that matter cannot be created or destroyed, which means nothing ever leaves. Not dogs or fleas or mockingbirds or Jefferson’s eyelashes. The dust stirred by the hem of