Walking near my home through Harms Woods, or standing in my backyard on a soft winter’s night searching for the moon between the house’s roofline and the big oak’s limbs, or perhaps sitting low in a stuffed chair in the library in a carved out space among tall bookshelves, or even typing this at my desk where I write, I [...]
It’s the season of trees when their leaves, a pallet in shades of green from bright leafy flora to deep woodland, cease their infusion of growth and bleed vibrancy of color seen only in the fall. It’s a time to connect and to explore the wonder of a landscape falling softly to sleep, but not before it brings drama to [...]
After a lengthy hiatus from writing memoir to write a second book, my first of fiction, I returned to memoir, and recently completed an essay about my mother and I during her final months of life . . . or so I thought. Yes, grief was palpable throughout the paragraphs, yet, when I read the essay a final time before [...]
I recently saw a question posted on a social media author group page, of which I am a member, asking if any writer has earned out the amount she has put into the (hybrid) publication of her book. I read the fifty plus affirmed comments and their details. Sure, every author hopes to cash in on an investment that has [...]
winter willow I sat on the floor and pulled the lid from a squat octagonal storage bin, releasing a crisp waft of evergreen. Inside, a trove of trinkets lay in beds of crinkled butcher paper. They varied in size, shape, color—and age. I rummaged through the collection, my fingers becoming sticky from leftover tree sap clinging to the Christmas tree [...]
If you’ve read my memoir, Under The Birch Tree, you’ll learn that as a young girl, I was a walker, circumnavigating the yards that surrounded my home as if to plot memories with every footprint. And to this day, I walk, traversing the woods along curvy earth trails marked by bumps and dips, or meander through the neighborhood, pivoting on [...]
When I was seven or maybe eight, summer vacation was freedom. I would be free of classes, sitting, listening to a teacher, reading from a book, studying a blackboard. I would be free from test-taking anxiety and fear of maybe failing them. Having nothing required of me that would elicit emotional responses was my definition of a summer vacation. Until [...]
I completed a final draft of a blog post (I had started it as a Word doc) last week about how our most vivid memories come from our childhoods. I explored why that might be. I fired up my laptop to post the blog the next day, but was stalled as my computer ran updates. Twenty minutes later, I logged [...]