Late on a Sunday afternoon, after a nearly eight-hour drive, I arrived at The Porches in Norwood, Virginia. I met my lovely host, Trudy, got the tour, unpacked my stuff, opened my laptop and stared out the large window in front of my writing desk, which overlooked a porch, and beyond the porch, the mountains. […]
Tell it to My Boss
I’ve just arrived in my writing closet. I’ve got a nice cup of coffee. I’ve pushed hubby’s shirts to the side to give me a little breathing room and positioned my laptop in the center of the TV tray, which serves as my desk. This morning, I plan to add to the document titled “Freewrite-New Novel,” […]
Is your cat being naughty? Send him packing in this suitcase-turned-pet-bed!
Suppose you like to cruise Ebay for vintage suitcases, as pretty much everyone does (No? Just me?). Well, I found this beauty and knew it would work as a bed for the alpha cat in our household, Mr. Fudge John Lickins III, Esq. (not sure where he found the time to get that law degree…). […]
Balto, he’s not.
It happens at least a couple times a week while I’m out walking my new dog. Someone asks where I got him, I reply “The Humane Society,” and they say, “Oh, so he’s a rescue dog.”This puzzles me, as that phrase makes me picture heroic dogs from history, a parade of Baltos carrying diphtheria medicine […]
Quick! Get my tinfoil hat!
There are moments when paranoia grips my throat so tightly I can’t breathe…when my mind is paralyzed with the thought that someone else out there…someone else laboring alone in her own, similarly sized and ill-equipped writing closet is writing about the very same thing I am! But I had the idea first! Didn’t I? Not fair!Here’s my […]
It can’t tune in Helsinki, but it can hold my Cuisinart.
It’s so much fun to take something that’s not getting much use and turn it into something both practical and beautiful. In my dining room, I’m currently using vintage test tubes as flower vases. In the living room, an antique shadow box explaining the tadpole to frog life cycle does a turn as our end table. And […]
Write Like a Mother
Ah, Mother’s Day Eve. Tomorrow, after the kids climb into my bed smiling those sweet little grins when they present me with a plate of French toast they helped prepare, I will hug them and thank them, and feel thankful for them, and then I will shoo them away for a few hours to work, likely some much […]
The Little Man Inside My Head
So, I’ve been having this problem with…um…with… (Hey! Is that a Chipping Sparrow at the birdfeeder?)…FOCUS. After a long (sometimes painful, sometimes exhilerating) struggle to complete my first novel, I’m ready to begin the next one. I have a bare-bones idea for the book, and I’ve been doing lots of background reading, but I […]