We’re celebrating a rare and wonderful rainy day here in parched Northern California—complete with deliciously heavy downpours, lentil-sized hail, lightning and big time thunder. I was blessed this afternoon to get home before the big show started, but here’s a journal piece I wrote after driving home in a powerful rain last fall—back when we … Continue reading Celebrating the Rain
I spent a lovely Sunday afternoon yesterday, eating, walking, gossiping and sharing projects with Sister Writers, June Gillam and Leslie Rose. For some reason I got started venting about an incident that happened a few years back--all part of the ongoing healing process, I guess. So today I thought I would share a poem I wrote at … Continue reading Why I Left My Job
I write about all the crap floating around inside my brain, the ghosts of school bullies and nuns in black habits, wielding rulers and sharp tongues. I write about my favorite teachers from high school when the nuns abandoned their veils and wore peasant blouses and sandals and read Kahlil Gibran to us in religion … Continue reading What do you write about?
I’ve been filling up notebooks writing like crazy for over forty years. A lot of it was venting and whining—or to be kinder to myself, I’ll call it “therapeutic.” I am happy to brag that over the years I’ve had several poems published, usually in local newsletters and chapbooks, but twice in nationally distributed anthologies. … Continue reading Let’s Go!
Dear Family, Friends, and Fellow Writers, I spent 2014 working like crazy to revise and edit my first four novels. 2015 will be my year to promote and publish my writing—and then promote it some more. Toward that end, I am asking all of you to sign up for my email list. This list serves … Continue reading Please Join Our Email List!
I took a leave of absence from my teaching gig to write my first novel. At the time I was burnt out on teaching, but at least when I was teaching I knew what I was doing. I didn’t know how to write a novel, but I started writing anyway. It took about five months … Continue reading Becoming A Novelist (featuring a salute to Nanowrimo)
Marketers would have us believe that summer is the time for books that are light and frothy, suitable for beach or poolside reading. But since I generally didn’t work for eight to ten weeks every summer I often used that time to tackle some massive classic. Last summer I pushed myself through Doris Lessings’ The … Continue reading Good Summer Reads
After a week where the temperature topped 105 degrees each day with little cooling at night, we are all so grateful to welcome back the Delta Breeze, the delightful wind that courses up from San Francisco Bay along the Sacramento River to grace our valley with a natural air conditioner on blessed summer evenings. I … Continue reading Delta Breeze
I pledge allegiance to this sand and gravel road that runs between the river and my house, clumps of California poppies rangy stalks of fragrant fennel and burgeoning fig trees that grow wild on the river bank. I pledge allegiance to the rhythm of the spoken word to cheap pens and notebooks that welcome … Continue reading Happy Birthday USA!
It’s been a year now since I’ve retired from teaching, and I’m sure it will surprise no one when I say retirement is GREAT! Every now and then a friend approaching retirement age will ask, “Do you ever get bored?” My response to that is an unqualified “Heck no!” Sometimes someone will counter with, “Yes, … Continue reading Tending My Muse
