Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category

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Just an Ordinary Woman

I met a woman the other day who had read my books and after praising them generously, she went on to tell me that she could never write fiction because she was “just an ordinary woman.” She said more, but I got stranded back where she said she was “just an ordinary woman.” Well, let’s hear it for all the ordinary women who cook the meals and brush the dogs and – yes, it’s true — write the novels.


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Temptations

There are so many temptations that lure me away from my work.
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Meet Django

Django Jones leapt onto the pages of Little Girl Gone fully developed, smiling and ready for his close up. He’s almost thirteen and though he’s an orphan now, he had the good fortune to be raised by a glamorous mom and dad who adored him in the best way.


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Foo

One of the characters in LITTLE GIRL GONE is a pit bull named Foo. Actually, he was part of this story during an earlier incarnation and almost ended up in the discard pile for plots, ideas and characters that for some reason don’t work out.


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The Countdown Begins

I’m so deep in HONOR & GLORY these days that it came as kind of a shock when The Bear reminded me that it’s only three months ‘til the LITTLE GIRL GONE pub date and I’d better start blogging and tweeting.


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Emerging from the Swamp

It’s two months since my last blog post. When I began this endeavor I had the best intentions to stay on track, keep in touch and share the daily-ness of this writer’s life. And then I got knocked right off the path by my new book, HONOR & GLORY.


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San Diego Book Awards

Last Saturday night a crowd of writers and well-wishers came together for the annual San Diego Book Awards. For the last seventeen years, these awards have singled out local published and unpublished writers in a crowd of categories. To be honest, I thought I had a chance of winning the best contemporary novel because the nominated book, The Good Sister, is a powerful story about the inner life of a woman whose psychotic state of postpartum depression led her to believe that killing her children and herself was the best thing she could do. Even so, when I heard my name called there was an instant of disbelief and I was suddenly blushing like a kid.


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A Day in the Life

Just in from outdoors where the sun is shining and it’s warm after a gloomy morning. Woke up feeling like half a person so I hit Jitters (Morena Blvd, fabulous Calabria coffee) for two medium caps and a plain croissant (I resisted the chocolate) and drove to the bay with the New Yorker. Good article about Jane Fonda this week. For a while I nibbled my sinful pastry and watched the water-skiers getting dumped and dogs taking dumps as I gradually got out of the dumps and drove home and got to work.


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What does an author owe her reader?

Good morning, friends. Let me say right off that the thoughts in this piece were written in a grumpy and resentful frame of mind. I guess that’s called a disclaimer.


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Old Friends

I just finished a long and then very long email to a friend from college, a woman I see maybe once every five years and with whom I correspond maybe twice a year.  As I was writing, I found myself speaking more candidly than I would to most people. I started to remember what she looked like at twenty, the way her hair was always a dark, smooth and shiny cap while mine was mouse-brown, curly and untidy. Her smile was beautiful and still is. I was good at smiling so I didn’t envy her that. But the hair, the hair! And guess what? She still has it and I’m still envious!


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