Sometimes I need to go back to old favorites. With food it’s a pot roast and potatoes, chocolate chip cookies, or good old homemade baked macaroni and cheese (NOT Kraft). With movies it’s Enchanted April, or Raiders of the Lost Ark, or The Sound of Music. And speaking of music — […]

I tried for almost ten years to get an agent, which you can read about on the blog I wrote for Sisters in Crime this week. Finally, after writing three other books, Till the Cows Come Home caught one agent’s attention. I had several “Can I please see the first 30 pages” requests, […]

My friend Lorraine Bartlett wrote a blog on March 4 about friendship in the writing world. She says she was told by a successful blogger that if one wants to be successful in the writing business one must be ruthless. You must surround yourself with successful people, and if they become a […]

As a child I dreamed of having a book published. Then, later on as an adult I dreamed of having a book published. And finally after about thirteen years of serious writing, I did. It took a long time. It took several manuscripts (with lots of revisions). And as C.R. noted […]

I have spent this week at the hospital with my dad. I drove him and Mom down to Cincinnati on Monday to visit a specialist there, and we are in the midst of other tests, conferences, and difficult decisions. His brother Jon is in from Washington (state) to help and be with us, […]

One of my daughter’s friends was over yesterday. She took a break from playing to come find me, where I was sweating on my recumbent exercise bike (lovely contraption) and reading The Thief Lord, by Cornelia Funke. She looked first at my set-up — a music stand with the book pinned to it […]

On my daughter’s day off from kindergarten yesterday we watched our usual array of PBS shows, including old favorites like Clifford and Sesame Street, plus new ones like the cute and fun Super Y. But the one I was most excited to see was good ol’ Mr. Rogers.
He’s so wonderful, from his gentle manner […]

Well, the floods are coming again. By this morning the waters have reached our driveway. My husband parked at the neighbors’ last night so he’d be able to hoof it through the fields to his car so he could get to work. The next challenge will be to see if he can […]

Tuesday night I lay in bed and tried not to think about the wind. The news said there could be gusts of up to sixty miles an hour. Sixty! It took me a long time to get to sleep, and sometimes I’d be almost there and a gust would whoosh me out […]

My son is having his tonsils out today. In fact, it’s happening so early in the day that by the time most of you read this it will be long over.
One would expect an eight-year-old to be nervous about surgery. The pain. The shots. Whatever else he could imagine. […]