a.k.a. Good Food

At four, she learned that Santa doesn’t really bring brightly wrapped dolls and Easy Bake ovens.
At six, the beautiful tooth fairy morphed into a parent sneaking into her room late at night to place a silver dollar under her pillow.
At thirteen, her first love, Jimmy Marks, dumped her for cheerleader Alison Moore.
At seventeen, acceptance to the local college did nothing to dull the pain of the thin envelope from Princeton.
At twenty-four, 2 months before the birth of their first son, came the news that her husband had died, the victim of an Iraqi IED.
Innocence can never last.

Tags: 6 Sentences

Writers Reading. That’s the name the Wilton Library gave our second appearance. My critique group, as I’ve previously mentioned, is blessed with the support of our library, which provides us with a meeting room every other week, regular speakers and workshops and, once a year, with a forum to preview our works in progress.
Tuesday night was the night. And we, the four writers, read to an audience of over 60 listeners packed into the Library’s Brubeck Room. Continue Reading »

Tags: Wilton Library, writing

I wanted to write him a love song, but I had no music in my heart, no melody in my soul. Sonnets and poems are beyond my limited capabilities, no Shakespeare or Shelley in my genes. A picture paints a thousand words, but my pallet is colourless, my canvas blank.
How do you tell someone how much you love him when inspiration is elusive? I ache to express my feelings, the pain is physical, almost tangible.
There is no other way, I must just say it out loud: I love you.

Tags: 6 Sentences

Last weekend I attended Fiction Fest, sponsored by the Connecticut chapter of the Romance Writers of America (CTWRA). Obviously romance is not my genre, but there were writers of other genres there as well. Continue Reading »

Tags: agents, conferences, query, writing

A blank, white screen; the only motion a blinking cursor and Rocky (my animated Office assistant) gyrating in the corner of the toolbar. Crawl into your doghouse, Rocky.

Where is my inspiration? Where is my muse? Nothing is flowing from my fingertips.

Only six sentences will be written today..

Tags: 6 Sentences, inspiration, writing

Rather than blither on about my WIP, I thought I’d post a piece I first wrote for Six Sentences.  It sums it all up.

My mind is a dangerous place, treacherous and deceitful at times, serene and joyous at others, a never-ending source of insight and blindness, pain and pleasure.

Fear stems from my inability to predict, resist, control, and yes, sometimes even cope with, the environment therein.

At first my mind is wildly out of control, spewing ideas like an manic pitching machine; the ideas coming at random speeds – 5, 90, 35 or 79 per minute – a maelstrom of creativity, assailing, overloading all sensory receptors.

Then, nothing; the calm after the storm, but the calm more terrifying, more draining than the storm; will the tide rise again, or will the waves remain placid, unruffled for days and weeks on end.

Is it a lull or is the storm spent, blown out by its own ferocity?

I dread the halcyon times, the sterility, the quiet, the nothingness; though I know exhaustion and frustration will result, I yearn to feel once more the sharp savagery of my mind’s storm, for those are times when I am a creative being.

Check out the Six Sentences Redux page on my blog for other 6’s

Tags: six sentences, writing

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a reading of Julie Curtis’ irreverent essay: My Radioactive Home. Julie is a member of my writing/critique group.

The Westport Arts Center came up with the idea of tying in a writing competition with the art exhibit they had planned. The concept was to integrate visual arts, the written word and performance art. To that end, professional actors gave the readings. After yesterday’s event, selected essays were recorded onto audio devices and placed in the gallery as companions to the HOME art exhibit.

Continue Reading »

Tags: contests, Julie Curtis, Westport

Having finally completed the manuscript of my first mystery, and being reluctant to go through yet another round of revisions, I decided to venture out onto the ‘net in search of people, places and knowledge that might be helpful. Continue Reading »

Tags: blogs, RSS, websites, writing

In the interest of full disclosure, I admit that I have never claimed to be, or even aspired to be, an optimist –my glass is never half full, but neither is it half empty; it simply contains a certain amount of water.

This philosophical outlook has served me fairly well throughout my life, equalizing the joy of being selected for the first-string lacrosse team with the pain of not being accepted to Harvard, the ecstasy of my first love with the discovery that he was a two-timing, good-for-nothing , conniving lowlife, and so on.

Now that I’ve completed my first full-length manuscript and submitted it to agents and publishers, I’m finding the “Tao of Simply” less adequate. The stress of long waiting periods, followed by the inevitable rejection, is wearing away at my ability to view things simply.

Is it that my writing is simply not good enough, or that the agent is simply missing the point; is it that my genre is simply not in favor this year, or that the industry is simply stagnant?

Or, perhaps, I’ve simply lost it – whatever it was. If found, please return.

For those of you who don’t subscribe to RSS feeds (and you should – there are some very good ones out there) I thought I’d pass along a question raised yesterday by Nathan Bransford: When do you start calling yourself “a writer?” And what about “author?” Continue Reading »

Tags: author, publishing, writer, writing