On Finding Enough Time

Posted on August 29, 2018 by admin

Because I’m working on a book about happiness, anxiety, and creativity I’ve been thinking a lot about time. As in, a lot of people, including me, feel anxious about not having enough time. By definition, being human and mortal means not having enough time. Most of us can think of more things to do than we could ever engage in during an average lifespan. Yet there are periods in my life when I’ve felt extreme anxiety over not having enough time and others when I’ve felt, in contrast, mor...

Real Bees In An Imaginary Garden

Posted on August 22, 2018 by admin

In front of me a woman and her husband face one another on their porch. They've just reunited after a long separation. The rows of worn floorboards between them and their halting, hesitant way of speaking tell me there's a lot no one is saying. Despite the wife's smiles and efforts to set her husband at ease, this isn't a happy reunion. To my left, barely within my peripheral vision, bees buzz angrily inside a beehive. I hope none of them gets out. The thought, or really more of a feeli...

Fiction And Life

Posted on July 18, 2018July 19, 2018 by admin

My fiction is not autobiographical. Not only have I never experienced a supernatural pregnancy (surprise, right?) as does Tara, the main character in The Awakening Series, I’ve never been pregnant at all. I’ve also never dated a vampire (When Darkness Falls), and unlike Q.C. (Quille) Davis, I don’t investigate crimes and no one I love has been murdered. (I did work in the tower formerly known as Sears, but nothing occult happened there. That I know of.) Yet as I walked today through Pri...

Rediscovering Bliss–At The Library

Posted on September 29, 2015 by admin

The other day I rode an escalator to the seventh floor, literature and fiction, at the Harold Washington Public Library in Chicago and felt bliss. It was the second time in as many weeks I'd visited there. This made me happier than I can say because that's more visits to a public library in two weeks than I've made in the entire last decade.For as long as I can remember, I've loved libraries. At five years old, I got my pinkish orange children's card at the Brookfield Public Library. I was so ex...

Are Books Written by Women More Likely to be Labeled “Trash”?

Posted on June 30, 2015 by admin

Have you ever heard someone say with an air of apology, “I read trash”? Or has anyone dismissed what you read that way? Once a friend referred to an early Mary Higgins Clark book as trash. If Clark has heard her work called that, I imagine she doesn’t lose sleep over it given that she’s known as the Queen of Suspense, has sold over 100 million books in her lifetime, and receives advances of over $10 million per novel. But the comment made me wonder, what is it that makes one book or author more ...

Why Do The Books We Love (Or Hate) Matter So Much To Us?

Posted on March 23, 2015 by admin

One of the two book groups I belong to consists of lawyers. (Yes, who knows why we set it up that way, but we did.) In the non-lawyer group, the participants express strong personal views about liking or disliking a book, a character, the writing style, the plot, etc., and usually listen with interest to others' impressions. The lawyer-readers comment on the same aspects of the books but are a lot more apt to pound the table and insist a particular book or author is excellent or horrible. The in...

Sin, Sex and the Art of Persuasive Writing

Posted on November 21, 2013 by admin

My parents used to subscribe to a Catholic magazine with a column for young adults. When I was in high school, I read one of the columns that advised teenagers that the Bible clearly showed pre-marital sex was wrong - just look at the Sixth and Ninth commandments. I didn't remember anything in the Ten Commandments about pre-marital sex. I checked my parents' Bible (no Internet at that time, so I used the index - remember those?). The Sixth Commandment prohibits adultery. The ...