June 2014 For many years I aspired to be a short story writer. I wrote several short stories and asked friends to read the drafts of...

Perhaps it was because I was born into a Greek tragedy that I somehow managed to avoid reading any of those classic plays. I, however,...

St. Patrick's Day 2014 During the early spring of 2010 while I was writing the draft of THE DAWN (which was at that time called...

It is a difficult, demanding hunger - the need to create. One must fill the senses with the sense of exhilaration, even joy, in the...

February 2014 My husband and family have been and continue to be the highest priorities in my life. They have inspired me to develop my...

W. Somerset Maugham W. Somerset Maugham, William Somerset Maugham, the British doctor-turned-writer, is one of my favorite novelists. He was born in 1874 and died in 1965. He lived within a duration that produced many wars, quite a few revolutions, many changes in travel and in technologies, and many assaults upon languages and literatures. His reputation as a popular, best-selling writer, as well as the highest paid author during the 1930s, led his peers and critics to carp

Born in 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was a very conservative (in its original meaning), upright Victorian male who never lost his mid-Western view of life or his delicate sense of propriety, even when drunk. The reason why he could so ruthlessly chronicle the chaotic, destructive, careless, immoral Jazz Age (a term of his invention) was that he was so outside of it, even when he was in the middle of it. He was never able to bridge the gap betwee

As the year comes to an end and holidays are celebrated, I would like to offer some gifts in a literary vein to anyone who enjoys good...

During my many years of study to become a novelist, I encountered these forms of writing that purported to be fiction and were even...

It was not until I moved West from the East that I learned about Louis L’Amour, and it was a rather chance encounter that informed me of...

I attended a Writer’s Conference in the early 1990s on the “up and coming plots” for the future, the ideas that a writer needed to focus on to sell. I felt slightly insulted but very infuriated by this “author” to whom I’d paid $90 for a bunch of bull and a mass of malarkey. His contention was that the readers of the future were persons of certain specific ethnicities. “Target them. Write for them. They’re where the money of the future is.” I raised my hand and this author pe

The time has come for me to buy a new laptop. I have worn out another keyboard. In addition, the battery of this HP has conked out. I...

20 September 2013 One weekend during this past summer I took a much needed break from composing the first (and hopefully only) draft of...

In the essay entitled “Unplugged,” I stated that I do not recognize the names of most current “actors” and “actresses.” It is indeed...

Sometime during the middle of February 2009, while I was just beginning the draft of what was then named “Nottingham,” Dear Reader sent...

It has been en vogue for quite a while for various musicians, especially guitarists, to become “unplugged.” They play their songs that...

14 July 2013 Guy de Maupassant, the prolific, successful short story writer par excellence, was but one of a sizable number of...

Friends want to know how I work -- what I do to get “the creative juices flowing.” Husband said it might be the subject for an essay. I...

This poem by the American poet Robert Frost has long been a favorite of mine. It speaks to a star but could just as easily have been...

I bounce fictional and non-fictional ideas off of my very dear friend through emails, and I have told her that I come up with the best lines in our emails. She enthusiastically agrees! I am not aware of the literary quality of the statements when I make them, but I inevitably add a reply: “I can use that line.” She responds: “It’s a good one!” I, in fact, found “my voice” for what became THE DAWN while communicating with this friend during the tumultuous summer of 2008. I had