Note: Readers have written, asking what happens to Savannah, who was six years old when “The Comfort of Lies†ends. This epilogue was in the original manuscript—I thought some readers
How does a writer, working alone, manage isolation? The initial spark of a
With every listen, the Trump sex assault tape sounds worse. Every syllable engenders feelings of being small and wretched and humiliated. I search for the genesis of these emotions, for
I’ve been mid-book since my addiction began at age four and I pray to have a TBR stack until the moment I die. On that heap I want it all:
The Widow of Wall Street: A novel about the seemingly blind love of a wife for her husband as he conquers Wall Street, and her extraordinary, perhaps foolish, loyalty during his
“It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.” – Abraham Lincoln Selling–the worst part of writing. Writing a
Before there was the movie, and the other movie, there was, The Book. I liked the first movie. I loved the second movie. Denzel Washington. John Travolta. Luis
(Originally posted September 2014) And the blame continues. Twitter & Facebook abound with it. Some claim with surety that they’d leave after the first minute a man touched them. Other
The Massachusetts Center for the Book has chosen Accidents of Marriage as a “Must Read” book for 2015! It’s in wonderful company–you can see the full list for the fiction category
Yes, death is the last frontier. In my circles, even friends who talk about sex, politics, and that most forbidden of topics, paychecks, rarely talk about the nitty-gritty of death.
“There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst.”–Frida Kahlo Writers often don’t recognize their
I dreaded Father’s Day as a child. Every year (during those far less aware days) we were asked to make a card for our father as a classroom project. My
There’s a reason more people understand the Holocaust from The Diary of Ann Frankthan from The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Story. Since the cave man days we’ve
I started Jesse, A Mother’s Story twice. The stark beauty of this memoir hit me the moment I began. Marianne Leone’s narrative, written with an unrelenting immediacy, yanked me into
A parent’s tragedy will always influence the life of their children—often to an overwhelming degree. Writing fiction from the emotional truth of one’s past can be liberating and also
As I waited for my first novel to launch, I was told by the experienced: 1) “Don’t expect to get on Oprah.” (I wasn’t.) 2) Waiting for launch was “the
Perhaps every insatiable reader has a book so thoroughly imprinted at a vulnerable age, that they carry those characters like family of the heart forever. Some marked me for horror.
When it comes to criticism from my writer’s group, I need to hear or read the same idea two, three, or four times before I can incorporate it into my
“No child could possibly be happy about her father moving out!” The above was said to me at a writing workshop, in a discussion about my then unpublished novel (it
“My agent and editor started talking about ‘the list’ from the start, virtually ensuring that I’d consider myself a failure if I didn’t make it. At first, when they
The first time I looked for a job, Help Wanted was divided into three sections: Men, Women, and General. If memory serves me (I doubt it) men’s jobs were the
“I speak not for myself but for those without voice… those who have fought for their rights… their right to live in peace, their right to be treated with dignity,
While readying to write about Professor Cromer Learns to Read, I searched for a quote or statistic that would put in perspective the overwhelming job families have caring for brain-injured
During my (self-guided, self-nagged) courses in my ‘Homemade MFA’ I did many things: I read stacks of books, I read multiple favorite novels with an analytical eye, I participated in