Every family has their quirky Christmas traditions. My family has too many traditions to list here. But one in particular has stood the test of time…matching Christmas PJs. Knowing this tradition was merely a prompt for my mother to take photos, we all (mostly) complied with the requisite holiday cheer. As kids, we knew we’d…
My recent four-month writing and blogging hiatus, caused by intense stress and workload from my day job, has come to an end, thanks to a hike through an elevator shaft. I sometimes can’t predict when the intensity of my day job will overtake my writing life nor how a creative dry period will end, but…
As the old saying goes, judging a book by its cover leads to all sorts of ill-advised judgments and wrongheaded conclusions. So, my warning today is to not judge this library by its cover. This is the National Library of Kosovo. It taught me something about perspective and freedom and the thirst for knowledge. The…
My heart goes out to the residents of Maui who lost loved ones and livelihood, pets and property in this week’s fire. To have witnessed one’s own community go up in flames must have been so horrific. Seeking shelter in the ocean or abandoning a car to scramble from the flames must have been terrifying….
“I’m bored,” said no adult, ever. And said every teenager who ever lived, repeatedly, on hot summer days that seem to languish without end. My, how I long for the days of being bored, a distant memory that I can’t seem to recreate in my own hectic life filled with travel and screens and deadlines….
A recent visit to Corolla’s Maritime Museum prompted me to reflect on whether characters should be anchors or buoys. An anchor holds tightly, tethers a person to a place and time, while a buoy marks a place but adapts to changing tides and circumstances. Characters who hold onto strongly held beliefs or their past can…
