Another Homemade Father’s Day Gift
Last year I wrote about the banana cream pie I made for my father one Father’s Day. A couple of years after that incident, I made him a shirt. I was much better at sewing than cooking, and by the time I made this shirt, I was sewing many of my own clothes, from pants […]
What Books Don’t (or Won’t) You Read?
It just so happened that last Wednesday, I read two articles about when and why readers quit reading a book before they finish it. One was Guilt Complex: Why Leaving a Book Half-Read Is So Hard, by Heidi Mitchell, in the Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2013; the other was Putting a Book Down, by […]
Grammar for Fiction Writers: The Language of Fiction, a Writer’s Stylebook, by Brian Shawver
You might think grammar is boring, but it is the writer’s toolbox. I marvel each time I sit down to write that I can create a blogpost or a scene in a novel or a poem from various combinations of twenty-six letters and a few punctuation marks. That’s all I have to work with. I […]
Reverse Gold Rush Journey: My Trek to Kansas City
It was 34 years ago this week that my husband and I arrived in Kansas City to live. Early June, 1979. We had just finished our last law school exams, and didn’t even stay in California for our graduation ceremony, because the preparation course for the Missouri bar exam had already begun, and we needed […]
Family Lore and Small Town Gossip on an Interfaith Marriage in 1898
I am the latest of a long line of Catholic women who married Protestant men. The stories of our weddings show how interfaith marriages have changed over time. This post is the story of the first such marriage of my ancestresses that I know about. In Sacramento, California, in 1898, my great-grandmother, Cecelia Ryan, an […]
Memorial Day. Remember. Today and always.
Join the nation in a moment of silence at 3:00pm on Memorial Day to remember our fallen soldiers.
Water Sports, Card Games & Airplane Letters
As Memorial Day approaches, I remember long summer days of swimming and waterskiing until we were exhausted, followed by cutthroat card games in the afternoons and evenings. My family rented a cabin on Coeur d’Alene Lake in northern Idaho, beginning when I was thirteen or fourteen, until my parents bought land on the lake and […]
Sticking to Goals as a Writer (and Not)
I had a boss once who always knew what percent of the year had already passed – it was roughly 2% per week, a little more than 8% each month. He would cite the percentage down to a fraction. I’ve come to adopt that attitude, as I watch time and life slip through my hourglass. […]
Reunions, Memories, Age, and Wonder
I recently received a notice about my fortieth high school reunion this fall. Fortieth!!! How can it be forty years since I graduated from high school? I still feel seventeen. Well, except when my back hurts. And my knees creak. I remember when I was fifteen and my parents went to their twentieth high school […]
Jesse Applegate and the Great Migration of 1843
In May 1843 – 170 years ago this month – Jesse Applegate and his brothers and their families left Missouri for Oregon. They were among the early pioneers to Oregon, four years earlier than the emigrants of 1847 in my novel about the Oregon Trail. In fact, 1843 was the first year of significant migration […]