A Review of the Amazon Bookstore in Seattle
On a recent trip to Seattle, I took some time to go to the Amazon bookstore in University Village. I wanted to see what the behemoth online retailer would do with a bookstore. Although Amazon began as an online bookseller, it has morphed into the Wal-Mart of the Internet. It still sells books, but books […]
Haunting Book: Lilac Girls, by Martha Hall Kelly
It’s hard not to be haunted by any book about the Nazi death camps. Lilac Girls, by Martha Hall Kelly, tells the story of World War II from the perspective of three women—Kasia Kusmerick, a Polish teenager who becomes a political prisoner in Ravensbrück because she helps the Polish resistance, Herta Oberheuser, a Nazi doctor […]
Announcing Publication of NOW I’M FOUND!
A year ago I published Lead Me Home, and I immediately turned to editing its sequel, which I had drafted before polishing Lead Me Home. I knew the sequel needed a lot of work, and it has been a long year in the editing. But I am pleased to announce today that [. . . […]
Haunting Book: A Murder in Time, by Julie McElwain
I’ve made a tradition of writing about “haunting books” on this blog each October, though last year I combined my list into a single post. This year, I’m going to try to write about a book that haunts me (stays with me after I’ve read it) each Monday through the month. As I selected books […]
Transporting Gold in 1850
One of the problems I’ve had to deal with in my soon-to-be-published novel, Now I’m Found, is how gold was transported in California in 1848-50. The gold flakes and nuggets had to get from the mines where they were panned from the water or dug from the ground to the surrounding towns, then ultimately to […]
Social Media: Reconnecting and Lurking
I’ve written before about how social media has helped me reconnect with relatives and friends. Well, I’ve had two new experiences in the last couple of weeks where social media again has warmed my heart in this way. A second cousin found me on Facebook recently. I’ve met her and her branch of the family a […]
World Gratitude Day
September 21 is World Gratitude Day, a day celebrated since 1966 when an international group meeting in Hawaii agreed to designate a day to express gratitude and appreciation for the many wonderful things to be found in the world. I haven’t taken much time to be grateful in the last couple of years. I’ve been […]
Gail Elizabeth Sullivan
In my last post, I mentioned that I developed some friends during my second grade year, the first school year I spent at Christ the King School in Richland, Washington. One of those friends was Gail Elizabeth Sullivan. Gail was a bubbly little girl. She was smart (in the A reading group with me). She […]
Second Grade Anonymity
Throughout my first-grade year, I felt exposed. As I’ve written, I was a superstar during my three weeks of kindergarten and in the first first-grade classroom I attended, because I could read and the other pupils couldn’t. Even after we moved and I came into a new first-grade class in November of the school […]
No One To Ask About My Tantrums
I had to deal with a financial problem the other day, right in the middle of working on the last edits on Now I’m Found, the novel I hope to publish within a few weeks. Turning my mind to taxes was the last thing on earth I wanted to spend my time on. I wrote […]