A Visit to The Rabbit HOle
Last week, I visited The Rabbit HOle, a museum in North Kansas City dedicated to children’s literature. The museum features displays based on a wide variety of children’s beloved and award-winning books, from Goodnight Moon to Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel to Crow Boy. Although I have lived in the Kansas City Northland for […]
Granddaughter Trumps Blog
My granddaughter paid me a visit this past weekend (with her parents), so I haven’t had much chance to write a blog post. And, while I took enough pictures to post a photo blog, her parents have forbidden me to upload any pictures to the internet. So all you get is a shot of me […]
Milestone: Sending My Work-in-Progress To Beta Readers
I’ve reached an exciting point in writing my current work-in-progress—I’m about to send the manuscript out to beta readers. Writers define and use “beta readers” differently. I now use them when the basic plot is baked (though details can still be tweaked), when I’ve edited the manuscript fairly well (though there are likely typos and […]
A Dozen Haunting Books for 2021
I have usually devoted at least one October post to “haunting books,” because October is both National Book Month and the month we celebrate Halloween. This year, I have a long list of books I’ve read in the last twelve months that could be considered haunting. I’ve winnowed the group down to a dozen books, […]
What My Mother Read To Me: THE LITTLE ENGINE THAT COULD
One of the earliest books that I remember my mother reading to me was The Little Engine That Could. I went online to see if I could find the cover of the edition she read to my younger brother and me, but I couldn’t be sure which one it was. It was probably the 1954 […]
An Early Start on College
This post is about my mother, though not about Mother’s Day. While searching for a topic for a Mother’s Day post, I came across a photograph of my mother and me in an album my grandmother made for me many years ago. I’ve always liked this photo, because it shows my mother as a reader. […]
Home-Schooling with Historical Fiction
I’ve learned most of my history through historical fiction. Not all, but most of it. Even back in grade-school days, I read a lot of historical fiction—the Little House series, Caddie Woodlawn, What Katy Did, The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Anne of Green Gables. All evoked by-gone times […]
LEAD ME HOME: Missouri Author Project 2019 Adult Fiction Winner
I received an early holiday present this year. In mid-November, I learned that my novel Lead Me Home was selected as the 2019 winner in the Missouri Author Project adult fiction contest. Earlier this year, I came across Jane Friedman’s suggestion that indie authors consider listing their books in SELF-e, a site sponsored by Library […]
On Stop Signs and Safety in 1969
I’ve written before about my youngest brother learning his alphabet—how we sent him on reconnoitering missions around the card table to find where the Airplane letters were. That was the summer of 1969, shortly before he turned two. By the time little brother’s second birthday rolled around in November 1969, he was beginning to put […]
Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety-Jig
I’ve spent a fair amount of time in October away from home visiting relatives. The trips weren’t hard, but at the end of my travels, I was glad to be home. The first morning I returned, I started my journal entry “Home again . . . .” And a phrase popped into my mind, “Home […]