Turning Sixty is No Joke
There’s an overused expression, especially on the show The Bachelorette: “I’m not gonna lie.” But today I will use it too. Because on this day I turn the big 6-0 and, I’m not gonna lie, it’s been throwing me for a loop as swirly as the horns on my Aries zodiac sign, the ram. No, […]
When Don’ts Outnumber Do’s, Do Your Own Thing
When I first began drafting Alienable Rights in September 2017, I was awaiting Nevada Bar exam results, and it was a cathartic way to escape personal tribulations of life—and a world in utter turmoil when it came to human rights or decency. I’d decided to pursue a traditional publishing route with a literary agent—the whole […]
Editing to Website Design: I’ve Got Superwomen on the Job
As a writer, it would be disingenuous to proclaim my words on a page or in this blog are solely possible by my ingenuity and grit (and the First Amendment). We’d all like to think the brilliance, the magic, comes to life by mere pen scrabbles, or keystrokes of inspiration. But like an award acceptance […]
Free Speech: Free to Be Ignorant on Social Media?
I used to think how bad it was that so many Americans didn’t understand all that the First Amendment entails, or how it works in terms of freedom of speech. Now I also lament the appalling number of elected members of Congress who are bereft of a clue and preeningly proud of it, if their […]
Writer’s Research: Google-y Eyes Are Upon You
You’re deep into drafting a chapter and suddenly you need to fact-check a place, person or thing. You quickly Google it on your phone, which leads to another click, another image or word or concept. And this somehow all weaves together in a surprising symmetry that’s downright uncanny—to use a favorite word of my protagonist, […]
Anti-Mask-ulinity and Other Selfish Character Traits
We probably all know someone like this. The guy who won’t wear a mask during this COVID crisis due to his personal freedom that shall not be infringed. And perhaps we lament that we had no idea he had such toxic self-absorption pulsing through his veins, and his psyche, back when we were supposedly friends […]
Plague of Gun Mongering Psychopaths: A Never-Ending Black Hole of Maniacal Murder
I’m wide awake at 3 a.m. listening to the wind howl outside my window, raging at the all- consuming fury and angst from the most recent atrocity of gun violence perpetrated by yet another all-too-predictable act of domestic terrorism. I had a different blog post ready for today regarding gun fetishists and their myopic self-serving […]
Word Bird: Power and Plumage of the Pen
The feisty protagonist of my Other Worldly series, Rowan Layne, is a woman writer who, like me, was once a newspaper columnist in a small town. Accordingly, I will occasionally wax poetic about the writing process in all its joys, and the juggernaut of angst. And if I tend to get a little grandiose in […]
Aliens Abound Launches on Spring Equinox
Aliens Abound, third installment of the Other Worldly fantasy series, launched today on Amazon, with more online bookstores soon to follow! Given that it’s the spring equinox, this could not be more perfect while I’m hard at work drafting the fourth book, Being Alien, with scintillating scenes taking place at Stonehenge… But today, here’s the […]
Gaslighting Sociopaths: Have We All Been With the Same Guy?
I started to call this post “Why Cowboys Are No Longer My Fantasy,” but that wouldn’t convey the subject at hand, and no sense in blindsiding readers. Though I might have done so in Alienable Rights, first book of the Other Worldly series, with a certain former-cowboy character. The thing is, this character turned out […]