Saturday night, my husband Peter and I decided to watch a movie. The 2021 James Bond movie, No Time to Die, currently streaming on Amazon Prime caught my eye. The write-up mentions it had received several awards, including a Golden Globe. Why not? I thought, go for some escapism, an…

One of my favorite picture books as a child was about a little girl who doesn’t understand time, seasons, or the days of the week. She vaguely recalls holidays: the flowers blooming, baby chicks , a basket with a fluffy bunny. She remember a cracking walnuts in front of a…

Before there were computers and artificial intelligence, there were file cards. Writers producing nonfiction used the cards to organize their facts. Writers churning out vast quantities of genre fiction, such as a series of detective novels, also used cards and charts to vary plot lines. …

Perhaps it was the illustrations that captivated me when I’d pour through the fairytale books, the dragons and the princesses with long gowns and tresses, but of all the picture books in my room when I was a young child, I liked the fairytales the best.

Sundays are our Tango days. My husband and I set aside our desire to linger over a big weekend breakfast of eggs, avocado toast, salmon, and capers. Instead, we quickly eat our standard fruit with cereal. Rather than pensively reading the contents of the Sunday newspaper or tending the garden…

I was having difficulty staying asleep. The room felt hot. I kept tossing and turning. Worrying about my grandson’s upcoming surgery. Worrying about manuscripts I’d emailed to various literary journals, wondering would they eventually result in publication? Finally, I resorted to the one mental exercise I turn to when attempting…

I almost threw them out. The unidentified shoots popping up in last year’s vegetable garden, not yet tilled and planted were destined for the compost pile, until I took a second look. Lettuce, I repeated to myself. Tiny leaves of lettuce. Cilantro. I recognized the familiar leaf, the shape and…

Breaking News. Man charged with white collar crimes elects not to board plane to Maryland for his arraignment. Police search his Florida home. Wife claims no knowledge of his whereabouts. Where is he? The news story captures my imagination. Where is Roy McGrath, former Chief of Staff to former Maryland…

I recently became a founding member of a Poetry Collective. Many people have found this surprising, not the founding member part, but the poetry part. Because when asked about what kind of writing I do, I seldom mention poetry. True enough, I write poems. …