irritated

Once, long ago, someone called me to tell me he’d written what he called a “picaresque” novel. I didn’t know what that meant so I had to look it up in the dictionary. It means episodic adventures described in realistic detail of an engaging, usually roguish character. Don Quixote is an example. Inman in Cold [...]

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earrings

A very bad day with Mother this last week, a reminder that Alzheimer’s is stronger than wishful thinking. No matter what we did, I couldn’t lift her to liveliness. Her smiles were few, her gaze was often vacant, her attitude one of how much a struggle anything was, getting in and out of the car, [...]

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cicadas

Ah, the noise of a September in Houston. A chorus of cicadas screech love or death with the beginning of dusk. There’s a whir, some kind of rythmatic, awful rising and falling in their cadence, like fiddles being badly tuned or violins beyond a bearable pitch, and yet it’s an autumn sound I’ve heard most [...]

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no name

Fretting over a title for latest novel…..which is not at a publisher’s. My agents read it, like it, but want me to clear up a plot point or two. I never like suggestions, but I’ve learned over time to listen, particularly to those I respect and whose job it is to sell my novels! (There’s [...]

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