Click to visit this blog post about my weird jealousy of Washington Irving, sacrifice and hard choices.

Click to visit this blog post about my weird jealousy of Washington Irving, sacrifice and hard choices.

I wanted to share the article I wrote which is out in this month's Highlights for Children Magazine. I had a great time interviewing David Zinn and telling his story. I think Highlights did an amazing job with the layout. I really love how they illustrated the instructions for drawing a 3-D hole. I came home today to f

Growing up, I was lucky enough to be close with one of my great uncles, Olaf Olson. My Uncle Olie was a character who spoke with a Norwegian lilt and ate ham and eggs every single time we took him out for dinner, no matter where we went. He liked to say he’d lived ‘the clean life’ - never smoked or drank much. He passe

Growing up, I was lucky enough to be close with one of my great uncles, Olaf Olson. My Uncle Olie was a character who spoke with a Norwegian lilt and ate ham and eggs every single time we took him out for dinner, no matter where we went. He liked to say he’d lived ‘the clean life’ - never smoked or drank much. He passe

When I’m reading, I’ll wonder how much of a novelist’s real life is used in their work. With the best books, I’ll sometimes think, how on earth can that author have conjured that scene from thin air. I thought that about several scenes in John Irving’s The World According to Garp. Garp grows up yearning to know about h

Growing up, I was lucky enough to be close with one of my great uncles, Olaf Olson. My Uncle Olie was a character who spoke with a Norwegian lilt and ate ham and eggs every single time we took him out for dinner, no matter where we went. He liked to say he’d lived ‘the clean life’ - never smoked or drank much. He passe

I had a bit of exciting news today - one of my children’s poems, titled Grandpa’s Feeder, has been picked up by Highlights for their magazine, Hello. It’s pretty ironic timing because I was working on this blog piece about a poetry workshop I attended a little over a week ago. I came home from the workshop motivated an

I sat across the table from the pretty New York literary editor who looked to be all of 25 years old. Young as she seemed, she knew her stuff and had given a wonderful conference talk earlier in the day. I was excited to hear what she thought about the synopsis I’d sent her of my novel, The Life-Diving Days. This wasn’

At writing conferences and workshops over the years, I kept hearing the same thing over and over: be sure your story begins where it’s supposed to. I was told that most writers eventually end up trashing their original first chapters. It was a bit concerning since I kind of liked my first chapter and, I hoped, my novel

In my last blog, I wrote about John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, which made me think about the ending of that amazing novel. It’s one of the most emotional passages I’ve ever read - so moving, I sobbed. To set the scene, the Joads are homeless, starving, and unable to find the new life they were so desperately seek

John Steinbeck, one of my favorite authors, is known for his incredible ability to illustrate the human condition. He was able to examine the deeply troubling and disturbing things that happened to people in his own time and write about them. That’s no easy feat. In The Grapes of Wrath, for instance, Steinbeck wrote ab

I started writing my novel, The Life Dividing Days, on a train I was taking to my sister’s house in St. Louis. By the time I arrived, the first version of the first chapter was finished. I gave it to my sister, Laura, who was encouraging. I always looked up to my sister, who has a master’s degree in English and worked

When my parents moved to Columbiaville, they said it was hard to integrate into the small, tight-knit community. Then, John and Nancy Durden knocked on their door, invited them to the Columbiaville United Methodist Church, and changed my family’s life forever. The Durdens were one of only a few African American familie

Last night didn't start out well for me. I let myself get so worked up about the election, my hands were shaking. So I filled the bath, threw on Francesca Battistelli, and tried my hardest NOT to think. That's when I heard a voice. He said, "Come with us." No, it an apparition, it was the start of the final scene of t

__________________________________ For links to all Songbook pages featuring Bert Williams, please visit the following index page: Bert Williams, George Walker, and Aida Overton Walker Bert William…