Taking Root
Seventeen-year-old Delaney Moran is trying to make it on her own but panic attacks threaten to undermine her independence. Luella, a determined social worker, and Murray, the owner of a music store, want to help her but in doing so, they uncover a secret from her past.
My Writing Blog
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Off Course Discourse
The next blog will happen to fall on Election Day. Many years ago, employees in the County Clerk’s office were offered the opportunity to work during election night as ballots were tallied. Our County Clerk is also the Registrar of Voters. We’d sit at tables grabbing handfuls of paper ballots, checking for rough edges, straightening […]
Fall Colors
We’ve turned the corner into fall and are emerging from yet another round of wildfires. Our skies were painted with the shades of fall leaves and the air has been thick with smoke. Tire tracks were visible in a layer of ash on a Santa Rosa parking lot. More homes have been lost; more lives […]
Why Vallejo?
Someone asked me why I chose Vallejo as the setting for my novel, Taking Root. Early on, as I began thinking about the plot and envisioning Delaney, the protagonist, a little memory bubble floated up to the surface and popped. When my brothers and I were kids, our family lived in Novato, a city north […]
Other Writings
Thoughts on Fishing
My junior high school English teacher asked each of her students to find a poem and bring it to class. Flipping through the pages of my parents’ Viking Book of Poetry, I settled on “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop. In exquisite detail, she portrays an ancient, grandfatherly fish that could fight no more. Old hooks and pieces of line were embedded in his jaw but what I remember most was the sadness and surrender she described in his eyes as she held him half out of the water alongside the boat, before letting him go. Her poem resonated with me in an almost visceral way because I’d often gone fishing alone or with my father.
