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
Latest Posts
The Best Years of Their Lives
I’m currently reading a collection of short stories published in 1949. It’s not the stories themselves that I’m finding memorable, it’s the vivid period details. I’m imagining the author, sitting at her typewriter, keystrokes finding a rhythm as the plot unspools from the reel-to-reel inside her head. She’s fleshing out her stories with details that […]
Family Photos
As you might have guessed from the picture credit, this photo has nothing to do with my family. I couldn’t find the one I would have liked to share—an old black and white scalloped-edge photo of a terrier named Suzie with a cigarette in her mouth—taken by my mother when I was a child. And […]
Ode to the Ladies
Amaryllis flowers pop up in our area this time of year. They stand in sharp contrast to their environs, especially during the present drought. In the strange glow of our hazy sunlight, they seem almost lit in their brightness. In lieu of my usual post, I’ve written this poem: Ode to the Ladies Untroubled by […]
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.
