Brenda Bellinger is an award-winning writer and author of Taking Root, an urban coming-of-age novel. As a former courtroom clerk and high school secretary, she didn't have to look far to find fertile soil for her imagination.
Brenda has been honored with first place awards for non-fiction and flash fiction at the Mendocino Coast and Central Coast Writers Conferences, respectively. Her work has appeared in Small Farmer's Journal, Mom Egg Review, Persimmon Tree, THEMA, the California Writers Club Literary Review, and in various anthologies.
Fueled by good coffee, Brenda writes from an empty nest on an old chicken farm in Northern California.
With the exception of this past year (due to the pandemic), fellow members of one of my monthly writing groups gather for an annual weekend retreat at a rented home on the coast. Our group of eight women has been doing this for several years, most often over Super Bowl weekends. Watching football is not […]
This post happens to fall on what would have been my mother’s 86th birthday if she were still with us. She passed away thirteen years ago, yet I often feel her presence. Recently, I was dusting a small antique genie lamp that belonged to her mother, my grandmother. Made of white china, its glaze bears […]
You gotta be careful what you wish for! A little over a week ago, an “atmospheric river” dropped six to eight inches of rain in our area in a 24-hour period. There were reports of localized flooding and downed trees. We watched as water flowed along drainage ditches long overgrown and small seasonal ponds we […]
Tripidation – a state of worried anticipation about air travel during COVID – choosing which mask to wear, maintaining a safe distance from other passengers, avoiding high touch surface areas, etc. We planned our long-awaited trip to visit grandchildren in Tennessee for mid-October hoping to avoid the crush of summer and holiday travel. Wanting to […]
Can I just say that I’ve never liked the sound of the word “blog”? It sounds like something you wouldn’t want your body to do at an inopportune moment. Yeah, I know the origin: web + log = blog. Still not a fan though. So why do I do it? When Taking Root came out, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
We’re fortunate to live in an area where live music is usually within easy reach. It’s one of the things I’ve missed most during the fallout from the pandemic. Before COVID-19, we’d go to one of two local cafes or a beer garden to enjoy an evening of music with our favorite local bands, Foxes […]
One of the perks of being retired is that you have the time to follow something that catches your eye—right down the rabbit hole. Such was the case for me a couple of days ago. I was reading a brief article about a collection of women’s obituaries. Among many others, it mentioned Joan King, a […]
Brenda Bellinger