There's a cover! (I'm not saying there's video of me jumping up and down with excitement anywhere, but there could be.) And, there are book launch events scheduled and getting scheduled. If you'd like to know when I'll be out in the world showing off my new baby like...
This is an edited repost from my previous blog ars culinaria. It originally appeared in January 2010 but still captures my feelings about Twelfth Night and midwinter. The old winter season of merrymaking kicked off on All Saints’ Day in November and lasted straight...
Thanksgiving is in two days as I write this. I've ordered the turkey and braved the grocery. I'll start cooking tomorrow with a batch of my mom's cornbread - without the sugar - for her Down South dressing from the 1940s edition of the Good Housekeeping Cookbook. I...
My husband and son would be the first to let you know that I am not the placidly calm human I am often mistaken for. I don't think I have a very good poker face, which makes me think what people take for an even-keeled visage is actually my panic and/or conflict...
I've been back in Knoxville over a year. That year mark is usually where I start to feel like I live somewhere, a new space, a new place. The transition here has been different than my last few moves which were all just to new rentals in Nashville. Moving back to...
I'll confess that most of my knowledge of plotting is from field research, mostly reading and watching mysteries since Nancy Drew. I think I'm better at creating characters. Or characters are better at finding me than story arcs, depending on how, or if, you think the...
Last May I started writing a novel. That was a surprise. My dream of being a writer was to be a poet. Then it was to be a fairly obscure blogger with a small but dedicated following. Then it was to be a memoirist. Then this novel slammed into me out of nowhere when I...