Blog
As a curious observer of life, I blog on writing, marketing, my prairie - anything that interests me in the moment. I like to have conversations with readers, so don’t hesitate to leave a comment. I'll respond.
A fresh read of a manuscript points out all kinds of problems: flat characters, scenes that though beautifully written go nowhere, leaps in logic that were clear to me in the writing but not to…
I want to thank Carol for hosting the tenth stop on my blog tour for the young adult fantasy short story series White Swans: A Regency Era. It’s great to be here, Carol. It’s been…
A drive through the southwest United States invariably inspires my interest in geology. The seismic power of uplifts reveals sheer walls of stone. The layers of red, white, green rock tell of eons of floods,…
Could I have been so brave? That’s the question I found myself asking yesterday as my travels took me to the Clinton Presidential Library, to sculptures like this one of Civil War abolitionist Harriet Tubman…
The discussion swirling around the propensity of this year’s Oscar-nominated Best Pictures to have taken liberties with the facts has me asking: Do the facts matter? and How much do the facts matter? In Oscar…
In December I began hand quilting a Grandma’s Garden quilt my grandmother began to assemble about a century ago. This month I finished the task. Throughout, I was literally wrapped in history as I held…
Monopoly players have said good-bye to the iron, welcoming a cat as the new player piece. As kids growing up in the 1950s, my sisters and I played Monopoly often, and I have to admit,…
When I was a little kid growing up in Iowa, we seldom saw Bald Eagles, even though we lived near the Mississippi River. When we did chance to spot one, everyone, children and adults, looked…
As a reader and now writer of historical fiction, I’m always interested when an author tells a story that not only realistically captures an interesting place and time but also carries a story with themes…
Holiday traditions usually pass down to the next generation. But this holiday, our family passed a tradition both down the line and back up. My sisters and I were in 4-H where we spent many…