Book Banning: Seriously?
An article on the front page of USA Today caught my husband’s eye while he was standing in line to pay for coffee last week. Apparently he made a spectacle of himself because he laughed so uncontrollably that he spit the coffee all over himself and the person in...
Using Sense Memory
My husband and I have just watched the movie Stand By Me for at least the tenth time. About every two years we seem to crave another viewing, usually in high summer, which is when the movie is set. This time instead of renting it, we gave up and bought the Deluxe...
You’ll Use It All Later
It turns out that those monster thighs and herding tendencies that Amy, Diana’s chicken, was developing made a lot of sense. You didn’t even have to notice the red comb on top of her head; Amy cleared her throat and let out the first crows right after Diana and her...
Update on Chickens and Posts
I think everyone is due an update on my friend Diana’s urban chickens, aka the world’s easiest research. My blog post of May 13 introduced the chicks (Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy) when Diana was beginning to wonder if Amy might be, oops, really an Amos. Recall that hens...
From The Mailbox
Last week a note from a Massachusetts reader appeared in my inbox regarding my book, Where The Trail Grows Faint. The book, published in 2005 by the University of Nebraska Press, is creative non-fiction about working with my chocolate Labrador retriever, Hannah, in a...
On Listening
I’ve just finished Townie, the recently published memoir by Andre Dubus III. I found his first two novels, House of Sand and Fog and The Garden of Last Delights, to be brilliant literary fiction and was eager to see what he’d do with nonfiction. Dubus addresses the...
Where I Get My Ideas
Given my love for the natural world, I hit the jackpot when my dear friend Diana lost her mind and brought home four baby chicks in early April. I immediately recognized that I’ll gleefully use chicken-raising in a novel (definitely in an urban setting, too; Diana...
Back To Details: Naming The Wilderness
One thing I've learned is that most of us are passionate about a couple of things and how much those interests emerge as defining parts of our identities. I don’t know exactly when I fell in love with being able to identify, for example, the wildflowers that right...
On Craft: Scene or Narration?
Would you think for a moment about your favorite novels? What about them do you remember most? My memories are of tense or revelatory scenes that came alive as strongly as if a staged play were in front of me. (For our purpose, let's define a scene as a a unit of...