Tea For Two

Recently, I was asked to do a Q & A for another writer’s blog, and one of the questions was very thought-provoking. “If there was one person, dead or alive, that you could spend an afternoon with, who would it be and why?” I considered my answer with care. All of my initial responses seemed…

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Killing A Novel Stone Dead

I am often asked what the book on which I am currently working is about. I usually simply say that it is a novel this time–instead of a memoir–but people are persistent. They are determined to know what the book is about. Is it a mystery, a thriller, a romance? I am sure it isn’t…

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ONE WORD AT A TIME

Last week, as some of you will remember from the invitation I sent out, I was lucky enough to be “in conversation with” author Erica Jong, just as the last newsletter was going out. It was an evening event with a best-selling novelist who also just happens to be one of the friends I most…

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AT MY MOTHER’S KNEE

I was born into a home filled with shelves stuffed full of books. When I was a child, my mother, the poet Anne Sexton, frequently read aloud to me, and the first book I would remember well was a dog-eared blue volume of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, full of all its macabre horrors. As I reached…

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A POTENT MAGIC

As I tackle this week’s newsletter, I find myself feeling tired and swamped. When I consider how many things are happening in my life right now, I am not surprised. I have passed the three hundred page mark in my novel, as well as creating over forty newsletters to connect with you all over the…

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HAVE YOU HUGGED YOURSELF TODAY?

Why would we hug ourselves? Is this an absurd idea? Maybe what I mean is something akin to, “have you received your hug today?” And if so, have you given someone else a hug today–all of which is just another way of saying, “have you taken care of yourself today?” One of the things researchers, animal…

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