Blog
An Old Post for the New Year
Cathy and I spent New Year’s Eve and most of New Year’s Day in the hospital because I was having an episode of atrial fibrillation. I’m fine now, but instead of writing something new this week, I’ve decided to repost this slightly revised entry from six years ago: New Year, New Writing: Tips for…
Read MoreThe Lonely Voice
It’s one of many Saturday nights in 1970 when I’m fifteen years old. I live in the very small town of Sumner, Illinois, with a population of around a thousand. We have no teen center. I don’t belong to a church that sponsors youth activities, and the Friday night sock hop after the basketball game…
Read MoreNarratives from the Unexpected
Author Marjorie Holmes once said, “At Christmas, all roads lead home.” And so it was that last week Cathy and I set out to spend a week in our native southeastern Illinois, albeit not without a bit of last-minute drama. The night before we were to leave, I heard a loud noise, the kind of…
Read MoreSnow Was General: Writing Beautiful Sentences
Last night, snow was general all over central Ohio. If you’re a James Joyce fan, you’ll hear the echo of this sentence to the end of Joyce’s story, “The Dead.” Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless…
Read MoreCuriosity and the Fiction Writer: Ten Questions
Last night at a gathering of folks from my MFA workshops, the talk turned to dating and the attempt to find a romantic connection. I listened to those who are using dating apps talk about how horrible it is to try to find a potential partner that way. I’ve known success stories from the…
Read MoreGet At the Marrow: Tension in Dialogue
As I’ve aged, I’ve gotten thin-skinned. I mean that literally. As a result of my stroke in 2012 and subsequent episodes of atrial fibrillation, I take an adult-strength aspirin every day to keep blood clots from forming. Now, when I bump or scrape an arm or a leg, I’m more prone to bruise, developing ugly…
Read MoreBerryville, Illinois: I was Listening to Your Lessons on Love
When I was a child, my Thanksgivings were always spent with my mother’s side of my family. We gathered at my grandmother’s house in the crossroads village of Berryville, Illinois, catty-corner from the general store that my grandparents had run once upon a time. My grandmother’s house is now gone as is the store and…
Read MoreThe Last Time I. . . .
After my father was dead, and after my mother could no longer live independently, the task of dealing with their property fell to me, their only child. I remember, with an ache that never left me, the days I spent alone in their home, sorting through personal papers, deciding what to keep and what to…
Read MoreA Boy Named Hog Sausage
Last Thursday, much to my and Cathy’s regret, our washing machine gave up the ghost. While we await the delivery of a new one, we’ll have to make a trip to a coin-operated laundry. It’s been a while since I’ve been in one of those, but for many years I accompanied my mother on Saturdays…
Read MoreRight Before Our Eyes
On Saturday, I participated in the Kentucky Book Festival. The venue was the Joseph-Beth bookstore, a two-level store in Lexington. We authors sat at our tables with our books displayed, and we chatted with folks who stopped to look at our books. The author who was sharing my table never appeared, so from time to…
Read More