2026

Hello Friends. Happy April. I hope the tax fairy was good to you this year and left you a present under your pillow and not a bill. It is always good to get good news. So I will send you all happy thoughts. While I’m on the subject of good news, I was just asked to teach a graduate class this summer called Writing and Rhetoric of Nonfiction. I am pretty excited about that because, as you may have noticed, my newsletters have evolved into little works of literary analysis. I

Hello Friends, Big News! I got a new story published! You can read all about it way down at the end of the newsletter. I didn't want to bury the lede. Happy Solstice. Did you try to stand an egg on its end? Did it work? I have actually done it twice in my life that I can remember. That would be amazing if I were 8, but I’m in my 50s, so my success rate is low. I try; I fail. Sometimes I totally forget to try because I’m distracted by…something or other. Who knows. Could be an

Hello Friends. I hope you are doing well. This is going to zig before it zags. Buckle up and hold on. When I was seven, going on eight, two deranged people, one in December of 1980 and another in March of 1981, did some deranged things, and somehow The Catcher in the Rye was "blamed" for the actions of those unwell men. I’m not going to use their names here. I don’t want to give them more space in the world. If you know, you know. If you want to look it up. You can. The poin

Hello Friends, How is your January? Cold? Blustery? Feeling rudderless? I hope not. How are your New Year’s Resolutions? Holding firm? I sure hope so. I’m not a big resolution person, but I do like to set and meet goals. As part of my social media interactions, I do a fun book bingo project each quarter. When I first started, it was just random ideas like “book for middle-readers” or “female narrator.” Eventually, Lea and I started making themes (she also does all the amazin