Category: Inspiration

Eulogy for an Unpublished Novel

Let’s start with the good news before we get to the complicated feelings: my debut novel Lightborne is coming out next year. And I am ecstatic! Lightborne is a historical novel about Christopher Marlowe, an Elizabethan playwright and contemporary of…

Smell Writes the Novel, A Meander 

Everybody has a trick for entering their writing. They light candles, turn on Mozart, twirl three times counterclockwise.  Me, I cook. This is new. And it isn’t the cooking, really, it’s the smell. Seems I need the simmering of onions…

From my Pod to Yours

Long before I was relearning fifth-grade math at our local “faux-school,” I was a fan of writerly podcasts. I devoured audio craft lessons and author interviews with the hopes they would crack open plot issues, shed light on the mysteries…

Paying Attention: Darkness into Light

On this past Solstice eve, instead of celebrating by the fire with friends, I went to Lahey hospital for a last minute MRI, to rule out something an ultrasound had picked up.  The details of that true story don’t matter,…