My blog

Yesterday I chatted with my agent to talk about several items of outstanding business – pages I’m showing her, steps to take on several balls we have up in the air, a conversation I [...]

The original 16-page (?!?) working manuscript of the lyrics to “American Pie” has been sold at auction for $1.2 million.  With the story about the sale, I finally read an explanation [...]

An ode to my gardenia-scented skin lotion: My sugarplum.  My sweet thing. I love you. I love you with the wild abandon of a first crush. Your touch invigorates me. Nothing in the world smells [...]

My life would be so much easier if my name was Marie Andrew.  Like… orders of magnitude easier.  Tallied up, I would probably get weeks or months of my life back that I didn’t have to [...]

When the trees start to flower, I am overcome with a bizarre obsession.  As I drive around, all I can think of is sneaking up to every flowering tree I see and cutting off branches, then running [...]

The other day when I got home, my son looked a bit worried.  “There is a deer in the backyard,” he said, waiting for my reaction. M)%#$#^! I am offended by the presence of deer in my [...]

I’ve often said that writing is about remembering. Even when you’re making something up (which is what writing fiction essentially is), you still have to access memories of your own [...]

I came back from California with some pretty wicked jet lag, so I didn’t get as much done in the garden this Saturday as I might have liked (oh, napping is divine).  But I DID get some good [...]

I have had many pets in my life and I have loved all of them.  Still, when one goes, it’s hard not to think they were the most special.  So is the case with Misty the ferret. I got Misty [...]

  This is the view from where I’m staying in San Francisco today.  Pretty awesome, right? 2015 was supposed to be the year of the “no travel” after the madness of 2014. [...]

I got a sneak peek at the covers-in-progress for the paperback edition of THE SECRET SIDE OF EMPTY (which will hit bookshelves September 1st)… and I loved them both!  I can’t quite [...]

2015 International Latino Book Award Finalist The 2015 International Latino Book Award Finalists have been announced… and THE SECRET SIDE OF EMPTY is one of them!  It’s under the [...]

Not too long ago, an editor from a column I’d love to “crack” sent out a tip about pitching him an idea.  It said: “Don’t put two spaces after a period.  I instantly [...]

On March 20th, I resolved to unburden myself of 27 things each day for 27 days.  Many friends said I was crazy and wondered how I’d ever do it.  Today, with a final book put in a donation [...]

What does it mean to be a prolific writer? A short while back, a writing buddy shocked me by saying she admired my writing output.  Surely she must have just been blowing smoke.  One of my deep, [...]

In November, 2014, President Obama announced that he was providing relief via executive order to millions of people currently living undocumented in the United States.  Since then, some states [...]

I am a big fan of something called “life hacks.”  They generally come in the form of articles and they show you clever ways to solve simple household problems.  For example, cutting [...]

The Big Spring Clean continues full steam ahead.  On Day 15, I am past the halfway point and I feel absolutely liberated.  (For those of you just tuning in – I am getting rid of 27 things a [...]

There it was in my Facebook feed, one of those ads for new apps I normally just scroll past.  The first one caught my eye because it annoyed me so much.  It was called “Facetune” and [...]