On shaky ground

On Wednesday, near the end of the workday, I stood up from my desk to go get a cup of tea, took a step and fell down like a sack of potatoes. It took me a few seconds to realize my ankle had [...]

Stuck in Quicksand

Set in quicksand and loving it! My publisher, Running Press (actually my wonderful editor, Lisa Cheng) just sent me over some sample pages from the freshly-typeset The Secret Side of Empty.  It [...]

The death of twerking

The school from Footloose (you know, the one that banned dancing) is a real thing and it exists in…. Southern California? Wait… what? Proving that grown-ups are still as stupid as [...]

Why I love witches

The other day I happened to catch the tail end of Elizabeth Montgomery’s one-hour Biography special. It reminded me how fascinated I was by her witchy housewife on Bewitched when I was a [...]

Happy 200!

This is my 200th post on this blog!  Woo-hoo!  Cause for celebration.  I have been writing consistently just about my whole life.  And, yet, this blog is special. Before I learned how to write, [...]

My English Teacher

A few days ago I wrote about my high school English teacher, Ms. Bordiga.  I mentioned her as an aside in a piece about “Latino time” vs. “American time,” as kind of a [...]

Wadjda – a review

Women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to drive.  They can’t leave their homes without a man.  Anytime they are outside where an unrelated male might see them they have to wear the full [...]

I write because

I often find myself frustrated that I don’t write more.  Words swirl inside my head constantly, wanting to be written down, stories, plots, insights, ideas.  I’m sure they’re [...]

First Monday in October

Today I celebrated the start of another session of the Supreme Court by reading an interview that Antonin Scalia, super-conservative justice, gave to New York Magazine.  And my conclusion is [...]