Picture it with me, won’t you? A cafe table on a pedestrian-rich sidewalk, a minor capillary in the city’s bursting circulatory system. The street is quiet yet bustling, shaded from the summer heat by the long shadows cast from buildings that have been there for centuries, each facade so jaw-dropping in its ornate whitewashed glory that they all seem to blend together. There’s a glass of chilled wine on the table in front of you.…
My kids were on spring break last week. I would like to say we went on vacation, but really it was a trip: four hours on a plane to my hometown near Seattle for a family visit. I have loads of relatives that still live there, and while we weren’t exactly sipping margaritas on a tropical beach, we did have a wonderful week combing the rocky shores of Puget Sound and seeing many people who…
When we moved to Illinois last summer, one of the first things I did was start hunting for a new critique group. My old one back in Atlanta had been invaluable to me as a writer and I missed them terribly. I found a weekday group, close by, with a meeting time that worked with my kids’ school schedule, so I jumped in. We have an interesting mix of genres from thriller to romance to…