Many people suffer from anxiety…adults as well as children.  But the question is: how to help kids deal with anxiety.  The Show Me How program uses picture books to help young children deal with the challenges they face so today, for Perfect Picture Book Friday, I’ve chosen a story that addresses that problem.…

 sI finished my 50,000 words yesterday and validated it today.  I have finished my third "novel" and won NaNoWriMo for the third time.

Also, i recently took a Coursera class, Writing in the Sciences.  i found out today that i received a 91%.  That makes me very happy.  i am going to take the weekend off and take a look at my stuff and start my rewrites. 

I have several things in the works, but I need to sit down and work on them until I am satisfied with…

Around this time of year, I see a lot of my Facebook friends posting how they prefer "Merry Christmas" to "Happy Holidays" or insisting that they will accept any greeting someone wants to throw at them.  I've seen people state that they say "Merry Christmas" to people who they don't know what they celebrate because they themselves are Christian.  And there are people who get downright mad that some of us prefer not to be wished "Merry Christmas."  They make such people out to be grinches or…

This article was published in JUDAISM, A Journal of Jewish Life and Thought, Issue No. 211/212/ Volume 53 / Numbers 3-4 / Summer-Fall 2004 / Pages 260-266.

Bus Ride of the Living or What I Did on My Summer…

Let me take you on a little pre-Christmas trip today from your PC or EZ-chair to the land of Christmas markets, Germany and Austria.

Also called advent or christkindl markets, they originally gave towns and their burghers an opportunity to stock up on provisions at the onset of the cold season. Historical records name Dresden, Germany as the first in 1434.

Now they are a staple celebration of Christmas traditions drawing millions of visitors in the four weeks,…

Future Valatie Free Library a near Net-Zero building featured by the United Nations at the Rio+20 Sustainability Summit, Brazil…

The Random House Publishing Group (my happy literary home!) just announced three new digital imprints to add to LOVESWEPT, their digital imprint for romance and women's fiction:

ALIBI, for mystery/suspense;

HYDRA, for sci-fi/fantasy; and

FLIRT, for "college-age New Adult" fiction

Their stated goal is to provide "affordable, accessible, and accomplished genre fiction," which they will publish more quickly and nimbly than traditional books.

What's in it for…

All Art Friday spotlights Lebanese artist Cynthia Nouhra, the Met's "Inventing Abstraction" show, Ursinus College's Berman Museum of Art's exhibition "Access-Ability", programs for seniors at the Whitney Museum, and Carne Griffith's drawings in tea and calligraphy.

The roundup highlights exhibitions at the National Building Museum ("Detroit Is No Dry Bones") for which I've included a video; Illinois's Rockford Art Museum (mixed media by artists of Little City, a program for people…

The Palace of Broken Hearts

By Phoebe Wilcox

Outside their window, at the Palace of the Broken Hearts, they listened to a kind of surf all night long. After he fell asleep he dreamed of a dark-haired woman. She had blue eyes that looked green when she sat on a pony with brown eyes. She weighed somewhere between 128 and 130 pounds at any given time. The pony could handle her weight as they…

So, there's this dude (I am assuming) at Deviant Art who has created a poster of "Action figures" of "Heroes of Science" - i.e. folk who have had an influence, presumably, on the world of science. He has drawn the action figures as they might appear were they actually real - they are, as far as I understand it, not real as themselves. There is just the poster, not the actual figures. You can see it <a…

Announcing my win to the Internet! Now I’m going to go announce it to my husband. And then I’m going to bed.

The novel is “complete” at 50,712 words, but far from finished. I can’t wait to take this one on for a few more rounds. This is only the beginning.…

Kirkus Gives Great Review of Rebels By Accident

Kirkus Gives Great Review of Rebels By Accident

Hayden Kian Publishing House has just announced the release of Isabelle Esling's, "Unwrap Your Present." This is the second release for the French born - London based author Isabelle Esling.

Isabelle has spent the last decade as a music journalist and an Eminem biographer. In July 2012, she published her first book, Eminem and The Detroit Rap Scene - White Kid in a Black Music World with Amber Books and Colossus Books.

The 170-page volume, traces not only the Detroit…

This year I decide that instead of giving gifts that will probable be re-gifted, need too many batteries or left in a draw somewhere, I will give my family something that will truly be a blessing to both them and someone else. 



For the price much less than the Kindle Fire, I could send the money to Women for Women International in their name to buy a goat for a woman in Bosnia, South Sudan, Iraq, etc. to provide for herself and her family. She…

I first have to admit that I'm over 50. That likely predisposes me, much as I hate to admit it, to some natural reticence about social media. I still write thank-you notes, with a pen. I make phone calls. I send cards. While I’m not hesitant to admit my age, I don’t like to admit my reticence. I like to think of myself as progressive, embracing of new ideas, and an ever growing, evolving type. But the whole Facebook, Twitter thing--from the outside looking in, anyway--just seemed a silly…