Every once in a while I feel a rage day coming on. Thankfully, a parking spot and a musically infused subway ride saved me the other day. Who knew? The subway could have such an uplifting effect.

Subway Tales

Hebrews 13:2

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

Once in a while you run into a person that lights up your world. I met such a lady this past weekend while strolling up a path beside New River. Her name was Mary, but she said her special friends call her Bunny. Not Bonnie, but Bunny. That’s what her Daddy nicknamed her when she was a little tike.

Mary was looking for somewhere to pull her teardrop…

I am proud to announce the release of her new Contemporary Suspense Romance. 

RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT on my blog Aspired Writer

I've posted a new poem, "When You Talk About Food, It's Complicated", that is inspired by a recent New York Times City Room article.

http://writingwithoutpaper.blogspot.com/2013/03/when-you-talk-about-food-poem.html

After safely dropping off my third novel, “The River Keeper” to my editor a couple of weeks ago I’m experiencing an entirely different lifestyle than I’ve been used to as of late. Since last October I have been revising and critiquing my new work. The first draft grew from 87,000 words to 101,000. The characters have become more colorful and complete. I can now actually see the lines in their faces and smell their surroundings. So while I wait for “The River Keeper” to return what…

I lived in Manhattan when Ed Koch was running it. I met the mayor perhaps a dozen times when I lived on Lafayette Street in the East Village. These were not official meetings, you understand: they did not take place at fundraisers, book parties, or political conventions. I was a graduate student living in a one-room basement apartment, putting myself through school and working two part-time jobs in 1980s; I was not a valuable constituent.

Yet I spoke to Mayor Koch as often as I did…

When I was a graduate student, I worked as Susan Sontag’s personal assistant for one year. I went to her apartment on East 17^th Street on Friday mornings to run errands, take dictation, type letters, and retype essays. (My typing skills were not what she expected so I quickly signed up for a class at a secretarial school near Penn Station that enabled me to pick up speed and keep the job.) I was thrilled to be in proximity to so prominent a writer, and she gave me…

Looking back on 2012 I have so many things to be thankful for. Good health, a family that loves me even when I’m not lovable, a God who erased my every sin with the cleansing power of His shed blood, and my writing. My new novel, The Color of My Heart was released in late October and is doing very…

Enough already! On both my morning commute and my afternoon drive home, the radio DJ's were blasting out a litany of stats on failed resolutions! Already!?! Seriously!?! Isn't this still the first week in January? Yes, I turned them right off...but it got me thinking.  Who says you need to start that page-a-day writing regime on January 1st or it will never happen? Who says you need to start…

Should some writing come with a "made-in-China" label?

In our digitized 21st century, how much of our writing is too cheap, too quick and too disposable? Has the sheer volume of digitized, podcast, broadcast and hard-copy content spawned a  24/7 static, a persistent distraction?

I have been a lifelong lover of the jigsaw process of writing, of yoking apparently disparate ideas together…

Want to finish and publish your memoir this year?  Here are four resolutions to knock your writing up a level to create a memoir of enduring value that readers want to read and publishers will want to buy.

1.      This year I will make myself vulnerable on the page.

What’s the one quality that keeps me reading a memoir?  The narrator’s willingness to make himself vulnerable.   Most often in memoir the narrator’s vulnerability originates from sharing stuff most of…

Hallelujah I made it through another year. No looking back on 2012. Just moving ahead into the unknown. Who knows what treasures I’ll uncover in the weeks to come?

Every day is a gift. Each new twenty-four hours is bound up tightly in colorful paper and tied with a flamboyant bow. Hour by hour we un-wrap a piece of our day and behold the magic. Don’t we wish every day would be all bright, bubbly and full of fun?

I know that 2013 will hold many treasured…

...a new year arrises,

        and I wonder what this means.

...a chance to begin again?

        but every new dawning contains this seed.

            maybe, just maybe

...a first and new glimpse,

        a quivery legged rising.

....…

Up this morning in Kings River Life--a New Year's Eve mystery short story by Gail Farrelly http://kingsriverlife.com/12/29/the-times-square-terrorist-an-original-short-story/

Also up in KRL this morning--a review of Earlene Fowler's new book "The Road To Cardinal Valley", an interview with Earlene, a chance to win a copy of the book & information on her book events at both…

Memoir: The Story of the Transformation of the Self

By Theo Pauline Nestor

‘

This spring I’ll be hosting the Wild Mountain Memoir Retreat in Washington state’s Cascades Mountains (keynote speaker: Cheryl Strayed, author of WILD; see below for She Writes member discount code). In some ways, this retreat feels like a culmination of the work I’ve been doing…

Moving is a stressful time for anyone, and apart from the strain and exhaustion of packing and unpacking, there is the new neighborhood to contend with. Now you have to find a local coffee shop, a new MD, another hairdresser, a local dentist, a local watering hole, somewhere to do your groceries, and most nerve wracking of all, make some new friends. Starting with your neighbors might be a good idea. Even if you don't become friends, having a good relationship with your neighbors is…

So, the kids and I survived our first storm completely on our own.  I never thought I'd utter these words, "Thank god for teenagers."  My two oldest and able-bodied worked by my side getting our house ready for Sandy without complaint.  I had to venture onto our roof to clean out some leaf clogged gutters that plague us with water damage every storm. My daughter Riley climbed a ladder next to me and forgot about all her girly queasiness and fears of spiders. She reached in and pulled out…

Join us for Why There Are Words, November 8 at Studio 333 in Sausalito, 7 pm, $5. Our promise: A magical night of stories from seven remarkable writers on the theme, Promise.

Fred Arroyo is the author of Western Avenue and Other Fictions, as well as The Region of Lost…

It's a book launch party for Eldon Taylor and his amazing book Self-Hypnosis and Subliminal Technology.  Stop by and check out the book and the link I'll have up for all the fabulous drawings that you can enter for a chance to win. 

At the party site, there's over 100 bonus gifts plus the…

I was invited to take part in "She Writes" "The Next Big Thing" - and jumped at the chance to answer questions about my current work in progress. (Working title: "Griffin Calling"). 

If any of my fellow "She Writers" have a few moments to spare, please take the time to drop…