Good morning. I hope you have a great day on tap. I'm up early in Negril, updating Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/cassandrablackauthor?ref=stream), author blog (http://cassandra-black-author.blogspot.com/2013/05/up-until-after-200-am-writing-last-night.html), etc. Getting ready to…

Today's short is the trailer for the documentary  "William and the Windmill", which was the Grand Jury Award winner for Documentary Feature at this year's SXSW festival. I've included some background on William Kamkwamba, who is the young man profiled in director-producer Ben Nabors's film.

http://writingwithoutpaper.blogspot.com/2013/04/saturday-short.html

Once I got a sweet taste of my deepest heartfelt desires, everything else just left a bitter flavor in my mouth. Looking back now, it’s easy to recognize that writing about love had been there all along. Sometimes though, I couldn’t see what was right in front of my face.

At age eleven, I had a terrible crush on the guitar player from Huey Lewis and the News. Chris was his name and he sported thick dark brown hair and dreamy eyes. I genuinely adored him and spent countless hours…

This piece was first published on Head Butler.

I was intrigued by Jillian Medoff’s stunning new novel, I Couldn’t Love You More, from the very first scene: a princess-themed birthday party in suburbia with ten shrieking,…

So I had decided that, being busier than a one armed paperhanger most of the time, I just did not have the time and energy to promote my novel. So I stopped posting, stopped trying....figured maybe I would pick it up later sometime....

Then I get a notice that…

Who has read On the Island by Tracy Garvis-Graves? It's hard to believe this book was a free e-book on Amazon at one point. I am curious if the writing is good.  It seems like it is more than a love story of an older woman (Anne is 30 and TJ is 16 when they meet and crash on a deserted island).  It is a survival story.  The reviews of…

In another post, Naked in Times Square, I listed many of the…

By Becky Green Aaronson  

Ingredients

1 Open Mind

1/2 cup Inspiration

3/4 cup Talent

1 cup Originality

1 cup Authenticity

2 cups Motivation…

Some people birth babies; I launch them. True, I don’t have stretch marks, but the agony and bliss I’ve experienced while ushering my newborn out the door is just as real. I joke that if I’d given birth to a human child, she’d be…

Well folks, I've reached 100 likes on my blog posts.  Don't I feel special!

Did you know that if you hold a gun, even a plastic toy gun, you are more likely to assume that someone you see is holding one, too?

If this isn't an argument for gun control, I don't know what is. George Zimmerman was holding a gun, so this made it more likely that he'd think Trayvon Martin's pack of skittles was a gun than if he'd been holding a…

I've been blogging on success for nearly a year, which seems like a good time to take stock of this blog.

Good news! My readership has grown. Nowadays, my obsessive stats-checks of my blog traffic never yield zero hits, and that is certainly and definitely and meaningfully success. Of a baby-step sort. I mean, hello,…

Greetings SheWriters.

     As we look back through our writing lives, what kind of person do we see?  Is she confidant, plunging through crowds with her head held high, pen raised, agents begging at her heals?  Does she sit for 6 hours a day, fingers moving fluidly and in an organized fashion, hair perfectly coifed, rose petal smell emanating from her office?  (Of course she has a room of her own, right?!!) 

     Or is she engaged in fits of passion, clouds of self-doubt, all…

I was in labor with my first child. Contractions, fear, anxiety, and excitement rippled through me. The husband had my suitcase. The bed was made. Our one-bedroom-with-a-den apartment was tidied. I was all ready to go.

Then I saw a sock on the floor. It seemed, in my contracting and anxiety-ridden state, too hard to bend over and pick it up--and I am proud to say it also seemed too niggling a detail about which to bother the husband.

I'll get that…

  I always take time to do personal inventory.  I'm a big fan of manifestation and creation.It's very important to realise that our outside environment is a manifestation of our inner belief system. So I honestly look at my environment. My home, myself, kids, boyfriend, friends, work......So I start out asking myself... what goals have I reached, what ones are I in the midst of working towards, and what would I like to change…

Did I wreak karmic harm on myself yesterday by snapping at a telemarketer? Read my blog and find out....Unmapped Country

I know a sure-fire system to positively change your life you can implement immediately, doesn’t cost a thing, and won’t make you fat.



(You love me now, don’t you?!)



Put your pencils down, you should be able to remember this without props. Ready?

Every day do:…

The Way is Paved at SheWrites      

            When I moved to Beacon, NY, in the middle of a snow storm, from Denver, Colorado, without any friends (not a single one would follow me), I brought my clarinet, my paints, and a file called "fragments" that were all going to make it into a novel, several poems, and short stories.  As I re-invigorated my blog and pumped some badly needed hours into my webpage, I realized I left half my "platform" behind in Denver. …