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Walking Toward the River

Every morning and every afternoon I walk toward the river. The river flows past the oversized window at the end of our hallway. Sometimes when I walk, a behometh ship passes, rusty hull slicing the air. At other times it’s the train passing, the cars laden with graffiti. On the rarest of occasions, the train runs in front of a ship and...

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Literary Gift to Those Once Known as Homeless

No one owes you anything in this world. Everything anyone does for you is a gift. Some gifts—the gift of love or forgiveness or a trust fund enabling you to graduate law school and make your way in this world for a while—are pretty damn big gifts. Others may seem small, but those gifts are the ones that often bring tears to my eyes. Chapter 16.org...

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Creative Healing

I am working on a new novel. A mystery with a 62-year-old protagonist who was formerly homeless. A body is found in a Jeep in the Wolf River Harbor. My man Coot is on the case. This is why I haven’t been posting lately. When I am drafting—not revising, but writing new work—everything else pretty much comes to a stand still. I am only posting...

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Love Your Heart!

I love this book. It’s about a young woman who goes on a cross-country train trip to clear her dead daddy’s name and winds up repairing her relationship with her mother. It’s funny—really funny—and sad. And, in parts, wise and faintly political—it decries the commercial abuse of chickens. The main character is Southern to her...

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That’s the Way Rumors Get Started

This morning at the church service attended mainly by those living on the streets, one of the guys told me about two recent incidents when he’d been told he was an inspiration. He began the story by saying, “I’m not telling you this to to be bragging.” I’ve known him for about a year and a half. He wasn’t telling...

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Why We Do What We Do

Thank you so much to Luanne Castle at Writer Site for asking me to participate in this conversation on writing process. Luanne Castle Luanne lives in Arizona and California; our paths would never have crossed without her wonderful blog. Yet, I’ve since learned we have mutual writing friends and, out of her long list of publications, we share...

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