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Prayers against Extinction

A storm is churning toward the North Carolina coast and Ocean Isle Beach in particular where I have gone every summer since I was in the 11th grade, and the hurricane is threatening to tear it to pieces. And then I open my emails to read an article about male sperm decreasing in fertility by 50% since 1973 and warning us that the entire human...

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Baby Groot, et al.

As I was talking to my grandsons about my crush on Baby Groot (and sharing a video to prove how cute he was), it occurred to me that this is not an aberration. The boys will remember that I love the bug band (officially known as the Fiesta Trio) in Dora the Explorer (“Gogi! Come quick, it’s the band!) and correctly conclude that I...

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Talking Creativity/Creatively Talking

Early on in my writing career when my mom read something I’d written, and she didn’t know quite what to make of it, she would graciously say, “You are sooooooo creative.” Well, now it’s official. I’ve been included in Sandie O’Neill’s conversation on creative women. You can read the interview on...

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Crack in Time

In the fall, in the South, time stands still. In the South, in what we call fall, dust settles on the roads, climbs onto forgotten porch swings, drifts through open windows to curl on tabletops. In the evenings, the cicadas thrum the air and in the mornings the shelled bugs kick, flat on their backs, dying. The lazy days bleed yellow while the...

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In Mississippi, We Pull Over

For all its fun and foolishness, TRACKING HAPPINESS: A SOUTHERN CHICKEN ADVENTURE is a story of a young woman coping with grief. Lucinda Mae’s dad died two years before the novel opens. Losing her dad threw Lucinda’s life off track, as it were, and the cross-country train trip hopefully will set it to rights. As I’ve shared...

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Given Where I Started From

Kind folks keep congratulating me on the release of my novel TRACKING HAPPINESS: A SOUTHERN CHICKEN ADVENTURE and inside myself I think, I self-published it—where is the congratulations in that? I did successfully get an agent for the novel (a long time ago), but he wasn’t able to sell that half-baked version. Later I had another agent...

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All the Way From Canada!

Please enjoy this kicking review of Tracking Happiness: A Southern Chicken Adventure found on Susanne Fletcher’s Wuthering Bites blog. I am thrilled Susanne compared the comic dialogue to P.G. Woodhouse, whose Jeeves collection I long ago fell in love with and read in its entirety (how one gets so lucky as to be compared to a beloved writer,...

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Uncultured Smells

MEMPHIS AS BABYLON Traveling North Parkway with the windows open, I drive through a scent, and my head jerks in memory: a cracked sidewalk with weeds springing tall; a blossoming hedge that smelled so sweet. That’s all I remember, but it’s enough to keep me searching for the bushes all spring. Along roadways, on vacant lots, in other untended...

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