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It’s a whirlwind of a day teaching four 90-minute long sessions to 5th, 6th, and 7th graders in McDowell County. All totaled, I see about 100 students. We talk about similes and the five senses, [...]

“Discipline” is going to be the name of the game these next two weeks. That and “fun.” I’m serving as Artist in the Schools for McDowell County (starting Monday morning, bright and early) but I’m [...]

[Weymouth board member Elaine Sills and I after tonight’s live music performance in The Great Room of Boyd Mansion. The performers? Esteemed Fred Moyer (pianist) and Nancy Green (celloist), [...]

  It is so important to make time for the art of wandering. To look up: To look down: To look at the wide-eyed world straight on and marvel…

  The other side of my writing life is my editing life. I serve on the Advisory Board for Memoir <(and) journal and am founding Associate Editor of TRACHODON literary magazine, as [...]

I don’t often like to reflect the negatives in life. If a situation is challenging, I’ll take some personal time after I get through it to consider how I might grow from that challenge. But by [...]

There’s the humble chair in the afternoon sunlight… And the big booty chair in The Great Room.   The understated chair in the entrance hallway… And the squatter’s [...]

  A quick news flash for local readers: This Sunday, October 24th at 2pm, I will be giving a presentation and book signing at Weymouth Center on my book, Lost Crossings. Come learn about [...]

  Questions I have asked other writers—decades my senior—this week at Weymouth: “What does the compulsion to write a novel feel like?” “Am I going to love this life so much that I’ll become [...]

And so the Boyd house mansion fills with the sound of women’s laughter, fast fingers at the keyboards, and the nighttime footsteps not of ghosts but of fleshy creative spirits—the human kind, the [...]