Dear Nicholas, You dared to suggest the crone archetype as fitting where I now am in my life. Okay, I’m fine with the wise woman idea. But the word “crone”? Very troubling. And I do believe words matter. I want a clearly positive term for an often derided stage of life. A mild example of […] Read More

Nicholas, Talking about my life feels wrong while Houston is under water. Seeing what the storm has done there, I feel I have no problems to solve. The damage there is horrific. But as a child I thought hurricanes were a great adventure. Nothing shows a change of perspective more than how my view of […] Read More

Dear Nicholas — I have a couple of minor health glitches of the sort that can be caused by stress and one that has been made worse by stress. I don’t usually have many health glitches and so I have to ask myself: can you be stressed and not know it? Wired and tired I […] Read More

Dear Nicholas, “How Life Turns Out (so far)” is the final piece of the personal history I started unfolding here several days ago. The first, “City Love”: brought me to the point of getting a newspaper job in Raleigh, the city that’s the original reason for writing all this. The second was “Single Girl in the City.”  This […] Read More

Dear Nicholas, “Single Girl in the City” is the second part of the personal history I started spinning out here a couple of days ago. The first part brought me to the point of getting a newspaper job in Raleigh, the city that’s the original reason for writing all this. Here’s the second in this […] Read More

Nicholas, A few years ago, I wrote a piece of personal history for the anthology 27 Views of Raleigh. Turned out to be a story that stretched across all of my adult life, which of course I want you to know about. In the language of Facebook, I called it: “In a Relationship with Raleigh: […] Read More

Nicholas, I have trouble believing in two major facts about life: birth and death. The real facts of life, it seems to me, are love, work, and running errands. Plus, being a believer or non-believer. And going to the beach, etc. The idea that people vanish seems utterly implausible to me. The idea that people […] Read More

Dear Nicholas, Without deciding to, I seem to be neglecting my most-cherished bad habits, at least for the moment. I’m amazed. Usually, to make a change like this, I have to decide to do it, suffer in the process, and give myself rewards for sticking to my resolve. Most dramatically, it has been ten days […] Read More

Nicholas, In the flurry of book promotion three years ago when Cobalt Blue came out, I dreamed up a fabulous idea: write a sales rap for all my books. Make a rap video. I was so excited. I wrote the lyrics. I’ve been making pathetic attempts to rap ever since. I was advised from the […] Read More

Nicholas, Writing these notes to you makes me see my life/self a little differently. The experience is a lot like keeping a journal in the three months I spent in Varanasi doing research for my novel Sister India. Then I was writing what I felt/thought/observed hour by hour, to have the tastes and smells of […] Read More