As a serious magazine junkie, I turn through or pore over three or four dozen a week.  I get them at the magazine swap corner at my nearest public library (Eva Perry in Apex), the swap shop shed at the county recycling center (the dump), the PTA Thrift Shop in Chapel Hill (currently 2 for […] Read More

You might think that this is a small thing: a personal and professional no-brainer.  To me, it's a big deal, which is how it is with so many anxieties.  One person's no-problem is another's ponder-it-obsessively.  I have no problem with something like risking rejection or hamming it up (see photo below), but I worry about […] Read More

My psychologist husband Bob Dick will host another all-day seminar at our house on using hypnosis for better relationships.  Date: Friday, Feb. 22, 9 am to 5 pm.  Location: rural Chatham County, outside Chapel Hill, close to Jordan Lake. "Individuals and couples will use hypnosis and learn self-hypnosis while exploring a practical approach to…strategies and tactics […] Read More

After I surprised my husband Bob this morning with this birthday present, he said he thought it was a sufficiently bold choice to merit a blog entry. (He does like it, BTW.) Read More

Bernard Malamud's writer/psychotherapist daughter has written a very insightful piece on what stops people from writing or, for that matter, from other imaginative, self-expressive projects.  I hesitate to use the word "creative" after reading what she has to say about it. Janna Malamud Smith draws from her new book, An Absorbing Errand: How Artists and Craftsmen Make […] Read More

That's the question at the heart of my novel Revelation.  The blue-sky church-steeple cover wasn't getting across the grit, darkness, struggle, risk involved. So I've put a new one on the Kindle edition.  (The old hard copies have long been out of print.)  See what you think.  I think it better represents the story.      Read More

My upcoming novel gets some early and sizzling attention on home turf:  From Wilmington, NC's Starnewsonline.com: Bookmarks “Cobalt Blue” Tuesday, January 22, 2013 at 5:58 by Ben Steelman   Joining the host of area authors with books coming out this spring is Wilmington native Peggy Payne. Her new novel “Cobalt Blue” is due to be […] Read More

 An 88 year-old veteran, mill supervisor, father and farmer was buried in a small town churchyard in North Carolina today.  His daughter is a close friend of mine and so I stood at that service for the 21-gun salute that blasted as the church's flag flew at half-mast to honor Martin Luther King, Jr., and as Barack Obama was inaugurated for […] Read More

Read this one afternoon on the coast of Costa Rica.  The picture sticks with me as a way to be courageous while simply sitting still. From Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa: "I, for a moment, thought the situation might be awkward to him. But as we sat together in the afternoon sun, in no way pretending […] Read More

In the first place, I wouldn't have expected to find such a story in Coastal Living magazine, and then I saw it was by a writer I know, Durham's Barry Yeoman. The story angle that made the piece fit into a magazine about coasts was the fact that it all took place near the water in Cadiz, Spain, where "Atlantic waves […] Read More