Here's your Anxious Holidays list (a la Letterman): 10. Do some minor home renovating since you have guests coming; it'll be nice for them to get to see the results. 9.  Decide unilaterally that this year we are going to do things a little differently. 8.   Make your own (anything.) 7.   Shop for a last-minute tree stand or one […] Read More

….The women who ran toward the sound of gunfire.  They were courageous.  Read More

From Robert Bausch on Facebook, reprinted with his permission: It's about what he thinks we are up to as teachers and writers:   Recently I showed my students in a humanities seminar the black and white film The Miracle Worker. Some wanted to know why I thought that film was appropriate for such a class. Why did […] Read More

What genre does this novel fall under?  Oh, many!  Raunchy-edgy mystical.  Pagan Christian. Metaphysical mystery. Spiritual crisis. Church psychodrama.  Et alia.    Kay Goldstein, author of Star Child asked me to keep this online book roundelay going:  I am to answer here a questionnaire about a book of mine and then tag five more writers and ask them to do […] Read More

  The cover for my new novel Cobalt Blue, coming out in spring, arrived today.  I am thrilled.  I love the blue.  Love the simplicity of it.  Love the boldness.  (It's a fairly bold story, too, BTW.) Read More

In a few minutes, I'm going out to rip the peeling bumper sticker off my battered Ford fender.  It's time.  The contest is over.  What's important now is to unpolarize, compromise, re-integrate, harmonize, and chill. Not that it's so easy.  It continues to amaze me that the Clintons can argue so passionately for their former […] Read More

It takes serious courage to run for public office — no matter how much money and support a person may have. The process can fairly be compared to opening in front of a live audience  your college application letters or the email responses from agents and editors to your manuscript.  Or to sitting in front a world-wide audience of […] Read More

  Here's a wonderfully thoughtful useful book that can actually guide readers in figuring themselves out.  It's by the psychologist/analyst  Dr. Joseph Burgo who writes the wildly popular blog After Psychotherapy. Why Do I Do That?  (and can't you just hear yourself saying it?) offers ways to recognize our knee-jerk responses and the feelings they're […] Read More

Friday my clinical psychologist husband Bob Dick will teach a one-day seminar on using hypnosis to improve your relationships.  This is his last seminar of the year — 9-5 at our pondside log house in the woods, near Chapel Hill, NC. "Individuals and couples will use hypnosis and learn self-hypnosis while exploring a practical approach to […] Read More

  Write when you're angry. Cook up ideas in a room with blue walls.  These and other strategies from Imagine: How Creativity Works are simple and usable.  And did you know that just before your new idea or connection becomes conscious, the crackle of recognition can actually be observed in the brain by a technique using fMRI and EEG?  Cool! […] Read More