I just made a change in my "price structure" for critiquing manuscripts, etc.  In addition to the page rate, I ask people to also buy one of my novels each time they contract with me for a service.  Even if they already have all of them! Cheeky? Maybe. Highly self-promotional? You bet! I consider it […] Read More

                                                                                                                                                                         (from USA Today) In support of the fast food workers who went on strike for higher pay this week in more than 50 U.S. cities, I […] Read More

                                     You may not know of the Golden Flower that this intriguing memoir deciphers.  A 12th century Taoist text on meditation, its full title is The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life or by […] Read More

My first and so-far-only venture into self-publishing.  A 20-page Kindle item: At Sea with My Writing: A Novelist Cruises to Book Deals priced at 99 cents.  The title alone ought to qualify this action as bold. The booklet/litbit/cybersingle or whatever this new form is called is made up of two articles, each one the story […] Read More

At first I asked myself: have you never looked at clouds before, Peggy? Was all this extraordinary stuff overhead here your whole life and you never noticed? But then I discussed the matter with others.  I'm not the only one in a state of astonishment over the recent cloudscapes.  The sky over central North Carolina […] Read More

My 2001 novel Sister India, set in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi, emerged in recent days as an e-book.  Appropriately for a book from the bank of the Ganges, it was re-released by the original publisher, Riverhead, an imprint of The Penguin Group. I am very happy to have this book easily available again. […] Read More

Holding a  book signing at a skin spa is definitely "thinking outside of the books."  (Good one, yes?) Sister novelist Carrie Knowles and I wrapped up the recent Virginia leg of our Crazy Ladies Book Tour in the most charming of locations: Rosehips Beauty boutique and skin spa in Newport News.  The proprietor and beauty […] Read More

The Crazy Ladies Book Tour got a four-hour head start driving across Richmond to look for the bookstore where we were expected. We'd almost missed our broadcast splash the previous day by taking a wrong turn on the way to the WTVR-CBS studio, arriving three frantic minutes after the appointed hour.  (We did make it […] Read More

C.J. Knowles at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Back from four days on the road with Carrie Jane Knowles, as her book cover calls her. She and I were out on a Virginia segment of our Crazy Ladies Book Tour. What an adventure! Here's Day One-and-a-Half:  When we arrived at 7:15 p.m. in Richmond […] Read More

Namibia      Photo by Jim Maney. The odds of noticing a pink elephant or a cobalt blue coconut are thought to improve (see post) if a person is mentally focused on seeing such a sight. A day or so after my post on this principle, Jim Maney kindly  arranged for me to see a pink elephant […] Read More