Some days the words are like a wrestling match. Some days they flow like water over the edge of a cliff, too fast to catch them all. Some days all of life seems profound, with beauty to be mined in every moment. Some days it’s head into the wind and muscling through. Some days there is…
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A Writer’s Life
On Friday morning, at the end of two weeks’ worth of puzzling and researching options for how to take this Write-at-home-mom gig mobile, I picked up a laptop from surplus to try out. I carried it around all morning, to Jazzercise and speech therapy and the copy shop and music-dropoff. I felt all grown up…
Read MoreIce Buckets, Nazis, Reprints and other QTs
___1___ Well, I did the ice bucket thing this week. I’m kind of scared to say this, but I have to admit to some ambivalence about this challenge. It’s great that people are donating to ALS research, but am I the only one who felt like I HAD to do it or I would look bad?…
Read MoreA Novel Accolade and Lots of Kid QTs
I intended this 7 Quick Takes to be all about the kids, but first I have to share a piece of really exciting news…… ___1__ My novel, The Wine Widow, made the finalist round of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association’s inaugural contest, the Rising Star! All novels are a labor of love, but when you’re…
Read MoreWhere I Spent Last Week, And What I Learned From It
I spent last week at a conference for church musicians. I want to blog about it this morning, but so far I have spent ten minutes sitting in front of the computer grasping for what to say. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. I can think of lots of things to say, but I can’t find…
Read More7 Quick Takes
___1___ Twice this week I was asked if we bought a new van. “No,” I said. “We just got the doors fixed! And they washed it!” ___2___ Overheard in the back seat of the carpool: Neighbor: “My sister only wanted to go to chess club because her BFF was going.” Nicholas: “What’s ‘BFF’?” Me: “Best friend forever.”…
Read MoreFiction: Snow Day
The bells of St. Brigit’s are calling tonight, winging over the snow and alighting on my windowsill. All day I have been imprisoned by twenty inches of snow. Something inside me quivers for escape. Something bright, warm, effervescent–and utterly impossible. But real. When I woke this morning I was half an inch above my…
Read MoreA Journal Entry
I try not to write about writing too often, but I hope you’ll indulge me this once. I’m in transition right now. My last novel is finished and in the query phase, but its first forays into the hands of the industry were not as successful as I hoped, so I put the brakes on.…
Read MoreAuthor Interview: Erin McCole Crupp
Today I have a special post–a chance to chat with the author of a new Catholic novel: Don’t You Forget About Me, by Erin McCole Crupp, also known online as Mrs. Mackerelsnapper, OP (how can you resist a name like that?). Can you start by telling us what the book is about? Sure, Kate! Thanks…
Read MoreThe Avengers and other Quick Takes
___1___ I went to a family wedding in southern Missouri last weekend. It was quite a culture shock; very suddenly, when I turned onto I-44, I found myself surrounded by John 3:16s, Baptist churches three times the size of my (very large) parish, a Mack truck dealership that took up both sides of the highway,…
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Kathleen M. Basi 