Cooking the Hook - NEW

        How long does this last? he wondered, spreading his broad hand across her belly. Inside his head, he heard her reply, closer than his own thoughts,         As long as you want it to,  and she looked at him with that unspoken answer in her smile.

Whack. whack.  He drops the head of the hammer on a large ant making its way across the board he's sitting on. What are you doing? What does it look like? That could have been one of your relatives in another life! Whack. Take that Uncle. But why? Have you ever been bitten by an ant? No, but maybe if you stopped killing them they'd stop biting you? Listen to yourself. Whack, whack. Those two won't bite me anytime soon. But your ancestors! Who the fuck wants to be an ant? I'm speeding them on to a better reincarnation. A nonbiting one. Whack!

It was dusk by the time they set out through the backyard for the short walk into town. The Windsock was lit up like a Christmas parade even though it was the end of summer. When she was a child, she had been allowed to open one gift on the Eve. This early September evening had all the feeling of December 24th and Anna was aglow with it. For a weekday night with no ball game on TV, there were a lot of cars in the parking lot. As they walked in the front door and there were two loud, hollow pops, Billy opening two bottles of champagne in quick succession, Goldy splashing the liquid over two round trays of shot glasses. Friends and neighbors, traveling strangers crowded the bar for their glasses. Billy passed a tequila sunrise to Anna and draft beer to Jack raised his glass dramatically and said,  “To the power of love.” Everyone cheered and drank. “ Stop, stop, don’t make me cry. God, I wish Tam and Murph were here,” Anna said.  Jack whispered something in Goldy’s ea...

This, from last August.... It's important I keep my finger on this pulse as I revise.  It's taken a while, but I've discovered the theme of my book is  touch and connections . I'm not sure how knowing theme matters when the thing is already manifested. I sure didn't think about it going in.  Themes are funny things.They sneak in over time and one day, you flip back a shutter and there it is, a sleeping bat clinging to the wall, it's eyes scrunched shut and muttering "Good. She can't see me." Not much of a reach for a stitcher, this tactile thing. There's just no denying it.

A friend recently discussing her art in and with cloth. These are thought trails that I am taking with the next book, even as I pick up the cloth myself and resume my own stitched storytelling. ".... Emotional truth. Hand stitching as expression of body and love. Ideas of protection and safety, destruction and reparation. Mending. Covering."  -  Judy Martin

Hell is a picnic in a warm place. I am in Revision. I've made a point of NOT reading any more craft books about writing. Not that I know every damn thing there is to know. I just can't let myself be derailed by any more second, third, fourth or fifth guessing. But this great piece on revision popped up in the email the other day and I'm so glad that I couldn't resist Chuck's dirty mouth. It's a long and worthy read if you are any kind of scribbler. Know that I am only at #5 - Fermentation, which to an outsider probably looks like you've changed, skipped or bad need of medication. To help with the "Hands Off thing", and to salve my aching political soul, I indulged in binge-watching every episode of West Wing   on Netflix. Outstanding in every way, it ran from 1999 to 2006 and it's positively eerie and sad how the issues raised continue to be things that we are still dealing with today. In every episode, your heart will swell to the size o...

"In reality, the woman belonged to sometime else as she was just here at this time by accident. A slip of the cosmic order had caused her to be born out of sequence, under the wrong stars. She had been overlooked by the universe. In the book of all names and beings, she was unlisted, with no past nor future written down for her. She was invisible to the gods, the passage of time and the protection of the stars."