The President glanced up from his phone.
“What the fuck’s going on? Why aren’t we moving?”
“Apparently there’s a protest or something going on. The Secret Service has it in hand. Do you want me to check personally, sir?”
“Yes. Wait. No. I’m gonna go straighten this out right now. Who the fuck do they think they are, blocking the President’s motorcade? I just wanna get this Arlington bullshit over with.” Read more about Crossing the River
Over the summer I finished reading Hillary Clinton’s What Happened. You’ll notice there is no question mark. It is a simple statement. Hillary knows damned well what happened. This book is her attempt to explain it all to us. From her point of view. Which is valid and instructive and heart-wrenching in many different ways. But over the years I’ve come to believe that given what she was up against, there were very few and narrow paths to electoral college victory. Read more about What Happened
Prairie Fires
I am one of the millions of women who grew up with the Little House Books, the ethics of which likely had a larger impact on me than my mother’s strictures. So that, right there, suggests the best advice I have for young parents everywhere: look for the books that your child will love and when they are grown they will not depart from them. Read more about Prairie Fires
What do you remember of 15th Century Italian history? Guelphs and Ghibellines ring a bell? The petty wars between Florence, Milan and Genoa? Yeah, me neither. Read more about GGK’s Italy
I never know what to say to children. So few of them have read Toynbee. Read more about Toynbee
Once Upon a New Year's Day
Acquiring habits:
Well, the first habit to acquire is the habit of writing. To follow Steven’s command at the outset of this journal and write it all – the real and the imaginary. Write descriptions, conversations, character sketches, imagination, ruminations. Find the means of expression. Perhaps my first and foremost resolution, then, is to become a writer.
How many times have you read “The Lord of the Rings?” David Marchese asked Stephen Colbert in a recent New York Times interview. Read more about Back to the Source
My son, Christopher, took me to see the movie, Tolkien, for Mothers’ Day. On the way home, we had a conversation about those premier fantasy writers of our time, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and George Raymond Richard Martin, and came to an agreement that although we have read and enjoyed both, GRRM will never be a JRRT. Not even close. Read more about JRRT vs GRRM
A long-forgotten reviewer characterized a novel I loved as “a 5th century China that never was but should have been.” Read more about Back to Africa
I’ve been writing a series of short stories, each of which is subtitled, “A Fairy Tale.” A couple of them do have bits of magical elements. Three of them are more or less down to earth. People in my writing group have asked me: In what way are these stories fairy tales?
I responded to one of them as follows, referencing my latest story that I call "Saturday Night in the Big City." Read more about What Makes a Short Story a Fairy Tale?