Do you make reading goals?

Every year, (heck…every month, every day) I vow to read more. My New Year’s Resolutions, for decades on end, have included the phrase, “Read More.” I have a passion for human stories and interesting innovations. History fascinates me. Science intrigues me. Books turn me on. (Truly, I get a physical thrill and a rush of endorphins, the body’s own joy juice, when I enter a bookstore.)

So why is it that I don’t read nearly enough? That I buy books that sit on my T0-Be-Read shelf for months? …

“Listen. Just Listen.”

I stepped outside and walked into the yard on a late May day. Finally, after a cool, rainy spring, the weather was beginning to warm and the sun was starting to shine. My husband ran up to me, smiling, pulling the headphones off my head, saying,

“Listen. Just listen. Can you hear it?”

At first, I thought I heard a low hum from the interstate a couple of miles away from our home, but then I realized that it was a steadier, softer sound than truck tires wheeling around and around on the highway.

A million tiny tambourines. A thousand…

Book cover art as postcard promotion

You spent hours deciding on your book cover. You may have paid to have it professionally designed. You might have done it yourself, playing with color, font, spacing. Deciding how big to make your name.

But no matter how it came to be, your book cover is the best way to promote your work.

Use the high-definition digital file of your book cover to create a postcard. I use a traditional 4" x 6", but you can go bigger if you choose.

I use a two-sided card so that I can print information on the back about where the book…

Has something changed?

Last year, I was curated often, about 70% of the time. This year, and particularly in the last three months, I’m running 100%.

Don’t get me wrong. While I’m baffled at my new curation rate, I’m absolutely thrilled. Obviously, any curation I can get is a good thing because every single piece that gets distributed adds to my exposure and the amount of time that other people might read my work. I’m hoping that someday, I will actually break the $100 mark in earnings.

If there are designated publications or specific people who have been given the green light for…

Every day is a great day to give a gift

If you know a writer, you know that it can be a tough profession: not everyone is making six-figure salaries. (I’m into the four figures if you count the two decimal points after the period!) The world of writing can be filled with intense competition, rejection, deadlines, and attacks on self-confidence.

If you love a writer, you know what I mean.

It doesn’t have to be a holiday to give a gift to the writer in your life…to encourage them, to say you believe in what they’re doing, to cheer them up when they’re discouraged, or to cheer them on…

What the modern world is missing out on

What would happen if we communicated only digitally? If everything floated through cyberspace and nothing was anchored on paper with ink? Where do those records, licenses, deeds, loans, and legal doings go if they’re only saved online and not preserved in hard copies?

It’s hard to value things in email only. And if there is every a cyber attack, like the one that just stopped the oil pipeline, would all those documents be held for ransom? Would they disappear in a keystroke?

In a world full of computers, digital correspondence, constant texts, I am a dinosaur. …

“Aged and Ageless” A Sciku of Trees:

I don’t want to live
In a world without real trees.
Without role models —

Botanical friends
That teach me, by example.
How to live and thrive

In a scary world.
How to grow up fearlessly
Rooted and reaching,

Twisting instead of
Breaking. Sucking up toxins
And giving back joy.

Laughing with the sky,
Coexisting with the earth,
Dancing with seasons.

Gifting leaves of green,
Red, gold, bronze. Nuts. Buds. Bark. Cones.
The scent of flowers.

Watching the wide world,
Eon after eon and
Staying strong, grounded.

Never despairing.
Always believing in growth.
Optimistic. Good.

Undaunted. Even
at the age of…

In retrospect, my hesitation at reading The Book of Longings is laughable

It’s absurd, really. I had purchased a copy of Sue Monk Kidd’s book, The Book of Longings when it was released through my Book-of-the-Month subscription, but I put off reading it. I had it in my head that I might be committing some kind of quiet heresy by indulging myself in a story that “re-imagined” Jesus’ as a married man.

My childhood upbringing of weekly church services and standard Methodist dogma got in the way and delayed my reading of one of the best books I’ve held in my hands this year.

I try never to rate books. I also…