First Lines; Last Lines: A Fine Balance in Books

  The perfect first line. How we chase it, scrambling phrases and our brains, seeking magic words to pop open our stories like magic keys.( Sometimes I want to create an entire book because a great beginning sentence pops into my head.) Tougher, can be that last line; Tougher because it’s culminating an entire world. … Read more

The Bobbsey Twins, Anomie, Schadenfreude, and Growing up in Brooklyn

I suppose they were meant to teach me reading skills. And the goodness of clean living. But what The Bobbsey Twins taught me was needle sharp envy. Freddie and Flossie Bobbsey’s adventures are the first books I remember reading. Their stories educated me about a world from which I was deeply, meanly, forever locked out. … Read more

Talismanic Objects

My dear friend and neighbor, Linda, sent me this rubber duck, which she made into a duck reading my book. Reading Duck oversees the bathroom and cannot be moved. If he left the room, my sense of safety would be shaken.

This morning I drank coffee from my Stephanie mug—the mug I bought the day I shook virtual hands with my literary agent (named, um, Stephanie.) I was in Rhinebeck visiting my sister—which made the entire episode extra special—and flying on the wings of love, I drifted into a gift shop where I saw this mug:

Being that my agent is French and we’d just had a conversation as smooth

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