Category Archives for Uncategorized

          COMFORT           I think I’ve had it wrong. The word comfortable has always sparked mental pictures for me of down bedding or a steaming bowl of homemade chicken noodle soup. But a recent reading educated me. Our English word comes from the Old French verb conforter (to comfort). It is made […]

         THE DOLDRUMS I’m a bit under the weather today. Not sick, exactly—just slight chills and dizziness and, mostly, a feeling of lethargy. If I worked for someone else, I couldn’t quite justify taking the day off. As a writer-at-home, I was so looking forward to picking up drafting on my novel, […]

          SLIPPER The elegance of this richly embroidered silk slipper, looking like a cute doll’s shoe at three-and-a-half inches in length, belies its hideous history. More than a century old, it was worn by a bound-footed woman in Formosa (Taiwan) and now sits on our bedroom dresser mounted in a black […]

          CHOCOLATE I once made the mistake, when speaking to a French friend, of calling chocolate “junk food.” You’d have forgiven me at the time, I’m sure, as I was referring to the thick tablets of chocolate pasted on the top of baby teething biscuits I found in the department store […]

          DRAFTING I’m in the mode. My desktop (okay, kitchen table) is stacked high with computer, binder of plot notes, reference books, sheafs of paper, pens, cups of cold coffee.  I’ll likely wear my housecoat till late afternoon, only dressing in order to walk on my elliptical while watching Dr. Phil. […]

        THE DOT My fourth-grade teacher made a single, round mark on the board as he stood in front of the classroom. “A dot is the end point, like the hole in a garden hose,” he explained. “If you tip the dot sideways, it becomes a line that runs on a plane forever.” Thus […]

          SOURDOUGH BREAD A batch of sourdough starter lives in a glass container in my fridge. I mixed it up last month and used some to make delicious loaves of white and rye breads, but the joy of sourdough starter is that the leftover keeps ripening and increasing in flavour so […]

     OUR HEARTS CAN REST AT HOME   “My grandmother,” I said in a low tone, “would have said that we were all in exile, and that no earthly house could cure the holy home-sickness that forbids us rest.”                               […]

          SNIP SNIP Check this out for an up-close-and-personal peek into the fictional mind of the main character in my debut novel, The Third Grace. Aglaia, a 32-year-old costume designer, was originally interviewed (through her creator, moi) by “Beyond the Books” during my online book tour last fall, but you might have […]

          MY GRANDMA’S CAST IRON POT My mom handed down to me this vintage four-quart Dutch Oven along with farm-girl instructions on how to stew a hen. The timing was perfect—it so happens that the main character in my current novel, Libby, has inherited just such a soup kettle from her own […]