Dragon’s Breath

Her heart hitches when she sees the fortress of three fallen spruce trees and thick alder branches half-buried by windblown snow. Wintry air turns the tears on her cheeks into ice drops. She breathes in the frozen shards of January air. Words come, ones she’s repeated for two years. “I haven’t stopped loving you.” In her dreams, her fiancé answers back. Now, cold, empty silence greets her, the only heat a flame of anger that pushes forward. “Did you not…

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I Never

I’ve never harmed a living creature. I’ve never tied thread to a butterfly’s wings or pulled a daddy longlegs’ center from his wriggling legs. Thirty years ago, Ma gave birth to me on a rotting cloth cot strung up in a leaking tar paper shack in the Tennessee hill country. They say a storm rains down babies. Two were born on our hill that night under a thunderstorm that bent trees to the ground as it rolled west from Mt.…

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A Drama in 127 Words: Leaning Forward

Here's a story I wrote one evening waiting out a storm at the cabin that a favorite literary magazine, The Big Windows Review published. I'd love to know what you think of it. Cully fights her way up the steep hill, attacked at every step by thick alder bushes bent from last winter’s snow. Clumps of prickly Devil’s Club and patches of stinging Cow Parsnip caution “danger, retreat.”She doesn’t listen.   Her fiancé waits for her over the next rise. He had…

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Dare to Real-life Write

When I read the powerful The Lie That Tells a Truth, I began thinking of a character who wasn’t me, but who’d gone through what I had and come out the other side.  Jess Cassidy burst into life. Her Next Hero begins with: He shouldn’t fly. I shoved my doubts down and shivered as my fiancé completed his pre-flight check. Steel-colored clouds clamped down on the mountains that dwarfed Finn’s twin-engine Beechcraft. Finn walked a final time around his plane,…

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Making Dreams Come True

I’m looking at this view as I write this post. There’s a patch of blue to head toward and mountains to climb. I’m rebooting my writing career from the “dear Abby of the workplace” niche I’ve carved out to write very personal novels. Five agents are reading Her Next Hero. What about you? Are you rebooting too? Here’s what I know: Clear the deck. You can’t move quickly by dragging sludge. Whenever you want to excel in a new arena,…

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Blind, deaf, broken, BRAVE

Early in life, I feared blindness. Then Deuce came into my life. We were close to two miles from the road when Deuce, a sixteen-pound sheepdog lookalike chased a small animal across the road. He heard me coming through the woods after him. I ran nearly four mph with two other leashed up dogs. Deuce was faster. That’s when he lost an eye thinking he could outwit a truck and get back across the road to me before I scolded…

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Your Voice is Needed

The future begins at the edge of your comfort zone. Have you ever read an article or post that hit home? Caused you to rethink how you were acting? Inspired you take action or change the course on which you were headed? Have you ever finished a novel and felt lighter and better when you finished it than when you first picked it up? If so, you know why I write, and why your voice is needed too. When I…

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If You Knew the True Story

When we face unexpected challenges, we find out who we are. When I was in my 20s, my fiancé died in a plane crash a few days before marriage. Not long after that, my son died of an undiagnosed, inoperable heart condition. Before these two events, when I called my dad to wish him, “Happy Father’s Day,” I learned my healthy father had died from an unexpected heart attack. As you might expect, these triple tragedies left me reeling. The…

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Courage is Your Partner

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go”. T.S. Eliot It takes courage to speak up. Especially when you speak to people who matter to you. Or to those who seem to hold all the power. It can be hard to voice your thoughts or needs when you see things differently than everyone else or when you fear what you say may fall on deaf ears. Here’s my belief. You win…

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Welcome

If you’ve found this blog after reading my articles and books, you already know what to expect. If this is your first visit, here’s what awaits you—real-life writing. That means I tackle human challenges, authentically and in-depth. I write authentically, from my heart, no holds barred. Hopefully, we’ll partner with each other. You’ll read what I write, and write your own thoughts, occasionally sharing them with me and the others who visit this blog. I hope what you read proves…

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