You ever have one of those days when you swear the universe is sending smoke signals but you just can't read them? Yeah. I had one yesterday, its residue strong enough to push me to write about it today. I was preparing to leave for an evening of non-fiction readings by two local authors at the newest event sponsored by the Springboro Historical Society -- Reading Between the Wines -- where I serve as facilitator. I have the honor of introducing the readers for the [...]
No way to sugarcoat this truth, for me personally, it's been a shitty summer. Three rounds of antibiotics for various unusual infections followed by a Mohs procedure (www.skincancer.org/skin-cancer-information/mohs-surgery) for skin cancer that ended up costing me most of my left nostril and resulted in complicated facial reconstruction, which is not over yet. If my last name were Scrooge, I'd scream Bah, humbug! The combination of these events entombed me in a very dark hole. I've been digging myself up ever since. For a flaming [...]
READY? What's that old line about "the world being too much with us"? Sometimes the obstacles laid along the road create a wall too high to scale. Sometimes they force us to confront truths we would rather avoid. If you're a little like me, maybe they cause you to contemplate, if only for a moment, running away, and summer provides the opportune moment to try a faux escape. After all, it's July, summer's highpoint in the northern hemisphere. In this month of heat, humidity, and [...]
July is sizzling and so is A FEIGNED MADNESS, the historical fiction debut novel of this month's featured author Tonya Mitchell. The novel tells the story of undercover reporter Nellie Bly’s ten harrowing days inside a women’s insane asylum in 1887. Mitchell has a degree in journalism from Indiana University. Her short fiction has appeared in a variety of publications, including The Copperfield Review and Glimmer and Other Stories. Our author confesses to being an Anglophile with a particular fascination for all things Victorian. She [...]
As I write this note, the two-inch snowfall melts outside the window, and the weatherman predicts temps in the twenties tonight. I have covered all my tender peas, lettuce, and spinach, but my heart quails at the prospect of losing blossoms on the tulip pear or on the pansies in the window box. Still, beneath the coverlet of white, spring trembles, preparing to begin again the rites of renewal and growth. And then that song plays in my head..."Don't stop believin..." I step away for [...]
The day, the hour, the moment muteness descended on my writing voice crouches in the deepest corner of my heart, waiting to pounce at unexpected times. As my son's birthday, May 27, approaches, I feel the memory uncurling, preparing to leap, determined to remind me that wounds can be dressed but some scars never heal. Dayton Children’s Hospital, September, 1973. 11:00 a.m. A doctor I do not know explodes from his office, lifts my three-month old infant from my grasp and swings him in the [...]