Yes, You Need a Platform

Congratulations, you’ve written a book! You’re done, right? You’ve typed and edited and revised and uploaded to your printer, and now the book is ready for people to beat a path to your door, right? Oops. If you’re like me, you soon discover that you are missing something critical:

The Table Turns

I am four years old. My mother has taken me grocery shopping, one of my favorite outings. As we roam the aisles, I traipse behind her as she checks prices and places items in the cart. I ask for cookies and treats, but she says no. I am distracted and don’t notice her rounding the

I Wanna Be a Witch

“I wanna to be a witch,” my four-year-old daughter said. “Are you sure? You don’t like scary things.” “Yes,” she said with a firm drop of her chin. “You know witches usually have big noses, warts, and straggly hair. They wear raggedy black dresses and pointed hats. That’s what makes them witchy looking. And we

A Very Scary Halloween Story

When my son was in first grade, he was the smallest kid in the class. So when a bigger boy invited him to go trick or treating chaperoned by parents, I said yes, glad Steve was making friends at school. Steve wanted to be a pirate. I can’t sew a stitch, but I rustled up

Was it a Gargoyle?

Not sure if this is a ghost story, but I swear to God it’s true. See, we finished up our work late, Geneva and me. By then, everybody else had left the set. I’m a stunt woman, so I’d been riding horses all day long, subbing for the skinny blonde actress who sat around filing

ROSES FOR LAVINIA

“Dr. Beall, can you do something about that patient, the strange one? She’s giving us a hard time,” Phyllis barked over the intercom from the front desk. She was fuming. She was busy and found it difficult to deal with disruptions in the routine of the HIV/AIDS clinic. “Do you mean Lavinia?” I asked. “She’s

Where are the Whales?

I never see whales. This wouldn’t be noteworthy if I lived in Nebraska or Saskatchewan, but I live on a peninsula that juts right out into the Pacific. At the foot of my street are sparkling waters some call the “whale’s highway to Mexico” part of a route that ends in Scammon’s Lagoon.. According to

Condo or Kitty Prison?

I recently moved out of a condominium complex where my neighbors called my cats the ‘welcoming community’. Every day I would open my front door and my Persian Blue Tomcat and his Bengal Tabby sidekick would trot down to the first floor and

Sex? I Can Do That.

“More sex,” he said. I was having coffee with an old friend, a publicist, who had offered advice on book promotion. I hadn’t expected “sex” to be on the agenda, but he was the expert, so I went with it. And he was, after all, doing me a favor. He even paid for my double-shot,

PIANO LESSONS – PART ONE

Her mother often bemoaned the fact that when she had been young, her parents didn’t have enough money for piano lessons, let alone a piano. Because of this, her mother was determined that her daughter should have the opportunity she herself had longed for. And so it was decided.