EverWriting: A Passion for Writing
On this Memorial Day, as on every day, I think of my father, Captain Thomas A. Verrill (WWII Veteran) and how proud he was to be able to serve his country. I know very little about his service, he never spoke of it. My mother told me stories when I was a child and wrote […]
Writers are arrogant pretenders. We freely usurp identities, characteristics, ideas, thoughts, voices of people we imagine as characters in our books and stories. These are all part of our craft—our toolbox—of storytelling. We step over the boundary between reality and fiction when we decide we also have the right, indeed the obligation, to speak for […]
Living in the greatest country ever invented by the human mind, a country that was never ruled by any royal personage (someone believing the country was theirs by divine decree – hereditary or by violence), a country designed to be governed by the people and for the people through elected representatives, embodying the rights that […]
While watching a retrospective on the American film maker, Ken Burns, the commentator announced that Burns was soon to release a new documentary about the Vietnam War. After seeing a short heartbreaking clip, I thought about the 50,000+ American soldiers (many of them drafted) who lost their lives in a foreign war the U.S. inherited […]
1871. The war has been over for six years but Rupe Smith still fights his demons. Ten years have passed since he left his Maine village. His Wyoming ranch is the one place he wants to be and the last place he can be. There is no escape from the guilt of his parents’ grief […]
As a #ProudAmerican, I express my gratitude to the many hundreds of thousands of my fellow Americans for the service and sacrifices made by the men and women in our military services. The last Monday of the month of May has been a part of our heritage since the first Decoration Day was recognized after the American Civil […]
Those of you who’ve been following EverWriting for a while may remember my blogs about growing and nurturing a pomegranate plant which I related to the process of writing Salsa Dancing with Pterodactyls. I’m back at it. I actually had not eaten a pomegranate for years and years! When I was a girl, my first […]
Last summer, I had the privilege of attending a workshop offered by Ursula Renée, who writes historical novels set in the 1930s in New York City. Renée had a long list of ways to discover information about the time period, the activity, the product or just about anything a writer needs to make their book—whether fiction […]
All the wonders of traversing the financial district streets on a weekday in San Francisco. This particular encampment is outside a popular Asian restaurant, an iconic often-filmed bank building, and a fashionable health gym. It spans at least four feet of an eight foot wide sidewalk. On both ends, there are piles of rubbish, garbage, containers […]
Several cultures include festivals in the Winter months, some to illuminate the darkness, some to celebrate the hope of a coming of new life. Many of us prepare a list of goals for the coming year, a list of resolutions for change and growth. For nearly 300 years, Americans have celebrated a family event called […]