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 […]
In June of 2019, I resigned my nine-year-long membership in Romance Writers of America. Here are my reasons: A writers’ organization’s purpose is to support and inform writers regarding their industry. Romance Writers of America has been commendably diligent in this purpose for many years. The organization has had a hand in the successful careers […]
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 […]
On April 24, 1915 the Ottoman Turk Caliphate began one of the most heinous, inhuman exterminations of their fellow citizens when they systematically annihilated Armenian men, drove women and children on death marches into the Syrian desert, and committed the first genocide of the 20th Century. This terrible act led to a coverup on an […]
If you have not read this book, I sincerely hope you will, as it is one of the first dystopian novels to be universally recognized as prophetic and at the same time dismissed as pure fantasy, something that could never happen. A few quotations: “If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide […]
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 […]
November 13, 2015 Vive la France et les Français. Today, November 15, 2015 – the French Air Force has made their appropriate response to Radical Islamic terrorism. This is mine. […]
In honor of all those who were murdered on this day, September 11, 2001, may they and their loved ones find peace. My most heartrending memory of this terrible event were the phone and email messages of love sent by the victims to their families and friends. There are still unanswered questions about this event: […]
A few days ago, Kate Steinle was murdered at a popular tourist location less than six miles from my home. Her killer was a five-times deported, recently released felon awaiting another deportation hearing. (http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Pier-shooting-suspect-had-been-released-from-S-F-6365228.php). A young woman, living just 20 miles from my home, was brutally raped and beaten by a gang of young men […]
The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail My rating: 5 of 5 stars Prophetic, timely, a difficult book but compelling read. Fittingly finished reading this book today, 14 juillet, Bastille Day, but I wonder if the French revolutionaries of 1789 would be in The Village or on the beach. View all my reviews This […]