Last month I talked about the first three of fourteen novels I wrote before I got a traditional book deal. None of them are published or will be. They’re me learning by doing before I set down to actually write novels as the main goal of my profession. Surely, once I did make novels my […]
On moonless nights during the winter of 1917, they meet in the bomb crater. A few hours before dawn, the soldiers climb over their sandbags and crawl, staying low and quiet (the trench sentries are paid off in dry socks and cigarettes). Loops of barbed wire glint like fangs in the glow of distant flares, […]
Two months after the last broken transmission from Earth, somewhere in the unexplored dark, we found a voice. At first we thought it was a mass hallucination. We’d been alone in space too long. Back home, we’d be treated for space sickness and starlust, our brains scanned and studied for signs that our grey matter […]
It rains the day my brother arrives. He steps onto Junian soil with a limp less prominent than the one I remember from childhood. And he just stands there, for a long moment, looking simultaneously lost and found. Getting soaked through. The rain here is clear as anywhere but likes to awaken the dormant algae […]
Rafael closed the bakery at precisely 4 pm and turned the key in the lock. In his arms, he cradled the last of the bread remaining: two baguettes and one round sourdough–all the ordinary kind. He walked up the street and around the corner to the homeless shelter, scouting, as he always did, half in […]
Author Aldous Huxley once wrote: “Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.” How true. Recent psychological theory, however, indicates that an attitude of gratitude is enormously beneficial. Positive Psychology, Mindfulness, Gratitude Practice. All integrate gratitude as a key element in living happier, healthier lives. Apparently, the more we practice […]