If I hadn’t picked 12 containers of blackberries, I might not have ended up with the Dorothy Hamill-had-she-cut-her-locks-with-gardening-sheers haircut at the age of 13 (aka, the worst age to be when you suddenly find yourself possessing a disastrous haircut). It seemed like a good enough idea at the time. I was staying with my friend Ramsay at her dad’s Napa vineyard for a week and after a few days of…
I do my best work in bed. Really. This isn’t to say that I can’t write in other places, like my desk, for instance. Or the library. Or on the backs of crumbled pieces of random paper while waiting in line at the grocery store. I’ve scribbled dialogue on airplane barf bags, come up with new scenes in the middle of a restaurant (where I had to excuse myself to…
So this was a tough topic for me. If I took it at face value I’d write about being fifteen and meeting the cutest thing I’d ever seen on two legs in summer school (I said he was cute, not brilliant), and the way it ended (badly) almost two years later. If I wanted to be especially precious, I’d skip that one and write about beautiful long red hair and…
There’s simply no way I can write the word “popcorn” and not delve into my popcorn-and-Milk Duds combo obsession. I don’t know when it started. I just know that today, as soon as someone says, “Hey, are you interested in seeing…” I’m already imagining scooping a handful of butter-drenched corn and Milk Dud into my mouth. Sometimes, when I’m not feeling remotely inspired by what’s out there, the thought is…
Busy week! I’ve been in Tampa, visiting my grandfather for his 86th birthday and making a couple of visits with some great independent bookstores, Inkwood Books in Tampa and Sarasota News & Books in, well, Sarasota. I also had the honor and pleasure of reading the yet to be titled manuscript of Ad Hudler’s excellent sequel to Househusband. Had a great time while away, but of course there was little…
The first moment I realized I was a grown-up was when I was nine years old. I came in from climbing trees in the back yard, orange trees, came through the back door, the kitchen. The house was quiet. I moved through the dining room and into the living room, past the sofas placed in front of the defunct fireplace at perfect 90 degree angles, and on toward the stairs. And…
When I was 9 I couldn’t wait to be 10 because then I would be double digits which as anyone would tell you is far better than single digits. When I was 10 I wanted to be 13 because then I would be a “real” teenager and thus party to all the fun that Seventeen magazine promised me: boys, lipgloss and the much hoped for arrival of boobs. When I…
Peter Pan was a childhood hero of mine. Like him, I had no interest in growing up. I looked at the adults around me and thought, “no way is that ever going to be me.” I was not going to get up each morning to go to a job I hated. I would never drink a martini with disgusting green olives that looked like lizard eyeballs skewered on toothpicks, watch…
Adulthood has come more slowly to me than I believe it does to most. I was the girl who was absolutely flummoxed when college was ending and everyone was going off to their grown-up careers with job titles I couldn’t even understand (and still can’t — am I the only one who couldn’t tell you what the hell, say, a systems analyst does?). I didn’t understand how and when everyone…
I’m someone who’s been around the block with agents. Before I came to my senses, see, I dabbled (mostly unsucccessfully) as a screenwriter and so I’d been through every version of despicable agenting. After being lied to, misled, hit on and even worse — ignored — I’d come to believe that an agent, if you wanted to do anything that required one, was a necessary evil, a person who always…
