My new book takes a hard look at love. If your partner is neurodivergent, you have special challenges to overcome. My new memoir, forthcoming from Vine Leaves Press in November, is an unflinching exploration of love on the autism spectrum. When I began writing my book...
Readers of my memoir, Swimming with Maya, often approach and say something like, “After reading your story, I feel as if I know you as an intimate friend. Wasn’t it hard to be so open about your life?” Now, I find myself tested again as I put my marriage under the...
“Intentions are the soul’s desires coming into physical manifestation.” –Wayne Dyer Every January, I like to reflect on the past twelve months and set intentions for the coming brand new ones, focusing on the qualities I want to manifest more than the things I want to...
Last month I celebrated five years of retirement from corporate editing. It seems like a lifetime ago – I don’t live where I used to, or think like I used to, or do what I used to. And the world has shifted radically in five years. Everything looks different now. Work...
My process as a writer is messy. It’s made of equal parts exhilaration and despair, moments of wanting to chuck it all, followed by renewed determination. I’ve been in a Dosi-do for the last four months as I plow through revisions of my 282-page novel interspersed...
Waiting for the muse to descend so you can write is, sadly, a tragic fallacy. “Writing is 99 percent perspiration, and one percent inspiration,” a wise person once said. Writing is work, and like any job, it requires commitment and sustained focus. I recently taught a...
I’m sitting in the balcony at Farley’s East Café at a “Shut Up and Write Meetup” attempting to block out the buzz. I could have stayed home. Here, though, I can’t dodge work by starting a load of laundry or suddenly deciding to vacuum. I’m fighting a largely hidden...
"What's this, Mimi?" My granddaughter Francesca pointed at a glass vase of shells on my desk. "That's my shell collection," I said. Her blonde curls bounced as she nodded her head, "Oh," she said, "Can I play with them?" "If you're careful. Some are very fragile, they...
I joke that I’m a recovering Catholic, but really, Catholicism is not something you get over. From time to time, I find myself in a Catholic church, bathed in incense, surrounded by candles, flowers, and statues of the Virgin Mary. I spent many hours immersed in...
Friday I launched my new website. We reached dozens of people and had more than 250 views on the site as a result of posts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We did it all from my kitchen table using a live Facebook video feed. I prefer interacting with friends, fans...