Cold Case In Ellyson

I’m an artist, but I can’t paint a picture, sculpt a head, or draw a circle. My art is writing, but there’s an art to baseball too. There’s a certain grace to fielding a hard, bouncing ball, delicately capturing it in a leather glove, step, step and hurling it across a diamond as if on […]

Jim Joyce – maybe a name you don’t knew, or perhaps only learned of recently…he’s the umpire who’s incorrect call blew Detroit Tiger’s Armando Galarraga’s perfect game. Rather than berate, cajole, spit, kick or punch, Galarraga did the unexpected – he graciously accepted Joyce’s apology without anger or malice. Remind me again, when do you […]

“Stinkin’ thinkin’.” You know just what I’m talking about. For me, it would mean walking onto the tennis court thinking I didn’t have a shot to win. Or my sons walking to the pitchers mound thinking “this guy’s going to jack me.” But for those of you who have quit believing, I have a solution […]

I was recently playing tennis when we heard a police car’s siren. The officer was leading a funeral procession down the road in front of the courts. All of us women stopped our points and matches, faced the line of cars and politely waited to resume play until all had passed. None of us had […]

I watched (sadly) as Joba blew a multi-run lead to the Red Sox last night. The Yankees had the game sewed up, or so I thought. Watching pitchers and as the mother of two, it can be so hard to witness their struggles. I turned off the game – I had seen enough, but as […]

When you hold that little baby, you expect to see a lot of yourself in them – maybe not in their infancy, but one day…As I was writing even in elementary school, well, I expected that they too…I was wrong. Neither of my middle school boys care one iota about writing, not now anyway. They […]

I watched a high school regional championship baseball game last night. Two powerhouses – both pitchers with ERAs under one. I knew what to expect with the local boy, but was shocked to see the size of his opponent – a 5’9″ bulldog. You wouldn’t expect a kid with a 26-0 win record and .44 […]

My 6th-grade son has to write an essay. He writes it online. He submits it to some program. He gets a grade. What? Really? How ridiculous!! Since when did computers come with the ability to read and interpret creative writing? That would be just before they take over the world. And just to show you […]

Never really expected it; secretly hoped; utterly taken aback by it! Cold Case in Ellyson won the Commercial Fiction category for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. The word “commercial” really struck me. We all know what that word means, but I looked it up anyway..”suitable or fit for a wide, popular market.” As a writer, […]

That’s right…my dad was (and still is at 82) an oil and gas producer. Some of my childhood was spent in the backwoods of Mississippi and Alabama checking out his wells. He’s proud to tell strangers that he had to change out some equipment on a well and needed just one more hand on the […]