As I grow older, it is often more difficult to fall asleep. I know I'm not alone in this. Age brings with it more anxieties and activities than the sheep we might otherwise be counting and, honestly, the only cure I've found (aside from melatonin) is to return to reading bedtime stories. As I recently…
I am a pianist, but I have long suffered from stage fright. My junior undergraduate piano recital was yesterday and, true to my philosophy that no art is complete without a proper understanding of other art forms, I used literature such as Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner to create program notes to give greater depth…
Yesterday was the birthday of renouned American author, Ray Bradbury. Three more years and we can celebrate his 100th birthday. But even in 2017, Bradbury's birthday is special to me because his stories provided the kick-in-the-pants I needed to take my writing seriously. Before entering high school, my family and I made a trip to…
Dystopian novels have been "in" for several years now. The Hunger Games and Divergent were the most popular reads of my high school days. Brave New World, 1984, and Anthem were on the AP reading lists. I continue to devour Ray Bradbury's work. However, we forget the purpose of dystopian fiction, which is to warn and protect us from creating such futures in reality.…
Note: any resemblance to real places and people is probably not coincidental. 😉 Enjoy! Requiem “Are the rumors true? Are they?” Trent, by far the youngest of the ghosts that inhabited Rowell Hall, rushed through a closed door and into the…
"Okay, what quirky place inspired this story?" asked my editor upon reading the following tale. "It's too random not to be based on reality." My editor (who may or may not also be my mother, but she was an English teacher/professor so it's kosher) was right. This story sparked to life in an antique mall in…
Their forks clicked in unison against the empty plates as they set them down, finished. The utensils were not the only things that had clicked. The meal had been delicious, the girl lovely, the man courteous, the conversation interesting and free of the awkward pauses generally ended by dull commentaries on the weather or the…
Most of my best friends are bookworms. We all have our favorite genres, authors, eras, you name it. We are an eclectic group of athletes, honors students, writers, artists, musicians, and gamers, yet we are united by books and our need for words. However, it has come to my attention that this is not how…
