Return to Tintern Abbey
Let the misty mountain-winds be freeTo blow against thee . . . After my last day of classes at Oxford, I rented a car and headed for Tintern Abbey, just…
Meet My Ideal Reader
by Laura Muntz Lyall 1860 In a publishing workshop, we were asked to create our Ideal Reader “avatar.” Here is mine: I visualize my readers as women aged 30-75, with…
Mary of Modena, Rain Dodging’s Queen: Take a Peek!
Duke Humphries reading room, Bodleian, Oxford As I come down the revision home stretch, I would like to remind you, and welcome new readers, of how I came to write Rain…
Blog 100! “I want to chase other dreams . . .”
beloved students writing by laptop-light That is what Australian Ash Barty proclaimed, announcing her exit from professional tennis on to authorship (working title) Fittingly, this is my 100th blog. .…
Sunday in the Park with Rembrandt
Cleveland friends: You know the Georges Seurat painting ,Sunday in the Park with George? Well, here is a poem, Sunday at the Museum with Rembrandt: Snow turned blackened crust four months old…
How far? A look into my new world of publishing.
In my last blog,"You've Come a Long Way, Baby," I said I would report in, after my 4-day virtual Women in Publishing Summit. I preface that I had a bit of…
I’ve Come a Long Way, Baby
With all that is happening in Ukraine, it feels self-indulgent to focus one anything else, but this week, virtually, I am attending the Women in Publishing Summit 2022. Last year I…
He’s Still Beautiful
A True Reflection The last day of February. For some reason, I woke up asking myself if my readers were getting tired of my ‘odes’ to black history month. I…
At Least I Learned to Work the Tractor
a short story (please excuse the paragraph formatting) "They're coming!" My old college buds were coming to my wedding by the river. I ran up to my walking buddies,…
“Kill Your Darlings”
Yesterday, enjoying my Sunday ritual, coffee while watching CBS Sunday Morning, correspondent David Pogue paid tribute to his mentor Stephen Sondheim. In the feature, the subject of editing came up. I was just…