Memoirous

Because I was tired and missing my daughter I googled my name. I know it's silly. We only got to see Grace for 4 days before she had to leave for Yellowstone where she has a summer job. Here's a link to her blog:   called Canyonfirebugs. She is working at Canyon the highest lodge in the park where right now they still have too much snow. Of course Memorial Day weekend is a big one for tourists, but at this point the park service is struggling to keep the roads plowed--let alone get the campgrounds opened. But while googling myself I discovered I have another story on-line. I'm not saying the journal stole it because 1) I submit my work and keep track of submission on a grid, but 2) I didn't have any correspondence or notes that "I'm Lying to You" was taken. So I was surprised, pleasantly. So far this spring I have THREE stories coming out. Let me go back to the pleasantly surprised part. I rechecked the journal to see if there might be any remunera...

What WEIRD weather we are having. I'm surprised it isn't the end of the world--oh, wait!--that was last weekend. Right now, here in Chicago it's a blustery, wet 45 degrees! Though this weekend I hear it's going to get up to 92. It's enough to make a person's head explode. Speaking of which here is a link to the YouTube video taken by the same person who experienced the Joplin tornado from inside the convenient store beer cooler. This is called Aftermath. sorry will have to post it later, not working right now http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-P4P68YyNM&feature=share

A lady needed some repair work done on a house she'd just bought. It was a fixer-upper, so she brought in a local handyman she knew. They weren't dating but were friends. The house used to belong to a judge and had at one time been a stunner. The handyman in the process of breaking through a wall discovered a safe deposit box and brought it to the current owner. Cool! So they broke the lock and opened it. Wow! It looked like a million dollars but was only like 10, 000. Still! They were very excited. The lady thought about what she could do with the money. So did the handyman. Hmm.... she didn't have to, but she decided to share. something like 80/20. Wait! How about 70/30?  No, she said. It's my house. He countered by saying, he was the one who found it. She agreed to 70/30, but then he thought why not 50/50. No way! The lady, no longer were they friends, took the handyman to court where they each laid out their case. Both of them had a claim to the money. In ...

Remember how I last wrote that I wanted to make people uncomfortable. Well, watch this: It is a first-person account of the RECENT Joplin, MO tornado. It depicts a crowded backroom at a convenient store where 18 or 19 people have gathered. We don't know if they know each other. Obviously some have come there together, but mostly they are thrown together because of a disaster. And then . . . . About half way through you start hearing people say I love you. They are saying good bye. It's amazing in one way because this is life boiled down to its most basic. It's not about stuff or plans for tomorrow or the normal routine. You can actually feel in your gut the REALNESS in this first-person account video. Yup, it's intense and very uncomfortable. I've also tried to be real with myself--am I simply watching/listening to be voyeuristic. Honestly, I am. but that's also why I read certain things. I want to live vicariously. We are drawn, however much it makes us ...

At the CCBC listserve the topic for the last half of this month has been about the depiction of poverty ie struggle, hard times in children’s lit. Of course Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse is a great example as well as Newbery Honor winner One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia. Certainly with the Great Recession many families are facing financial heartbreak. My picture book Home Is Where We Live: Life at a Shelter Through a Young Girl’s Eyes also tells the story of a young girl and her family working themselves out of homelessness. About the time this book came out there was also a picture book about a boy and his father who lived at the airport. I’m not sure people could do that in this day and age. Mostly my problem with a lot of YA and middle grade today has a lot to do with the middle. Middle class, middle America, maybe even middle children. Everyone just seems so suburban. Yes, even Libba Bray’s Going Bovine which in many ways is unique still reflects a pretty standar...

this story originally appeared in Flashquake , Summer 2009 She ran away when she was seventeen. Met up with a guy on the bus and together they rode to Denver. But he turned out to be trouble. One night she slipped away from the room they rented. By the neon strobe she packed a bag, took his wallet while he slept. On the way out of town she stopped at a diner with a funky name and ordered a chicken dinner. Ate it to the bone. It was a bad space. She couldn’t go home. Let’s leave it at that. And she didn’t have anywhere else to go, except names on a map. She preferred the blue roads, the ones that branched off, growing more and more anonymous, changing names in different locales, adapting to the terrain. Often dead-ending. She was okay on her own. She knew enough to get by. Her step brothers had taught her karate. Really more like Three Stooges gestures. She knew how to scream. Enough to do damage to her vocal cords, until her stomach muscles ached. Until black night melted and she...

Maybe it's spring, the scent of new in the air or maybe it's my daughter coming home for a few days before continuing on to her job in Yellowstone. Or maybe it's about change. The trees changing, buds budding, the fact that the sun is shining. The last few years here in Chicago I've had a mentor I'll call Esther and she is terrific. In fact this is one of her most-used words. She's had a steadily growing career as a writer, writing coach, and writing instructor. Though she's reminded me that it hasn't all been up, there have been downs too. but one thing she told me that has stayed with me is that hope is good. So maybe what I'm feeling is spring hope. I just recently sent out a new round of stories to literary mags and my agent--the one I went back to, despite some concerns--is taking my ms around to different editors. It always makes me think something is just around the corner when my stuff is out there, circulating in the universe, just lik...

Hi Fellow Writers I am a volunteer at a Chicago homeless shelter named CCO and they are trying for a $15.000. grant from Kaboom! a non-profit that builds playgrounds. If you can, please go to Let's Play Video Contest http://projects.kaboom.org/ vote_2011 and vote for CCO 1. register 2. you will receive confirmation, check spam folder as your computer might not recognize 3. sign in 4. vote for CCO Thank you so much. At this point we are #6 and the TOP 5 WILL RECEIVE A GRANT the contest ends May 11, Tuesday at midnight   Remember YOUR vote is important. (We need to beat) Brooklyn!)

Here is a re-print of an earlier blog about books as milemarkers for our lives because I was impressed so much by Daniel Kraus's article.     As I lay there in bed I tried to think back as far as I could, exercising my memory as if it were a flabby muscle. Pictures spindled across the photo album of my brain. I leaned forward and squinted my closed eyes trying to decipher them. Book jackets. Freddy the Pig, Barnyard Detective . Charlotte’s Web . Little House on the Prairie with the Garth Williams’ illustrations. Little Women —I actually saw the chapter illustration where Jo peers into Beth’s trunk and is overcome by grief. Piles and piles of Nancy Drew mysteries, and sitting on the back porch two-seat rocker with my legs dangling over the armrest and a glass of sweetened ice tea sweating on a small stand near by. Stories were intertwined with my life story. Books served as the chronological markers of my personal history.      The Newb...

I know I'm always stealing--it's what writers do--take things and rework them into their creative process--like an article I read at Salon today about SEVERAL writers who used a Happy/Sad Foot sign out in LA and made them symbols (get it-- a sign ) in their novels--something F. Scott Fitzgerald about the whole thing--and even he was borrowing from T. S. Elliot. Sooooo. Here is something I've taken from Booklist. The original link was from Daniel where he posted at a listserve I'm on SCBWI-Illinois Desperately Seeking DeSario: A Real-Life Literary Mystery. Kraus, Daniel (author). First published May 1, 2011 ( Booklist ). In 1990, I read a novel called Sanctuary, by Joseph P. DeSario (Doubleday, 1989). Don’t bother looking it up—you won’t find anything. I plucked it from a paperback rack in Iowa so that I’d have something to read while our family made its annual five-hour haul to Grandpa’s farm. As a young Stephen King fan, I thought the machete on the co...

false memoir is only part of what happens we are a people who crave myth--even if WE have to make it up thus--this piece from  this: Fakery Follows the bin Laden Killing One of the boxed features in our book is "Myths and Misinformation," a category that includes fake or misattributed quotations. As a previous post noted , many credit Martin Luther King for saying "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice," even though the line belonged to Theodore Parker. At The Atlantic (h/t Tina Nguyen), Megan McArdle spots another fake King quotation: Shortly after I posted my piece on feeling curiously un-thrilled about Bin Laden's death, the following quote came across my twitter feed: "I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy." - Martin Luther King, Jr I admire the sentiment. But something about it just strikes me as off, like that great Marx q...