(THIS IS AN EXCERPT FROM ‘THE BOOK OF MOODS’) In 1963, Elizabeth Taylor had just ended her fourth marriage and was starring in Cleopatra with the currently married Richard Burton. Within a year, the two were married at the Ritz in Montreal and their fame from Cleopatra, coupled with the drama of their private lives, […]
As promised, here is a short letter to my children with words of wisdom: Financial: You do not need a lot of money to be happy. Find something you enjoy doing and then you won’t mind working at it every day. Try not to get caught up wanting material things, these things won’t make you […]
When I became pregnant I told myself that I would see birth as the ultimate writing exercise. I would try and capture the elusive pain of it (it’s like squeezing a lemon out of a nostril, said one famous woman I can’t recall) and the infamous love I’d heard would fill me the moment the […]
I know how my life seems on the outside. A published book. A good agent. Some press. I know because I’ve looked at many of my colleagues, through the lens of social media, with similar achievements and accolades and thought they had everything. They were doing so well. And I’ve looked at friends outside my […]
Two months ago I stopped writing this newsletter the same way I stop or start most things in my life. In a rage. In a flurry. In a moment. I was sitting at the kitchen island, the lights above the counter aggressive and loud, as I stared with crazed eyes at words on a screen. […]
I can’t imagine what you’re feeling right now. So many of my friends and family uttered this phrase to me sometime throughout the day on December 8, 2020. How does it feel? The question poured in, over and over again. It’s a question I, myself, wanted to know for years. How does it feel to […]
Ursula Le Guin, who passed away two years ago, was a writer known for her science and speculative fiction. With a career spanning nearly sixty years, she produced more than twenty novels and one hundred short stories. During her career, she received eight Hugos, six Nebulas, and became the second woman honored as a Grand […]
When I was twenty-one and living in Madrid, the forty-one-year-old dentist I was ‘dating’ (the details of which I will not describe here because they are all in The Book of Moods and it would be better if my mother read them along with the rest of the world), once tried to show me a […]