Six months into this pandemic, I’m realizing things about myself, one of which is how cautious I am. Some friends and family members assure me the country’s situation isn’t as bad as the media paints it and, in fact, is getting better. But as of this week, there are over three million active cases of Covid-19, and we’ve passed the two hundred thousand deaths mark. That’s…a lot. That doesn’t sound like “better.” So I’m still practicing social distancing. Though I’ll call and write to the people I love, I won’t visit or entertain them. My caution has strained a few of my relationships, and I feel badly about that. “This isn’t forever,” I’ll say and think, I hope this isn’t forever. [Read more…] about Happenings

When I was in eleventh grade, my high school counselor Mr. Rizzo scheduled a meeting with me to discuss my college and career options. I pictured the two of us having this important conversation in his office, decorated inspiringly with his “Hang in there” poster of a kitten dangling out of a basket and his “Follow your dreams” poster of a mountain climber nearing a summit. I knew what questions he was going to ask. “What kind of life do you see for yourself?” “What do you want to do when you grow up?” I just wasn’t sure how to answer them. [Read more…] about Fondue

When I was a teenager, I liked romantic suspense novels. Mary Stewart’s Nine Coaches Waiting and This Rough Magic were my favorites. My mom, a reader, too, eschewed romance. She once told me in a bored voice that if she came across a sex scene in a book, she skipped it. But Mom enjoyed suspenseful novels, especially cozy mysteries, though she had an odd habit of plodding through the first couple of chapters, jumping to the end to read the last few pages, then returning to her earlier spot and finishing the book. [Read more…] about The (Good, Bad) End

Summertime is filled with the tasks I enjoy most. I live in Lake Ontario fruit country, where there are so many berries, cherries, peaches, and plums to do things with, bake into cakes, pies, and crisps, preserve or freeze. By August, I’m pickling cucumbers and canning tomatoes. Inevitably, at some point, a neighbor will leave a bag of zucchinis on the porch, and it’s a shame to let nice zucchinis go to waste. In the meantime, I have a writing project languishing, neglected. But the warmer months are also my pottery months. My studio isn’t heated, so I have to wait until the summer to throw and fire pots. [Read more…] about Paired, Turned, Fired

My first novel The Beloved Wild, a historical YA, came out in 2018, but once in a great while, a reader will still contact me about it. It’s gratifying when this person shares what they liked about the book, but usually they just have questions. Okay, one question: “Are you going to write a sequel?”

I don’t know. That’s usually what I say. But the truth is, when that novel was finally off my plate and out in the world, I was relieved and ready to move on. A sequel was the last thing on my mind. Not that I didn’t love my girl-masquerading-as-a-boy protagonist Harriet Winter or the early nineteenth century Genesee Valley where her pioneer adventure unfolds; just that crafting an excellent historical novel is, well, hard. [Read more…] about When the Present Makes a Writer Want to Curl Up in the Past

I recently started reading the Harry Potter series to my kids. They’re ten and eleven. They’re home—every hour of every day, for who knows how long, on account of the pandemic. And they’re anxious. I am, too. If ever there was a time to plow through eight fantasy novels and escape into a world of witchcraft and wizardry, it’s now.

We’ve almost reached the end of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, so we’re past “The Mirror of Erised,” my favorite chapter. This is the section in which Harry, fleeing Snape and Filch, slips into an unused classroom and discovers an enormous mirror—a most unusual mirror. In it, Harry doesn’t see himself reflected; rather, he sees people he eventually recognizes as relatives, the family he never knew—in particular, the parents who left him orphaned: “They just looked at him, smiling.” Harry, understandably, “stared hungrily back at them” and felt “a powerful kind of ache…half joy, half terrible sadness.” [Read more…] about The Mirror of Erised

Some of the most popular works of fiction are what I think of as monkey-wrench stories. They’re tales that establish an ordinary, habitual, possibly boring-as-hell situation, then introduce an element that upends everything. When an author throws a monkey wrench into the works, the reader gets to experience the disruption (along with the ensuing stress, struggle, excitement) and then, if the tale leans toward hope, the reader can enjoy the restoration of order or the development of a new order. [Read more…] about Things Not Going According to Plans

“A mindful happiness knows, and acknowledges, everything from which it has been excluded or freed. It often has a frame of suffering around it.”

—Charles Baxter, “Regarding Happiness”

[Read more…] about Happy?

My friend Rebecca recently recommended that I check out A Fit of Shivers, a collection of ghost stories by the children’s-book author Joan Aiken. I really enjoyed it. Aiken describes the enchanted, horrifying, and strange with matter-of-fact briskness to disconcerting and wryly humorous effect. I found the tale “Something” particularly arresting. It plays with the experience of dread. Dread, of course, is inherent in spooky tales, right along with fear and surprise. But Aiken doesn’t merely highlight dread in “Something.” She lets the feeling function as the antagonist. [Read more…] about A Killing Suspense: The Character of Dread in “Something” by Joan Aiken

“You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures.”
—Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic [Read more…] about Resolution