posts about personal things, animals, food, etc.
What is an Invisible Character? There are two kinds of invisible characters: those you create intentionally, and those you create by mistake. If you use beta readers, you’ll spot the mistakes quickly. They’ll be the characters that your readers don’t remember the names of. Or what they looked like, or what role they played in…
How a Character Can Interrupt Your Story Many writers say that sometimes characters do things on their own. Things they didn’t want them to do. I don’t necessarily agree, but things like that do happen in real life. I learned that lesson the hard way, and once again, through one of my animals. This time…
Understanding Your Strengths Since we’ve had our animal sanctuary, I’ve come to believe that there’s a lot we can learn from animals. Sometimes it’s a tidbit of wisdom from watching them do what comes naturally, like how the pigs keep cool by digging mud pits to lie in. Or how they use sticks and leaves…
Words Of Love What you do is far more important than what you say. It’s similar to the old show and tell rule. You can tell people all day long how scary facing a rattlesnake would be, but if you drop one down in front of them it takes on a whole new light. The…
Is Storytelling Genetic? What makes a good story? How come some books you can’t put down, have to turn the page or even start a new chapter, and others … might be good, but if you get tired, the book waits for the next day. How about movies. Some movies you can leave running while…
Animal Intelligence Depending on which list you look at, the order of intelligence for the different species usually looks something like this: 1. human 2. ape 3. dolphin 4. pig 5. elephant 6. octopus 7. dog 8. crow Most scientists agree on the first two, though I personally have doubts about the number one ranking…
What I Learned From Coffee Dog A few months ago I did a post about Gracie, the coffee dog. What I didn’t say in that post was that Gracie had been suffering from diabetes for a few years. Now the disease has progressed rapidly, bringing on complete blindness. She gets insulin shots twice a day,…
A Giant Of A Man Many, many years ago, growing up in the Cleland Heights section of Wilmington, DE., I learned a lesson that I’ve never forgotten. The lesson was taught to me by my mother, a woman who had a way of making you recognize the truth. People say the best lessons are the…
Memories of a Great Teacher I recently lost two of my favorite people in the whole world — my Aunt Margaret, who passed away a few weeks shy of her 91st birthday; and then Aunt Rose, who passed away a few months before her 97th. They were at the top of my list for a…
What Her Eyes Have Seen I lost My aunt rose a few weeks ago. Yes, that’s a sad thing, but the saddest thing was that she wasn’t just a dear aunt and wonderful person. What I lost was my own personal time machine, a magic mirror into the past. Aunt Rose was born in 1916….