Piper Bayard of Bayard & Holmes No one wants to read about a fictional nice day. Great fiction is about one thing, and one thing only . . . problems. And lots of them. Problems keep the pages turning, and the heart of a problem is conflict. Without conflict, there is no plot, which is […]

James Preston In Back to the Future, Marty McFly's mother's kid brother asks "What's a re-run?" Marty replies, "You'll find out." Pop quiz: What was on TV when Marty said that? I am old enough to remember that if I missed an episode of "77 Sunset Strip" (BTW if in your mind you heard the […]

I admit, I’m a sucker for articles about the secret to success. Because, come on, some genius out there knows how to break the system, how to beat the odds, how to make it in a world that just wants to beat the creative stuffing out of you. But here’s the thing, there is no […]

Sonja Yoerg The act of writing is an exercise in managing symbols. Every word, after all, is attached to a universe of meaning; the bit we formally agree upon is the definition. Everything else a word signifies exists in a web of personal memory, experience and emotion. If I write “moon,” your brain lights up […]

I love how life hands me "lessons" when I most need them. And it's wonderful when those lessons are tied to a wish... More than a year ago, as I played with my thirteen-year-old Siamese cat, Shogun, I thought, "I'll never have another kitten. Heck, I'll never live with a litter of kittens again." My […]