Blog

I wrote this in honor of my granddaughter Sydney, who this week begins her first teaching job with Teach for America, in an inner-city school in Chicago.

A teacher brought us to America… Our great-something Grandfather Stephen Cook was a Hedgerow Teacher in mid-19th century Ireland. This was a terrible era for the Irish. England had subjugated them to an extreme degree – even forbidding them to educate their children, or to wear their national color green. How mean could they be!

Men and women...

I will look for that new moon outside my bedroom window tonight. A new Moon even as I grow old. Old in numbers, that is. Inside I am still much as I was, blessed by the writing that flows through my life and connects the younger me to now. A river of goodness and “me-ness.”

Old in the sense of being long-lived brings more experiences and wisdom to write about – lost loves and broken hearts, bottom-of-a crumpled-paper-bag despair. And triumphs.

One thing old does not mean is stopping. Not...

I have a new website up and running! https://moconlanwordsandart.com

And I have a new audio edition of my book "The Lost Books-Romance and Adventure in Tudor Times."

https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Books-Romance-Adventure-Tudor/dp/1639888004

(You can also listen for free on some sites, including Hoopla.)

I got to this high point with a lot of help from my friends. Author and fellow member of the Monday Morning Writers Group in Cincinnati Richard Hoskin, (...

I could say I do not wish to be famous as a writer, but that would be a half-truth. Growing up I kept my brighter lights under a bushel barrel – middle of a “gang of seven” siblings.

I was the quiet one. Maybe I was a bit famous for that. My father saw me as I was – a quiet one, smart, a voracious reader. With affection, he would sometimes call me Little Mouse.

Inside my mouse-ness, unrecognized by me, I was burning for recognition I believe. So when I extricated myself from my brown wool...

It was by accident that I wrote a novel set in the Tudor era. I was a member of an online writers group, called Unmute, – which I recommend.. The prompt was to write about a holiday song. It did not interest me. Too serious.

Then I had a second thought: instead of dreary as piped-in Christmas music, maybe I could make this a fun write. “The Twelve Days of Christmas” came to mind. It was already fun and silly.

I imagined a scenario where a suitor sends over-the-top gifts to his beloved. She...

I am a poet, and a novelist; but I also am a journalist, and sometimes these literary impulses do not jibe. The poet wants beautiful language and metaphor. The journalist wants simplicity, clarity, facts. The novelist wants to take a long scary journey into Story, find her way out again to produce a book.

Recently, I wrote an essay about a prose poem, a prompt in my writing group. The poem reads, in part: …He said, every object sings. He said, if I built a room it might give me an A-flat and...