General Thoughts
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A Eulogy
“A Eulogy” 12-26-05 Written about my grandmother, my father’s mother, who died in March of 2004. She was my favorite person in the world and the reason my daughter’s middle name is Pearl, named for my Meema. When I started college, Meema would write letters to me several times a week. I have saved every single one of them. What can I say about her? Simple doesn’t say it— Beautiful is too generic. All I can say is that I loved her, And can’t believe she’s gone. I still think of her gentle old face, Hollowed in its frailty, smiling while writing letters to me. She told stories of the past with…
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The evolution of my novels, leading to Caroline’s Lighthouse publication
Humble beginnings: I have mentioned before that I started writing novels when I was 13. I hand-wrote them in pencil on notebook paper. (I have scanned them and saved them digitally now in addition to keeping the originals.) Between the ages of 13-15 (or 18 if you count the typing of the last novel) I wrote 7 book-length stories: Night and Day, When Does Life Begin?, Four Hearts, Jordan’s Sister, Just Taylor, One Shot, and Caroline’s Lighthouse. I also had an idea for a story about a young girl named Kincaid staying at her grandparents’ motel for the summer and the lessons she learns, but I never wrote anything more…
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The Summer of Reality
This story was part of the collection of writing samples I submitted for the Creative Writing Scholarship contest at Arkansas Tech University in Spring 1999. I placed 4th, so I was pretty excited about that. The scholarship paid for my books for my first year in college. The Summer of Reality, 1999 The last day that I was ever fifteen, I went to the mall with my Mom, my aunt Carrie, and my best friend Melanie. Earlier that morning, I mailed a letter that could change my whole life if the receiver decided to at least humor me. During the previous school year, I had developed a crush on a new boy…
