It is an entire summer of house renovations and manuscript revisions. Will this writer survive?

The stories that we create and share are like cairns. They are like markers we leave behind that show other people the shape that our journeys have taken. I like this thought. Stories, to me, whether they are fiction, nonfiction or somewhere in-between, are sacred beings. They are our way of communicating with our current tribe, our descendants and also our imagination, intuition and spirit, the collective around us.

I had dreamed about going to Italy for years. I went there, in part, to do research for Seeking Sara Summers because some of the novel takes place in Italy. I love doing research that involves travel! The novel I’m working on now is set in the Georgia low country, near Savannah, which is a little closer to home. I feel a road trip coming on!

Here is a list of 100 things I’m grateful for. Creating a gratitude list can help return you to a sense of power and possibility. What would be on your list?

It happens to the best of us. We’re cruising along in life, things are going great or just so-so and then – wham! – something happens that stops us cold! It could be something at work, in a relationship, or something less clear-cut, like a fear that we’re not good enough or that our lives don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.

How often do you get one of those truly great ideas in life and you forget to write it down? So many good ideas, even epiphanies, come to us at inconvenient times: the middle of the night, the middle of a meeting, in the shower, or whenever. Our muse has a mind and a schedule of her own that doesn’t always respect or honor our timing of things.

A daughter’s perspective on a mother’s obsession