Sog and the Fly

It Happened One Summer by Blanche Day Manos In my neck of the woods, everything gets ornery in the summertime. Critters, humans, even bugs are easy riled. There’s nothing like the heat of a white-orange sun blazing down from a copper-colored sky to make varmints out of the most lowly of pesky, everyday things, particularly […]

A Clue in the Wallpaper?

A Clue in the Wallpaper?

Sleep was hard to come by that night. My dreams were riddled with ghosts and scraps of paper which kept floating just beyond my grasp. When a tumble-down house fell in on me, I awoke, my heart pounding. I’d had enough. Stumbling downstairs, I aimed my feet toward the kitchen.             The nightmares were one […]

Rain, Where Are You?

Parts of our country have a lot of rain, more than they need, floods; in my part of the country, we are parched and need rain desperately. I like to read or write when rain falls; I also like to write about rain, and I do–a lot. Here are excerpts from The Cemetery Club, Grave […]

Tea and Cake

Tea and Cake

It never fails…when I sit down to a piece of cake, I always remember that, according to Frog and Toad, this will cure anything. It’s a comforting thought. I’m grateful for being steeped in children’s literature and grateful for a mother who loved reading as much as I did. When I was a youngster, Understood […]

Blessed Be

Blessed Be

For Writers: Blessed be the tongues of writers, never running out of a wellspring of words.  Blessed be our thoughts, that they be open to inspiration and divine guidance and also our fingers, to translate those thoughts into words. Blessed be our computers–may they never fail us, may bad reviews never assail us; blessed be […]

Invaders of the Creepy Kind

Invaders of the Creepy Kind

Ants are on my cabinet, mosquitoes at the door; Summertime has come at last. Who could ask for more? I don’t know if they are coming in to escape the rain, or if the rain is causing them to multiply. Maybe each raindrop is a tiny capsule filled with baby mosquitoes and ants. Maybe they […]