Everything I Need to Know, I Learned in a Cozy Mystery

Everything I Need to Know, I Learned in a Cozy Mystery

Cozy mysteries are fun to read and fun to write. If they were not, who would read or write them? As well as being fun, they are instructive. They’ve taught me several life lessons. Storms come in every life. There is no problem than cannot be solved. Perseverance  wins the day. Home’s hearth fires burn […]

A Dog-Shaped Shadow

A Dog-Shaped Shadow

My Shadow My shadow’s not like me at all; It’s three feet long and two feet tall. Two floppy ears, a pointy nose, Where I go, there my shadow goes. Four furry feet, a shortish tail, It follows close and, without fail, If I sit down, it sits down too For that’s what all good […]

Facts Are Facts and Fiction is …

Remember the old, black and white TV series, Dragnet and the phrase, “Just the facts, Ma’am.”  This unflappable team of Jack Webb and Harry Morgan spent a whole thirty minutes ferreting out the bad guys and getting to the facts of the case. But, fiction writers can have fun fiddlin’ with the facts. In writing By […]

Learning, Rules, Fun

Learning, Rules, Fun

 I tend to look back sometimes, and, lately I’ve been thinking about a little one-room school my brother and I attended in northern Oklahoma– wheat, alfalfa, and cattle country. I close my eyes and see it plainly in memory. The school’s name was Valley Center. The teacher was Miss Virginia. The school was her life […]

Misty Morning

Misty Morning

A Leprechaun Comes to Kindergarten

A Leprechaun Comes to Kindergarten

“God needed laughter in the world, So he made the Irish race, For they can meet life with a smile And turn a happy face.” –from The Book of Irish Blessings, author unknown. A green mist seemed to shimmer in the sunlight that streamed through the window as I walked into my kindergarten classroom on […]