One of the weirdest resolutions I achieved this year was establishing a good exercise regimen. I say weird, because this particular resolution was connected to having a healthy pregnancy (which didn’t come to fruition), and even then, I was only taking it half seriously. But here we are, less than three weeks away from 2012, [...]

It’s been a hectic seven days — I mean really hectic. First there was the freak windstorm that put my area of town into a state-of-emergency and erased my childcare for a couple of days. Then there were all sorts of negotiations and meetings, involving stuff I’m not allowed to talk about online yet (but [...]

I have a rather fond memory of this one paper I wrote about Milton’s Paradise Lost back in college. This epic poem belongs on the rather short list of English canon works that I actually enjoyed on a non-academic level, and I remember feeling particularly validated when I discovered that it was a bestseller before the [...]

2011 wasn’t just a good year for books, it was an AMAZING year, just an embarrassment of riches as far as reading is concerned. And unless something else ridiculously wonderful comes along, I’m fairly sure that I’ve nailed down my top three books of the year. One of them is SILVER SPARROW by Tayari Jone, [...]

Ugh, I hate my memory. I can’t recall who I was talking to the other day about this, but somehow we got to discussing other writers who were so insanely good, they made us feel like an awkward fraud and paralyzed our own writing for a bit of time. For me, this writer was … [...]

Hey-o Happy Folks, Today I’m blogging over at Girlfriends Book Club about the genres I’m too scared to even attempt writing: Writers being writers (read really frickin’ neurotic), there’s a huge list of things that scare us. For my part, I’ve had both waking and sleeping nightmares about missing deadlines, getting career-ending reviews, current fans [...]

We’re about to start submitting my second novel, THE AWESOME GIRL’S GUIDE TO DATING EXTRAORDINARY MEN, which is about three women who attended my alma mater (Smith). This means 2 things. 1) I can finally read COMMENCEMENT by J. Courtney Sullivan (which is about white Smithies), without fear of influence and 2) I’ve been thinking [...]

Yesterday, I watched two very different kinds of shows, one that came with a ton of hype, TERRA NOVA, and one that I didn’t know was even going to be on the air, until I was compiling my Fall TV 2011 Challege watch list — that would be HART OF DIXIE. How did it all [...]

Yesterday I watched two women-centered shows, neither of which I had very high hopes for, because of their situations: THE PLAYBOY CLUB, which is set in the 60s, at the Playboy Club in Chicago, and 2 BROKE GIRLS, which is set in a diner in contemporary New York. Well, I was totally right about THE [...]

Funnily enough, the number one response to my post about how I lost (and kept off) 40 pounds in a practical way and over a reasonable time period (a year), as opposed to my husband, CH, who lost 80 pounds in a dramatic way over the course of six months was … folks wanting know [...]