Blog

Welcome to my Blog

I’ll usually post three times a week. Mondays will be general essay on whatever captures my fancy. I’ll write about writing and editing, about gardening and cooking, about women worth knowing, and other topics. I’m also a science nerd, so you’ll get some of that. I like to write haikus, so you may get a few of those too. Wednesdays will be for the arts: music, books, and whatever else comes to mind. Fridays will be history questions and answers from my books American Trivia and American Trivia Quiz Book. Finally, I’ll suggest links to other blogs and websites that I think might interest you. But be sure to come back here when you’re done though. There’ll be much more here in coming weeks.

BLOG AND WEBSITE RECOMMENDATIONS

My first recommendation is Richard Lederer’s www.verbivore.com . He has a wealth of information on many topics. He’s written more than 50 books on language, humor, and history. To give you just a taste, here’s what he writes as his opening paragraph of his website:

Welcome to the website woven for wordaholics, logolepts, and verbivores. Carnivores eat meat; herbivores eat plants and vegetables; verbivores devour words. If you are heels overhead (as well as head over heels) in love with words, tarry here a while to graze or, perhaps, feast on the English language. Ours is the only language in which you drive in a parkway and park in a driveway and your nose can run and your feet can smell…

If you have any questions about the English language, Richard is your man. You can email your questions to him, and he’ll be glad to give you an answer. You’ll find much of pleasure and of interest at his website. I recommend it to you.

Another of my favorites is Writer’s Almanac. If you sign up, you get a daily email that takes five minutes or less to read. It starts with a poem, sometimes contemporary, sometimes from the past, and continues with snippets of history—mostly about writers. Sign up for the email newsletter.

 

Introduction

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What are the ties that bind together a country as far-reaching and diverse as ours? We are not a people made from a single stock. Rather, we are a medley of colors, races, religions, and ethnicities. You might think our language unites us, but in fact, we have no official language; we speak all the […]

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Music: Bridging the Generation Gap.

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I started this odyssey of finding music I liked on the internet with “Old Movie Stars Dance to Uptown Funk.” Stars from the 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s dance to current music. No matter what your age, this is fun. It might even get you to dance yourself. You’ll see famous dancers: Gene Kelly, Fred […]

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Science Fiction

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Working as a book reviewer has been surprising. When I started, I had a mental list of what I wanted to read and what I would enjoy. Science fiction and fantasy were nowhere on that list. Well, after reviewing almost 300 books, I’ve learned. It turns out that there’s good writing everywhere, even in genres […]

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Samples of Hooks

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The first sentence in your writing is called the hook. It is quite literally intended to hook the reader into to wanting to buy your book. If you’re intending to try traditional publishing, it should hook the reader at whatever agency you send your manuscript to.  You don’t have to have the perfect hook when […]

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Memory and Memoir

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I had a friend, Jim, who fell off a ladder. The doctors said they couldn’t tell whether the fall caused a stroke or if a stroke caused the fall. In any case, when he finally woke up in the hospital, his memory was gone. He told me that the worried-looking woman at his bedside was […]

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Haiku

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I’ve set myself a new project. It’s not as if I don’t have enough to do, but oh, well. I’m going to try to write a garden diary entry every day. I want to start each entry with a haiku. I started a project to write haiku 12 years ago. I managed to write two […]

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