A few reviews have compared my writing to Donald Miller lately.
I was a little surprised by that.
I’m more manic that Donald, I think.
I go on and on.
Don is straight forward.
I packed more Christian ideology, more Bible-y, churchy stuff into my books than you’d find in all of Don’s books combined.
But I still get the comparison.
Don [...]
I do not live in Hollywood.
I do not live in New York City.
I don’t even live in a more mid-size-city, like Atlanta or Pittsburgh or Nashville.
So sometimes it amazes me that anyone anywhere ever hears anything about my book.
A book written by this middle class white girl…
In tiny prison city.
In the economically shrinking state of [...]
There once was a gentleman reading,
A book that was very misleading.
With a dandelion on the cover.
You’d expect women to love her.
But even the men picked up weeding.
***
An observant reader pointed something out to me this week:
Based on my book’s cover–which sports the not-so-masculine fuzzy tuft of a dandelion–a reader might assume my book is chick [...]
Today, someone put it out there: “You could make it writing and speaking.”
Meaning, you could ditch your day job and hack it in the industry.
I’m not entirely sold.
Maybe I could. At some level anyways.
Or maybe, just as likely, I couldn’t.
My goal is to never know.
Because writing, and especially speaking, is my side gig.
Its a tangent [...]
As a kid, I “knew” what it would be like to be a writer.
It would involve the following:
A corduroy jacket (WITH elbow patches…the elbow patches are important.)
A “study” with built-in corner shelves
Enough well-worn classics (first editions) to line said shelves
A window seat over looking an ivy-league looking courtyard
A huge dark oak desk, buried under crumpled [...]
In my Creative Writing class, form poetry often goes over well.
And by “goes over well” I mean it scrapes by.
That the kids–well, most of them–do it.
And that when they’re done, the pieces they’ve written show a little piece of them. A little piece of their lives.
Assignments aren’t always easy to read because their lives haven’t been [...]
This week, the women behind Under the Fig Tree are sounding off with their reactions to my new memoir, Picking Dandelions.
This all-female team splits us weekly posts between them. And this week, all seven of them have something to say about Picking Dandelions, which they’ve been reading together.
Check out their site as well as [...]
Yes.
The rumor on the street is true (for those of you out socializing in the alleyways this morning).
My new memoir, Picking Dandelions, just arrived in stores TODAY.
Officially.
Its an actual book sitting on actual shelves in actual stores–hopefully doing some sort of song and dance to attract the actual customers walking by.
Go ahead. Pinch yourself.
And, of [...]
So as far as newspapers go, I have to admit, the Jackson Cit Pat has always been good to me.
When I lead the disaster relief trip to Ground Zero in 2001, they were the first media outlet to jump on board. They covered the release of my first book in 2006 too. And now they’ve [...]
If you have a blog and like to read (particularly memoirs), then we HAVE to talk.
Live.
On your blog.
The virtual blog tour for Picking Dandelions: Searching for Eden Among Life’s Weeds will kick off February 1st and run through April.
Here’s the down and dirty details:
Your url will be tattooed all over the place. It will [...]
