Category: Compassion

Right Now, It’s Like This

I’ve never visited any of the places Anthony Bourdain recommended. I never owned a Kate Spade purse. My palate is limited and my sense of style is best described as Mid-Life Lesbian at a Baseball Game.  Still, I lived in a world where Mr. Bourdain, by osmosis, gave everyone a […]

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Got the News Blues? Transcend the Plot

Want a sure way to rejected by every publisher ever?  Start your query letter with, “This is a character driven novel.” I guarantee you’ll be getting the “Thanks, but this is not for us” email before your tea gets cold.  Characters create feelings, give insight, and spur our desires, but in […]

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Shall We Dance?

How awesome is my wife?  Walking in the house with arms full of groceries I said, “I accidentally offended a Christian woman while talking to the flowers at Kroger.” Cathy didn’t look up from the paper she was writing.  She wasn’t surprised about any of the phrases in that sentence. […]

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Charity and Stone

I come from a long line of Tennessee hillbillies …er…Appalachian Americans. My grandparents on my father’s side, Charity Grace Rupard and William “Stone” Rupard, were subsistence farmers who owned land in a holler (hollow) in Laurel Bloomery, Tennessee.  Where’s that?  As my uncle Claude would say, “It’s right down the […]

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