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Showing posts from 2015

Travel Tuesday: Florence

Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral. Robert Louis Stevenson

Travel Tuesday: Istanbul

I tell my students, it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next door who looks like you. What's more difficult is to identify with someone you don't see, who's very far away, who's a different color, who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then literature is really performing its wonders. Chinua Achebe

Travel Tuesday: Venice

Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.

Travel Tuesday: Venice

Never look backwards or you'll fall down the stairs. Rudyard Kipling

Travel Tuesday: Istanbul

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after. Henry David Thoreau

Travel Tuesday: Raglan Castle

Her passion for ancient edifices was next in degree to her passion for Henry Tilney -- and castles and abbeys made usually the charm of those reveries which his image did not fill. Jane Austen ,  Northanger Abbey

Sabbatical Year

1 And the Lord spake unto Moses in mount Sinai, saying, 2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath unto the Lord. 3 Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof; 4 But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the Lord: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard. This blog is in its seventh year, its year of sabbatical. In that year, I have revised two middle grade novels, wrote two picture books, attended three writing retreats, served as a graduate assistant at VCFA, met Julie Paschkis, had lunch with Roger Sutton, spoke to Katherine Paterson, received an honorable mention for the SCBWI Work-in-Progress grant, committed to return to my art studies, and traveled domestically and abroad to refill my cup. It's been a good year. The writing life is alive and well, and n