• Lollygagging

    Greetings, friends. It’s been a while. I’ve been lollygagging as it relates to my blog, that’s for sure. I’m kind of embarrassed about it, and I’m kind of not. I’ve needed time to recalibrate. Besides, I just wanted to title a blog post “Lollygagging.” Ever since the film Bull Durham, “lollygag” has been one of my favorite words. If you don’t know the clip I’m talking about, I’ve got it for you below. The truth is, I’m balancing a lot of stuff and hardly lollygagging at all. I’ve really become a juggler. When I went part time to teach, I didn’t realize I’d be developing so many courses from scratch,…

  • The New Thing: Writing About Baseball (And love. And death.)

    It’s quite a combination, I know. Taking the subject of baseball and rolling it into a novel women will want to read. Women’s fiction…contemporary romance…and baseball? Who is she kidding? one might ask. Here’s the thing: I’m finally up for the challenge. At about 35,000 words already written for the novel (BENEATH THE MIMOSA TREE was 59,000 words), I am making some serious headway with the main character I like, but who has some issues to overcome. Incidentally, she works in professional baseball. And that’s about all I’ll say right now. It’s taken me years to write a novel with baseball as one of its “characters,” just as New York…

  • Bull Durham, Kevin Costner, and Me…Still Loving the Bull in “Bull Durham.”

    Last night, I took a moment to channel surf in between Olympic commercial breaks. After Gabby Douglas lost out on a medal for the uneven bars, I let my fingers do the walking. It isn’t often I get complete control of the remote, but my husband had fallen asleep. You would have thought I would have latched on to some PBS British series, but no. I went the other way. Enter “Bull Durham.” It’s one of those rare films that I enjoy so much, I just can’t glide by it when it’s on. I have to stop. I have to partake of adorable Kevin Costner and the rest of the…