If there’s one thing Southern gals know how to do, it’s gab. Silly or serious, all it takes is a glass of iced tea and time. Pull up a chair, kick off your shoes, and make yourself comfy…get ready to dish!
Ten Favorite Characters from Television
Gil Grissom, CSI. He’s brilliant but has issues dealing with people. Endlessly surprising.Sheriff Andy Taylor, The Andy Griffith Show. Just the kind of smart Southern gentleman we could use more of.The “It’s…” Man (Michael Palin), Monty Python’s Flying Circus. He’s a favorite not for himself, but for what comes right after we see him.Julia Sugarbaker, Designing Women. Who wouldn’t love to be able to tell off a jackass who so richly deserves it, and in that droll Dixie Carter voice, to boot?Oscar...
read moreThe Gobi Desert
About 150 pages into her last novel, The Buccaneers, Edith Wharton wrote in her diary,What is writing a novel like?1. The beginning: A ride through a spring wood2. The middle: the Gobi desert3. The end: A night with a loverI am now in the Gobi desert.Honey, I’m camped there with you, and I think the camel ran off.One plus to meeting tête-a-tête with Dream Agent at RWA National is the immediate feedback on the current projects. One minus is the conversation in all its nonverbal communicative glory…the facial expressions that...
read moreTen Favorite Sounds
The wind in tall North Carolina pinesRain on a tin roofDixieland jazzBagpipes. Seriously. Best if you’re actually in the Scottish Highlands.”I’m home.”Night sounds: tree frogs, cicadas, owlsAaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring and Vince Guaraldi’s “Linus and Lucy”That groany-snuffly sound your dog makes when you scratch him just so under the earMy children’s laughterMy husband’s giggle when he’s really tickled about something
read moreReading Lists: Another 100 Greatest?
Not to be outdone by their rivals at Time (see my post on their list here), the good folks at Newsweek have compiled what they call their “meta-list” of the Top 100 Books, using rankings from lists as diverse as the New York Public Library System, the Modern Library, and Oprah to determine their choices. This list was interesting because it included nonfiction, poetry, and drama in addition to novels. There are some quirks: all the Shakespeare selections are grouped together, they seem to love ancient history (Thucydides,...
read moreCarolina in My Mind
Ahh….mountain air. There’s something refreshing about escaping the ridiculous humidity in Florida and enjoying cooler days and nights in the Blue Ridge. Driving up from Atlanta, you can totally understand the scriptural reference “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help” (if I may go all King James for a moment). The Appalachians don’t have the jaw-dropping vistas you see in the Rockies, but there’s something about them…probably the fact that they’re the oldest...
read moreRWA National Recap
Whew! One more RWA National Conference in the rearview mirror. This was a networking year for me, so that meant fewer workshops to report on. Here are some highlights from some of the workshops I did attend:Outwitting a Muse Who Just Won’t Behave – If the girls in the basement (as Barbara Samuel O’Neal is likely to call them) or the squirrels (as I’m likely to call them) are misbehaving, try a vacation. Try an artist’s date, listening to music, taking a vacation from writing, and reading in different genres from...
read moreNow That’s What I Call Feminine Protection!
Now I’ve seen it all. Normally, the host hotel for RWA National commandeers a men’s bathroom to handle the high number of female attendees. I’ve always thought it was kinda cool to penetrate the inner sanctum in all its masculine glory. But not the Marriott Wardman Park. They were so kind as to arrange this:It’s not like we’re going to run screaming from the loo at the sight of a couple of urinals, but this is really going above and beyond to preserve our feminine sensibilities.
read moremimi Does Monuments!
I am one tired puppy, let me tell you. I wish I’d remembered the pedometer, because I have no idea how much we walked. I only know it was a lot. After a yummy breakfast at Afterwords Café near Dupont Circle, we hoofed it down Connecticut Avenue to Lafayette Square, then over to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. I’ve been to DC before, but my memories of a lot of these places are from a tour bus. How great to walk up! I only wish we could have scored tour tix, but alas, the denizens of Chez mimi do not, in themselves, constitute a school...
read moreThe Bed List/The Dinner List
BED LIST: EDDIE CAHILLWe don’t watch much TV at Chez mimi (not having cable will do that to you), but we’re lined up and ready on Wednesday nights for CSI: NY. And let me just say it’s no hardship whenever Det. Flack walks by, usually spouting some smart remark. The twinkly eyes and hard bod don’t hurt, either. Yum.DINNER LIST: SEN.-ELECT AL FRANKENSeveral years ago, I bought classroom subscriptions for The Nation and National Review to use so my students could identify political slant. Because of those, I receive lots...
read more#writerfail Redux
For all I adore technology, I’m not a first adopter. It took a couple of years before I finally bought a cell phone, and I was practically the last person I knew to start texting. Although I belong to several email loops, I was a Facebook holdout until recently. I’m still on the fence about Twitter. After reading Jennifer Weiner’s post about Alice Hoffman and how not to use Twitter at Huffington Post today, looks like I won’t purchase my tickets to the Twitterverse anytime soon.The short version: well-known novelist...
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