It’s an otherworldly experience, what happens to creative writers when they fall in love with bits and pieces of storylines and characters crowding their heads. They are teased by their own minds into discovering what’s there, summoning up old memories, old feelings and fantasies of bravery, evil machinations, breathtaking adventures – you get the picture.…

If Alice of Wonderland ever grew up in the present day, she’d look like my friend Terri. I saw her for the first time in ages the weekend before last—she of the purple locks, John Fluevog fantasy-like footwear and a fairy tale dress that coordinated impeccably. At first blush, there’s no way to tell we’d…

If you’re looking for bookish relief from the problems that seem to surround us all these days, Dr. Stilson has a personal prescription: an un-put-down-able mystery novel, THE LAST PERDOUX, written by Larry Maness. Those of you who know my writing tendencies, and my novel THE JUICE in particular, may assume that this novel falls…

I was standing before a Gustav Klimt painting when I felt him. A man I’d just met was right behind me. His hand had reached out, a half inch from my dark hair, searching for a connection and a true sense of me. Pretending not to notice, I gazed at the pale-skinned woman in the…

When Wynton Marsalis was 17, he knew he had to leave home. His relationship with his mother was contentious. She didn’t want him to become a professional musician, and other people were urging him to find another path as well. Wynton asked his father, the great pianist Ellis Marsalis, for his opinion. “Do you love…

On lazy summer days long ago, my mother, sister and I would tackle the attic, figuring out which of our possessions relegated to that deep memory space should be discarded or better organized. There were odd sticks of furniture, stacks of splashy picture magazines, my mother’s childhood ringlets in an old cigar box, and my…

“A great main character is a character who’s fully committed to a terrible plan.” Marti Noxon, Writer, Showrunner Recently I listened to a podcast called THE SCREENWRITING LIFE that featured an interview with Marti Noxon. Her screenwriting credits include SHARP OBJECTS, FRIGHT NIGHT and BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. When she talked about great main characters…

It was dumbfounding. There I was, trying to plug a power cord into my MacBookPro. And for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what slot to use. That happened a few days ago. Bear in mind, my laptop is like an extension of my body. There is an invisible umbilical cord between the machine…