This Saturday, November 1st, is the 44th annual Kentucky Book Festival at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington, Kentucky. To save you having to do the math, the first one was in 1981. The Kentucky Book Fair, as it was called before becoming the Kentucky Book Festival, was the brainchild of Carl West, a nationally recognized journalist who spent time in Washington …
A Day for Gratitude
Today, September 21st, is World Gratitude Day. I admit that I had never head of that until I saw it online today, but I feel like it’s something good to celebrate with a special day. Then when I looked up more about World Gratitude Day to find out why we have this day, I was surprised about how it came …
“Do You Like to Read?”
“Do you like to read?” Years ago, I was first asked that question by a member of a New York book club I was visiting via phone. Since it was back in 2009, they may have read my first Shaker book, The Outsider, or it might have been Angel Sister. one of my books that has been a popular book …
Book Birthdays and Reviews
“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” ― W. Somerset Maugham And so once again, without knowing the rules, I have written a novel and seen it make its way out to the world of readers. Tuesday was release day for The Song of Sourwood Mountain. That is always an exciting day for …
When Writers and Readers Get Together
“The world belongs to those who read.” Have you ever been to a readers’ retreat? Do you even know what that is? It’s something a little new in the world of books, I think. A few years ago, an avid reader or two got together and thought how much fun it would be to actually meet the writers of those …
What Makes Characters Come to Life for You?
Do the characters in the stories you read come to life in your head? And in your heart? Is there some special something about the book or the characters that makes that happen for you? A few years ago I got a very nice note from a reader who had gone to Rosey Corner. She hadn’t read the first book, …
Book Release Week for When the Meadow Blooms
“A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.” ~Samuel Johnson I had the pleasure and blessing of having a new book release into the world of readers. When the Meadow Blooms has been flying through the mail out to mailboxes and through the air or however that tech magic works to electronic reading devices. Readers are finishing the story …
Jumping into a New Story
A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead. ~The End of the Affair by Graham Greene (1951) There’s truth in that first sentence of Graham Greene’s novel. A writer does have to pick that moment to let her characters come to life and …
Readers & Writers at the Fiction Readers Summit
“Let’s be reasonable and add an eighth day to the week that is devoted exclusively to reading.” – Lena Dunham I know all these wonderful readers and writers that I spent a couple of days with last week at the Fiction Readers Summit would agree with Lena Dunham on that extra day for reading. But not having that extra day …
Have We Forgotten How to Read?
I just read an internet post that suggests we’ve forgotten how to read. It included this quote from Eric Schmidt, the founder of Google. “I worry that the level of interrupt, the sort of overwhelming rapidity of information … is in fact affecting cognition. It is affecting deeper thinking. I still believe that sitting down and reading a book is …










