Recent Posts
Resonance

Resonance

For me, writing is musical. It’s also a quest for precision. How do I channel these images and feelings in my mind and heart into words on the page? Metaphor is, of course, one way to get there, through the back door of memory. Emotional associations with a sound, a smell, a sight or taste Facebook Twitter Email Print

Of Blood Transfusions and Brain Magnets

Of Blood Transfusions and Brain Magnets

To say that World War I was gruesome is to understate the obvious. Updated weapons—like the 600-bullets-per-minute, rapid-fire machine gun, with a range of more than 1,000 yards—decimated infantries. Chlorine gas, phosgene, and mustard gas maimed more than killed, but caused devastating lung and skin damage. Hellish flame throwers terrorized troops. Deadly ordinance destroyed armies Facebook Twitter Email Print

Wordsong

Wordsong

When I write, I hear music. In the words, that is. Some writers play favorite music in the background while writing. I don’t. It distracts me from hearing melodies as they emerge from the page. I can trace my awareness of word rhythms to the beginning of my professional writing career decades ago, in public Facebook Twitter Email Print

In the Query Trenches

In the Query Trenches

I’ve been sending out queries for Line of Flight since November, about 10 months, now. So much for any naive assumptions that I’d find a literary agent sooner than later. I’m up to about 40 queries, so far, and have received a variety of form letter rejections and a couple of more personal notes, as Facebook Twitter Email Print

Time Travel

Time Travel

This afternoon at 2:15, my husband and I were supposed to be on a plane taxiing from the gate on a long-planned trip abroad—our first significant excursion in three years. I had been dreaming of our destination even before the pandemic hit. Having waited patiently, venturing only as far as a day’s drive from home Facebook Twitter Email Print

Letters from a French Hospital

Letters from a French Hospital

In October 1914, two-and-a-half months after Germany launched WWI in Europe, Dr. Mary M. Crawford, a graduate of Cornell University (’04) and Cornell Medical College (’07), set sail for France—one of six American surgeons journeying to Paris to assist in medical treatment of combatants at the American Ambulance Hospital at Neuilly-sur-Seine. In Line of Flight, Facebook Twitter Email Print

In Their Words

In Their Words

For anything I’ve ever written, be it fiction or non-fiction, my favorite research is always sifting through primary sources. There is something about reading materials that are unfiltered by someone else’s editorial judgment, in their original form, that gives me chills, as if I’m connecting across time and space to another person’s soul. My research Facebook Twitter Email Print

Men Weren’t the Only Literary Legends to Drive Ambulances in WWI

Men Weren’t the Only Literary Legends to Drive Ambulances in WWI

Literary giants Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, E.E. Cummings, W. Somerset Maugham, Dashiell Hammett—all were aspiring writers when they volunteered as ambulance drivers during World War I. But Hemingway, perhaps the most celebrated for his experience, which he immortalized in A Farewell to Arms and The Sun Also Rises, actually drove an ambulance only once, Facebook Twitter Email Print

Angels in Waiting

Angels in Waiting

Uniforms are cultural artifacts. They encapsulate social values, priorities, gender biases, romanticized ideals, and more. Practicality factors in, too. During WWI, for example, combat soldiers stopped wearing bright colors that had characterized European military uniforms for centuries, in order to make themselves less visible to the enemy in trench warfare. As I built the world Facebook Twitter Email Print

On Creating a Voice

On Creating a Voice

Of the many lessons learned over seven years of writing Line of Flight, one of the most challenging was figuring out the voice of my narrator, Simone Levitsky. I knew in my gut that I needed to tell the story from her point of view, and I wrote early drafts as her journal. It was Facebook Twitter Email Print