And Another Step Forward
More progress on the publishing front to share: The opening of Line of Flight was published in the April 2024 issue of Embark, an online literary journal that presents openings from 10 unpublished novels twice a year. This happens to be Embark’s twentieth issue, and I am in good company! It’s rewarding to have two Facebook Twitter Email Print
Some Progress on the Publishing Front
I’m thrilled to share the news that an excerpt from Line of Flight has published in the online literary journal, The Writing Disorder (such an appropriate title for this pursuit)! “The Sinking” takes place on the doomed last voyage of the Lusitania. Can’t say more, or I’d spoil it. I hope you enjoy reading it! Facebook Twitter Email Print
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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