4,215 Blogger posts later, I'm starting clean with a new website

My friends, the time has come.

All of these thousands of posts, over the course of these dozen years. Celebrations of books I've loved, of friends I've made, of kindnesses that have been extended my way.

It's all become a bit much—overgrown, weedy, unkempt.

And so, after cleaning out my father's home and then my own, after thinking hard about who I want to be in the days I still have, after writing and publishing a Woven Tale Press essay called "Clean" about all the things I am learning to leave behind, I am also leaving this blog behind. I'm moving on with a simple web site, which I invite you to enter here.

All thanks to each of you who took the time to stop by, to comment, to share.

All thanks to the friends I made through the books we loved.

All thanks to my husband, who has sat with me and built this new site, scrubbed it down to the essentials. Let the reviews and stars of bygone years be bygone. Let the nuggets of thought get tucked into time. Let the photographs recede.

It's time to start fresh again.

The blog will remain live for any who want to sift back through. But I will no longer be adding to it.

Excerpts from eight of my books can be found on the site.

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on spiraling toward the essential, in "Clean," a new essay for Woven Tale Press

What a blessing it is to work with Sandra Tyler at Woven Tale Press. She looks at every word, scours every sentence, asks, and asks with kindness. "Clean," my essay up today on her beautiful literary site, is so much better for having had her graceful interventions.

With thanks as well to Angelica Gonzalez—reliably kind.

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so grateful for this essay in LitHub, on not vanishing our writing heroes

Quietly, determinedly, I have returned to the writing of essays. My pieces in the Philadelphia Inquirer becoming ever more personal. My research for fiction yielding explorations of the truth (in Woven Tale Press). And, this past week, the publication of an essay long in the making in LitHub.

Finding my voice again. Slowly.

The LitHub essay stems from years of reading and wondering about Paul Horgan. From a trip my husband and I took out west. From a letter that was sent to me from Andrew Wyeth's nephew. From my wondering, often, what really remains of writers once they are gone. And why.

"Reclaiming a Beloved Writer from the Brink of Disappearance" can be found here.

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What the painter Andrew Wyeth teaches about the narrative arts, in The Woven Tale Press

I've been thinking a lot about the Wyeth family. Reading and traveling, looking and thinking, standing in the galleries of the Brandywine River Museum of Art and allowing the wash of the Wyeth retrospecta to work itself on me.

This essay, on what Andrew Wyeth teaches us about the act and art of writing, erupts from that obsession. I'm so grateful to Sandra R. Tyler of The Woven Tale Press for sharing my enthusiasm and running the piece on her literary/art site today. Woven Tale is quickly becoming a mecca for writers and artists and those who understand the essential middle ground between the two.

So thank you. Here's a link to my story, which includes photographs of Andrew Wyeth's Chadds Ford studio.

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an honor, an excerpt, my husband's clay

I struggle, perhaps I always will, with striking the right balance. How much do we talk about ourselves out here? How much do we turn our attention to others? What does a small personal moment mean against the backdrop of grave concerns or else-where suffering?

I don't have the answers.

But here, today, is this:

This Is the Story of You, my young adult novel about the consequences of a monster storm, was named to the 2017 TAYSHAS Reading List today, and I could not be more grateful on behalf of this quiet book that means to much to me. Thank you, TAYSHAS, and thank you, Taylor Norman of Chronicle Books, who is so consistently kind to me. The link to the full list is here.

An excerpt from Nest. Flight. Sky., a Shebooks memoir about the loss of my mother, appears on the beautiful literary site, The Woven Tale Press, today. Woven Tale is like a book you want to read—beautiful considered and laid out. That link is here.

Finally, my husband's work will be featured in a major exhibition that opens tomorrow. This international show, Craft Forms, has its home at the Wayne Art Center, and tomorrow night I'll abandon my ordinary, often wrinkled, not exactly glamorous garb for a dress and heels to help celebrate the opening night. The link to my husband's work is here.

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