There’s a particular white wine I’m sipping that transports me back to the sun-bleached limestone and olive-tree-studded mountainsides of southern Greece. It was introduced to me on our trip last month by Giannis, a fourth-generation winemaker in the off-the-beaten-path Papagiannakos Winery sandwiched between the bustle of Athens and the blue waters of Artemis Beach on […]
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A Day for Fools and Other Speakers of Truth
I don’t love pranks. I’ve never been a fan of April Fools’ Day, even as a little kid. Pranks always seem to me like they’re designed to pointlessly humiliate the other person so that everyone else can laugh at them. Life is hard enough without purposefully making it harder for someone else when they’ve done […]
Tasting Notes for Books
“We should rate books the way we rate wines,” an author friend of mine told me. She’s absolutely right. Books have flavors, after all, and essences. Some make you breathe deeply as you imagine a stroll through a rose garden in chapter 3, while others stink like skunk grass from page 1. Imagine you’re at […]
Finding Inspiration and Joy on a Girls’ Trip to Cabo
Two little words can carry a wealth of promise. A promise of adventure, magic, nourishment of the soul, and, you know, margaritas. What are these two mystical words? “Girls’ trip.” I recently spent almost a week in the beautiful Cabo San Lucas area of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula with two dear friends I’ve known for four […]
How to Make 2024 a Better Year (Mayhem Optional)
Welcome to 2024, a shiny new year full of promise and good intentions and definitely not heinous deceptions. Like you, I’m positive this is the year eight billion people will suddenly and inexplicably—all prior evidence to the contrary—morph into rational, caring, kind human beings. I hope I bought the right shoes for the occasion. Anyway, […]
Novel Writing: A Love Story
I’ve started writing a new novel, and we’re in the honeymoon phase together, my novel and I. I’m infatuated with this shiny new idea, digging into the research with wild abandon and gleefully exploring my new characters. It’s like starting any new relationship—I have thousands of questions for my characters to learn who they are […]
