Bouchercon: Writing About the Past from Now
I'm prepping to fly to San Diego for BOUCHERCON tomorrow! I'll be moderating a Thursday morning panel on writing about [...]
Icons evolve. Poster girls evolve.
It's three months out from pub day for Poster Girl, which deals with World War II era Rosie the Riveter and lesser [...]
Barbie–smart, funny, silly, touching, authentic and fanciful
I spent untold impressionable childhood hours playing with a Barbie doll, the protagonist of Greta Gerwig's new blockbuster film. Neither [...]
Why propaganda works
A picture's worth a thousand words. Have you heard about the Picture Superiority Effect? Here's the short version. The brain processes pictures [...]
Rabbit holes, research and Facebook
I’ve been down some research rabbit holes lately. Usually, it starts with a pile of books, ranging from time and [...]
Herb Caen: The Sackamenna Kid
I'm thrilled to join Archivist James Scott 12-1:30 December 3 for a discussion about the Sackamenna Kid: Herb Caen. We’ll [...]
Fiction, life, history, politics
I retired from teaching in 2021. One thing I really miss is talking about CONNECTIONS between fiction and life and [...]
Who gets to tell the story
I first learned about Betty Reid Soskin (above, in a photograph by Frederic Aranda for National Geographic Traveler) while visiting the [...]
Mustn’t let adults know
I used to run The Banned Book Club for teenagers. We only read books that had been banned by libraries [...]
Cantankerous and fussy
I wrote Copy Boy, my first of the Jane Benjamin novels, in ten years, dipping in and out of the [...]