I’ll qualify this post by saying that affordability and distance from family are not considerations for this list. I’ve made it assuming that I could live comfortably in any of these places and have access to those I love most, whenever I want to see them. I also didn’t include anywhere in Michigan, since I …
I love Halloween. I love the idea of it being the one night of the year when the veil between the living and the dead is thinnest. Do I actually believe it? No, not really. Do I like watching scary or horror movies? Nope. Do I like the idea of evil and the undead and …
To celebrate Halloween, here's a little short story I wrote a few years ago for the writers' group I was in, inspired by an All Hallows' incident from my childhood. Hope you like it! Mom said I had to wear a winter coat and long johns with my costume. It wasn’t the first time. I’d …
I am currently on a weekend trip with three of my closest friends from high school. We’re staying in a house just across from Grand Traverse Bay, on the northernmost tippy-top of the Leelanau Peninsula in lower Michigan. It’s an amazing spot, and I love these girls, so I’m a happy lady right now. In …
October is here, and it’s feeling pretty anticlimactic. October is the month I desperately look forward to each year. For more than a decade, Octobers have been a carefully planned and meticulously executed string of events, carrying us from one weekend to the next until suddenly, it’s All Saints Day. It’s a whirlwind of orange …
I was born and raised in Michigan and lived there (mostly) until I was 24. Then I moved just south to Ohio, where I lived for 13 years. I have a big place in my heart for these two Midwestern states, and writing my book, which is set in both, as well as on the …
I have a confession to make. I’m not really an art person. But in the summer of 1998, while vacationing with most of our extended family on my dad’s side, I saw a print of a 1921 painting, and I fell in love. We were at a shop somewhere in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, browsing and …
When I was in college, my mom and my aunt took up the hobby of quilting. More specifically, they did strip quilting, which is basically making quilts via assembly line. I decided I wanted on that bandwagon, too, so I asked them to teach me. Both of their moms also quilted, so we had some …
I am lucky enough to have a family member in the writing business! Here, my cousin Lia Mack shares a little about how she became a writer and what it meant to her to write her first novel. When did you take up writing as a hobby? Hobby? Them's fightin' words, ya know! Joking aside, I …
Being a writer can be very isolating. I can’t tell you how many times I wished I was cuddled on the couch next to my husband, watching a movie or reruns of “The Office.” But instead, I was sequestered in the other room, furiously typing out my story. Even last Saturday, I was upstairs at …
