characters « Natasha Alexander

Game Time revisited - just in time for the Super Bowl!

I first posted this story exactly a year ago. As Super Bowl Sunday approaches, it seems worth posting again, even though posting it pretty much nails it that no one will be inviting us over for a Super Bowl party, Tom Brady or no. Oh well.

Anyhow, here it is. Maybe I’ll finish writing my reflections [Continue reading]

New year, new knees

Many years ago when I was traveling semi-regularly between DC and Charlottesville I’d drive past a huge junkyard barely hidden from the highway by a long fence – chain link with strips of green plastic woven through it. I probably would have forgotten about it except for the sign:

LEON’S AUTO BODY PARTS — THE WALKING [Continue reading]

Wicked awesome

I’ve just come back from Boston, so I can say/write wicked awesome when I mean totally, completely-and-in-a-good-way awesome.

Here’s what’s so awesome: One of my nonfiction pieces has been nominated for the Dead Mule Best of the Net 2011 awards!

I LOVE the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature and am deeply honored – especially after reading [Continue reading]

You are not your stuff

I’m back.

The tourists are gone; the locals and eccentrics are out in force once again.

Phew. I’d begun to think the world was made up solely of People From Away slathered with sunblock and lugging beach chairs, cabanas, umbrellas, coolers, boogie boards, corn hole games, plastic shovels, radios, cheese curls, small children and high expectations to [Continue reading]

Vince, John Cusack, chicken suits and me

Hi folks. I’d love some of your thoughts here. I’m interested in learning how clearly other writers see their characters when they’re writing them. Do you have strong visual pictures of them before or while writing? Some writers hang pictures of people they think their characters might look like near their writing desks, for example.

I [Continue reading]

Art imitates life. Or something like that.

I had a serious case of deja vu when Holly, my hairdresser, was snipping my split ends last week. She’d just gotten back from Nowhere, Ohio with her boyfriend and started telling me about their trip.

It turns out that Jason’s grandfather, at age 83, didn’t want to drive his big Ford Econoline van anymore. He [Continue reading]

Trout fishing (or mebbe catfish) in America

The Man and I recently got back from our spring road trip. We had our usual quirky time – we like back roads and waterfalls and dams and fish hatcheries and of course we met enough characters to people a couple of novels (I hope).

When you and the guy walking across the top of [Continue reading]

A driving force

I guess the day you renew your driver’s license and they snap that picture that will follow you around for the next 8 years BEFORE you get the black eye qualifies as a good day, right?

Yeah.

Yesterday I had an appointment to go in and prove to the DMV examiner that I knew the difference between [Continue reading]

“That shure am some purty girl there…”

Oh, good. The weather is getting warm, the sand is covered with bare foot prints, and folks have climbed out from under their winter rocks and are talking to each other again. That means I ought to have up-to-the-minute Character Reports from the Front Lines before too long. It’s almost time to [Continue reading]

I'm back...

…Sorta. I’ve spent the last couple of months grappling with back problems, I-suck-as-a-writer syndrome (could the two possibly be related?), and finally – the pièce de résistance, the flu.

Glory be, boy-howdy, and hallelujah! Who woulda thunk that four days and nights lying in bed in a fever-induced hallucinatory stupor could be so wonderful?

First, [Continue reading]