Jane Austen's Fight Club

Does this manuscript make my butt look big?

A gets extra credit for directing me to this clunker in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (and on the front page!): Goodbye, Girdle: Curvy Stars Spark A Raid on Padded Panties.

It turns out there’s a market segment willing to shell out big bucks to get big butts.

Seriously?

The article provides TMI about flat-bottomed women    [Continue reading]

Friday Flash -- July 16

“I want those to go, too.” She pointed to the row of rosebushes, yellow and red blossoms bobbing in the breeze.

“Ma’am?” The bushes were healthy, lush, and while he wasn’t a flower man himself, he was sure someone had lavished a great deal of care on them, and recently, too.

She smiled and    [Continue reading]

Sunday Short: Nectar

(Thank you Wordle for the Word Cloud!)

She stirred the pitcher of sugar-water and smiled. Oh, her hummingbirds surely did love this sweet nectar! And the bees – some days she believed they swarmed under the trees in the back yard, just waiting for her to fill the feeders and the cups    [Continue reading]

CW - Two weeks of Diabolical Thinking

So how am I doing with the Creativity Workshop? It’s been almost two weeks since my last CW post, and I’ve barely posted anything else, either. What happened?

Stagefright. Yup, I had stagefright. My blogging buddies seemed SO eager (thanks for the vote of confidence!) to follow my foray into the diabolical    [Continue reading]

Finance & Economics 101

Move over, Paul Krugman, I’ve got The Word on Money from Alton, my Tree Guy. Remember him?

He was back today with his son Dale to trim some trees at our beach property. I forgot the camera so I’m recycling an old picture.

The heat index here today was 105 degrees. That’s hot,    [Continue reading]

CW -- Sunday -- er, Tuesday -- update

How am I doing with the Creativity Workshop, you ask?

I have two stories-in-progress from the first section of the workshop. I posted snippets of the second story ideas in these Flash Fictions — here and here — and the blog comments (thanks, everyone!) reinforced my thinking that this story could move in    [Continue reading]

Friday Flash Fiction 55

This builds on last week’s Friday Flash Fiction:

Barbara looked at her daughter. How could she tell her? Oh, Kirsten, by the way, I’ve been living a lie in front of you and Dad all these years?

She winced at the false notion of ‘Dad’ that her husband, her daughter held. What possible    [Continue reading]

CW - Update on goals & progress

So where am I along my Creativity Workshop path? According to the original plan, I should be starting my last of four stories centering around a specific place and time: post-Hurricane Ike Galveston Texas. Am I there?

Nah. I realized during my week in Texas that there was Absolutely No Time    [Continue reading]

Friday Flash Fiction

This one came out of a short conversation I had with an airline seatmate last week.  She’d slept most of the flight, and I only got to talk with her after the plane actually landed.  She was in her late 20’s, probably, and she’d just come from visiting her sister, who was a couple of    [Continue reading]