Amy Cloughly, Warren Frazier, and Dan Lazar are literary agents that I don’t know and have never met. But I respect them and here’s why. I sent them a query letter about representing my new book Under the Sand. They responded and said no thanks but nice of you to…

I was recently attending a Zoom meeting about book publishing when the speaker announced that the author with 8.5 percent of all books sales in the U. S. last year was Colleen Hoover. Who? I thought I had misunderstood. Surely, the speaker meant that the top book sales in the…

Being a reader isn’t easy. I was trying to work my way through the latest mystery for my Sleuth Book Club meeting later this month when I gave up. The book, Descent by Tim Johnston, is well-written and riveting. The darn print is too small. I feel like Amazon should…

To Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare. Sir, your company needs to get its act together! For years I have been on the Medicare Advantage plan and have had no issues. When I moved to Sarasota in December, I decided to “upgrade” my Medicare supplemental plan. Advantage has been…

Alex, the paint store manager, and I shared a moment today. I was returning from a visit to our new home in Sarasota when I decided, on impulse, to stop at the Sherwin-Williams store nearby instead of driving to my usual paint shop, now 90 minutes away. We are getting…

I and three members of my extended family start off each day trying to figure out what is on Tracy Bennett’s mind. Or more specifically, what word she has selected for the popular Wordle puzzle in The New York Times. Since the game occupies about 10-15 minutes of my morning…

Before July 1, there were scores of workers replacing the roofs on our condo complex in southeast Florida following Hurricane Ian. Today I counted two. After four months we are still without a metal roof. Every time it rains our upper-level neighbors, who hail from Canada, get another round of…

Thank you Covid for making a return visit after our first introduction to you. We are so excited to see you and the baggage you bring with you: headaches, runny nose, nagging cough and that general feeling of ennui. Your first visit was three summers ago. The construction worker remodeling…

I just finished cleaning out 16,271 sent emails quicker than you can say Hillary Clinton. I’m not sure what motivated this housecleaning of 10-plus years of email responses. Earlier in the week I got rid of more than 4,000 emails – all read I’m proud to say. That’s how it…

My son and I were exchanging Wordle scores this morning as we do every day when I experienced one of those aha moments. It’s amazing how often we track. On occasion, he gets the word in two or three guesses and it takes me five or six or vice versa.…