My friend E (I like this blog etiquette of using initials; its Victorian coyness seems nicely at odds with the technology) is a reader of many blogs, and she tells me that regular updates are crucial if she is to keep returning for more. So I am clearly failing her miserably right now. I suspect that there are more posts …
Frank Wess All Stars – Columbia, Missouri
Frank Wess and Rufus Reid at Murry’s I’m sure some people must think I doth protest too much when I tell them about all the astonishing jazz that we get to hear in Columbia, Missouri, but boy, I wish the doubters had been at Murry’s this evening, where Frank Wess and his band played a set which had me floating …
Post Election Analysis
Conversation at the George breakfast table this morning: Hallam: Catherine, do you know who the new president is going to be? Catherine: You!
Lobster Pad Thai
This lunatic quest began some time ago as I was reading an amusing piece by a writer named Steve Almond about eating lobster pad thai in Maine. As I read, I licked my lips and pictured myself serving up a similarly ravishing masterpiece to a rapturous reception. The fact that I had cooked neither (a) pad thai nor (b) lobster …
Death Becomes Me
For all those of you who are contemplating writing a multi-generation saga for your next novel (come on, admit it), a word of warning for you. All of my previous books have taken place over a relatively short time period. One of the things I wanted to do with my new novel was to expand that rather tired palette (to …
Eureka!
Today was kind of a big day for me and my little ole book. I’ve spent more than three years on this baby, painfully cranking out the 130,000-odd words that constitute my fifth novel, whose working title is Paradise. (5 second pitch: “Absolom Absolom meets The Sound of Music.”) And all this time, I’ve been wondering: how on earth am …
Happiness
How to make a 3 year-old happy: 1. Melt some chocolate. 2. Dip ice cream cone in chocolate. 3. Give to 3 year-old.
What's It All About, Alfie?
So, yeah, anyway. This blog. I wanted to have a go at trying to give some sort of mission statement – more for my benefit than yours, really, just to keep me on the straight and narrow. Here’s what I do not want: within a couple hours of mentioning on facebook that I was contemplating starting a blog, I got …
Inaugural Post: Growing Old Gracefully. Or not.
That it should have come to this. There we were – newbie blogger (that would be me), wife, parents, aunt and uncle fresh off the plane from New Zealand – sitting around the dinner table after one of my father’s spectacular creations (butterflied leg of lamb, thank you very much). We were happy, replete, and a couple of bottles of …