Saving Lola

The latest edition of The Summerset Review is out and includes my story "Saving Lola." I'm thrilled to be included! You can view it here.

Great read:

Liz Murray's Breaking Night is amazing, inspiring, and distressing. I found it painful to witness what the author, as a young girl-turned-teenager, endured. Her experiences were horrendous. I read many sections with tears pooled in my eyes. It's unfathomable to me how these sorts of things happen to children, how they happen every day, how her story is not unique. And yet she survived. She persevered. Hers is a story of true grit and determination, of unapologetic love and survival.

Great read:

I finished Stephanie Nielson's Heaven Is Here last night... what an amazing account of the human spirit. The book is divided into 3 sections: life before the crash, the crash along with the 5 months spent in the hospital, and life after leaving the hospital. Full disclosure: I didn't much care for the 1st section. For me, it was too pie-in-the-sky-and-everything-is-perfect... it was hard to get through it. But the rest of the book was fully engaging. I read with interest and sometimes with tears in my eyes. Simply incredible what she has gone through.

I took something away from this book that is so subtle yet so powerful:  

     ... without a doubt the true source of happiness, self-worth, and authentic beauty doesn't come from the outside. Woman are constantly being persuaded to want something unachievable, to look younger or thinner and above all to fit in because being different is too painful and embarrassing. ... our hearts matter most. YOUR heart matters most, so be gentler and more patient with yourself, and THEIR hearts matter most, too, so be kinder and more compassionate to others. It's a beautiful heart, not a perfect body, that leads to a beautiful life.

Thank you Stephanie Nielson.

Saving Lola

It saddens me to realize that I've not added an entry here since last December, but the truth is that my life has been extraordinarily difficult over the past 6 months, all to do with a personal situation I'm not yet ready to talk about here. But I will one day, hopefully sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, I have some good news to share... my story "Saving Lola" has been accepted by The Summerset Review. I am thrilled, thrilled, thrilled! This is a long story (nearly 7500 words) and some of my writer friends gently suggested that I find a way to cut it down to the more acceptable 5000 word range. But I held fast (some might label it stubbornness) that the length was needed and earned; I believed in the story and am pleased beyond words that Joe Levens at The Summerset Review agreed with my vision. "Saving Lola" will go live in their next edition due out in June. Woo-hoo!