When I was little, going to my grandma's house actually felt like the song; Over the river and through the woods. My paternal grandparents lived about an hour north of us and on holidays, we made the drive up to visit them. There’s something dreamlike about driving off to grandma’s house to stay for a …
Ghost Stories
Last night, after I got home from the office, I sat down on my bed and didn’t get up for the rest of the evening. Though I didn’t fall asleep and it wasn’t restful per se, my body quit on me hours before I was ready for it to clock out for the day. The …
The Ballad of an Eighth Grade Gladiator
Clack-clack-clack-clack. The chorus of clacking rang out in the small computer lab as tiny fingers pressed down on the brand new keys of Macintosh keyboards. Like a forest of chatty insects, the clacking filled the room of elementary school children. We were new to this—this “typing” thing—and the foreign and measured coordination required to …
I Did Something Big. I Wrote a Book.
If you’re a writer, you know there’s nothing more harrowing, more debilitating, or more anxiety-inducing than pressing ‘publish’ on something you’ve been working on for a long time. The reason is simple: Once it’s out there, you can’t take it back. It agonizing to think I possibly made a mistake, said something that reads differently …
Jurassic Park Made Me a Writer
When Jurassic Park hit theaters, it changed my life. I was ten, my brother was seven, and my father took us to see the dinosaur movie. We went to the dollar theater sometimes, but we weren’t huge moviegoers so this was a big deal. As I sat in the theater and watched those creatures resurrected …
