I’ve blogged about a lot of topics over the years, including quitting a job to write for a living, experiencing and recovering from a sobering health diagnosis, accounts of babysitting my nephews, and the weeks-long process of raising and releasing monarch butterflies.
Readers call my posts clever, authentic, humorous, thought-provoking, timely, and whimsical. I just think of it as my space to tell the stories that matter to me the most.
Say what you will about how well or how poorly the stop-motion Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer television special has aged. It tells the truth. It was the first of dozens of Rankin & Bass-produced stop-motion holiday movies. Rudolph, the Heat Miser, and Frosty were...
![Recommended [Listen]: Rage Against The Machine](https://suddenwriteturn.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Brick-400x250.jpg)
It’s a rhythmic build and driving force. When those first forceful chords of “Wake Up” filled the theater, I felt activated. And I feel activated every time I hear this and any other RATM song.
![Recommended [Look]: Art @MAG](https://suddenwriteturn.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/IMG_7658-rotated-e1747325751718-350x250.jpg)
Art is dreams made solid. Well, sometimes art is nightmares made solid. Art is also the lessons of those dreams and nightmares. And living in the spaces between dreams, nightmares, and lessons, there is, sometimes, resistance.
![Recommended [Watch]: Soylent Green](https://suddenwriteturn.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/veronica-lorine-zYrKNo7ZJoA-unsplash-400x250.jpg)
So many dystopian stories written so many years ago are set in the decade that we are currently living. It’s hilarious to see how much they got wrong… and morbidly fascinating to see how much they got right.
![Recommended [Read]: The Moon is Down](https://suddenwriteturn.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Moon-Light-engraving-400x250.jpg)
John Steinbeck’s novella The Moon is Down may have been published 83 years ago, but it’s more relevant than ever. It’s a quick, oh-so-satisfying read.
![Recommended [Watch]: They Live!](https://suddenwriteturn.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/SUNGLASSES-lucas-george-wendt-3xtCeUhqZWE-unsplash.jpg)
The premise of They Live! is a delightfully late-80s, somewhat campy, thawing-cold-war-era cautionary tale.
“Well, hello there. Have you been waiting long?” “Oh, just almost two years.” “Wow. Has it been that long?” Ummmm….yep. It has been almost two years since I last posted to my blog. Ooops? To be fair, my last post here (February 2022) coincides with when I launched my...
– Me, November 15, 2010 Those words opened my first blog post. If ever a life had a turning point, for me it was then. That post kicked off a run of publishing a weekly blog post for a full three years. (Count ‘em – that’s 156 consecutive weeks, 156 posts. And they’re...
Nearly 40 years ago, I was a small, tomboyish fifth-grader. (Shout out to my GenXers!). This was an era when a 10 year old was still very much a kid. I certainly was. My school, Walt Disney Elementary School (for real), still held recess at lunchtime, but the...
My mother was all about that bling. Anything and everything shiny. Her hair, her makeup, her clothes were always 110% on-point. She had style and always looked good and the effort she put into it that meant she was on her own timetable for any event. She would be ready to go when she was ready to go.