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One could call my home a relaxation prison. I don’t go anywhere or do anything of consequence to anyone but me. I plant and water flowers and watch them flourish along forest paths. I write in solitude. I prepare and eat my meals in solitude. I do everything alone. My warden, Norris, demands his cream.
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In the midnight hour, when no one else is around or listening, the story I tell myself is that I didn’t fall off the turnip train yesterday. That the voice of Linda Ronstadt still rings true in my heart and head. I’m still the woman I was forty years ago even though I have silver
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I’m still not used to the Fourth of July without the indignity of the sumptuous feasts my mother concocted on her birthday. They had everything but bursting fireworks against the black sky. They weren’t necessary for her celebrations. Everyone was too tired for them by dark anyway. The family would have had to replenish its
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“Do you remember when we had dinner in that old house in the woods on the farm?” Ruby asked as she took the pan of lasagne out of the oven. Alan smiled. “Yeah, you wore your prom dress and I wore my sport coat. Mom made lasagne for us. We took it to that little
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Image generated with AI Being home in my forest among my flowers allows me to be me. The old people said “tending violets cures melancholy.” There’s something about digging in dirt to plant my begonias and impatiens that does the same thing. It restores my soul from working all fall and winter. Every morning of
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Image generated with AI. “I’m making goulash for dinner tonight. I’m going to use Mom’s recipe too.” said Janice. Mason hoped she remembered the recipe. Sometimes her memory of her Mom’s dishes were sketchy and turned out awful like the soup. He was skeptical of this goulash stuff. It had a weird name to it
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Image generated with AI. In the old stories, when life went sideways, the princess had to go to the haunted forest to find the oracle. Diane thought she might as well give it a shot. It was a hundred degrees outside. The creek was ankle deep, the shade dappled and dark. She’d start looking here.
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Defensive Secrets
“You majored in theatre in college, in your twenties and thirties, you were active in community theatre and children’s theatre, you taught theatre, yet you never took your boys to a play or got them involved in theatre when they were little. Why is that?” the news anchor asked me. I had been expecting this Read more
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Mom’s Roadtrip
Mom lost her mind and married Roebuck. None of the kids could stand him, but she was entitled to her midlife crisis, same as anyone else. Since his house burned down on their first date, something about gunpowder gun cleaning equipment and an explosion, such a catastrophe, that they moved to Texas soon after they Read more
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My Cloister
Smile. I biked to the cathedral in the spring. I was an overweight 40 year old American woman on a bike tangled in British traffic. The underpass near the roundabout before the cathedral was scary, traffic came from everywhere and all directions. I should not have survived the rides into town. That’s the cloister walk. Read more
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Dear Creativity
Dear Creativity, It’s time we stopped piddling about and started dancing together. Since I was little, you’ve been working against me instead of with me. You and I have been out of time and one ingredient shy of success since I was born, and you know it. You left me in the dust, or did Read more
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Running out of Time in Dante’s Spiral
“Turn in your papers.” “I’m not finished. You didn’t give us enough time,” said Jason. “You had two days to copy ten sentences correctly. That was enough time,” I said. “I wasn’t listening, that’s not fair. I’m calling my mom,” said Jason. Pressure. I wasn’t listening either. I wasn’t listening half of the time when Read more
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Leonard’s Top 10
Leonard’s Top 10 My current favorite book is Elmore leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing. It might be my favorite. It has pictures. It is what a book should be. It is complete. It is auditory, visual, and kinesthetic, if you get the hardback, which I did. Twice. This book is special. My first copy Read more
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One could call my home a relaxation prison. I don’t go anywhere or do anything of consequence to anyone but me. I plant and water flowers and watch them flourish along forest paths. I write in solitude. I prepare and eat my meals in solitude. I do everything alone. My warden, Norris, demands his cream.
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In the midnight hour, when no one else is around or listening, the story I tell myself is that I didn’t fall off the turnip train yesterday. That the voice of Linda Ronstadt still rings true in my heart and head. I’m still the woman I was forty years ago even though I have silver
-
I’m still not used to the Fourth of July without the indignity of the sumptuous feasts my mother concocted on her birthday. They had everything but bursting fireworks against the black sky. They weren’t necessary for her celebrations. Everyone was too tired for them by dark anyway. The family would have had to replenish its
-
“Do you remember when we had dinner in that old house in the woods on the farm?” Ruby asked as she took the pan of lasagne out of the oven. Alan smiled. “Yeah, you wore your prom dress and I wore my sport coat. Mom made lasagne for us. We took it to that little
-
Image generated with AI Being home in my forest among my flowers allows me to be me. The old people said “tending violets cures melancholy.” There’s something about digging in dirt to plant my begonias and impatiens that does the same thing. It restores my soul from working all fall and winter. Every morning of
-
Image generated with AI. “I’m making goulash for dinner tonight. I’m going to use Mom’s recipe too.” said Janice. Mason hoped she remembered the recipe. Sometimes her memory of her Mom’s dishes were sketchy and turned out awful like the soup. He was skeptical of this goulash stuff. It had a weird name to it
-
Image generated with AI. In the old stories, when life went sideways, the princess had to go to the haunted forest to find the oracle. Diane thought she might as well give it a shot. It was a hundred degrees outside. The creek was ankle deep, the shade dappled and dark. She’d start looking here.
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I Did a Thing…
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Norris+tales+ii&crid=3A2N1W43XCPVA&sprefix=norris+tales+ii%2Caps%2C87&ref=nb_sb_noss Available in paperback, hardback, or Kindle Unlimited or Kindle.
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Alpine
Alpine forgot all about the presentation due in Ethics 101 in two hours. He had a conglomeration of photos on his computer. A mix of people, places, and things, nouns he could mash together like words to spew out in front of a PowerPoint that would make him sound like he’d been up all night…
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What color is “E”
What color is the letter “E”? It’s red. E is the most used letter in the English language. It should stand out. E encompasses everything. It’s one of the first letters children learn. For some reason, they even learn the term “schwa e” in first grade. I know I did. I still don’t know what…
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You can see me?
Image generated with AI Elsa had flour all over the kitchen and her fingers were sticky with dough. It would take more minutes of finger work, squeezing, kneading and molding the dough to get it to stick together for pastry. It would come together, get less sticky, then she would have to work her magic…
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Clementine’s Parchment
Image generated with AI. “I hate this tradition. It’s dumb. Why can’t we be like normal families and roast ducks and wear stupid hats?” said Janice. She was eighteen and didn’t want to write a sentence on her scroll this year. “Write what you feel. If you think it’s a stupid tradition, write about it…
Devonne Brown 