Debbie Does McKee

Robert McKee, of “Adaptation” fame, has long been a hero of mine. A friend recommended his book “Story” as I was writing my first novel, “Rattled,” and it helped immensely. McKee is a genius when it comes to de-constructing the elements of story. Writing is more than putting down pretty words. It’s creating a narrative [...]

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How I Plan to Spend My Summer Vacation

Kicking off the beginning of summer (never mind that it’s 50 degrees right now and Memorial Day Weekend starts tomorrow) by writing.
Husband and kids are going away to Seven Springs for a family reunion. I get the house all to myself.
I’m about halfway through “Cars from a Marriage,” my novel that tells the story of [...]

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I Wrote to Oprah

Was reading her interview with Eckhart Tolle before getting discharged from the hospital this morning. Thought about that tonight (middle of the night, home, but wide awake at 2:30 am), and decided to write to Oprah.
This is what I wrote before whittling it down to 2,000 characters.
I was sitting in a hospital this morning, waiting [...]

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What Do Book Groups Want?

I had a dream last night that I had launched a campaign to send out tons of copies of “Fear and Yoga” to individual people, people who might fall in love with it, spread the word, turn it viral. People like Christopher Buckley, Stephen King, Oprah. But I also thought (this was part of the [...]

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Things Accomplished Today

1. Looked up kiddie movies that came out in 1993 for book-in-progress.
2. Signed retainer with a lawyer to file tax appeal.
3. Scored a 45-minute telephone conversation with Baristanet’s elusive technical genius Tom Biro.
4. Updated author site. (Clips from Montclair Times and NJ Monthly.)
5. Bicycled to Brookdale Park and back. (Warren was right. It’s easier to [...]

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What’s the Emoticon for Not Perky?

My therapist says I do not have to be perky all the time.
This came as news. Actually this came with the force of revelation. It hadn’t occurred to me, until we discussed the issue, that a certain continuous level of bubbly effervescence was expected of me. Something I expect of myself. Something passed down through [...]

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Work to Do

With the great push towards getting press and signings for “Fear and Yoga,” I’ve neglected my third book, “Cars from a Marriage,” currently underway. It’s very hard to get back to a project as big as a novel when you’ve neglected it for more than a month.
So yesterday I took out my latest manuscript, stretched [...]

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I Guess What I’m Missing is a Cat

Just got back from a spectacular four-day vacation to Key West, which involved much eating, bicycling, application of SPF-45, and, well, other things that can’t be mentioned on a family blog. One thing that can be mentioned, however, was my visit to the Hemingway House, where I discovered that the secret to becoming an [...]

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Kind Words

There are mean words, and there are kind words. Many, many kind ones arrived today. From Jenn Krusch at St. Martin’s:
Just wanted to let you know I’ve been reading your blog and I listened to you on the Brian Lehrer Show. I thought you did well and found it delightful to listen to.
No matter how [...]

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Live by the Sword, Die by the Sword

Today should have been a very good day for me. I was on the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC, which is a big deal, and I thought I’d done a fairly respectable job. Brian is a big sweetie, he and his producers were well-prepared, people called in. Brian is a wonderful host in every sense [...]

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