The drive to the acute rehab center from my house generally takes about 25 to 30 minutes, but it’s rush hour and I-77 is a clogged vein. I’m a city girl, used to traffic, yet I find myself gripping the wheel from the stress. The traffic thins, and I peel…

When she was born, Harry Payne Whitney was disappointed. A filly, not a colt. Her parentage was prestigious. Sired by Broomstick out of the mare, Jersey Lightning, but Whitney didn’t hold high hopes for her, so he named her Regret. …

Litany of Lovers The first time I saw him was at a Moody Blues concert. The first time I saw him, he waved from behind the wheel of his Daddy’s propane truck. The first time I saw him, he came out of the house instead of his brother, jumped…

I always wanted to be a girl like that, not Hollywood pretty but so blindingly beautiful a spirit you can’t quite recall what she looks like on the outside. You only remember her radiance. As my friend and I sit in the Kirtan chanting with electric guitars and channeling George…

Clorox bleeds out my goddamn hands as the mold encroaches. Dog fur swallows my feet. Dust from the vent overhead clings to my face as I wipe and wipe and wipe again. Outside an infinite variety of weeds and trees and ferns splits open the brick patio with only leaves…

“Over a period of more than a half a dozen years Battle Annie was the Queen of Hell’s Kitchen and acquired widespread renown as the most formidable female of her time.” — Herbert Asbury, The Gangs of New York I started a book about ‘high society’ in New York during…

When I decided to write my historical novel, I chose the year 1913 because it was such a pivotal time period. The Gilded Age was coming to a close; World War I had not yet started. And prohibition was a few years away. …

I had finished the revisions for The Burning Bride, the second book in my Delafield & Malloy Investigation series. Or at least I thought I had. Right before I went to sleep that night, I remembered that my main character (Louisa) takes a Vest Pocket Kodak (VPK) with her on…