Category: Special Features
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Books & Brews Highlights Community’s Friendship with Library
“There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship,” declared Thomas Aquinas some 800 years ago. His words ring true not only for individuals but also for public institutions, such as libraries. That’s why the Friends Foundation of Worthington Libraries has such an important role to play. The financial support the…
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American Writers Museum Lives up to my Hopes
I recall as a child being totally awestruck by two museums my family visited. One was the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History. The other was Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. The latter with its interactive exhibits, true-to-life coal mine, and World War II German submarine dazzled my young mind and showed me just how…
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Vote 2024: The Language of Political Signs
The 2024 Presidential Election is only 44 days away, so it’s not surprising that political signs are sprouting up on lawns and in windows at an increasing rate. Given the limited space available on a political sign, the words it displays have to be cleverly chosen. Granted, a sign may have nothing more than the…
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In Pursuit of a Publisher
Many of you know that I’ve been working on a YA novel (my third) for the last four years, and now a milestone in that project has been reached. I need to find a publisher. Reaching this milestone has been neither quick nor easy. Diary of a Girl in Trouble has been through no fewer…
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Pre-Publication Questions
Within the next six weeks, I plan to send a finished draft of Diary of a Girl in Trouble to as many as a dozen publishers. And then wait for the rejections. Well, maybe not from all of them. At least that is my hope. But I have enough experience with the publication process to…
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Beta Readers Offer Helpful Revisions
Beta readers play a key role in the writing-publishing process. As their name suggests, they aren’t the first ones to see a draft manuscript. Alpha readers see the first draft as it is being written and offer feedback on clarity, character development, and plot continuity, and how the composition reads as a whole. Beta readers…
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Poems by Linda
Ever since I took up writing as a serious hobby some 20 years ago, I have devoted far more time and effort to prose than poetry. But that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy poetry. Many poems, especially those written by the romantics, can stir my emotions and send my thoughts soaring back into a blissful…
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New YA Novel Nears Completion
During my 28 years at the Ohio Department of Education, I spent a great deal of time at State Board of Education meetings. One of the Board’s primary responsibilities was (and still is) to revoke the licenses of educators who, because of criminal or otherwise inappropriate behavior, were deemed unfit to work in a school…
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2023 Holiday Favorites
A couple of weeks ago, when I saw that my next blog posting would fall on December 24, I decided to do something different. Rather than write some dull (and probably overlooked) piece on grammar and/or punctuation, I would list the favorite holiday stories. movies, and books of my family and friends. In the end,…
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Have a Capital Christmas
When we think of Christmas and all the lovely things that come with it, we definitely do not think about the rules for punctuation and capitalization. Just the same, the holiday season in general and Christmas in particular provide an opportunity to consider when capital letters, italics, and quotation marks should be used when referring…