• The Dreaded Question

    The Dreaded Question

    Originally posted on Bloom: by Marlene Adelstein  Now that my debut novel, Sophie Last Seen, has just been published and I’ve started doing readings and interviews to promote it, I’m hoping my least favorite question won’t pop up. But inevitably, it does. How long did it take you to write? It’s often the first question…

  •  Bedbugs and Friendships

    My husband and I went to Charleston last week and came home with bed bugs—maybe. A lovely city, we have been there many times joining friends at the same hotel. This time, after a hiatus of a couple of years, the hotel was looking a bit rough around the edges. Our first room was quite…

  • COLD CLINICAL FACTS

    Originally posted on Getting Older: Charting the Uncharted: Four women in my Wednesday evening non-fiction workshop graciously agreed to be my beta-readers and look over my manuscript during a two week break, following suggestions outlined by our leader, Carol Henderson. What Carol stressed, among other things, was not to get bogged down with spelling and…

  • Meeting Nancy Panko

    I was one of about thirty authors who attended the program, Authors in Your Backyard: A Celebration of Local Writers, held at my neighborhood library on a Sunday afternoon not too long ago. I arrived with copies of my book: Stories from the Tenth-Floor Clinic, and the syringes to lure readers to my table. I didn’t…

  • Learning to Heal

    I’ve long been a proponent of nurses writing their stories to educate the general public about what we really do. Here’s a book: Learning to Heal: Reflections on Nursing School in Poetry and Prosethat does that and more. The essays, from seasoned nurses as well as recent grads and “respected elders,” are set in the…

  • Computer Crash

    I have been without my computer for four days so I didn’t work on today’s post. I didn’t have a computer to track any other posts that I could reblog. I didn’t want to scratch out a new post longhand. Maybe I could’ve been more aggressive or use my I Phone to pick up the…