The summer season here in the northern hemisphere is winding down. Are you a summer sort of person? I'm not really. I prefer fall, the crisp change in the air (although still a ways off yet in Texas) and the fun of Halloween. How far away from your hometown do you live? Have you left …
I've been trying to work on a poem for my mom, but I am insecure about my poetry. After my mom left my dad, she started writing poems. Maybe she wrote them before that, but I have no proof. What I have is a journal filled with poems dated 1975 or 1976. My mom inscribed …
Every decade has its personality, right? Although it's tricky because it isn't as if everything changes on January 1st of that zero year. When exactly did the '80s become THE '80s? What historical events mark the period? The election of Reagan perhaps? The beginning of MTV? I graduated in 1986, the year Ferris Bueller skipped …
What story changed your life? Maybe that's too dramatic? Well, what story shaped or moved your opinions one way another? My parents didn't tell me often how or what to think. "It's up to you," they said. How did my mother vote? I don't know. She wouldn't tell me. "You have to decide for yourself," …
When I was a kid (and for many years after), I would've said my biggest fear was spiders. As a teenager I'd lock myself in a room if that's what it took to get away from a spider. Spiders still cause me breathing trouble. When I started sending my writing out into the world, I …
I grew up in the Florida boondocks. A few feet from my side bedroom window grazed cows. Looking out the back windows of the house, we saw our backyard, more cows, and highway 27. A field of overgrown grass stood between us and our neighbor. Our property, divided in half by the road, extended down …
Whether you had a dream dad, a nightmare dad, an absent dad, or an oddball dad, no matter how you'd describe the man who helped bring about your existence, there is no doubt he shaped you one way or another. Even an absence has an influence. My dad never planned on a being a single …
We all have a story why we write or make art or create whatever it is we create. How far back does the story go? Does my story go back to the first book I fell in love with? (Watership Down) Does it go back to my mother's love of books? My grandmother's love of …
Do you ever google people from your past? Hmmm? Well, okay. So. I set my novel in 1985 because that's when I was a teen and because I didn't want to deal with cell phones and google. I used my hometown as a starting point for my novel. But then my fictional town of Lake …
Have you heard the theory that there are countless parallel universes, that at particular moments in your life when one decision was made, another universe began with another you who lived the choice you didn't make. What moment in your childhood would change where you are now? Of course, perhaps it the small forgotten decision …
Marta Pelrine-Bacon 