When I started participating in Story-a-Day in 2010, I chose a theme. That had to be the best way to approach coming up with an idea every single day for a month. That first year, the theme was fairytales. I took famous objects (a red hood, a poisoned apple, a pair of dancing shoes), and …
When I was a toddler, my mom spent time in a hospital in Tampa. It would have been in the summer of 1971 or 72, right around the time of The Baker Act. I don't know if that had anything to do with her time in the hospital. I know that she tried to harm …
Fall gives me energy. Maybe it's all those years starting school in the fall, going to the store to buy new notebooks and folders that made me feel like everything was beginning all over again. My dad wasn't one to take me shopping much. He was a single dad and so shopping for my shoes, …
Continue reading The End Summer and the Beginning of New Things
One problem about writing about a girl in high school is that I haven't been in high school since 1986. In the manuscript I've been working on, my main character pulls a fire alarm at school. She does so on impulse, in one of those it seemed like a good idea at the time impulses. …
My novel launched today! (Here at Amazon.) Since the story is set in the summer of 1985, I've been thinking back to those high school days. What were you like in high school? I wasn't popular. I liked to be in the art room with a sketch pad or a book. The drawing posted here …
My novel is set in the summer of 1985. That summer I loved Howard Jones and I was about to start my senior year of high school. If you were around in the '80s, what did you love and what did you hate? * * * My novel, The Blue Jar, will be released as …
In high school I spent one year on the yearbook staff. I started the class really excited, and I ended the class hoping never to speak of it again. When my mother saw the section I'd worked on--the advertising section, which I hated but did work hard on--she said, "That doesn't look very good. That's …
I'm reading this book about the films of John Hughes. Of course, I'm rethinking those dreaded high school years. Sure, I hated high school, but perhaps my animosity towards former classmates is a bit unnecessary. My classmates were not that awful. Many teens have far more unpleasant experiences. Anyway, while reading one of the essays …
How often do you look back on a past moment in your life and wonder if you missed what really happened? I am very good at this. The other day I was reading about some hubbub going on over a storyline on a television series. I don't watch the series but the issue of writer …
Former high school friends find me on facebook. This happens to everyone who ventures onto fb-land. Maybe this makes you happy. Most of the people who "friend" me, are nice people. They never did me any particular harm back in school. In some ways, catching up on their lives is good. But here is the …
Continue reading High School, Facebook, and Who the Hell Am I Anyway?
Marta Pelrine-Bacon 