I have an article about learning new things posted over at Indie Chicks Cafe today … As children, we were expected to learn something new every day.  Whether it was math in school, or a better way to hit a baseball, it was part of how we did things.  Some kids react better than others to an initial failure to learn new things easily, but even so, you can’t be a child without learning all the time.  Kids learn as easily as they breathe. Adults—maybe not so much. Read more:  http://indiechickscafe.com/learning-something-new-at-44/

Writing Historical Fiction Back in high school, I overheard two girls lamenting how awful their classes were and how they ‘hated’ history.  Since I was hiding in a bathroom stall at the time, I didn’t give voice to my horror at their sentiment, but it has stuck with me in the thirty years since.  How could they ‘hate’ history? Unfortunately, all too easily if by ‘history’ they meant the memorization of facts and dates that had little or no bearing on their lives.  Why did they care what year the Civil War began?  Or who was the tenth president of the United   States?  Or what happened in the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia (though knowing might clarify our wars in the Middle East today, but that’s a different topic). That’s not what history is about.  History is about people.  It’s Read more…