Remembering Marty Cesana My friend Marty died as a result of a stupid training accident at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, in 1996. Military training itself is not stupid. We train as we fight, which can happen day or night, in the dust and heat of the desert or in the brutal…
I have often thought that putting together a group exercise class is like telling a story: first, there’s a beginning. There are peaks and valleys and a conclusion you hope feels satisfying. A class literally moves people. It makes them feel things and teaches them something about themselves. Ideally, an exercise class uses its physical…
The blank page is winning, y’all. I still get up early every morning; I still open the ol’ notebook, but then the page stares me down and I’m the first to avert my eyes. I don’t know what to say about anything at the moment. As it turns out, my entire existence in the military,…
It’s Boxing Day* so my fancy has lightly turned to thoughts of violence: Chain Gang All Stars is a barely dystopian story of prisoners turned gladiators. It’s a book about our culture of violence, but even though the brutality is written beautifully (something I personally have a problem with) it doesn’t glorify it. Quite the…
A bit of a book review, more moodlin’ than maudlin: A conversation went deep at the Little Ripon Bookshop the other night, discussing how family stories are shaped and told (in reference to Kate Grenville’s Restless Dolly Maunder, a not very sympathetic fictionalization of her grandmother’s life that was shortlisted for the 2024 Women’s Prize)….
All of my journaling about staying in a bad situation or going to an unknown (but also guaranteed to be difficult) one led to two pro-con lists that cancelled each other out entirely. What was good about one element was negated by something pretty awful on the other side.
Just a quick note to say that I’m delighted to have been chosen Author of the Month by blogger Gina Rae Mitchell! Here’s the post where she features Playing Army. It includes an excerpt and a bonus piece called 10 Things Most People Don’t Know About Me: https://ginaraemitchell.com/playing-army/ Did you know all of it already?…
Here are the choices: stay in my job that used to be mindless but I could leave it all on my desk and go blithely into the other sixteen hours of my day. I could switch it off so fast and so completely that I honestly forgot I worked there when I was on my…
It’s been a bit more than a month since Playing Army was released and I’ve got some things to say about how things are going. But as is typical for me, what I have to say doesn’t necessarily match up with what people mean when they ask that question. Probably they want to know if…
My Dearest Bea: Love Letters from the USS Midway by Peyton H. Roberts My rating: 4 of 5 stars I don’t know what it is about epistolary books, but lately I can’t get enough of them. Something the author says in her postscript rang true to me: “As handwritten correspondence becomes a lost pastime, I…
NB: I wrote this review originally as part of a program at my local library, comparing books to their screen adaptations (such a fun idea! Go to your local library, people!). The Margaret movie was new at the time and getting lots of praise from people whose opinion I respected, so I gave it a…
First, the unboxing video! Videos of writers opening boxes of their books are A Thing. By now you’ve all seen the cover of Playing Army, but this is where I hold the physical book in my hand for the first time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuKDmHRCgfQ Yay! And thank you to Colette for making the video, but I wish…