Who are your Pajama Authors? You know, the ones who keep you in your PJ’s the entire weekend because you can’t put their book down to get in the shower or get dressed. Hell, you have to drag yourself away from the page to eat! I have just a few. John Grisham has PJ’d me a couple of times. So has James Patterson in his early years. And I’m not ashamed to admit that I even went without sleep to finish Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in one sitting! That’s why I’m beyond ex

I was appalled this week to learn that a school board in Mississippi is removing Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird from the 8th grade curriculum because, according to the Associated Press, “the district received complaints that some of the book's language ‘makes people uncomfortable.’" Really? It makes people uncomfortable? I believe that was exactly Harper Lee’s purpose when she wrote it in 1960. I remember reading it in junior high in 1972, and being changed by it; I was f

Those of you who read my blog on a regular basis know I have a penchant for shorts. Although my days of wearing them are long gone, I do love both reading and writing them. I’m not sure when this affinity developed. Perhaps while I was an English undergrad and completely bombarded with reading assignments that covered more the breadth than the depth of the literary canon. It was certainly during this time that I found myself drawn to the writings of early 21st-century authors