Calling all creative minds… Let's novel! National Novel Writing Month is about to begin. This annual event pits you against your inner editor (troublesome fellow: more on him below) to write 50,000 words – the equivalent of a novella – in one month. Millions around...
I tried writing a note to a friend in ze French language. Ouch. We've been studying for months and still, the basic conversations with the front desk at our hotel, or answering people's questions about Catalunya, are so awkward and clumsy I want to press "pause" on...
We made it to Tunis. It's lovely. The weather is divine. Ramon's job looks great, and I can work at his office for now. There's wifi to spare and a cute coffee shop out front, run by a fellow who teases us about our French. But try to get a taxi and... ARGH! The...
T-minus ten and counting. A spectrum – red, yellow and green – illuminates. A traffic rainbow that means turbines are operational. A buzzer squeals overhead: propulsion jets are ignited, pushing 100,000 pounds per square inch against the launch pad. A faint, buffered...
(A story for Chuck Wendig's Flash Fiction contest, based on a randomly selected title, first line, and last lines.) Three days without sleep was the least of my worries. Charlene was out there, slouched in an alley or a flophouse, a needle dangling from a vein,...
ENGLISH ESPAÑOL Last night in Madrid I had my Grand Premiere as an actor. Six women, four different accents in Spanish (Italian, French, Irish and American) and an audience of all our Spanish boyfriends and a couple of weirdos who must have had nothing better to do....
Do what you like When I told my parents I wanted a job where I could do what I like, as a young college graduate with a sociology degree (!), you'd have thought I said I wanted to juggle babies for a living. But they came around, about the time I found a job I liked....
I don't get it. The hipster thing here in Madrid is just massive - without even going into how many beard-trimming, fade-shaving, exaggeratedly side-parting, bangs-gelling barberias there are, I also walk past (and sometimes into, thanks to Ramon) shops selling the...
I haven’t worked for months. No, it's okay. My last months in Colombia were rough – very long hours with several enormous tasks dangling over my head. It was time for a break. Sabbatical - lovely word, right? Leaving Colombia was also a big change for me – because...