Today Jama Rattigan interviews me--and Echo--on her blog:

http://jamarattigan.com/2014/03/07/friday-feast-chatting-with-barbara-etlin-about-antique-piano-other-sour-notes/

I just wasted two hours of my life watching a horror movie on tv.

While I liked part of the premise, a teen girl who foresees disastrous fatal accidents just before they happen, this movie was one of the worst I've ever seen. M and I kept debating whether or not to turn it off, but we persisted because we wanted to see what happened.

Writer, you ( Read more... )

This post  from my LJ friend, Tracy, reminded me about a dliemma that has bothered me for a while. Yes, it's a lovely writing quote and I took it humorously as Tracy and Hemingway intended. But...

I wonder, can you love a writer's work but not the person behind the words?

Hemingway is one of my favourite authors.
Besides a troublesome attitude towards ( Read more... )

The editor of Danse Macabre said that

the fortieth issue,
the current one whichfeatures three of my poems,

is the
 best read, most visited issue
ever!

Thanks for clicking on that link!

Look at this:

http://www.thenovellive.org/novel/live/

Thirty-six novelists collaborate on live camera to write a novel in six days.

You can watch them in action from 10 am to 10 pm, October 11-16.

TURN ON THE TV NOW!

Today on CBS "Sunday Morning" some time between 9:00 and 10:30 am EST, there will be a feature on the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop.

You may just catch a glimpse of me or M in a background shot! Or maybe even a few seconds of M's standup performance!!! (He's wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and black vest.)

Even if we're not ( Read more... )

Not everything is a tulip.


( Read more... )

... stands for

Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop

Guess who attended it this year? Both M and I!


( Read more... )

The February 8 issue of The New Yorker has three personal essays about J.D. Salinger and his writing.

"Postscript: J.D. Salinger" by Adam Gopnik captures what I feel about why Salinger's short stories and especially his one novel, The Catcher in the Rye, are still read and loved 40 plus years after Salinger stopped publishing his writing.

There's ( Read more... )

February 1985

My mother said,
"Why isn't your name on the cover? Why isn't your name in bigger letters?"


( Read more... )