Recently I was given an example of the adage, “Less is more. ”  One of my memoir writing  students, whose parents had been Holocaust survivors, was describing the way they discovered that the family left behind in Germany had been killed. This was something she could have taken countless pages to write, but she chose to do it in just six words:  Letters stopped coming. Then we knew.

How much tragedy is conveyed in those brief commonplace words, rather than diluting the impact with decorative adjectives. It’s similar to a line in the Bible that I’ve always admired, about Jacob’s overwhelming grief when his beloved wife Rachel died. No “tears streamed down his cheeks” or breast-beating language, but the simple: Jacob wept.

How much each of us might communicate in a few words, whether we’re writing or talking, rather than rambling on and on. I’m not dismissing the power of lengthy novels in genius hands (Proust is safe!) Yet, as I often find in my own work, a story may improve surprisingly when it’s stripped to essentials.

No less an authority than Ernest Hemingway agreed. Legend has it that he wagered he could write a complete story in just six words. He won his bet with the terse: For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.

(I can’t resist adding a more acidic example by Canadian author Margaret Atwood:  Longed for him. Got him. Shit.)

Compared to such compression, being assigned 20 words seems expansive. That was the challenge given the brilliant writer and translator, Lydia Davis. After what she admitted was considerable revising she came up with:
I am happy the leaves are growing large so quickly. Soon they will hide the neighbor and her screaming child.
An intriguing scene in what was literally a very small space – for the assignment was for the label on a mouthwash bottle!

Since brevity is the soul of whatever, I’ll end here. (10 words)

Comments welcome! Send to annehosansky.com
Books: ROLE PLAY and TEN WOMEN OF VALOR – Available at CreateSpace.com and Amazon.com. Also Amazon Kindle.
WIDOW’S WALK – iUniverse.com
TURNING TOWARD TOMORROW- Xlibris.com

I’ve just made a punctuation discovery that I’d never realized before. The apostrophe in Mother’s Day makes it one mother’s day, not a day for all mothers — although, of course, it’s designed to be.

This seemingly slight difference punctuates a truth: not all mothers feel grateful for this enforced holiday. Yes, there’s many a fortunate woman with Hallmark gratification that her son or daughter remembered her, with a bouquet or trinket or candy or whatever. Even a phone call might be special in some families!

On the other hand there some (many?) women who are disdainful of the holiday or feel guilty because they find the day difficult. Perhaps offspring are far away, emotionally as well as geographically. So Mother’s Day becomes something to get through, rather than a celebration. (On the other side, children can have conflicts about compulsory homage – but that’s for another blog.)

We should also remember that there are too many women who have lost their  own mother or a child, and who would rather tear the month of May off the calendar than be reminded by this day – as if grief needs any reminding.

But between the Hallmark smiles and bitter sadness there’s a whole spectrum of mixed feelings. Because the truth is that very few of the famed relationships between Mother and Daughter- or Son – are 100% black or white . There are numerous shades of conflicted feelings on both sides. I vividly recall a woman telling me about a fight with her adolescent daughter, who then sent her a note to say, I hate you. Love, Becky.

So I was gratified when one of my memoir writing students wrote her own candid view of the day. Her name is Toby Kass, and she’s a mother and grandmother. She came into my class a little over a year ago, confessing that she’d “never written anything but grocery lists.” She then stunned the class by writing with exceptional candor and talent. Here’s an excerpt from her frank comments about Mother’s Day.

This Mother’s Day has a new meaning – a different feeling. I remember becoming a mother as being the most significant event of my life. . . .But, as with all things, Mother’s Day has changed. My children are now 50 years old or close to it. Although I still hold the title of “Mother,” it is from a distance. Everyone is involved in their own life and family. It’s as if I’ve been retired from a job I loved. My children and grandchildren always make sure I know I’m thought about and loved – but the involvement is peripheral.   This is the scheme of life – all things come and go.  My plight is not unique and my plate is certainly not empty. In my head, I know this is natural. But sometimes my head and heart are not in sync.

To all of us struggling for that “sync,” and for acceptance of the way things must change, I wish a peaceful Sunday. Go to a movie, treat yourself to a massage, splurge on chocolates,  confide your feelings ¬ whatever they are ¬ to your journal. And remember: Monday’s around the corner.

Comments welcome! Send to annehosansky.com

Books: ROLE PLAY  and TEN WOMEN OF VALOR – Available at CreateSpace.com and Amazon.com. Also Amazon Kindle.

 WIDOW’S WALK – iUniverse.com

TURNING TOWARD TOMORROW– Xlibris.com

I’ve never been one to dissect every word for hidden meanings (unless it’s a message from my children!). But I was intrigued when I recently heard a lecturer analyze a seemingly simple sentence: ”Listen to her voice.”

That’s actually from the Bible, which I had too little acquaintance with until a few years ago when I discovered the first Biblical heroines. (I wrote about those remarkable women in my book, Ten Women of Valor.) So I recognized the sentence this lecturer was referring to. It was said when Sarah, the first matriarch, demanded that her husband, Abraham, banish his first–born son and the woman who had given birth to him. Since Abraham loved this son, Ishmael, he was understandably conflicted. According to the Bible, that’s when God told him he should listen to Sarah’s voice.

To me , that’s a perfectly clear order. But the lecturer asked: “Why voice ? Why not her words?”

It seems that the difference is that words are utterances between people, but not necessarily what someone is feeling beneath the surface. Sarah’s spoken request was strong and demanding. But beneath this assertive speech, were fear about what she saw as a threat to her own son and anguish about this other woman. She was too proud to tell her husband, “I’m scared and heartsick.” Fortunately for her, he listened beyond the words and heard the fear and pain in her voice.

It may seem hair-splitting to quibble about the difference between voice and words, but I leapfrogged to a connection with writing. (So many paths lead to writing with me.) Too often we fill our stories, poems, even letters, with excess verbiage, when it would be better to allow room for the underlying meaning to come through. I still have to guard against a tendency to spell out every nuance, as if the reader won’t get the meaning if I don’t. In my long-ago college days, a savvy writing teacher drew huge red X’s through some of my paragraphs and wrote: Trust Your Reader.

Years later this advice was echoed in different words in a writers’ group I shared with science fiction author Carol Emshwiller. In the barrage of comments thrown at me after I finished reading my latest (wordy) effort, Carol said simply,  “The most important thing in a story is the space between the lines.”

Haunting advice, “trust” and “space.”  Or is it Trust Space?

Since there couldn’t be more astute advice, I won’t add extra words to this blog!

WEBSITE: www.annehosansky.com

BOOKS:   ROLE PLAY and TEN WOMEN OF VALOR -CreateSpace.com, Amazon.com and Amazon Kindle.  TURNING TOWARD TOMORROW – xLibris.com;  WIDOW’S WALK – iUniverse.com

It’s finally over – that loved and lauded TV hit,”Downton Abbey.”(Over except for what will probably be endless reruns and, invariably, a movie.) What lingers for addicts like myself isn’t just the memory of living vicariously in the Edwardian age, with those oh- so-elegant costumes and table manners. What also lingers, especially for writers, are numerous witty echoes. (The Dowager’s ”What’s a weekend?” seems to be the most quoted.)

However, amid all the memorable lines, I’m haunted by one from the final episode: “Your Mary isn’t my Mary.” A riddle? Not at all. Merely that Lady Mary’s new husband sees her as a warm passionate woman, generous-hearted with the servants — while her brother-in- law knows first-hand Mary’s snobbery, coldness and cruelty to her sister. Actually, both men are seeing the real Mary, just opposite sides of her.

How many of us have at least one person in our life whom we find difficult and whom we could describe in negative terms? My father, for a personal instance, I would describe as taciturn, stern, morose. Yet, as I discovered at his funeral, a friend who’d known him for decades recalled a man with a great, if cynical, sense of humor, who was devoted to his mother and sister. Which image was right? Both of them – for if there are the proverbial two sides to a coin, there are certainly multiple sides to every person.

In my youthful “other life” as an actor, I was taught that to enact a villain believably, I had to find something good in her. Just as when playing a “goody-goody” heroine it enriched the performance to inject some not so nice traits. I later learned that this applies to writing, as well. To portray someone as “good” or “bad,” is to confine that character to one dimension – which is simplistic and also makes the story less interesting.

Since I’m addicted to journaling, I confess that when I have difficulty with someone in my life, writing about that person from my own angry view, and then from the imagined view of someone who admires that same person, is an effective way to recognize an inescapable truth: none of us is either/or.

WEBSITE: www.annehosansky.com

BOOKS : Role Play and Ten Women of Valor – both available at CreateSpace.com, Amazon.com and Amazon Kindle. Widow’s Walk– iUniverse.com.  TurningToward Tomorrow – xLibris.com.

If we’re attempting to assemble a gadget we can follow step-by-step directions. Unfortunately, creativity doesn’t work that orderly way. It’s more like stop, go, revise, reverse, round-about. That might make an intriguing board game, but it’s sheer frustration for writers and artists. (Actually writers are artists, too!) The creative process is typically “disorganized” because it reflects “our chaotic and multifaceted nature.” That’s the opinion of Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire, in their recently published book, WIRED TO CREATE. Given all the detours, how and when your work might be completed is “uncontrollable.”

George R. R. Martin, author of the fantasy series Game of Thrones, was up against this as he struggled to produce the sixth book in the series. This January he missed his deadline – for the second time. As he candidly blogged to his faithful fans, “Truth be told, sometimes the writing goes well and sometimes it doesn’t.”

I have yet to discover an express route for this. It still amazes me that I can realize my manuscript needs something different to bring it alive, yet be unable to see through the fog to the solution. This happened most strikingly when I was working on my book about the first ten Biblical heroines , TEN WOMEN OF VALOR. Halfway through the manuscript , I became painfully aware that it wasn’t what I wanted. There were facts galore, thanks to conscientious research. But I didn’t want the book to be about what these women did, but how they felt. To show that they not only had strong faith, but feelings common to us today: ambition, passion, envy. Yet I couldn’t find my way to this no matter how hard I struggled. Perhaps my Muse took pity on me, because one night as I lay awake wrestling with this dilemma, I seemed to hear her voice whispering, “Why don’t you let these women speak for themselves?” I leaped up, stunned at this new vision. Instead of the author describing in third person the actions of these women, let each woman speak in the first person. The moment I tried this out I knew I’d found the key to the heart and mind of each of these distant ancestors.

I still don’t understand why it took so many blank months before this epiphany. I only know something similar has happened with each of my books. I once heard Canadian author Margaret Atwood talk about the time she was well into one of her novels when she realized she was on the wrong track and would have to start over. “For writers , that’s Tylenol time,” she said.

Like many other things in life — finding the right mate, or a way to connect with your adolescent — it’s a wait-it-out process. You can tell your muse to rush because you have a deadline, but muses don’t obey. It seems there’s nothing we can do about it, unless we give up on art and become accountants. (I’m sure they have their frustrations, too! It isn’t just writing and painting that are loaded with in-born road blocks.)

Reviewing WIRED TO CREATE in The New York Times, Christie Aschwanden labeled all this “The Blessed Mess of Creativity.” Mess, yes. Blessed, we have to believe.

So what can we do about it? We can bang our head against a wall, “rage against the dying of the (creative) light,” and even swear never to write anything again. But none of these would help. The only solution, according to Kaufman and Gregoire, is to accept these aptly named “murky places. ” Ironically, they are where the “creative magic“ may suddenly happen. Eventually, that is.

I try to remind myself this is like the troughs between waves,. Meanwhile, take long walks, chat with friends, stock up on movies, permit your mind to wander freely. And trust that something’s going on beneath the surface. In current parlance, Hang Loose . According to Kaufman and Gregoire, “the ability to tolerate and embrace the discomfort of this process is a hallmark of creative people.”

I just wish that, like my TV remote, there could be an On Demand button !

WEBSITE : annehosansky.com

BOOKS: WIDOW’S WALK – available at iUniverse.com. TURNING TOWARD TOMORROW – xLibris.com.  ROLE PLAY and TEN WOMEN OF VALOR –  CreateSpace.com & Amazon.com. Also Amazon Kindle. 

I live in New York City where we just had a gigantic visitor: Jonas. Otherwise known as the second biggest blizzard in New York history.

These days storms are given popular names. (Why is it necessary to baptize them?) But when it comes to writing or talking about the weather, we cling to clichés. Snow is routinely called cold, damp, white. Why don’t we find more originality? In Alaska, where there’s plenty of the white stuff, the native Inuits have 52 words for snow!

“We’re all susceptible to using clichés, reaching for the easy word or phrase rather than seeking the most accurate, most vigorous one,”  asserts Robert Hartwell Fiske in his thought-provoking book, Thesaurus of Alternatives to Worn-Out Words and Phrases. Browsing through it, I was chagrined to discover how much of my own speech utilizes the over-used. For example, “back to the drawing board,” an act that I proclaim with every revision, is dismissed as a “moribund metaphor.” Nor should I “wash my hands of it,” since that, too, is “moribund “- though Fiske supplies 35 alternatives.

We like to think of ourselves as originals, not carbon copies, so unearthing a store of creative expressions is a good way to start. Since Jonas forced me to hibernate, I used the time to research quotes about snow and found a few that bring it to imaginative life. A “snow- globe world.” That’s Sarah Addison Allen’s description in her book, The Sugar Queen. I’m also delighted by Jamie Mc Guire, author of the best-seller Beautiful Disaster, who saw snowflakes as “politely begging entrance” to the windows they drifted against.

But the most startling declaration I came across was that “snow itself is lonely.” According to famed author/critic/ conservationist Joseph Wood Krutch, it’s lonely because “the whole world seems composed of one thing and one thing only.” On the other hand, he also saw snow as “self-sufficient.”  That’s a challenging combination for those of us engaged in necessarily lonely work like writing, painting, being president, or just coping with living alone. (If only I were ‘self-sufficient” enough not to need to connect with Facebook and LinkedIn some twenty times a day! )

Whether speaking or writing, we can all try to avoid shop-worn expressions and practice being more original. Isn’t this healthier than succumbing to metaphors that are “moribund”?

Comments may be sent to ahosansky@gmail.com.
WEBSITE: www.annehosansky.com
BOOKS: ROLE PLAY – CreateSpace.com & Amazon.com. Also Amazon Kindle. WIDOW’S WALK available through iUniverse.com; TURNING TOWARD TOMORROW – Xlibris.com; TEN WOMEN OF VALOR – -CreateSpace.com, Amazon.com; Amazon Kindle.

My December blog, RING OUT THE OLD, drew scores of intriguing confessions from readers about items they insist on saving, ranging from cocktail napkins with lipstick smears (!) to the dead fuses a Yonkers woman discovered her husband was hoarding. The most common favorite seems to be matchbook covers, hopefully with the matches removed.

My award for oddest item goes to Warren, a displaced New Yorker now living in Florida. A World War Two veteran, Warren recalls than upon being discharged he was permitted to keep his pistol. Even though he stored it on a top shelf in a closet, he was uneasy having a gun in the house (would that more Americans felt that way!). So he turned in the gun at a local police station and was given a receipt. Some 70 years later no one is likely to ask for the gun, but Warren still keeps the faded receipt preserved in a safe deposit box in the bank!

For writers like myself, what we are reluctant to part with is the phrase, sentence or – Muse forbid! – entire chapter, that we discover is wrong for the story. Canadian author Margaret Atwood says she was halfway through writing one of her novels when she realized she was on the wrong track and had to start over. “That’s Tylenol time,” she says.

I ran into a similar trauma when writing my latest book, ROLE PLAY, the fictitious story of an actor. Since I used to be in the theatre in my “other life,” I had dozens of anecdotes I was eager to include. One was about an actor resentful of being cast in a minor role in a production of Summer and Smoke. In his one scene the stage direction read: “Vernon sits.” But that wasn’t enough for this man. He huffed and puffed his way into the chair so dramatically it slid off the platform and left him lopsidedly dangling his legs in the air. (I still remember trying to keep a straight face in view of the hysterical audience!) As amusing as the anecdote is, I had to face the fact that it interrupted an important flow of the chapter. In other words, OUT !  People who don’t agonize over this type of editorial surgery would simply delete. But being a compulsive saver, I created a haven for him (and similar outcasts) in a REJECTS file. Then optimistically added: TEMPORARY.

Months later, I was able to rescue that poor man with his legs dangling in the air, when I added another chapter to the book in which the heroine reminisces about her days in the theatre. He fit into those pages as if he belonged there. However, to be honest, I didn’t just resurrect him. I revised him, trimming what I now realized was unnecessary fat from the anecdote and sharpening the lines. That’s the positive side of the saving coin, for invariably I discover ways a piece can read better.

Actually, I got the idea of how to part with some of my precious words from poet Colette Inez. In a workshop I was fortunate to have with her, she confided that it was painful to part with phrases she thought too beautiful to give up, but that were wrong for the poem. So she decided to store them in a drawer especially reserved for this purpose and, hopefully, use the deletes in a later poem.

Perhaps we should each find a large box to store items we know there’s no rational reason to keep, but that we can’t bear to part with. Looking at them a month or year later may make you realize you didn’t even miss them.

P.S. Saving is also useful with angry letters we write. Putting them on hold, rather than rushing to mail, can result in calmer rewrites and preserve many an endangered relationship!

Comments may be sent to ahosansky@gmail.com.

WEBSITE: www.annehosansky.com
BOOKS: ROLE PLAY – CreateSpace.com & Amazon.com. Also Amazon Kindle. WIDOW’S WALK available through iUniverse.com; “TURNING TOWARD TOMORROW” – Xlibris.com; TEN WOMEN OF VALOR – -CreateSpace.com, Amazon.com; Amazon Kindle.

I recently read about a Latin American New Year tradition of setting fire to dolls stuffed with objects that have bad associations. I want to adopt my own version, one that involves clearing my home of items that pull me down.

I once gave the students in my memoir writing class an assignment to bring in something that brings up happy memories. But how many of us also store things that bring up memories we’d rather be rid of? (This doesn’t mean parting with reminders of people we’ve loved and lost, for these bring up poignant connections we rightly hold on to.)

But why keep items that reek of failure – or that we’d feel guilty getting rid of? Like my oversized platter with the design of a dead fish, a Christmas gift in lieu of a bonus from an obnoxious executive I worked for. It reminds me of unhappy days at that job, but thriftiness says you don’t throw out a perfectly good platter. Well, why not?

How about the stacks of plastic boxes where I compulsively keep every birthday card I’ve received? It’s one thing to cherish the cards the children created in their kindergarten days (although they’re now way past even college). But faded cards for my 21st birthday, when I barely remember being that young, from equally faded friendships?

Then there’s the misplaced writer’s pride of keeping every version of every story and book I’ve written! My newest book, Role Play, has finally seen the light of day. So why clutter overloaded files with all the unsatisfactory versions that preceded the final one? Or all the maddening corrections that went on between the publishing company and myself? (Correcting REDHEAD from their unfathomable capitalization resulted in Readhead! At which point I recall bursting into tears of frustration.) So why keep this and the collection of similar grim reminders?

Still, nothing compares to the rejection letters we masochistic writers hoard. It’s true that some offer a faint hint of future publication, such as: We’d like to see more of your writing.No matter that it’s obviously a form letter, since I received exactly the same dead-end wording from eleven other magazines. There are also the outright rejections with their standard – read: unimaginative – phrases (already have similar, doesn’t meet our current needs,etc.) Do I need to be reminded of the times my story was turned away, like a poor little Oliver Twist? I even heard of a woman who papers her room with these rejection letters. Nothing like creating a positive environment for yourself!

I propose raising a glass (one you enjoy holding, not the ugly one bought in a misguided moment at the local flea market) and making a toast to a home cleared of downers. Let’s sing the refrain of an old song: Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative . In this new year let’s try to live surrounded by – buoyed up by – belongings that remind us of joy and hope.

A safe and spacious 2016 to all

Comments welcome: ahosansky@gmail.com.

WEBSITE: www.annehosansky.com

BOOKS: ROLE PLAY – CreateSpace.com & Amazon.com. Also Amazon Kindle. WIDOW’S WALK available through iUniverse.com; TURNING TOWARD TOMORROW – Xlibris.com; TEN WOMEN OF VALOR – -CreateSpace.com, Amazon.com; Amazon Kindle.

It may be heralded as the “season to be jolly,” but December can be a dark time for many. Therapists’ offices are filled with those who are suffering from depression. Judith Bristol, a New York therapist, says that the problem is often “S.A.D.” She’s not voicing an emotional comment, but shorthand for Seasonal Affective Disorder, triggered by the short winter days, darkness setting in too early.

We’re surrounded by festive scenes –- glittering department store windows, the dazzling tree in Rockefeller Plaza, holiday songs airing endlessly, Santa coming to town – yet many of us feel blue amidst all this. It’s not helped by a frantic schedule of shopping and hosting. While for those of us whose families are far away, there can be a pervasive sense of loneliness.

I usually fight the doldrums with a pen or computer, for writing lifts my spirits more than almost anything else. (Haagen- Dazs chocolate is a close second.) A depressed mood eats away at my energy, and I find it harder to write when I’m in that state.

It can also affect what I write about. I came across a short story I wrote one winter, that was never published. Rightly so, for it was a dismal view. The story is of a grandmother longing for her young grandchildren, but limited most of the time to “visiting” via Skype. I killed her off at the end, a lonely victim. Recently I wrote a fiercer ending to give her more strength. Sort of my anti-December version. The story may or may not be more successful, but writing it brightened my spirits.

What we write about comes from within us, even if it’s masked as fiction. But what, really, are we trying to say? I find that the most inspiring stories are about people who refuse to be clobbered by foes, without or within. People who determinedly reach for – and risk for – the light.

Which brings me to this week when I’m writing these words. It’s Chanukah, the Jewish “Festival of Lights.” A holiday that commemorates the time 2000 years ago when five courageous Maccabee brothers led a rebellion against a mightier oppressor and won freedom for the Israelites. Reclaiming their Temple, they wanted to light the sacred lamp again, but the enemy had left them only enough untainted oil for one night. As every Jewish child is heartened to learn, the oil miraculously burned for eight nights.

This is the kind of story we need, one that kindles hope. The type of scenario that pulls us up. The “High Noon” sheriff refusing to be cowed when out-numbered by the villains, and almost single-handedly (unbelievably?) beating them.

I’m not propagandizing for happy-ever-after fiction. These stark days, that wouldn’t even be imaginable. But we can create characters who remind everyone that darkness isn’t forever, and strengthen ourselves in the process. Let’s try to live and write as if we believe we have the power to turn on that light.

WEBSITE: www.annehosansky.com
BOOKS: “Widow’s Walk” – iUniverse.com; “Turning Toward Tomorrow” -Xlibris.com; “Ten Women of Valor” and “Role Play” — CreateSpace.com, Amazon & Amazon Kindle

I’ve just finished reading “SPEAK, MEMORY,” Nabokov’s enthralling memoir. I had planned to say that anyone who wants to write a memoir should read it, for this incomparable stylist brings childhood to life with such vivid details.

That’s what I had intended to blog about . But in these tragic days there’s something even more timely to say about Nabokov. He was that currently vilified word, immigrant.

Russian by birth, he came here with his wife and son to find a new home in America. Russian was not an identity guaranteed to get the welcome mat in those days. But imagine how absurd it would have been if we had turned him away, for he’s indisputably one of the great writers of the 20th century.

It’s true that he was already famous, but the list of “ordinary” people who came to America from other lands and made invaluable contributions to our country is longer than space allows. (Weren’t the Pilgrims ‘immigrants”?) Think of the many writers and other artists who fled from Nazi Germany, found sanctuary on our shores, and added immeasurably to our culture.  But think also of what we lost when we denied refuge to so many,  like the desperate Jewish refugees whose ship was infamously turned back.

The media is overflowing with politicians warning about the “danger” of letting today’s refugees into our country, as if every migrant is a potential terrorist. Recently the papers related the story of a family who fled from Syria and finally – after two years of being exhaustively vetted – arrived here, planning to settle in Michigan where they had friends. What were the words of welcome? None. Michigan had closed its doors.

Dangerous people? Look at the photo in the papers. A man, his wife and their four- year- old child. ”We fled from violence,” the woman said. ”We are not looking for more.” To me, they and the multitude of other migrants, are far less threatening than politicians who volley racist words of hate and fear.

Fortunately, that particular family found welcome in Connecticut. . But for every family allowed to come here, how many thousands more find they have left their native land for a no-man’s land where they are shunned and rejected?

What has this got to do with writing (for this is supposedly a writers’ blog)? Everything. For who we are and what we believe are inevitably reflected in our work. Yes I’m afraid of terrorism, yes I travel more anxiously. But I never want fear to corrode the better person I strive to be.

If we kill our own “quality of mercy” something will die within us, and it will barely matter what we hope to write, for the victory will go to the terrorists.

[comments welcome]

WEBSITE: www.annehosansky.com

 BOOKS: WIDOW’S WALK, available at iUniverse.com; ROLE PLAY and TURNING TOWARD TOMORROW, both available at CreateSpace.com, Amazon & Amazon Kindle.