I arrived at God’s house and found Him truant - Dean R. Krosecz, Tsunamis Dean Krosecz never imagined himself as a Christian. After he became one, he never dreamed he’d one day reject the supernatural in his desire for a more perfect love. But that’s exactly what happened. As a child Dean lived in an unhinged household. His dad, a member of the outlaw motorcycle club, the Cossacks, left when Dean was eighteen months old. With little supervision, Dean roamed the alleys looking for trouble. By the time he was a teenager he was immersed in drug and alcohol abuse. At seventeen Dean joined the Air ..read more

Each time I finish a great memoir, I always ask myself, what made this one work? In Following Atticus, it’s clear that Tom Ryan figured out how to make this book work on multiple levels. When Ryan is seven, his mother dies in a horrible accident. His dad, overwhelmed by her death and too many children to care for (nine), he shuts down emotionally. Ryan is the youngest and perhaps feels the loneliness and anger of his father most of all. Instead of making this the central story, however, Ryan brilliantly weaves it into a much larger story. Ryan buys a wonderful little dog, who becomes the hero ..read more

It’s unfortunate when you emigrate halfway across the globe with your Italian wine-making skills, only to find there’s a growing movement in your adopted homeland of America to ban alcohol sales. That’s what happened to author Kevin Ferguson’s great-grandfather, John Gemello, in the early part of the twentieth century. It was 1914 and Gemello had just run into an old buddy, Giovanna Beltramo, from Piedmont, Italy. They just happened to be in the same little tavern in the same little town in Northern California. What were the chances? Beltramo, more than twenty years older than Gemello, had est ..read more

If you like to win free, signed copies of memoirs from lots of different authors, then you need to sign up RIGHT THIS MINUTE for my newsletter at http://eepurl.com/h340Ib - or you can sign up from any page of my website, including this one. Here’s a preview of what’s coming up THIS WEDNESDAY: How does a mother cope when two of her three daughters face insurmountable obstacles? Read my interview with J Mark Stacy as she tells her heartbreaking, yet hopeful, story. Her book, Tapped and Skipped, tells of a daughter’s descent into the hell of schizophrenia, just as she nearly lost another daughter ..read more

There’s a misconception about memoir writers in general that bugs me. It’s that we all write to process our pain. Here’s the truth, though: many of us, perhaps most of us, write for the same reason everyone else writes: to share a story. To make people laugh and cry. To offer up a world that’s different from the one in which our readers live. To take people away from their own problems for a little while. We write because we love art and because we believe our stories are art. Or at least that we can construct them artfully. We write because some particular story won’t let us alone. It tugs at ..read more

Last week I traveled to New York City for a writer’s conference. After paying fifty dollars for a short taxi ride from the airport to the hotel, and feeling the culture shock of being surrounded by all that concrete, I posted the picture shown here on Facebook and mentioned that I dislike New York City. Actually, I said I hated it. With some venom. But seriously, that isn’t entirely true. I’m just not a city person. I dislike noise and crowds. I love nature. I live on forty acres in the country right outside the Shawnee National Forest, next to a string of orchards and the Southern Illinois wi ..read more

The swells jostled Doug and Ray’s patrol boat as they surveyed the disaster in front of them. Two fishermen had wedged a sixty-five foot boat in between two boulders and the boat was quickly being torn to pieces. Doug saw two men clinging frantically to the rail, screaming for help. The area in which the men had wrecked the boat was a morass of jagged rocks. That, and the storm, made it nearly impossible for Doug and Ray to get their patrol boat close enough to rescue the two men. Finally, they spotted a small area of the sea that looked calm enough to draw a little closer, at least long enoug ..read more

Come on a writing/reading journey with me by signing up for my very first newsletter! Here’s what’s in it for you: A chance to submit your own mini-memoir. The winner receives a free book and publication in the following month’s newsletter. A “behind the scenes” discussion with my author of the month. A quiz to help you determine if you have what it takes to become a writer. I’ll examine a different, important aspect of writing each month. Looking for a great market for your memoir? Find magazine and book publishers who are looking for memoirs right now. If you follow me on Twitter, you’re pro ..read more

If you have ever known anyone who died in the coal mines, please add your brief memory after you read this. From 1838 to the middle of the twentieth century, when approximately a half million men were working in the coal mines in the United States, nearly 30,000 men died. They were crushed by roof falls, burned in fires, drowned, fell to their deaths down mine shafts, and were blown apart by dynamite blasts and explosions. In the early years, immigrants often weren't counted. Bodies were never found because there was nothing left to be found. Men who died trying to form a union weren’t counted ..read more

Some months ago I read a book - or at least I read part of it - by an author who was writing about childhood trauma. About thirty pages in I was emotionally exhausted, and another thirty pages found me questioning the story. I had no reason, really, to doubt the author’s truthfulness but as I stopped to skim her book reviews, I discovered that a lot of other readers felt the same way I did. Why is this? Here’s why: few, if any, children grow up without some kind of joy or friendship or love or hope, and a writer who doesn’t acknowledge this risks losing the trust of their readers. So as you wr ..read more