I have just finished the first draft of my new novel. It is out to beta readers now. Here is the synopsis: Sometimes life gives you a second chance for happiness and it’s worth fighting for. Jo is an environmental attorney in Washington D.C. battling corporate polluters. Lauren is a young British woman just discovering her sexual identity. They meet in a pub in London in 1981 and have a brief and torrid affair. But ambition, the ocean and immigration barriers prevent a lasting relationship. Despite this, and both having other partners, they keep in touch. Twenty-two years later, they meet aga ..read more

Last night I got to reflect on my journey from attending my first Pacific Northwest Writers Association conference virtually in 2020 as a completely novice writer to becoming a 2023 finalist for the Nancy Pearl Best Book Award for Memoir. It was also affirming to see thirty copies of Making the Rounds put out for sale by Barnes and Noble right up front in the exhibit hall. I went from an avid attendee at PNWA workshops soaking up new knowledge to this year’s PNWA presenter of a workshop on writing memoir. I also gave four twenty-minute workshops on determining the arc of your story that were ..read more

The highlight of this four-day national conference on the shores of the Olympic Peninsula was meeting new friends. I volunteered to be a mentor and was thrilled to be paired with a young internal medicine intern who had read Making the Rounds and was training in Boston at Massachusetts General, She has an interest in writing and even with her busy schedule, hopes to have some pages to share with me. I brought a box of Making the Rounds with me and sold all of them with the proceeds to benefit the WIM scholarship fund. Very touching was the last night when some former mentees shared what their ..read more

In the early 1980s, I joined a mostly all-male multispecialty clinic to set up a new program in my specialty. As a leader, I aggressively advocated for resources and recognition. After a few months, the Chief of Medicine called me into his office to admonish me that to be more effective, I should to “go to charm school”. Yesterday’s article in the New York Times reminded me of this. Adam Grant cites numerous studies showing that women are more effective and better liked by their male bosses and peers when they use weak language. “Disclaimers (I might be wrong, but…), hedges (maybe, sort of ..read more

“I can’t imagine writing about my intimate life for public consumption,” several of my friends have told me. It is indeed scary to leave yourself open for judgment. Self-disclosure of our intimate feelings might happen in the privacy of our homes but not often on the page, not for anyone outside of our trusted circle to read. As women who love women, society has marginalized us for so long that disclosing intimate details of our personal lives feels dangerous and rightly so. We may fear fallout from our families or even from our friends, should we reveal too much of our inner lives and the fu ..read more

Recently, at the urging of my friend, Barb, I listened to Terry Gross of NPR interview Marijane Meaker, a pioneer of lesbian pulp fiction. Listen to the interview here. I asked Barb to give me her thoughts on what pulp fiction meant to her as a young lesbian just coming out. How I Found Myself in 50’s Pulp Fiction Barb Glenn "When I came out, in 1976, in Champaign, Illinois, at the age of twenty-one, I knew only two lesbians, both high school friends. Other than M. and J., I’d never known any lesbians. I came out into what I felt like a hidden world. My first foray was to a women’s dance in an ..read more

Both my grandmothers were born in the 1870s. Grandmother Gray had two years of college and was a school teacher in Arizona before she married. Grandmother Hall also had some college and was a school teacher in Washington State before she married. Both were intelligent and limited in their options as women. I wonder what they'd have accomplished if born a century later. My pen name, Patricia Grayhall is in honor of my grandmothers ..read more

The desire to review and make sense of my life through memoir writing arose when my partner and I were downsizing. Coming across my old journals from the seventies, I sat down to read. As the fire crackled in the wood stove, I became so absorbed that I forgot to put on another log. I read late into the evening and all the next day. Tears occasionally blurred my vision. When I’d finished, I announced to my partner I was going to write a book. “About life, love, and medicine in the sixties and seventies,” I explained. “Coming out as a lesbian and training to be a doctor when it was a nearly all ..read more

My grandfather was born in the mid-1870s on a farm in Iowa, the eighth child of ten. His mother died (presumably of exhaustion) when he was a child. He put himself through medical school working as a waiter, then migrated to the Pacific Northwest to serve a small timber community as the only doctor for miles around. He was a beloved physician who often did not charge his patients experiencing hard times and cared for some in his own home. He doctored the community through the great flu pandemic of 1918 and two world wars. Though my grandfather died when I was only four years old, my emotional ..read more

I pass by my dog’s bed in the living room and look down at him. He gazes up at me with his soulful brown eyes, the whites showing in a rim under the brown. He looks innocent, trusting, adoring. I notice his eyebrows need to be trimmed. I kneel on his bed and lay my head on the ruff around his neck while stroking his charcoal-colored fur. He makes soft little grunting sounds, acknowledging our connection. I lift my head and stare into his liquid brown eyes. Politely, he turns away and lays his head down. He is old and tired, but can I bear to put him down? Thirteen years ago, I decided I had b ..read more