Here is a link to my new essay in The Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/finding-inspiration-in-century-old-travel-stories/2020/06/25/915c671e-b49b-11ea-a8da-693df3d7674a_story.html#comments-wrapper

This thing weighs about a thousand pounds. Why I still have it, I have no idea!

I am sharing some of the writerly memorabilia and paintings I have collected over the decades… “Lady Reading in the Garden” by William Pratt (Scotland, 1855-1936)

I have so many writing notebooks from over the years, and every now and then I love to go through them and see what jumps out at me as possible inspiration. I especially like to write down quotes from other writers, or lines from books or essays or short stories.  Here is a favorite one from Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange) that I just unearthed from an old notebook. Since many of my short stories involve dead husbands, I particularly love this: “The best first thing to do, when you’ve got a dead body and it’s your husband’s on the kitchen floor, and you don’t know what to do about it, is to make yourself a good strong cup of tea.”

Perfect British understatement…