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Last week I disclosed my dilemma in combining two short novels, A Southern Girl and Just a Dance, into the single story they cried out to be. The solution was neither painless, nor quick, nor even mine. Dante famously warned at the gateway to his Inferno, “Abandon all hope, you who enter here,” and I had abandoned all hope of getting A Southern Girl published. But in 2012, I appeared with Pat Conroy at the Savannah Book Festival. Pat always draws a large crowd, and the crowd

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"Wyatt Durrette has been a friend, a mentor and an inspiration to me for almost four decades. He is also one fine reader, whose suggestions have made me a better writer. The adoption fictionalized in A Southern Girl had its roots in our friendship with Wyatt, and his daughter is the remarkable woman he describes." --John GUEST BLOG by Wyatt Durrette I should have known in January 1975 when Shannon arrived from Korea in the blizzard-shrouded Philadelphia airport that nothing a

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San Miguel de Allende was recently named the world’s number 1 city in a Conde Nast survey of its readers. That’s right, NUMBER ONE!! Paris? An also-ran. London? Chopped fish ‘n chips. New York? Forgettaboutit! No one here takes this coronation particularly seriously except the mayor, who is widely believed to have higher political goals. The city dates from the year 1541. In the decades following the Cortez invasion, it became a significant way-station along the roads connect

Last week I wrote about our move to Mexico in 1993, a move that promised to give me the time to write the next novel at hours later than 4 a.m. to 7 a.m. I should say a bit more about that decision. Why Mexico? The three most compelling reasons were culture, distance and dollars. As long as we were planning to be gone for a year with our two younger children, ages 14 and 13, we wanted a cultural experience that broadened the horizons of all four of us. Barbara and I felt the

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When I left you last week I was on the cusp of literary stardom with my first novel, Bethesda’s Child. I had what I had been assured was a very good story, one of the top literary agents in New York had signed me up as a client, and the timing of the genetic science, which anticipated issues and tensions springing to world consciousness a few years later when Dolly the Sheep was created (invented?) seemed perfect. All the elements had fallen into place for a best seller with

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As Easter approaches, I’m reminded of one of my mother’s most enduring gifts. Like most of her generation, she handed down to her grandchildren silver flatware, some furniture that would have impressed few on the Antiques Roadshow, and hug-infused unconditional love. Late in life, she took up ceramics, a soothing, stress-free hobby that produced Easter rabbits for each of my children. Each displays the grandchild’s name in her still-respectable print. Each contained a recepta