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Email: bawriting@earthlink.net
Phone: 562 628-9688

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Welcome to My Wordy Life

For as long as I can remember, I've been besotted by words, in love with the English language. My parents read to me (as I read to my son) practically from the moment of my birth, and when I learned to read, I always received books for Christmas and my birthday and had finished reading them within the week. I still have some of my childhood books: old editions of Little Women, Grimms' Fairy Tales, Andrew Lang's fairy books, Hans Brinker, The Wizard of Oz, all the Nancy Drew and Cherry Ames books. My mother was a member of the Literary Guild and because she never got around to sending the post cards back, I got to read her books, too. (I learned early on how to climb up and get the ones on the top shelves.) She gave me her official permission to read Gone With the Wind when I was eleven. Boy, was that an eye-opener for a naïve little girl! My parents also bought my brother and me The Book of Knowledge; I read straight through all twenty volumes. 

Yeah. I have been, as they say, bookish all my life. Today, of course, I spend most of my time editing and writing. 

Let Me Be Your Editor 

Learn about the skills I offer as a freelance editor. I invite you to explore this web site and see what I've written and what I can do to help you write your own book or article or thesis. You can read samples of my novels (including a so-far unpublished one) and short fiction elsewhere on this site. Read excerpts from my books, a few of my magazine articles, and some of my poetry. If you want to write a book of your own, comment on my books or other work, or talk about Shakespeare or musical theater, please send me an email. 

Note: if you like my work and want to use it, please do not just copy and paste. As I have to explain from time to time to an author whose work I'm editing, copying and pasting someone else's copyrighted work without their permission is plagiarism. Which is against the law. Which can get you an F in your class. Which can get you prosecuted. It's usually easy to get permission to reproduce someone else's copyrighted work: just ask. If you want to reproduce anything on my site anywhere else, please send me an email and ask. I'll no doubt tell you I'm honored that you like what I've written and then tell you how to give me proper credit.

What's New

I'm adding new material to this site when the sun sign changes every month. What's new this month? A new blog about creativity and my annual goal board, which is one way my own creativity flows out of me. Four new dates from Pagan Every Day, including my take on the sun entering Aquarius, plus Hildegard of Bingen, Titans and Titanesses, and Wonder Woman. The Found goddesses of Wall Street and bad housekeeping. My new blog on the Feathered Quill site.

Come back next month and see what's new!

New Blogs, New Stories 

As I tell people, ideas just keep sleeting through my head (I stole this phrase from Terry Pratchett -- thanks, Terry) and sooner or later I get them down on paper or into the computer. That's what I'll be doing as I update this web site every month. Watching the sleet.

Restarting Creativity with the New Year

Posted on January 22, 2010 | Read full article

Circle_lightbox2 I like to start the new year restarting my creativity. Not just in my work with the authors whose books I’m editing, not by making resolutions—stop eating junk food, be nicer to my neighbors, wash the kitchen floor … you know the drill—but by doing something creative. Since childhood, creativity has always been important to me. I was forever writing stories, drawing pictures, running around with my little Brownie camera (yes, I had a real Brownie), inventing games. It seems like half the events in my life turned into stories. When my brother joined the Boy Scouts, I had to write a story that I called “My Life as a Boy Scout.” I tried to sell it to Boys’ Life. Early rejection slip.