Real Life
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For the trip back, we mapped a route that would hit four new state capitals. Number one on the list was Tallahassee, and since no trip to Florida would be complete without visiting Florida-cousins, we coordinated with my sister and her girls to meet us there. As a native Floridian, I was excited to finally…
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On the drive to Panama City Beach, I tasked the children with looking for signs that we were getting closer to Florida. These included things like seagulls, boats, sand, palm trees, and men holding up liquor stores with an alligator as his weapon. We found nearly everything before we’d even left Mississippi, but Margot was…
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Why do you travel? After returning from a three-week vacation to Florida, I decided to take a page from my high school and college students’ playbooks and, instead of reflecting, asked Chat GPT. “Curiosity drives us to see what’s beyond the familiar. We want to understand other cultures, landscapes, foods, languages, and ways of life,”…
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Friends, Family, and Current Residents, I’m always daunted by the Herculean task of condensing the lives of the Millers into two pages. How can all the key events of an entire year fit onto such a small space? An account of the variety and amount of cereal we ate alone would take up an entire
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It’s been a while since I wrote a birth story. Four years. This morning I sat over my breakfast of coffee and eggs and mulled over this fact. For a while, I was turning out a birth story every two years like clockwork: 2015, 2017, 2019. Then nothing. Why did I stop? Was it the
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Friends, Sometimes a year is too much for one Christmas letter to contain–so it is with this year, but I’ll give it a try. Susan found out she’s pregnant with baby #4! That’s probably the lead. We found out over the summer in between one of our many trips. Susan came up with the tummy
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This June, I had the honor of traveling the state of Kansas to offer a mystery writing workshop. I spent a good deal of time back in September and October setting this up, but I think it was well worth it. We visited TEN libraries across the state of Kansas! While I failed to take
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I received my first print publication of a short story last month—six months after my debut novel came out. Go figure! I was always told to focus on the short form before venturing into writing a novel. Read “The Opening of a New Spy Novel by an Author You Love” online at Calliope on the…
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Friends, If COVID in 2020 was a roaring lion that broke down our door, maimed us, and left us collecting disability, COVID in 2021 has been a lamb braying incessantly. At least for us. Last year, we continued to wear masks and practice social distancing in our respective schools, but with the advent of vaccines
Steven J Kolbe 