Category Archives: Writing

Aging is the most beautiful, life-affirming, wondrous, spiritual, uh…wondrous…

5 Replies

Aging as a woman is thrilling, exciting, invigorating, life-affirming, and super cool.  With my 39th birthday arriving on the first day of summer, I am finding myself ever-enthralled with the changes I’m seeing in my face, my hair, my skin, as I mature. Woo!

I’m just like Gwyneth Paltrow, who said, “I like being older. It’s nice to really know yourself and feel relaxed. And I actually think I look better now than I did when I was 24, so I’m very comfortable with myself.”

Exactly! I was hideous as a 20-something. Ask anyone. Almost-40 is the bomb diggety doo (or whatever the kids are saying now). Continue reading →

On writers reviewing writers: We probably shouldn’t. But–

1 Reply

When I learned that an author I’ll call Ms. Y had a son in the Army, I asked her if she might be interested in reading Pretty Much True… . (At the time, it hadn’t yet been placed with a publisher and was just sitting around in my computer doing nothing.) She responded with “Yes,” but she also asked if I was looking for an endorsement. Continue reading →

The “reader” interview with author Elisa Lorello

Leave a reply

Writers interview other writers all the time about their upcoming or current projects.

But when the writers conducting the interviews are also creative writers, the questions can sometimes get a little too “Tell me about your process.” A little too “What do you, as a writer, think about the great art of writing?” It becomes (frankly) a big writer circle j–well, back-patting circle Continue reading →

Healthful adjustment? Nuns say chiropractic offered relief from debilitating symptoms.

Leave a reply

Originally published in the Journal Inquirer March 5, 2013
By Kristen J. Tsetsi

Dr. Sousa & Sister Monica MarySister Monica Mary Kvasnik, a member of the Sisters of Charity of Our Lady Mother of the Church, says her neurologist was surprised when she told him the neuromuscular disorder he’d said was incurable had stopped producing symptoms following adjustments from a chiropractor.

“His mouth kind of just dropped open and he turned beet red. At first he was really upset that I was going to a chiropractor,” she says, “but when he heard my reasoning…”

Continue reading →

FREE KINDLE BOOK this weekend, Feb. 23/24!

Leave a reply

Pretty Much True…, recently featured on Faith Middleton’s Book Show (NPR), is free on Kindle this weekend.

I’m a fan of free things. And if you are, too, pick up a free copy of Pretty Much True…! (Live in the UK? Here’s yours.)

Promotion ends Sunday, Feb. 24. I hope you’ll take advantage!

Pretty Much True...I’ll be honest: this isn’t the sort of book I go for, but I’ve been trying to step out of my comfort zone when it comes to fiction, and in this case, I’m glad I did. Pretty Much True… challenges the typical definition of a war novel. – Todd Keisling

If novels were people, Pretty Much True… would be the love child of The Bell Jar and The Things They Carried. –UnfunnyMe‘s TMarie

There are few stories written from the point of view of a loved one back home waiting, and waiting some more, not knowing if or how the soldier will return home. Perhaps that’s because so few have found an interesting way to write such a story, but that has changed, thanks to Kristen Tsetsi. – Carol Hoenig, the Huffington Post

Catfishing: Don’t blame the victim

3 Replies

Originally published in the Journal Inquirer Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2013
By Kristen J. Tsetsi

(c) US Magazine

(c) US Magazine

Sometime during the 2013 Superbowl broadcast, former Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o deleted his Twitter account, according to a Feb. 6 ESPN.com report. It’s not known if his decision was made because of the media’s reaction to Te’o’s claims that he was a victim of “catfishing,” slang for impersonating or misrepresenting oneself online with an intent to deceive.

The overall response from the media was to question and/or criticize Te’o’s two-year relationship with a woman he’d never met in person and who was later discovered to have been a man playing a female role online. Continue reading →

If you’ve read Todd Keisling’s A Life Transparent, you know what true Yawning is.

1 Reply

Todd Keisling

What I mean is, if you’ve read the first book in his Monochrome series, you know what a life-yawn is — that all-consuming swell of MEH that rises from the depths of your dissatisfied soul. You know it because that’s what Keisling’s protagonist, Donovan Candle, is experiencing in the early pages of A Life Transparent. But then, slowly and tauntingly, the reality Donovan has come to know begins to flicker in and out, the “out” portions introducing a new, frightening – but exciting, at least – world: the Monochrome.

Continue reading →

Fort Bragg spouses only following the “Army Wife Creed” by discriminating against gay couple

2 Replies

In December of last year, a Fort Bragg, N.C. spouse club denied membership to Ashley Broadway, spouse of Lt. Col. Heather Mack.

In their defense (and apparently, Fort Bragg leaders ["leaders" used loosely] agree), their refusal to accept her into their special club is legal (and “legal,” as we know, is synonymous with “morally sound”), because a department-wide directive drafted in 2008 Continue reading →