Sheila Curran's Blog, page 3

Father's Day

Manhood 101: Having Your Masculinity and Your Marriage Too

by

Sheila Curran

When it comes to macho, you can't get more manly than my father.  Air Force fighter pilot, Air National Guard Hall of Famer, Golden Gloves boxer.  Kind of a cigar-smoking cross between Robert Duval in The Great Santini and George C. Scott in Patton, except that he'd never be cruel to his children, nor would he have suffered fools gladly enough to make general. 

He's actually more like the late Paul Newman, happily...

Mother's Day: My Way

But Wait, There's More

by

Sheila Curran

When my mother phoned with the news that my sister Cathy had delivered her second child, a boy we'd come to call Tommy, she said, "Sheila, I don't know how she does it!"

    At the time, I didn't think to remind Mom that she'd given birth herself.  If you're doing the math, you're thinking "Right! At least twice."

    The truth is stranger still. My mother had ten labors. Yes. Even back in the Sixties when many Catholics followed the Church's ban...

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Every Christmas I buy books as presents but this past December, as I thought about what to buy, I was stymied by the fact that half my family had Kindles and the other half were probably getting them under the tree.  Suddenly the books I was so happy to personalize to each sister and brother's taste seemed gratuitious, heavy to pack and possibly outmoded.  Multiply this times a zillion and you get the digital revolution, which has pretty much put all of us on PAUSE until we figure out what's...

Reversals of Fortune: Twists of Fate

One year ago today was my last day of treatment for tonsil cancer.  I had been counting down to the date, presuming that, once they stopped aiming death-rays at my poor throat, everything would fall into place.

Here are snapshots of me going into the machine just one last time;

 

 

 

Later that day, because my husband was teaching, my dear friend Jane drove to Gainesville to the

 

 

 

 

 

...whereupon she shoveled me into her car and drove me home.  I discovered several things in the...

There's Even More To Celebrate Than My Paperback Release

A year ago today I was begging my doctors to quit radiating my throat.  I kept saying, "I'm cooked!  I'm done! You're giving me the same radiation as you would a 300 pound truck driver.  Can't we stop?  Please.  Pretty please?

At that point, I was only a few days from the end of treatment, and no, the famous Dr. Mendenhall did not stop but he did give me more pain medicine.  (I was wearing a 100 mcg. Fetnenyl patch that would have felled the aforesaid truck driver.)   Third degree burns to...

Sometimes, Girls DO Just Wanna Have Fun...

   In the new Puritanism, if a book is extremely readable (i.e. accessible) it's also just not good for you in the same way that a more taxing (i.e. boring, difficult, obscure) read would be.  I have friends who are determined members of the 'eat your peas' school of literature. 

Not me.  Not ever. 

I truly want to be entertained.   We have little enough joy in life and if I can enter someone else's dream with their words and not have a Brechtian interruption every few seconds, that's just...

Alright. Here's a second try at the movie trailer. Very s...

Alright. Here's a second try at the movie trailer. Very shortly I will post my blog about Megan Crane's new novel, which I think may just rescue Chick Lit from its premature demise!

This monkey at this typewriter just made her first video ...

This monkey at this typewriter just made her first video trailer. please give me comments, suggestions, etc.

I'll have what she's having

Ok, consider me gobsmacked.  Hank Phillippi Ryan is scaring me.  And I've not even started reading her Agatha-award winning mysteries, which have gotten RAVE reviews from Robert Parker and Sue Grafton.  Four books in the time it took me to learn how to post a blog.  AND..this is the scary part...she is a full-time TV newscaster in Boston with tons o' Emmys to her name!  What is she taking?  May I have some? Please?

 She's also on the board of a jillion important writer's associations and...

Old Dogs, New Tricks

This next paragraph can be skipped.  It consists entirely of a rant, otherwise known as kvetch gone beserk.

For those of you who noticed the strange post with Judi Fennell's adorable face and nothing else, well, it's because TYPEPAD thinks I don't have enough to learn and has changed the way you post.  This week has been nothing but new technologies I can't (and frankly don't wish to) understand.  Big Brother exists except I think he's taken the form of big box stores with spanking new...