Category: Writing
While the music played she placed an arm protectively across her abdomen and began to chat unabashedly with the embryo about the normalcy of her background among skyscrapers versus its paternal background of palm trees and freeways, when there was a buzz at the door. It was her mother, in…
Oh babies you know the story, but for those who don’t, a short recap. Once upon a time Vickie Lester had agents who turned down one publishing deal and proposed another with a small indie firm that sounded just right. So, the wheels were in motion as 2013 turned into…
In case you’ve forgotten the first few pages, click here. You Don’t Own Me By Vickie Lester Late in the summer following her sophomore year, Billie Price was living in the Beverly Hills home of a blonde former figure skater. This photogenic darling of Orange County had risen from championship…
You Don’t Own Me By Vickie Lester The first roof over her head that summer was courtesy of a friend of friend who was house-sitting in a red brick colonial on a leafy street in Brookline. The house’s owner, a Political Science professor, little suspected that his home was harboring…
Siddons dominated the female tragic roles on the English stage for over 30 years. Her stately performances in the most immediate of art forms articulated the eighteenth century’s ideal of the sublime, and her representations of the classical passions, in combination with her outwardly virtuous private life, won over audiences…
“Walk! Not bloody likely. I am going in a taxi.” This famous line from George Bernard Shaw‘s Pygmalion was first spoken by Mrs Patrick Campbell in the original production in 1914. At the time she was almost 50 years old and yet she was considered such a distinctive actress that…
I suppose when that hashtag phrase is employed it’s meant to convey work on some literary or journalistic enterprise…for me it’s come to mean this: blogging. I had a letter from someone this morning inquiring why people close off access to their websites, make them private, or stop blogging. I…
Through the open top of the shade, the lamp cast its beams upon a wall entirely corrugated by the backs of books, all bound. The opposite wall was yellow, the dirty yellow of the paper-backed volumes, read, re-read and in tatters. A few “Translated from the English”—price, one franc twenty-five—gave…