About this Blog

Just the Write Touch explores my life as a writer. I used to think of myself as more of a reader than a writer, but I've discovered the two are inseparable. I can't read something without wanting to comment or question or even argue. Most authors I read, however, are dead or otherwise inaccessible. So I write. Margin notes, post-it notes, short paragraphs in a file I keep called -- how original can you get? -- 'Notes.'

For the past couple of decades, however, I have made stabs at initiating the conversation, beginning with a number of short stories published in Pockets® and other magazines for children and later moving into writing for newspapers, writing church services and dramas, and writing academic papers.

Not many people have written back. I treasure the responses I've received from the few who have. Then again, I haven't taken out an ad in the New York Times listing my phone number or address and making myself generally accessible. This blog, which I began when I went off to seek my master's degree as a Knight Foundation Fellow in Community Journalism in 2007, and my Facebook page, begun in 2008, are about as public as I've gotten.

And the subtitle?
 
Quodlibets and Quibblings of a Quirky Quinquagenarian sounds more literary and mysterious than Feisty Frothings of a Freaky Fifty-something.

Either title works, however, as Q to the 4th power tells how my life took a number of unexpected plot twists during my fifth decade on this earth. 

[Added 12/29/2013] When I turned 60, Q to the 4th power became Q to the 5th power with the addition of the qualifier "quasi" in front of quinquagenarian. What can I say? I like Qs!