I Am A Good Friend To My

The Voices Of Conformity Speak So Loudly. Don't Listen To Them. No One Does The Right Thing Out Of Fear. If You Ever Utter The Words, 'we've Always Done It That Way,' I Urge You To Wash Out Your Mouth With Soap.

Ever Since The Evil Empire Turned Out To Be A Collection Of Third-world Countries, Americans Aligned On The Far Right Have Tried To Cast Gay Men And Lesbians As The New Enemy, Calculating Deviants Seducing The Nation's Young, Anti-avon Ladies Selling Sodomy Door-to-door. This Simply Won't Wash. Just As Seeing The Russians Up Close And Personal On Television Humanized Them, So Seeing The Lesbian Grandmother Of Two Little Girls Wearing Her Gold Medal With Pride Makes The Notion Of Otherness, Much Less Deviance, Silly And Ignorant.

The Beginning And The End Are Never Really The Journey Of Discovery For Me. It Is The Middle That Remains A Puzzle Until Well Into The Writing. That's How Life Is Most Of The Time, Isn't It? You Know Where You Are And Where You Hope To Wind Up. It's The Getting There That's Challenging.

I Don't Really Read What People Write About Me. Someone Gives My Novel One Star; Are They A Troll? Are They Someone Who Hates My Politics And So Has Decided To Do That?

The Gender Gap Looks At This Point Like It's Going To Favor The President, Particularly Among White Suburban Women. I Certainly Think It's Going To Be An Issue. But I Think The Single Most Important Thing In This Election Will Be Turnout.