My Brother’s Tribute

My brother David has always been a hero. If he witnesses a purse snatching, he’ll chase the perpetrator down to get a stranger’s belongings back. He saved me more than once from my own self-destructive tendencies when I was young. For years he helped kids from the Bronx become chess champions — going as far…

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Excerpt From Cinnamon Girl

Thanks to Mattie, my grandfather’s second wife, I spent my childhood as a small adult. Mattie had spirited me away from my alcoholic mother before I was two years old. The story Miz Johnny told me was that Carmella (my mother) was living in a two-bedroom trailer on the outskirts of town when Mattie stopped…

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Finding the Perfect Voice for My Book

Usually when I talk about voice, I am talking about the “voice” in the writing — the tone, the cadence, the language. But when it comes to audiobooks, there really is nothing more important than the actual voice that comes out of an actual throat. (I will not be listening to AI narrations anytime soon…

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The Hummingbird Kiss: the Second Edition

In the year 2001 my first novel (under the name Pat MacEnulty) was published by Serpent’s Tail Press. It was called Sweet Fire, after the song by Joni Mitchell about drug addiction. The book got great reviews such as this one from The Guardian: MacEnulty writes about her subject with sympathy, wisdom and – an…

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A Sneak Peak into the next Delafield & Malloy Book

If you read Secrets & Spies, then you know that Ellen was impregnated by a German Intelligence officer in 1915. The novel I’m currently working on is the story of her child 24 years later! The novel doesn’t have a title yet, but I’m calling it “Ellen’s Girl” until I come up with something better.…

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Harrowing Days

I just spent the past week listening to the audio files for my memoir The Hummingbird Kiss. Whew, that was brutal. It’s been a good four decades since the events described in that book, and I’ve done a remarkable job of erasing most of that era from my consciousness — and from my conscience. I…

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He Saw Enough of the World

Following is a letter my grandmother, Skipper, wrote to my mother, Rosalind. Bob is the youngest of Skipper’s four children. I was gobsmacked when I found this among my mother’s papers, which I am gathering to create a website dedicated to my mother’s compositions. She must have just moved into the little red house in…

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When a Boy Died and a Georgia City Burned

When I began researching my novel, Cinnamon Girl, I had originally planned to begin with the riots which happened after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. That event is seared into my memory. I was in eighth grade and two years earlier my mother had married a man who taught high school chorus. I…

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The Trump Supporter Who Peed on My Mattress

No, she wasn’t a Russian prostitute. She was a fire-plug blonde from New York state with vocal cords sandpapered by years of smoke but also with excellent references as a caregiver. ​I was desperate. I’d already gone through two carefivers for my ex-husband, whom I’d been caring for since his stroke five months earlier. (Why?…

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The Speed Limit of Exit Ramps

The drive to the acute rehab center from my house generally takes about 25 to 30 minutes, but it’s rush hour and I-77 is a clogged vein. I’m a city girl, used to traffic, yet I find myself gripping the wheel from the stress. The traffic thins, and I peel off on I-485, the eight-lane…

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