Mylene Dressler's Blog
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Feb.26.2012
I am waiting for the bat.
In July, when we moved in, he was here.
He roosted in a corner of our screened attic window, wadded tightly, a velvet sock rolled into the lower right corner. Sometimes he hung upside down, a hooded bulb.
Smaller than the paper lanterns hanging above him, the...
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Jan.22.2012
I want to remember this, and so I write it down.
Ted spoke today. Ted doesn't often speak, but when he does, I listen. Ted is eighty-seven years old, a former chemistry professor--he and I have taught in the same classrooms--and an emigre who as a young...
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Aug.12.2011
In Boone, North Carolina, a three-mile track of narrow asphalt and iron bridges creek-hops and rolls past meadows, sports fields, the ruin of an old dam and the pale blue tanks of a sewage plant. Start at the Armory, and you'll come first to the Equestrian Field. It was empty as a Roman arena...
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Jul.14.2011
The other day my local library was having a book sale, and I found a stack of Graham Greene books--light green paperbacks, as it happened, together thick as grass--and bought them all. I haven't read much Greene in my life and have just begun Journey Without Maps. I'll share with you the...
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Jul.07.2011
I learned a new word this week: to "wallfish" is to bury or conceal wires behind a wall by means of creating a hole in it, and then hooking or fishing the wires up through it. It's a mechanism for hiding what's messy, or for trapping what's live and dangerous in a safe place. I have...
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May.25.2011
Dear Friends, I thought you all might get a kick out of this: PopEater (AOL's pop culture site) yesterday published my story "How Dancing With The Stars Almost Ruined My Marriage" to coincide with the season finale of Dancing With The Stars. My husband and I are devotees of the show for...
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May.12.2011
Friends, two of my three published novels are now available on Nook. I'm a Kindle gal myself, but it's nice to see the words spread around.
Link to my Nook titles is here.
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May.09.2011
So the other day I go rock climbing with Dan and Megan. This is how it came about: I had helped them with their manuscript--they are writing their first novel, a young adult fantasy/adventure about dreams that aren't only dreams but as real as stone--and in return and thanks they offered to...
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Mar.16.2011
I've spent many years along the Gulf Coast, writing one of my novels in an old house that withstood the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900, another in a weathered loft overlooking the island and the easy-backed water. A third was set on the water itself, in a beach house. I know the smells of...
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Mar.10.2011
This week, a dear friend of mine lost her grandmother.
I lost my grandmother ten years ago.
My husband lost his grandmother ten years before that.
Grandmother Number One was named Marguerite. Grandmother Number Two was named Anna. Grandmother Number Three was named Cecilia.
One grandmother...
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Feb.07.2011
"One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject, though it may seem but an ordinary one. How then, with me, writing of this Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard capitals. Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius' crater for an inkstand! Friends...
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Feb.02.2011
Yesterday, sitting down and typing away, preparing for a talk I'll be giving later this month at a conference exploring the subject of "Creativity and Madness," I was giving some thought to my moments of extremity as an artist--for example, my apparent inability to get through...
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Jan.16.2011
In Austin a few months ago, after one of my lectures on writing and creativity, a woman in her forties came up to me and asked if she could talk to me about her dream of writing a book about her experiences as an immigrant in America. After chatting for a while, we decided to go and have a cup...
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Jan.02.2011
(The Associated Press) BEEBE, Ark. – Wildlife officials are trying to determine what caused more than 1,000 blackbirds to die and fall from the sky over an Arkansas town.
The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission said Saturday that it began receiving reports about the dead birds about 11:30 p.m....
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Dec.21.2010
Friends, if you're looking for a gift with a bit of heart this season, or simply want to support recovery from the BP spill, or simply like good collections of creative nonfiction/essays, I hope you'll check this out. I'm very pleased to have my essay, "Butterfly," included in this...
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About Mylene
Mylène Dressler is a writer and a "superb" speaker whose work has been hailed by the New York Times as "splendid' and by the Christian Science Monitor as "haunting," "demanding" and "perfect."
Mylène was born in...
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