This serialized novel follows 17 year-old Mayella Winton, who has recently been expelled from the tony Freemont Academy for Negro Girls, and comes to live with her Mother, Delores, who is the live-in housekeeper for Herbert Halethorpe, a rich, Baltimore industrialist.

This excerpt: Mayella's first… Read full post »

This serialized novel follows 17 year-old Mayella Winton, who has recently been expelled from the tony Freemont Academy for Negro Girls, and comes to live with her Mother, Delores, who is the live-in housekeeper for Herbert Halethorpe, a rich, Baltimore industrialist.

This excerpt: Mr. Herbert gets… Read full post »

This serialized novel follows 17 year-old Mayella Winton, who has recently been expelled from the tony Freemont Academy for Negro Girls, and comes to live with her Mother, Delores, who is the live-in housekeeper for Herbert Halethorpe, a rich, Baltimore industrialist.

This excerpt: Mayella meets… Read full post »

This serialized novel follows 17 year-old Mayella Winton, who has recently been expelled from the tony Freemont Academy for Negro Girls, and comes to live with her Mother, Delores, who is the live-in housekeeper for Herbert Halethorpe, a rich, Baltimore industrialist.

This excerpt: Delores reflects… Read full post »

This serialized novel follows 17 year-old Mayella Winton, who has recently been expelled from the tony Freemont Academy for Negro Girls, and comes to live with her Mother, Delores, who is the live-in housekeeper for Herbert Halethorpe, a rich, Baltimore industrialist.

This excerpt: Herbert Hal… Read full post »

This serialized novel follows 17 year-old Mayella Winton, who has recently been expelled from the tony Freemont Academy for Negro Girls, and comes to live with her Mother, Delores, who is the live-in housekeeper for Herbert Halethorpe, a rich, Baltimore industrialist.

This excerpt: Mayella's… Read full post »

Here's an excerpt to the next installment of the Charm Offensive.
Thanks for taking a look!

The Homecoming

When I arrived I was a sight. The ride from the Freemont Academy for Wayward Negro Girls was a rough one. Of course, this was not the institution’s proper name, but considering… Read full post »

Hello OSers,

Baltimore Post-Examiner is a new online magazine very open to creative writing: fiction, essay, poetry, etc., and you don't have to be from B'more or writing about the city to be considered.    

Below is the link to the first chapter of my serial novel, The Char… Read full post »

When I was five I didn’t know my mother was in an open marriage, and for the most part neither did she.  My parents married when my mother was 24, just out of college, and my father, 29, played basketball for the Harlem Globetrotters. He did the road thing. She did… Read full post »

I called my mother and asked her if she had heard about the thing with Paula Deen.  She said she had. I asked her what she thought of the whole stink. She said, “Not much.”

I understand Paula Deen.  And because I do, it’s a little hard to understand why… Read full post »

When Shorondra Reynolds was a baby we lived in a row of Baltimore brownstones on the edge of Pigtown. Just me and my mother, back when there were no single mothers, just Adele’s mother or Mary’s mama, Kiki’s madear, and their like. It was a time when a five year-old with… Read full post »

We met at an artist retreat.

I had never heard of artists’ retreats before. When I finished my program in creative writing, I was prepared to do what most graduates do: defer paying my student loan as long as possible, get a tolerable admin job that might, possibly, segue into… Read full post »

I woke up hungry. Station North Café is closed all Federal Holidays. Something I can’t seem to get through my thick head. It’s also closed those days the owner Kevin feels the need to “live his best life,” wh… Read full post »

“A girl’s gotta have her cornbread.” This is what I hear as I sit at my usual table at Station North Arts Café, a spot I am found at so often that upon seeing me those not in the know are often compelled to ask:  (1) If I’m one of the… Read full post »

The first time I became a vegetarian lasted sixteen hours.  My mother had come home from work and announced that she was tired and we kids were to fend for ourselves. The meat that was in the refrigerator included two hundred Murry’s Italian meatballs for 1.99, and an empty box of… Read full post »

I’m fascinated by most things Baltimore; it’s hard not to be. 

I’m intrigued by Baltimore’s rowhouses, especially those built in the 19^th Century.  Tall and regal, short and stout, Federal, Queen Anne, or Greek Revival in style, thousands of rowhouses as quintessen/… Read full post »

“Girl, let me tell you…” This is how it starts. Even before I pick up the receiver, I know it’s her, something in the trill.  And, of course, I have caller ID.  An early alert Plan B of sorts, one I willingly pay 6.95 a month for in order to identify… Read full post »

The move should have taken 4 to 6 hours. This is what the moving company rep estimated. Twenty-four hours later, after the first box had been placed on the moving van, I was finally unsettled in my new home and completely exhausted though I hadn’t lifted even a lamp shade. My… Read full post »

“I’ll be your surrogate -- if you want.”  I turned and looked at my sister, my baby sister, and stared.  I then swallowed hard the lump in my throat and said the words required when confronted with such an offer  – those times a person volunteers to let you use… Read full post »

“I should’ve never had kids.”  I can’t recall how many times I’ve heard my mother utter these words, always with a sigh, always with eyes seemingly filled with regret and longing for a life better lived.  And this seems true to me.  For some… Read full post »

Sitting at the settlement table I had that feeling of freefalling.  It was the same feeling I had been experiencing for the last couple of weeks, only in those instances everything had been more ethereal and in dream form. But once seated at the mahogany table, I actually felt dizzy, and… Read full post »

My BBF (best Baltimore friend), Alexia --  she’s gregarious, brilliant, adventurous and beautiful, hardly the perfect wingman (wingperson?) for an extrovertedly challenged person like myself, but somehow it works – will spend Memorial Day weekend with some guy named Michael and anoth
… Read full post »

Congratulations to Cher for 64 great years (May 20), marked with grace, beauty and all around fierce female aplomb! In this belated commemoration of your birthday, and as a salute to my favorite Cher movie, Moonstruck, with much reverence, I offer up the following:

For my mother, “Snap… Read full post »

I got my first Barbie when I was six.  She was white.  By seven, I had received my first of several black Barbies, all given to me by my numerous aunts for birthdays, Christmases, and/or for simply being a good girl, often receiving the same model within months of each other. … Read full post »