Judy Richter
Author and Blogger
Blog
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I learned an important lesson at a writer’s conference recently while consulting with a publisher’s editor. She looked at me with incredulous eyes and asked me why she should care about a rich woman whose husband stole half a million dollars from her. And here was the kicker: she couldn’t relate because she, the editor,…
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May Day, typically observed on May 1, is perhaps best known as a European festival with ancient origins that celebrates the beginning of summer. I was first introduced to these rites of summer at the private girls’ school I attended from sixth to twelfth grade, where our headmistress was admittedly a bit of an Anglophile. Much…
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Growing up in the Midwest, Easter Sunday was a one-day celebration full of hidden Easter baskets, chocolate bunnies and colored eggs made the day before. In the “good” ole days, we dipped hard-boiled eggs into water and vinegar that was splashed with a few drops of food coloring, then scooped the eggs out with one…
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Watching the memorial for Jesse Jackson yesterday inspired me to remember—and heed—his rousing words: KEEP HOPE ALIVE! When our country went to war with Iran a week ago, hope seemed like a light about to be extinguished, caught between battling factions mirroring their respective intolerances. This cannot end well. After spending my entire adult life…
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Yes, it really is a thing—a syndrome—and I am afflicted. In clinical terms, it’s a state of experiencing others’ emotions with such extreme intensity that it causes personal distress and blurs boundaries between self and others. K is well aware of my condition, and commiserates with me often. It’s an affliction that manifests with anxiety,…
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There have been many times in my adult life when I have set intentions—sometimes even creating visually elaborate intention boards—to attract the energies I need to intiate positive productivity. Not always successful to the naked eye, to be sure. But this year is turning out to be a banner year for generating immediate gratification, both…
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As the calendar flips to a new year, I find myself desperately clinging to the many positive intentions I’d set for myself as they get sucked, one by one, into a vortex of volatility. I thought I was doing pretty well this holiday season, for a change. All the ghosts of Christmases past weren’t exactly…
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Okay, I’m now working on a final (yeah, right) deep dive to enrich and layer my characters even more (gasp), so now I’m working on my antagonist in Pura Vida. He’s gotta be a really bad dude dressed in celestial clothing. But authentic, right? Otherwise, my protagonist would have been a fool to marry the…
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Depending on how that sentence is finished will convey a sense of rosy euphoria or, at the other end of the spectrum, a sense of doom and gloom. Writing engaging characters and their relationships with others is a complex, often rugged odyssey. Perfect friends, those true-blue-to-the-bitter-end friends, are not very interesting, as far as storytelling…
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Judy Richter 