Christa Allan

Here’s one of those stories that, after reading it, I’m not sure who should be slapped into detention first, the students, their parents, or school officials.
To demonstrate how sexually transmitted diseases are spread, a visiting speaker invited students to share gum in health classes at four county high schools in December and last month. School [...]

Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you’ve had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make [...]

Russell Crowe fires scantily clad rugby cheerleaders; Hugh Grant admits to sipping whiskey and popping tranquilizers so he could loosen up to dance in his latest movie; Zsa Zsa Gabor’s husband, thirty-one years her junior (umm–she’s 90), thinks he could be the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s daughter; a molecular scientist has developed a way [...]

Keith Ferrazi’s Life Coach Tool 

Don’t leave your research paper without this: The Citation Machine.

Watch this; it’s worth every minute.

Here’s a story to entertain you while I’m away educating the future of America. Scary, huh?

Lisa Samson’s Quaker Summer,Women of Faith’s Novel of the Year, is out!

Guess not everything comes back in re-entry.
If it wasn’t so sad and pathetic, and if she wasn’t the married mother of three children, astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak’s acting like she left her brains and sense in space might be amusing.  She dons a diaper so she can drive straight from Houston to Orlando. Why? To ready herself [...]

Dilemma.
I cruised a website/blog by an agent who’s going on his/her own now and is accepting queries. Let me explain a “query” for my not-feeling-a-compulsion-to-bash-their-heads-in-with-monitors-non-writing friends.
Imagine there’s a great, no, better than great, beyond your wildest dreams great party going on. But, you are not invited. One of my daughters imagined this every weekend [...]

Peyton Manning is a saint!
And Rex, well, he’s still Gross-man.

God is so giving me whiplash.
This morning’s Bible readings were Psalms 31, 40, and 56. Here are a few soul searchers:
” But when I am afraid, I will put my trust in you. I praise God for what he has promised.” (56:3)
“But I am trusting you, O Lord, saying, ‘You are my God!’ My future [...]

Lisa Samson’s Straight Up.

My writer friend Camy Tang’s new book. Look for it in September.

Magnetic Poetry. You’ll love it.

As an English teacher, I’ve plowed through pronoun lessons. You remember, all those cases and persons and antecedents. In my AP Language class, I teach my students to pay attention to word choices writers make. Generally, those choices are purposeful. Even Francine Prose devotes an entire chapter to words in Reading Like a Writer.
If [...]

You know you’re a certifiable nerd when you find sites like this, and you find it as tantalizing as a Snickers Cheesecake. But, I’ll bet you didn’t know that the expression the “butt-crack of dawn” gets 6,000 Google hits or that there are 40 words and phrases whose etymologies are currently unclear. And, I’ll [...]

Gosh, I am ever so relieved to learn that runway models are no longer expected to be “super thin.” Guess that means they’ll have to swap those size minus threes for size zeroes. We do have some things in common. For instance, my right arm / their right leg. . . yep, [...]