Choices
Blog of Madeline Sharples, Author of "Leaving the Hall Light On"
Madeline Sharples
- Location
- Manhattan Beach, California, United States
- Birthday
- May 20
- Bio
- Although Madeline Sharples worked most of her professional life as a technical writer and editor, grant writer, and proposal manager, she fell in love with poetry and creative writing in grade school. She pursued her writing interests to high school while studying journalism and writing for the high school newspaper, and she studied journalism in college. However, she only began to fulfill her dream to be a professional writer late in her life.
She co-authored a book about women in nontraditional professions called Blue-Collar Women: Trailblazing Women Take on Men-Only Jobs (New Horizon Press, 1994) and co-edited the poetry anthology, The Great American Poetry Show, Volumes 1 (Muse Media, 2004) and 2 (August 2010). She wrote the poems for two photography books, The Emerging Goddess and Intimacy (Paul Blieden, photographer). She is pleased that many of her poems have appeared online and in print magazines in the last few years.
Madeline’s memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On, about how she and her family survived her older son’s suicide, as a result of his bipolar disorder, will be released by Lucky Press LLC on Mother’s Day 2011. She and her husband of 40 years live in Manhattan Beach, California, a small beach community south of Los Angeles. Her younger son Ben lives in Santa Monica, California with his bride Marissa.
MY RECENT POSTS
- The Independent Author Network
April 15, 2012 05:21PM - Please join me at the LA Times
Festival of Books
April 13, 2012 01:36PM - My role mode redux
April 12, 2012 06:20PM - Great news!
April 10, 2012 06:36PM - April challenges update
April 09, 2012 06:48PM
MY RECENT COMMENTS
- “Thanks for this. Sounds
delish. All best,
Madeline”
March 11, 2012 10:38PM - “Hi, yes, that is the
most important first step. But
it's
something to think
about…”
February 29, 2012 04:43PM - “Thanks again, Ashem.
That's the point - to raise
awareness,
erase stigma, and
hop…”
February 17, 2012 04:22PM - “Thanks for your comment
Ashem. You are probably right,
but
alas, it is too late
t…”
February 14, 2012 02:29PM - “Thank you FusunA and
Janice. I appreciate your
kind
words.”
February 08, 2012 12:08PM
Madeline Sharples's Links
APRIL 15, 2012 5:21PM
The Independent Author Network
I recently joined
The Independent
Authors Network and I think it is paying
off already in turns of book sales and reach. I recommend it to my
author friends out there who have stagnating sales rankings, and
who don’t get a lot of marketing
coverage. Now I think tweeting about
my IAN… Read full post »
APRIL 13, 2012 1:36PM
Please join me at the LA Times Festival of Books
I’m
so excited. Next weekend I’ll be participating
as an author for the first time at the Los Angeles Times Festival
of Books. I’ll hopefully be signing lots of
books for the hordes of you who come by.
I’ll
be at The Greater Los
Angeles Writer’s Society Booth Number 970
both Saturday/… Read full post »
APRIL 12, 2012 6:20PM
My role mode redux
I
wrote about my Aunt Helen, my role model, on February
28, 2011, and it's time for an update. In a couple of months
she will be ninety-six years old, and she's still as sharp as ever.
Unfortunately she's not in good health now. She's been battling a
lung infection that/… Read full post »
APRIL 10, 2012 6:36PM
Great news!
My memoir,
Leaving the Hall Light On: A Mother's Memoir of Living with Her
Son's Bipolar Disorder and Surviving His Suicide is now
Number One in the bipolar and suicide prevention categories on
Amazon.
Here's the proof:
Here's the proof:
APRIL 9, 2012 6:48PM
April challenges update
I took a break over the
weekend and caught up today with my two April
challenges.
The Platform Challenge
Days 5 through 8:
Day 5. Create a blog
– since you’re reading this
you know I already have a blog. I also post at several other blog
sites you might… Read full post »
APRIL 5, 2012 6:44PM
Challenges and writing work update
Yesterday and
today’s assignments for the April platform
challenge were to accomplish things I had already done
– build a Facebook profile
and give myself a Twitter name. I also have a
Facebook
author page. So I was ahead of the game
there.
However, Robert Lee
Brewer is always very generous… Read full post »
APRIL 3, 2012 3:44PM
April Platform Challenge - Day 2
Today's platform-building task is to set goals, including
short-term and long-term goals. Robert Lee Brewer wants us to also
make a list of goals to accomplish by the end of this year; and
then,… Read full post »
APRIL 2, 2012 4:57PM
April Platform Challenge - Day 1
I’ve
decided to enter Robert Lee Brewer’s first ever
April Platform Challenge. Anyone want to join me?
Here's how he says it will work:
- · On April 1, I'll post a task for writers to complete that day. (I didn’t get April 1 until today)
- · … Read full post »
MARCH 30, 2012 6:14PM
Does anyone know how to save a baby hummingbird?
Our post lady rang our bell a while ago to tell us a hummingbird baby was on our front walkway. Because it looked so still I thought it was dead at first, but this little one is still very much alive, and actually opening its mouth and trying to flutter its… Read full post »
MARCH 28, 2012 3:32PM
Rejection - another cause of a U-turn
Talk about a U-turn.
This must be my week. Here I am facing that U-turn again, and I
need to find a way to work myself out of it.
It is so easy to get in
the rejection doldrums. Any little thing can set it off
– an unreturned telephone call… Read full post »
MARCH 26, 2012 5:15PM
The Artist's Way: the creative U-turn
I think
it’s time to get off the subject of
The Hunger Games. I’ve had just about
enough of the hype. The children love it and
I’ll leave them alone to experience it
– as it should be.
I need to get back to
basics – my writing life. Yesterday I
felt… Read full post »
MARCH 22, 2012 2:53PM
Is life and death a game?
On a long drive
yesterday I listened to a lot of NPR, including an interview with Gary
Ross, the director of The Hunger Games, a movie
opening on March 23 with a lot of hoopla. Since I
didn’t know about it –
it’s geared to teenagers and adapted from a
young/… Read full post »
MARCH 20, 2012 6:07PM
Is life fair?
I’m
going through a rough patch. Well, not myself personally just
people whom I know and love.
I found out yesterday that
one of my dearest friends has lung cancer and she never even
smoked.
And one of the cutest
little babies in my life has to have a feeding tube put
through… Read full post »
MARCH 18, 2012 7:31PM
Keeping agreements
True
confessions: in the mid 1970s I spent two weekends at the Los
Angeles Convention Center in a room with hundreds of people taking
the est Training. It was the thing to do in those days. And
over the next decade, over a million people like me resonated with
Werner Erhard’s philosophy… Read full post »
MARCH 16, 2012 4:33PM
A gray Friday
It's been drizzling all
morning and downpours are expected tonight.
So it's a good day to show
off our front garden’s dazzling spring Clivia
blooms. They started blooming early this year since
it’s been so warm, but unfortunately they last
only a short time.
Today’s
rain gives them an extra spec… Read full post »
MARCH 14, 2012 7:00PM
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) - a ruthless and certain killer
Whenever anyone in my
synagogue community dies I get an email from the rabbi. I read
today’s email at about five in the morning that
Jill Cherneff Laverty died – probably yesterday.
I had heard last week that it wouldn’t be long,
but even so I definitely wasn’t ready for
the… Read full post »
MARCH 12, 2012 7:52PM
Another Buddha
I don’t
want to get into all the stuff going on right now and all the
things I need to do, so I’ll just post a pretty
picture. Every time I look at it, it makes me relax.
MARCH 9, 2012 2:37PM
Social network and novel work updates
Social Network
Update
I’ve
now joined BranchOut
and Pinterest
– as if I needed more social network connections
than I already have, e.g., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn,
Goodreads.
I really don’t know what BranchOut is all about
and Pinterest is even more of a riddle.
A recent pin on my
Pinterest&… Read full post »
MARCH 7, 2012 6:30PM
Getting the word out about my memoir day by day
There has been a lot of
mentions of my memoir,
Leaving the Hall Light On. On Saturday two women wrote they
have to read my book in a conversation on the Facebook page called
Loss of An Adult or Young Adult Child.
Monday I got a call from
an old friend of… Read full post »
MARCH 5, 2012 4:07PM
My thoughts about Didion's Blue Nights - probably just sour grapes?
Joan Didion
I’m
sure this is what you’d call sour grapes.
I’ve just finished reading, Joan
Didion’s latest book, Blue Nights, about
the death of her daughter, Quintana Roo. I read The Year of
Magical Thinking and was mesmerized by it, but/… Read full post »
MARCH 2, 2012 6:18PM
A good poetry practice - write in the style of other greats
Early on in my poetry workshops, we practiced writing poems in the
style of other poets we liked. I especially liked Frank
O’Hara’s homage to Billie
Holiday and tried my hand at writing in this style a couple of
times. This poem came to mind when Whitney Houston died two
weeks… Read full post »
FEBRUARY 29, 2012 2:55PM
Book clubs - a way to sell books
Two Tuesdays nights in a
row I had the pleasure of being the guest of honor at book club
discussions of my memoir,
Leaving the Hall Light On: A Mother’s Memoir of
Living With Her Son’s Bipolar Disorder and
Surviving His Suicide (Lucky Press, 2011).
Last week we had just a
short… Read full post »
FEBRUARY 27, 2012 3:21PM
A great family visit
Our great
niece, Khloe, was here from Denver with her mom and dad this past
weekend. She really liked putting her feet into the Pacific Ocean
and playing at our local park.
And now it's time to get back to my writing work.
And now it's time to get back to my writing work.
FEBRUARY 22, 2012 2:29PM
"It's always a fiction"
My writing teacher and mentor Jack
Grapes sent out the email reproduced (in part) here over the
weekend. I am in complete agreement with him that our sentences are
always fiction. We cannot recreate the past except through writing
our own version of the facts.
FEBRUARY 19, 2012 4:19PM
Writing critiques are not all alike
Sherwood Smith
I attended a
Greater Los Angeles
Writers Society critique session yesterday
afternoon that was different from any I have ever been to before.
It was led by author and writing workshop leader, Sherwood
Smith.
First a little about
Sherwood. She walked in at exactly 2:30, the time we were
s… Read full post »















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