Choices

Blog of Madeline Sharples, Author of "Leaving the Hall Light On"

Madeline Sharples

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

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 IANRead full post »

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:



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 mightRead 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 generousRead 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 »

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 itsRead full post »

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 callRead full post »

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 feltRead 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 throughRead 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 philosophyRead 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 specRead full post »
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 theRead 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.







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 »

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 ofRead full post »
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 »

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 weeksRead 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 shortRead 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. 




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 sRead full post »