Occasional Writing: Columns, Guest Editorials, Rants

(Published in the May issue of Brazos Monthly magazine) On a frigid day in the city of Boston I found myself in need of a cup of hot coffee and a warm place to drink it in. I had never been to that city and had only one day to see the sights.  Unfortunately, it … Continue reading The Things We Say

(I posted this on Facebook this morning. If you choose to create the requested list, do so either here or there; more people will see it there than here). Here’s a challenge for longtime devoted readers: List your FIVE favorite fiction books of all time, maybe in order. It’ll take some pondering; grab the aspirin … Continue reading A task for you!

Published in May 2023 Brazos Monthly My mother’s name was Quinda. Where it came from nobody knew.  Not even her own mother, who provided it. It wasn’t a family tradition needing to be given to some unsuspecting infant as an obligatory tribute.  Her middle name was Othella.  God alone knows why.  My grandmother was strangely … Continue reading What’s in a Name?

4/4/2023 I’m currently reading historian Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War, a meticulously researched and beautifully written narrative of the voyage and arrival in New England of just over a hundred pilgrim colonists in 1620.  It’s a great read, and I highly recommend it. Early this morning I got to the … Continue reading

© 2023 Ron Rozelle How a writer describes conflict between characters, ideas and sometimes whole nations is not only an important undertaking, it is an essential one. If what you're writing - fiction, nonfiction, memoir, poetry or lyrics - doesn't have any conflict you likely don't have a story. The little diatribe that follows, from … Continue reading The Conflict over Conflict

(Published once upon a time in my weekly columnist days) One morning this week I might make myself an omelet for breakfast. Or try to.             My mother had a way with omelets.  She turned out consistently perfect specimens in her big iron skillet:  buttery, light golden brown with delicate, crinkly lacework at the edges, … Continue reading There’s more to an omelet than the breaking of eggs

Published in Brazos Living (February, 2023)             One Writer’s Dilemma (with apologies to Robert Frost) Whose words these are I think I know, who said them’s lost in memory though. They will not mind me stopping here to prod enough to make them show. My old brain must think it queer to pause without a … Continue reading On the Firing Line 

This article appeared in “Texas”, a Sunday magazine in the Houston Chronicle when the last Astros game was played in the Dome in October, 1999. The first time I saw it was from the back seat of a car. My father and two of his buddies drove their sons almost two hundred miles from our … Continue reading More than Scores and Dome Dogs

If you love that island city as much as my family and I do you might be interested in some of the books that inhabit the ‘Galveston Shelf’ of the bookcase in my study. I’m currently (which means off and on for the last decade and more) working on a mutigenerational saga, my third novel … Continue reading Galveston on your mind?

Several years ago I ended up with several boxes of some of my mother’s books that had been stored away after she died in 1974. Some moisture had seeped in during their long hibernation, so some were stained and warped at the edges.   How they got there is anybody’s guess. They were quickly stashed … Continue reading Quinda’s Books