from Publisher’s Weekly How to Bake a Perfect Life Barbara O’Neal, Bantam, $15 trade paper (416p) ISBN 978-0-553-38677-6 The Rita Award–winning author (as Barbara Samuel) of The Lost Recipe for Happiness returns with the absorbing story of Ramona Gallagher, a 40-year-old woman whose joy in running a bakery in Colorado Springs helps her transcend a […]
barbara oneal
A dahlia for Friday
In HOW TO BAKE A PERFECT LIFE, there is a young girl who falls madly in love with dahlias. Somehow, I am in love with dahlias, too, and this one is growing in my front yard. It makes me want to go exploring.
Elsewhere, a blog on walking
No one here will be surprised at this post that I wrote for Writer Unboxed. I knew some of you would enjoy reading it, but keep forgetting to post a link here. The Writer’s Toolbox: Walking One of the number one requirements of a commercial fiction career is that you must reliably produce good […]
A Bed of Spices now available in ebook format
A BED OF SPICES is a wildly romantic tale of forbidden love set in the turbulent middle ages. Solomon and Rica meet by chance at the herbalist’s cottage and fall deeply in love despite the divisions of religion, class, and expectations — but how can they possibly find a happy ending with so many things […]
The damp, dewy beginning
I’m at the beginning of a new book. This is probably my favorite part of writing—every possibility exists. There is a freshness to the material, a scent of dew and dawn filling my work hours. There is always the chance that this time I will have matured enough, learned enough, that I will be able […]
The Reward in Going Away
When I was a child, I loved going to summer camp. Girl Scout camp in canvas tents with wooden floors, or much more often church camp (probably because it was very inexpensive and my parents had four kids) in cabins housing 20 girls. It was the highlight of the summer—getting ready, gathering shampoo and following […]
RITA AWARD FOR THE LOST RECIPE FOR HAPPINESS!!!
I thought you might like to see the sisters. More when I can actually sit up straight. After 6 days of conferencing and three of Walt Disney World, I don’t trust myself to cross the room, much less post about the conference.
England: the seaside, part one
Having technical difficulties with photos. Will add later. Time: 8:20 pm, English time. Weather: bright and warm. Not a drop of rain in sight. Books read: 2 (1 memoir, picked up on impulse at the Borders in the Orlando airport, 1 British Women’s Fiction picked up at a thrift shop in Cranbrook, Kent when my […]
Finished!
As I type this, a summery breeze is blowing through my office window. I can smell lilacs. The new book, HOW TO BAKE A PERFECT LIFE is finished at last…written, rewritten, given to agent and editor for thorough reads, then revised some more, and returned. It is on its way. I’ve seen a mock […]
Magic globe
I visited a pair of book clubs in Woodland Park on Tuesday night, and they gave me a gorgeous lavender plant. I had it in the sink to water and noticed the reflection. It looks as if there is another world inside that reflection, doesn’t it? I have now packed the book off to my […]