Articles
Ghostwriting and other Freelance Adventures
I’m on the flight deck of a hulking WWII cargo plane as it lifts off the runway of Homestead Air Force Base into the moody gray sky.
I’m a nervous passenger and for good reason.
We’re about to fly straight into tropical storm Hortense, a vicious cyclone of 90 mile-an-hour winds that has killed eight people in Puerto Rico, and will kill a dozen more before it’s through.
I’m stowing away with permission and I have two goals.
One is to write a magazine story that brings to life the hurricane, the crew, the experience of flight through the eye of a deadly storm.
The other mission is personal; to face down a long-held fear of hurricanes that began with growing up in Miami where hurricanes ripped off roofs, uprooted trees, flooded cars and turned off the lights for days.
But, this is now and I’m in an airplane with pilots and engineers and a flight plan with no exit.
Am I having fun yet?
Yes. Emphatically yes. I’m learning and confronting fear and having experiences I wouldn’t otherwise have. For me, writing about adventures, and ghostwriting books with accomplished people who let me into their lives, is fun, challenging, and I’m growing through these experiences.
Scroll down to read a few of my “confronting fear” true stories.
“How to test your mettle”
A city girl’s look-before-you-leap guide to roughing-it vacations
Self Magazine, July 1980
I was seduced. The river was described as pristine, untouched by man. The rapids, little ones the first couple of days and not many after that. The water teemed with “the mighty coho salmon” swimming upstream to spawn; the air was filled with what seemed to be the greatest concentration of bald eagles in the world.
“Fear of Flying”
Being a passenger in a plane made her nervous, so she tried her hand at being a pilot.
New Woman, May 1997
I hate to fly. Yet here I am, strapped into the pilot seat of a fighter plane. In moments I’ll be piercing the wild blue yonder with the nose of my screaming Marchetti aircraft, engaging in dog-fights with an opponent who will be trying to shoot me down. The bullets will be fake, but the Marchetti, the combat maneuvers, and the ground far, far below will be absolutely real.
“Sea of Love”
Forget the personals and online dating. Searching for a perfect love story, one woman resorts to an ancient method of communication.
New Woman, April 1998
I’m in a taxi, hurtling toward a rendezvous at the Eiffel Tower. I speak no French, the driver speaks no English. As I lean forward into the silence, I think about how this extraordinary journey began with heartache–and a letter in a bottle.
“Love Revisited”
New Woman
I’m at a small airport in Ireland anxiously waiting for Rob to arrive. I loved him once, wanted to marry him, but excepting our recent phone calls to plan this rendezvous, I’ve neither seen nor spoken with him in eleven years. I want to be spinning gleeful little pirouettes in the arrival lounge but I can’t. In the last week my fantasies of a rapturous reunion have curdled and turned to dread. We’ve both changed since we said good-bye over a decade ago and my queasy guts know bad chemistry when they feel it. I wonder seriously whatever made me think I’d want to see Rob again.
“Seduced… BY A CAR!!”
It was July of ’64. High school was out. In September I would be leaving my home in Miami, driving off to college hundreds of miles away. I had my own car. While my parents had two newer models—a Chevy Impala and a Chrysler—mine was a burlap brown, third-hand Peugeot, with a stick shift and a cranky disposition.
