Tag: Florida fiction
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NEVER IGNORE A “LITTLE OLD LADY IN TENNIS SHOES”
By P.C. Zick – @pczick.bsky.social “I’m just a little old lady in tennis shoes.” So said Margaret Hames when other more glowing titles followed her name. Environmentalist, conservationist, defender of wetlands, scrubs, and hammocks, and savior of public places in Brevard County, Florida, are more accurate descriptions of this “force of nature,” her daughter, Pat Baxter,…
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DESSIE SMITH PRESCOTT – A WOMAN FOR THE AGES
By P.C. Zick – @pczick.bsky.social As a freelance writer, I’ve been fortunate enough to write about some interesting events and people. In a few instances, I’ve even had the privilege of interviewing a handful of famous or infamous folks. Dessie Smith Prescott could be categorized as both famous and infamous, and the interview with her…
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THE HUMAN HEIRS OF MARJORIE KINNAN RAWLINGS
By P.C. Zick – @pczick.bsky.social Last week, I wrote about the inspiration of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings on my life and career. Here is the essay “Human Heirs” that I wrote for the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Essay Contest in 2001 as I left my decades-long teaching career to venture into freelance writing. The essay won first…
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A WRITER’S LIFE AND INSPIRATION
By P.C. Zick – @pczick.bsky.social Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of The Yearling and Cross Creek and many more books, remains an inspiration to me even though she died a year before I was born. Still, her journey as author and woman who left the north for the south provided a road map for me. I…
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CELEBRATING EARTH DAY 2025
Fifty-five years ago on April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day was celebrated. Maybe the word “celebration” doesn’t quite fit here because its inception came as the result of some horribly tragic events—an oil spill and the discovery by a woman scientist/writer of the harm done to wildlife and humans from pesticides. All those years…
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TORTOISE STEW – WHERE FACT AND FICTION MEET
Sometimes the muse leads us where we need to go. In early 2002, I was working on a novel set on the Suwanee River. I was also a reporter for a 5,000 circulation weekly newspaper in north Florida. I covered one of the more contentious city commissions as WalMart began doing what WalMart does best…
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NEW RELEASE – MOUNTAIN MIRACLES
When I first moved to the Smoky Mountains for our summer retreat, I knew the setting would be the perfect place to write. I didn’t know that the setting would become the setting for a new series of books. But it did and since moving here last summer, I’ve written four books in the Smoky Mountain…
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Native Lands Released Today!
It’s an exciting day for me–one eight years in the making. Native Lands is now a reality. It went from Connecting the Dots in its original form in 2006 when I participated in a Novel in a Month group. My month stretched out into 100 months, but I did take a break from it in…
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#Romance in A Month – I Did It
The month has ended for Romance in a Month, and while I didn’t finish my first romance, Behind the Altar, I’m close. The bones are in place. I will write the final chapters–the resolution–this week, and I’ll have a draft. This project represents the first time I’ve participated in a month-long writing assignment, and it’s…
P.C. ZICK 