• writing inspiration

    The Name You’re Not Supposed to Call Women

      A few months ago, I was watching something on TV when this PSA came on. It stopped me in my tracks, mostly because it brought some old memories to the surface. I’ve been thinking about writing about the topic of emotional abuse for a while, but wasn’t sure how to do it. I have one YA manuscript with a male character who is both physically and emotionally abusive to his girlfriend, but sometimes people don’t even realize they’re in a damaging relationship because they’ve never been hit, punched, slapped or kicked. At least, that’s why I didn’t realize I was in such a relationship when I was 17 years old. I thought…

  • True Crime

    What Happened to Maura Murray?

    When I first decided to start up my blog again I knew I wanted to designate one day to true crime posts. (Hey—I had to find some way of justifying my addiction to the unsolved/unresolved missing persons and cold cases, right?) For today’s post I had originally planned to talk about Kyle Fleischmann, a young man who disappeared in Charlotte, N.C. in 2007, but after I saw a new program scheduled to run on the Oxygen channel this weekend titled “The Disappearance of Maura Murray,” I changed my plans. For those not familiar with the case, on the night of Feb. 9, 2004, Maura Murray e-mailed her college professors at the University of…

  • Book Review

    Book Review: The Identicals by Elin Hilderbrand

    Digging in with my afternoon cup of coffee! #elinhilderbrand #theidenticals #summerreading A post shared by rlroberson (@rlroberson) on Jun 15, 2017 at 1:21pm PDT “The most underrated force at work in the universe is that of coincidence. And yet who among us hasn’t been at its mercy?” – The Identicals Elin Hilderbrand is one of my favorite authors, and every summer I look forward to meeting a new set of characters in her latest novel. In my favorite book, The Blue Bistro, it was Adrienne, Thatcher, the mysterious chef Fiona, and the whole colorful front and back of the house staff at the restaurant. In The Castaways it was Tess and Greg, Addison…