• Celebrating 20 Years Together

    Photo by Matthew Ball on Unsplash By Don Vaughan, www.donaldvaughan.com Triangle Association of Freelancers (TAF) was formally established in 2003. But the organization’s roots run much deeper. I had been teaching a class for novice freelance writers through Wake Technical Community College in Raleigh, and quickly realized a need for additional mentoring among some of my more promising students. We started meeting monthly to discuss their work, and as our numbers grew, I wondered if [...]

    Read more

    Requiem For a Friend

    By Don Vaughan, donaldvaughan.com Last year, I lost one of my best friends. We’d known each other for eighteen years, and had grown extremely close. We visited almost weekly, and shared innumerable stories on topics both intimate and far-reaching. I miss my friend a lot. This special friend wasn’t a person, but the McKay’s Used Books & More in Raleigh, which suddenly and inexplicably closed its doors in April 2017. When Nan and I moved to Raleigh from South Florida in 1999, [...]

    Read more

    The Agenda-Driven Book Reviewer

    By Jeff Davidson, breathingspace.com An insidious trend is impacting authors, writers, poets and all creative individuals everywhere. As a result of the Amazon.com review process, virtually anyone can post anything about any intellectual property at any time. Such postings can be made independently of whether or not one has actually, say, bought and read the book, or has anything coherent to say about it. In Amazon’s quest to provide a “forum” for users, all reviews, those [...]

    Read more