A Rule of One
Hand washing. I’ll come back to it. I have this theory. Or maybe it’s just an idea. It’s about the advantages you give your characters. And how many advantages you… Read more A Rule of One →
Thankful and Grateful and Mindful
Tis the season of giving thanks. Or perhaps of giving gratitude. I’ve been thinking about this some–not least because Thursday is the American Thanksgiving, which really should not just be about food, but somehow always is (OK, maybe a smidge about the Macy’s parade, and in some households about football, or not killing Uncle Pete who always arrives drunk and has unfortunate opinions), but because I listened to a piece on NPR about a Japanese discipline of mindful thankfulness, which sounds like something I want more of in my life.
We Must All Hang Together…
… or, assuredly, we will all hang separately.* Being human is not for the faint of heart. Being a kid, being a teen, being an adult, a parent, the child of parents with health or memory issues. There is no age of being human that doesn’t come with challenges. Family helps. But family has changed over the centuries, and our idea of what family owes us (and what we owe our families) has changed too. Time was, if you had children, they were raised to be part of a support system–doing increasingly complex chores,… Read more We Must All Hang Together… →
Black Thumb
My mother used to have a little sign by her bed that said “A garden can be fun…if you don’t have one.” I’ve never been sure if this meant she was anti-gardening (she was a killer weeder) or just anti-my father’s whole-hearted dive into gardening. I am feeling much in sympathy with Mom today. After spending a couple of hours proof-reading new Book View Cafe releases (watch the skies… in about a month) I decided I would go out and gather up the rotting lemons in the backyard. See, we… Read more Black Thumb →
Writing in (Yet Another) New Way
I got invited to do a cool thing! (Okay, part of my delight is that I don’t think of myself as being part of the cool crowd, and therefore, being invited to do a cool thing plucks at my deeply-buried high school nerd self.) A few months ago a writer of my acquaintance asked me if I’d like to be involved in a Serial Box project. “Serial what now?” I said, with my customary aplomb. It was explained to me: Serial Box is a new venture that takes as its model the… Read more Writing in (Yet Another) New Way →
Everything Changes
Last weekend I was in New York City for a meeting about The Most Fabulous Project I’m working on for Serial Box: a thirteen episode serialized story set in the… Read more Everything Changes →
It’s Not Easy Being the Little Dog
Emily, seen left, is 9 1/2 years old. She weighs 48 pounds, almost all of it muscle and fur (plus a little drool). She is a large fur-shedding machine whose… Read more It’s Not Easy Being the Little Dog →
A Week of Silly
Laura Anne Gilman, writer extraordinaire, member of BVC and the world, got me involved in GISHWHES (the Greatest Internet Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen) this year. This event/activity/madness was started by Misha Collins of Supernatural, and goes on for a week. You get 200+ prompts, and your team, individually and in groups, accomplishes as many of them as possible over the time allowed. Many of the prompts involve charitable activities and acts of kindness, random and otherwise. Others are just…random. My team was an extraordinary group: two people I already knew, and a… Read more A Week of Silly →