I saw something the other day that made me really angry, in that “what, were you raised in a woodshed or something?” sort of way. Prolonged, self-involved, privileged rudeness makes me on-beyond-cranky. And as I watched this behavior continue I realized that the perpetrator really had no idea of what he was doing. I was at a cafe, writing (I have said elsewhere that getting out of the house and away from its distractions is a must for me). There were others there, also working diligently, drinking coffee or nibbling… Read more Punching Down →
Job-hunting takes time. So does writing. But you cannot write, or job-hunt, all the time. And I’ve been experiencing a real need to create tangible things. Beaded jewelry. Knitted things. But what I’ve really been doing a lot of is playing with yeast. When I was a teenager I baked a lot. It was a form of rebellion (my mother was a fabulous cook, but did not care for baking) and I made croissants and herb bread and sourdough and rolls and pies–and one summer my summer job was to bake… Read more Everything That Rises Must Converge →
I think I was 13 when I discovered, more or less all at once, Georgette Heyer, Mary Stewart, Jane Aiken Hodge, and “romantic suspense,” a broad category that included different sorts of… Read more A Little Etiquette, a Little Incense, a Little Edge →
I am eleven chapters, give or take, into the WIP. Since my books tend to work out to about 20 chapters it is fair to say that I’m half way through the… Read more The Gooey Center →
Because my husband works in the film industry, we sometimes get to see early screenings–or screenings that are remarkable because the director is there, or we’re in the company of… Read more Fixing the Future? →
I’ve been thinking a lot about how I spend my time–not least because I was downsized out of my last job last August, and am spending a good part of each day working to find a new one. Unless you are pathologically social (I am not) or really brilliant at networking (I am not) this is hard work. Unpaid, hard work. It is disagreeable to me (and, I suspect, for many other people) for the same reason that book promotion is hard for me: I get creeped out by the notion of… Read more Work * Life * Balance (yes, again) →
Note: I chose this painting because I liked it. It was only after I’d typed in the painter’s name (Louis Comfort Tiffany) that I realized I’d doubled up on the entendres. Pure serendipity. With a to-be-read pile that stacks up to the sky and threatens my continued survival (it’s on my bedside table, and in an earthquake it would surely topple over and mash me flat) it perhaps makes no sense that I sometimes have to stop what I’m doing and start comfort reading. And it’s not always because I need comforting, in the “world… Read more Tidings of Comfort →
This weekend my husband and I went to the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco’s Presidio. We’d been meaning to for a while, and though we missed the exhibit of… Read more Raising Feminists – The Fairy Tale Edition →