December 2010
16 posts
Right now I’m wrestling with rewriting five chapters of the third Cloud Roads book. It’s going okay and I’m mostly happy with it, but I have one scene that needs to be inserted that is resisting the whole writing process. When I’m just thinking about it and its place in the story, it makes perfect sense. When I go to write it, I’m stuck like crazy. I think it’s...
I’m getting some work done, but today I’m kind of tired, kind of down. Must look at pictures of Joe Flanigan to cheer up. links: IO9 reviews Breaking Waves, the Gulf Coast charity anthology After the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in April, YA fantasy author Tiffany Trent asked writers to contribute short stories, poems, and essays for a benefit collection to raise money for...
One thing about this town, with finals and graduation over, it’s become very quiet. Hardly anybody was in the grocery store when I went yesterday morning. The weird thing was that this actually caused more navigational hazards, as people were a lot more likely to leave their cart in the middle of the aisle while they wandered off to look for something. This was very annoying, and more...
Most of the presents are wrapped. All the things not yet clean. I need to go to the store and get a bunch of food. Still clunking along on the rewrite of the five chapters I had to dump. I think I figured out another section of plot. One reason I don’t outline if I can avoid it is that I can figure out plot, but I can’t tell if it’s going to work or not until I actually start...
Yesterday we drove to Austin to watch my husband’s goddaughter dance the Sugar Plum Fairy in the Nutcracker. It was the 10th Annual Austin Children’s Nutcracker by the Austin City Ballet. Her father played Drosselmeyer. It was a lot of fun and the most Christmassy thing we’ve done in years. I actually hadn’t seen the Nutcracker in so long (and I haven’t seen live...
This idea came from ellen_datlow via John Scalzi and Upstart_Crow, so I thought I’d do it here. Please feel free to post links to anything you’ve got for sale right now: books you’ve authored or edited, and any arts or crafts you’ve made. Then spread the idea around on your own blog. This is for last-minute shoppers and to help any authors, artists or crafters on LJ....
Sunday I made cookies with this recipe, and they are delicious. The batter almost broke my hand mixer, but I think it was so cold in the kitchen the butter’s “room temperature” was still a little too hard. I used cocoa powder from this company (I think I must have got it the last time we went to Central Market in Houston) and it is fabulous. We went with a friend last night to...
Thanks to the people who linked to the Places to Donate Books post yesterday! I wanted to point out that if you like to buy new books online and send them to strangers (which I sure do) the schools listed on the Friends of Pine Ridge Reservation have lists of specific books they need/want. (Just click on the link for a school, then look on the righthand side of the screen for the list of books,...
You can make a difference with a few books. If you can’t donate, please pass this info on: From Judith Berman: Thinline (a saddle pad company) has started a book drive for a library for the Pine Ridge Reservation for the Lakota Sioux It is one of the poorest in the US. They are looking for: They say: “ANY books (horse-related or not!) — children’s, YA, fiction,...
Very gray and dark this morning. I’ve been thinking a bit about writer career crashes. Most people think that once a writer sells their first book, that’s it, you’ll sell everything you write afterward. This isn’t true, even if you don’t have a career crash. Unless you’re J. K. Rowling, you’ll still have short stories and novels or proposals rejected. A...
For Eureka fans, there’s a new Christmas episode on tonight, plus a Warehouse 13 episode, I think. I loved the Psych tribute to Twin Peaks. I wish I’d DVRed it though, because the original went to about 1 hour ten minutes, and the repeat seems to have cut out that ten minutes. (All cable repeats cut at least a minute or two or more from the original airing, which is why I love DVDs.)...
Topless Robot: The 13 Best Mystery Science Theater 3000 Songs There are awesome TV shows. And then there was Mystery Science Theater 3000, a show so awesome that it can’t even be mentioned in the same breath as other shows. And while it re-emerges in the form of Rifftrax and Cinematic Titanic, the original series will always have a legion of loyal fans, ready to defend this little Minnesota...
It’s December 3 and I feel like I’m already behind on Christmas. I need to get Christmas cards and get them in the mail. (And I like the kind that are a) pretty b) cheap c) use recycled paper plus bonus d) benefiting a hospital or charity or something. It’s amazingly hard to find ones that combine all those elements.) I need to disassemble the house, clean it, and reassemble it....
It’s been cold enough that Tasha has actually been sleeping on me again, instead of living wild and free as a feral cat in the dining room, see photo: It’s been nice, since I haven’t had an animal sleep on me since Harry died. links: Natalie Whipple: What Happens When It Is You. That thing writers aren’t supposed to talk about. This is the silent torture of those...
I added an update on my post yesterday about the pirate NookBook edition of The Element of Fire on BarnesandNoble.com, that after a friend found the right email address to complain to (the corrections and pubit ones listed on the site weren’t responding), the NookBooks were changed to “unavailable.” After that it looked like the pirate either tried to use one of the NookBook...
It’s actually getting down to the 30s here, at least at night. (Daytime it’s still warming up to the 60s and 70s). It may finally be almost cold enough that we can have a fire in our fireplace to drive off the wasps living in the chimney, so we can stop finding them in the living room. Psych is on tonight! And it’s the one with the cast of Twin Peaks. Links: Slushpile Hell One...
