08.13.16 Exit, pursued by meat bees

The meat bees are humming. We came to this incredible little beauty spot in Three Rivers, California (near the Sierra Mountains) a few days ago; we leave in just a few more. And because of this lucky find on HomeAway, I’m able to sit outside with the latest draft of my story — I’m trying…

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11.27.15 ‘Our eyes can be just the right size’

Since we are now on that steep snowbank of holiday season, careening at gathering speed from Thanksgiving to Hanukkah to Christmas to Kwanzaa to Festivus to New Years to Oh Lord Another Year Has Passed, I offer up my annual tradition: My short story, “Home for the Holidays,” which combines a feud, holiday lights, and … murder. You’ll never see decorations the same way again.

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4 reasons most book clubs just don’t work

Finding the right book club feels like dating. Many will be tried, few will succeed. At least, that's been my experience. Over the years I occasionally feel a need to actually share my reading experiences, which are wide and varied and as much about finding book-lovin' folk as it is to talk about the specific…

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You can’t go home to Arrakis again

Recently, a link popped up all over my Facebook thread, informing me how I could begin breezing through books at a much more rapid rate than I do. If I don't know anything more about that particular link, it's because, f that noise. I see no need to read faster. I probably need to read…

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Kick your own can, jump in your own tub of marshmallows

This morning, I watched Veronica Roth jump into a bathtub full of marshmallows. I'm a bit behind the times — she did this in 2010 and posted it on her blog, a promise fulfilled to her readers about what she'd do if she landed a book deal. And when "Divergent" got her that deal, she…

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Does good writing depend on looking under a story’s hood?

You'd think writing was just about putting words on a page, in a coherent and potentially attractive and compelling order. And you'd be right. But as with any interest/specialty/art what have you thing that people focus their lives around, apparently there's a hell of a lot of technical jargon, too. Stuff I grew up just…

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Going, going “Gone Girl”: Read it now

I'm a little late to the party, but I can't recommend highly enough Gillian Flynn's terrific "Gone Girl." I ran through it in about ten days (which considering my schedule is pretty swift) and though it'll sound like a cliche, hadn't felt a book emotionally yo-yo me like that in, well, almost forever. If you…

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Waving with my hand, smiling with my mouth

We've all got evidence from somewhere in our childhoods that mom thought our artwork was awesome. Frame-worthy. My mom's particularly great at this kind of stuff: She has a framed picture of a hamburger I did in pastel in an art class — taken from an Arby's ad — hanging in her kitchen. I was…

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