attendre-et-espérer

Oh Dear God She's Fussing Around in the Anthologies Again

2012-02-28T07:00:00.001-07:00

There are times when the, oh, say, hiccups of living become overly heavy. Times when the inevitably grim outcome of the ride—and the indignities that often accompany the decline—can't be ignored, and threaten to overwhelm.

(Some of us find ourselves extra-susceptible to the existential blues in late winter.)

But when the feeling is transformed into a little gem of beauty it's a small consolation, some kind of bulwark against encroaching dark. As in those oft-quoted last lines of Tennyson’s somber yet comforting "Ulysses":

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

"Venture Afield" (Ha!) That Was Totally Unintentional

2012-02-21T07:00:00.005-07:00

It’s probably a shock to no one that I read a lot of YA. Probably equally as unschocking, sometimes I like to venture afield in my reading.

So I spent the past weekend reading a library copy of Chad Harbach's much-hyped novel debut The Art of Fielding (as in, devoured it in two big Saturday then Sunday bites). I don’t want to talk about it – everyone in the world, it seems, has already talked about it! – but I can’t help myself.

Obviously I had a hard time putting it down, having consumed it so quickly. I was particuarly drawn to Schwartz (of course!) in all his well-meant, self-doubting, paternalistic even angry glory ... he could have been cast as Salieri to Henry's Mozart, but he wasn't, and I loved him for that. I read the last few chapters with a lump in my throat, and was wrecked for the rest of the day after the final page was done because I couldn’t stop thinking about that last scene. That bit there – that not being able to put the book out of my mind once it’s over – says a lot about whether a book is a good read for me. I was afraid I’d be disappointed after so much hype (I wasn’t, not at all), especially as I’ve learned to distrust so-called literary novels’ endings because they often feel to me incomplete and/or drearily tragic (another relieved exhalation here, at least for me … your own mileage may vary).

The thing I can’t stop thinking about, that compels me to keep talking when so much has already been said by smarter, more interesting people, is the baseball. I really can’t determine whether it’s the baseball itself, those loving, unhurried descriptions of the plays and the microcosm of a ball team, that’s the true reason I found The Art of Fielding so absorbing and moving. (I am aware that others have found the opposite to be true: Not giving a crap about the game as a subject and pleasantly surprised by thoroughly enjoying this book anyway.)

(Tangentially, I could analytically parse the evolution of my attachment to the game in a "Why I Love Baseball" essay, but that would be for another time, and likely never at all, since it would only be absorbing and moving to myself.)

If this story were hung on a different metaphor, would it have meant so much to this reader? But that’s maybe a ridiculous question, since the alchemical mix of plot and theme in every book either succeeds with a reader, or it doesn’t, and can often be at least partially predicated on the reader’s own prior emotional attachments to the particulars. Which is to say, I might not have been as absorbed by an ice hockey story, even one as well-written as this baseball story, because my emotional attachment to baseball exists prior and apart from this book. I believe this says more about how and why I experienced this particular book as I did than it does about whether I could enjoy a story about collegiate hockey players.

And really, none of this matters … it was just something I found myself thinking about. For whatever reason (it's the baseball!), The Art of Fielding = recommended. Add it to the innumerable tally.

Sweet Sour Times

2012-02-20T07:00:00.001-07:00

Happy Valentine's Day

2012-02-14T06:00:00.003-07:00

aka Candy & Flowers Day
aka Too-Cute-By-Half Punny Cards Day

I May Or May Not Have Difficulty Avoiding That Time Life "Classics of Country" Infomercial...

2012-02-13T07:00:00.001-07:00

b r a i n s m e l t e d s e n d h e l p

2012-02-09T07:00:00.001-07:00

As I rattataptap closer to the middle of the ol’ WIP, I realize that I’ve reached a point where the scraps and scribbled notes vastly outnumber my brain cells. Right now my writing "process" is a lot like when Beautiful Mind goes all scary paranoia crazy and starts pasting papers and clippings together in an "order" that makes sense only in his scrabbled brain. There are SO. MANY. SCRAPS. and I can only decipher about three-quarters of them. Wait, does—does it say here that the CIA is after me?! *eats all the paper*

Six Enjoyable Weekend Bits

2012-02-07T07:00:00.000-07:00

1. The better half and I watched a Dirty Harry movie marathon.

2. Since we installed the new one last week (and took the old one to the scrap yard to exult in its death), we now have a water heater that you know, heats water, and also doesn’t vomit all over the floor in temperamental fits.

3. We tuned in to the Super Bowl and Downton Abbey both in the SAME DAY. (Ooh!)

4. Speaking of the Super Bowl … there were tasty SNACKS. Lots of ’em.

5. And speaking of tasty snacks … yesterday we ate an ice cream that looked like a baked potato.

6. Also, the weekend lasted through Monday.

“Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.”~ Robert Benchley

2012-01-25T08:00:00.002-07:00

This Is How You Upgrade Your Day

2012-01-16T07:00:00.003-07:00

Why Do I Find This So Funny?

2012-01-14T12:00:00.001-07:00

Tag line: "I buy other people's landscape paintings at yard sales and Goodwill and put monsters in them."

(Involuntary Collaborations)

Madly

2012-01-09T07:00:00.002-07:00

The Doctors Are (All) In (My Head)

2012-01-06T07:00:00.004-07:00

I had a strange and frankly unsettling dream the other night that Frasier Crane and Niles Crane from the TV show Frasier were hounding me about committing to some New Year’s resolutions. (Context: I’ve had the flu and a fever for several days, undoubtedly a contributing factor in this particular subconscious mishmash…)

Fever dream or no, I’ve been giving their haranguing weight. Yeah, New Year’s resolutions are kind of arbitrary and often more bluster than follow-through, but on the other hand, who am I to ignore the free advice of not one but two imagined imaginary psychiatrists?

A lot of possibilities have been rattling around in my brain, resolution-wise – thoughts about taking risks, accentuating the positive, doing only what I love and nothing else – but as I struggled to delineate them to myself, I realized that every resolution I wanted to make boiled down to a single fact: In a hundred years we’ll all be dead. So really, what I think the shrinks of my subconscious were trying to tell me is, might as well stop worrying and focus on making the enterprise as interesting an adventure as possible. So that’s my 2012 resolution, wide-open and a little bit scary.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T00:00:00.002-07:00

It's That Time Again

2011-12-15T07:00:00.000-07:00

Every year, we bake and decorate Christmas cookies, and every year we end up with permutations on:

wide-eyed, mouthless trees,

nontraditionally eyed gingerbread goons,

squirrels in sweaters,

sad mittens,

and this year a combo I'm calling "A Star is Born."

File Under: Writer/Nerd Fantasy

2011-12-06T07:00:00.001-07:00

I know it would just end up a place for secret naps and pretending I’m not home when the phone rings or someone knocks on the front door, but wouldn’t a SECRET WRITING LAIR behind a SECRET BOOKCASE DOOR be the ultimate? Preferably up a winding staircase in a round, turreted room? With leaded glass windows? And a glowing little hearth? And a comfortable chair and a desk that’s the right height and no distracting interwebs and plenty of SNACKS?

Well, here’s a start, anyway, with instructions on how to make that hidden bookcase door…

(Via Galley Cat)

Six Things That Are Just Swell in Fiction But Would Be Horrible in Real Life

2011-11-28T07:00:00.000-07:00

1. Doppelgängers

2. Conspiracies that go all the way to the top

3. Worm holes

4. Dead parents

5. Vigilante justice

6. The Singularity

"I Know You Like Videos of Cute Kitties and Furry Things" Is What the Misleading Email Said

2011-11-14T07:00:00.001-07:00

Five Recent Opportunities TO LAUGH IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITY

2011-11-07T12:00:00.002-07:00

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger."

1. An OOP book I just bought was IMPROPERLY PACKAGED (a thin layer of craft paper to mail a hardcover across the country – really, seller?) and arrived damaged.

2. My cat clawed up one of my shoes and then BARFED in it. (Why INSIDE the shoe, kitty? WHY?!?)

3. My favorite restaurant has SHUTTERED. (Technically, I guess that’s more their opportunity to laugh in the face of adversity...)

4. The only Halloween candy I have left is the stuff I DON’T LIKE. (Anyone know where I can dump some Jolly Ranchers?)

5. The Cool TV (just as I’d become dependant) WENT AWAY.

Succor (You Takes It Where You Finds It)

2011-11-02T13:00:00.003-06:00

On experimentation, the pursuit of knowledge, and results expected and not:

Even a misfire teaches you something.

(Thanks for the reminder, Mythbusters.)

Happy Halloween

2011-10-31T07:00:00.000-06:00

Some Halloweens are more exciting that others; this year’s—on a Monday, and the better half and me with no reason to dress up, sniff—will be less. Not that I’m complaining about a quiet evening spent ~~eating my weight in~~ handing out candy to trick-or-treaters. (And if I want to get cray-zay I can always wrestle my cat into a costume ... Hey!—where you going, kitty?)

This Video Is So Upsetting Yet the Song Always Sticks In My Head

2011-10-24T07:00:00.001-06:00

Overheard

2011-10-20T07:00:00.002-06:00

"How would I know? You’d have to ask the bird."

What's Your Deal, Gendered Nouns?

2011-10-18T07:00:00.003-06:00

In all fairness to the Romance languages, Russian's lack of articles can be pretty frustrating, too.

Backward Through the Wormhole

2011-10-17T07:00:00.001-06:00

Yup, the wormhole ate my posts. My insightful, carefully crafted, positively illuminating posts. What other explanation for the marked recent absence of my blathering? The damn thing swallowed me and m’posts whole, and don’t think it was easy clawing my way back out to the accustomed dimension. Besides battling incredible wind force, I had to scramble over a bunch of other detritus eaten by the wormhole, including the Cool TV, Indian summer, and the Detroit overlords’ pitching.

Overheard

2011-09-30T07:00:00.000-06:00

"If wishes were fishes, we'd all have aquariums."

A Favorite

2011-09-26T07:00:00.002-06:00

Story and Marketing

2011-09-23T07:00:00.005-06:00

Lately I've heard a lot about a recent debut novel, Ready Player One. The premise sounded fun, so I took it out from my library and I finished reading it this week. This is not a review -- though if anyone cares, I enjoyed it.

What I found interesting-to-almost-surprising, after having read the story, is that it was not sold as YA. Yeah, the protagonist is finishing high school when the story begins, but his outlook and preoccupations and first-person tone remain distinctly adolescent throughout. I'm talking characterization, not the mere fact that he's into video games. (Heck, I still play my Super Nintendo.)

So what gives? Is it because the video-gamer premise turns heavily on '80s nostalgia and people who grew up in that decade are no longer young adults, whereas today's actual kids didn't experience any of this stuff firsthand? (But wait, the story's quest is predicated precisely on characters in 2044 exhibiting obsessive nostalgia and knowledge of the '80s some sixty years later ... whoa -- meta, man ...) Or is it because the story seems likely to appeal mostly to the male of the species and savvy marketing gurus knew fellas wouldn't buy a YA novel even if it is, in fact, a YA novel?

Which raises another, more general question: Is it possible to write a totally YA book that's nevertheless intended for an audience of (nominal) adults?

Or does that make it a different beast altogether?

My head hurts.

Contrastingly, I just started reading Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, another highly touted debut that I'm excited about -- one that's marked YA but having no trouble finding a wide audience. (We'll have to wait and see whether I end up with any wack-ass speculations about this one...)

Overheard

2011-09-21T07:00:00.001-06:00

"Yeah, I have a tattoo -- there's a Gremlin on my butt."

Some People Ask, “Why?” … I Ask, “Why Not?”

2011-09-19T07:00:00.000-06:00

I'm Pretty Sure There Was Also An Undercurrent of Fear of Abandonment

2011-09-15T07:00:00.006-06:00

Last night I had a pretty stressful dream involving breaking & entering, Mormons, pretending not to speak/understand English, and Mark Teixeira. Don’t know what it means but I’m going to stop eating Chunky Monkey before bed and see if that helps.

This Past Weekend’s Desert Camping in Six Sounds

2011-09-13T07:00:00.001-06:00

1. A near-deafening symphony of crickets

2. Hooting owls on the hunt

3. Screaming coyotes involved in some kind of coyote turf war

4. Helicopter cresting a moonlit hill and pulsing overhead

5. Wind combing tall sagebrush

6. More crickets

And Here We Have the ’80s Serious Story Song Video

2011-09-12T07:00:00.000-06:00

My Cat Loves This One

2011-09-05T07:00:00.002-06:00

Overheard

2011-09-02T07:00:00.003-06:00

"Uncle Buck is my new favorite movie. It was Die Hard before."

Vignette

2011-08-31T07:00:00.000-06:00

You were on the balcony after the afternoon storm had rolled in and it really began to pour. The clouds went away but left the rain and you watched a torrential shower illuminated strangely by full sunlight. From where you sat it looked as if you were seeing the yard from the under side of a waterfall. There was thunder for awhile, too, with one peal so loud it felt like it rattled your teeth. Watching water collect and drip from a thick black power line you had to look down to observe, and with more water weighing down the branches of the trees, you wished for a moment that you were alone; you assumed everyone else felt the same way. Then someone said when it rained like this while the sun was shining it meant the devil was beating his wife, and you’d never heard that, didn’t know the devil was supposed to have a wife.

Yet Strangely, I've Never Had a Dream Where I Could Fly

2011-08-30T07:00:00.003-06:00

You know you've spent your August well when you catch so many ballgames you start dreaming you got to meet your favorite player.

Food for Thought

2011-08-20T16:55:00.004-06:00

Author Saundra Mitchell has a thoughtful/insightful post today on "boy books" versus "girl books" and the perceived boy-literacy problem therewith and the problem with that perceived problem. (Don't skip the post's comments, where the discussion continues.)

(via Twitter)

Overheard

2011-08-17T07:00:00.003-06:00

"Do cats have patellas?"

Certified 100% Realistic

2011-08-15T07:00:00.001-06:00

It's Been a Week and I'm Ready to Go Back

2011-08-08T09:00:00.002-06:00

Recently my better half and I took to the mountains for nine days of woodsy solitude without the distraction of phone, TV, internet or other human beings. It was a long-anticipated getaway and I had big plans: finish tweaking my latest pile of pages and put some serious time in on the WIP. With few interruptions and an abundance of time, it was the perfect opportunity.

But when has a working vacation actually ever been a working vacation?

I found that as far as getting crap done goes, my average looks way better when I write my "to-do" list after the fact:

- Read
- Sleep
- Eat
- Stare out the window
- Listen to all the ballgames
- Snack
- Mull *(multitask with stare and snack)

There was really only one item that mattered and it didn’t get a checkmark: Write. C’est la vie. So that item went unchecked – I didn’t let myself lose any sleep (or snacks) over it. All in all, it was a week well spent. Very well spent, actually.

I wouldn’t say I returned eager … or prepared … or even willing … to get back to everyday life. (Grocery shopping and appointments and bills and laundry and the ringing phone – who needs ’em?) It’s funny, though: After the unpacking was done and the appointments kept and eighty-billion clean socks matched and stowed, the computer beckoned and the work was fun and easy, and did I mention fun? The result I wanted arrived a little later than expected, that’s all. Call it time-release revitalization.

Don't Be Afraid to Come Dancing

2011-07-25T07:00:00.001-06:00

Next Time You See the Sherman Monument, Really Look at It

2011-07-21T07:00:00.009-06:00

"It’s very beautiful, but I want to go farther away." - Last words of Augustus Saint-Gaudens (American sculptor, 1848-1907)

Saint-Gaudens is one of my favorite (if not favorite) sculptors, though that isn’t entirely why those words get to me every time I think of them.

I love art; pretty much every vacation/trip my better half (who’s an artist) and I have taken has been centered around certain art museums, specific exhibitions or, in one case, a chance to see just one particular painting. Unlike my love of fiction, it’s a pure (for lack of a better word) love, because I’m not an artist myself. My day-to-day life is spent with words, because that’s where my vocational interest and my talents (such as they are) lie.

This means that I spend a lot of time inside my own head, mining for stories to tell and reasons to tell them and the words to best get them out. Words words words all the time, which can either build what you want them to build or suffocate you in rubble, depending on how well the synapses are firing on a given day or with a given project.

Periodically, it’s necessary to get away from the words, to get outside my own head—to realign perspective, to rest, to spiritually refuel.

When I find myself needing a break from all that word wrestling, I stop writing for a day or two and read a good book. Sometimes this does the trick, but yet at other times I've been so locked in writing mode (or wheel-spinning, as the case may be) that even when I take a time-out to read, I’m not so much consuming a story for a pleasurable break as I'm analyzing plot, structure, characterization and word choices like it's some kind of specimen to be dissected.

In the latter case, a bigger rest is called for; sometimes I need to go farther away. I usually know I’m running on empty when I find myself curled up in a tight ball under my desk, and that’s when I get the hell away from the written word entirely and pull out a favorite art book or two. For me, visual art doesn’t make the same cognitive demands as fiction – I just enjoy the pretty pictures, sometimes from under my desk (shh … it’s actually quite cozy and no one thinks to look for me there). After awhile my synapses start firing again and the words are back to being useful tools instead of overwhelming white noise.

If you need a little refueling yourself, I found some pictures under the desk that I find beautiful, and maybe you will, too:

Dame Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth, John Singer Sargent

The Execution of Marshal Ney, Jean-Léon Gérôme

Mariamne, John William Waterhouse

A Walk At Dusk, Caspar David Friedrich

Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Kenyon Cox

Hair of Tintin, Sound of Awesomeness

2011-07-18T07:00:00.002-06:00

Summer In Five Sounds

2011-07-13T10:00:00.002-06:00

1. sprinkler snicking Morse Code in the yard

2. John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman drifting from the living room radio

3. the clangor of the lid being fit to the barbecue grill

4. moths ticking against a light bulb

5. box fan droning from an open window

Overheard

2011-07-07T07:00:00.002-06:00

Location: A big-box grocery store on a summer evening

Players:

Customer: A middle-aged man in shorts and a cut-off T-shirt, with unnaturally dyed hair, and on his shoulder what appears to be either a nicotine patch or a bandage peeking out from his sleeve

Customer’s Wife (a nonspeaking role): A youngish woman with the watchful subservience of a mail-order bride

Checker: A friendly, efficient man possessing no awareness of when an interaction gets creepy

—Act I—

Checker begins scanning and bagging Customer’s items, which include a small tackle box, bug spray, and gopher killer.

Checker: Going fishing?

Customer: Um. [pause] I dunno. Maybe.

Checker: [laughs] Maybe?

Customer: [laughs faintly]

Checker: [not taking the hint]: You can’t beat fishing.

Customer: [mumbles noncommittally]

Checker: [still moving merchandise over scanner while trying to pursue conversation] Where’s a good place to go fishing?

Customer: Um. I don’t really— [pause] I don’t really know very many places to go.

Checker: Oh, did you just move here?

Customer: Yeah.

Checker: So where you from originally?

Customer: [hesitates] Um.

Checker: I guess you must move around a lot.

Customer: [latching on] Yeah. Yup.

Checker: When you move around a lot, it’s hard to remember where you were last, huh? [laughs]

Customer: [laughs, never answering question]

Customer pays in cash and leaves with Wife, who never says anything.

—End Act I—

We can only assume that the second act begins with Customer waiting around until Checker’s shift is over, and ends with Customer taking Checker against his will back to some remote encampment for some dubious/cannibalistic purpose.

Go Ahead, Amadeus, Rock Him

2011-07-03T10:00:00.001-06:00

Sometimes I Wonder Why I Bother Making Crap Up When Life Is So Much Stranger Anyway

2011-06-22T07:00:00.001-06:00

Over the weekend, the state senator from my district got loaded to the gills and stole a vehicle (with attached trailer) from some random people's front yard, ran it aground in some other random people's front yard*, after which he was, of course, arrested. Even stranger: Newspaper coverage hints that his lawyers are running a North By Northwest-type defense up the flagpole to see who salutes.

*legalese requires me to add "allegedly"

it's like that thing of when you have a high fever but then you take some Nyquil and your head just sort of floats away and it's nice

2011-06-20T07:00:00.002-06:00

#truestory

2011-06-18T09:00:00.000-06:00

A second ago I was slapping on some flavored lip balm and managed to accidentally get some on my tongue, which flashed me back to when I was four and totally ate flavored lip balm on purpose.

Sometimes an Unlikeable Main Character is Just the Ticket

2011-06-16T12:00:00.003-06:00

I completely hated everything about the last book I talked about here. One of the chief reasons I didn’t enjoy the story (author and title unnamed because it would be mean to dog on it when I can’t think of one thing I liked about the book) was because I intensely disliked the narrator – which was a problem because the author clearly liked his narrator and expected the reader to as well.

So last weekend, I picked up an adult suspense novel by a totally different author: Panic Attack, by Jason Starr. This one had four main characters, and they were all quite odious, with their odiousness getting more pronounced as the story spooled out. However, I enjoyed the hell out of this book.

Approaching it through the lens of main-character likability, the huge difference between these two books was that in the previous book, the author seemed oblivious to his main character’s odiousness, whereas in this one, Starr was quite gleefully conscious of it and used the reader’s active rooting against his characters to make the story work.

My tastes don’t usually run to the cynical, which this book was. (I usually like a bit of heroism, a bit of hope, a bit of beauty in my fiction, and Panic Attack takes a somewhat nasty view of human nature. I wouldn't want it as a steady diet.) Even so, it was like this fun detour into the rotten, an almost cathartic way to indulge in guilt-free rubbernecking at the snowballing doom. I read it in one day. The pacing was fast but coherent and the plot threads well-integrated, but what kept me turning pages was that I totally couldn’t wait to see what terrible things would happen to these oblivious, self-indulgent jerkwads. You could just see the Sword of Damocles dangling over all their heads, and I couldn’t wait for the author to cut it.

Six Things I Realized Over the Weekend, In No Particular Order

2011-06-13T09:00:00.002-06:00

1. Sometimes when my cat meows, it sounds like she’s actually saying the word "meow"

2. I’m very confused about the decline of the short story in an age of short attention spans

3. Wait, it takes about the same amount of time to read a short story as it does to watch a TV program

4. That sound they dub into TV commercials that’s supposed to be the sound of someone swallowing may be the most annoying sound in the universe

5. Staring out the window and thinking is a legitimate writing method

6. The acoustics of the new shower = perfect for ELO covers

smacks forehead

2011-06-10T07:00:00.002-06:00

I realize that most of the blathering I do about books here is to ~~pick apart~~ examine what I think hasn’t worked in a book I just read. Which could lead to the impression that I’m a hard-to-please reader. Nuh-uh! On the contrary! I will admit, however, that most of the time when a book blows me away I don’t spend much thought analyzing why. (Perhaps because there’s not that kernel of irritation to motivate an inquiry?) Stupid of me, because of course it’s just as important to ~~pick apart~~ examine a story that works as one that doesn’t. Something I’ll try to be more conscious of in the future. (Especially since I have a couple on my TBR pile that I’m really excited to read!)

Overheard

2011-06-08T07:00:00.003-06:00

"So I was trying to think how I would spend it if I found this was the last day of my life and I couldn’t think of anything. Should I be worried?"

Oh Crap, Not Another Metaphor

2011-06-06T07:00:00.003-06:00

This weekend, I read a book. Specifically, adult detective fiction in the form of a recently published debut. I like thrillers and crime fiction in general anyway, and I picked up this book because it sounded OK and had a positive review from a (no longer very) trusted source.

So as I’m reading the first few pages, already I can’t quite settle into the story, and all I can think is, “John Connolly this ain’t.” Still, I stuck it out to the last page (it was a short book), though by then my thoughts were no longer charitable doubts but something along the lines of “GAH WHAT A PIECE OF CRAP WHY DID I WASTE MY TIME WITH THIS TURD I’M SO STUPID!!! ETC. ETC.” (This was my response to the book. Your mileage may vary.)

What I wasn’t doing is mulling over the story or the characters. Because I didn’t care about them. Not even a little.

That’s saying something, particularly given that the narration employed what is maybe the quickest way to engage reader sympathy – that is, a first person protagonist. Didn’t work here, though, probably because the narrator was a major douchebag and I hated his voice. OK, so maybe if he’d been my uncle or something I might have found something to like, but as a guide through a fictional world I just wanted him to get shot and leave the narration to someone less aggravating.

(Sidebar: Can you enjoy a book where the first-person protagonist is supposed to be sympathetic and generally likable – as in, not an antihero – but you really don’t like him/her at all and would never spend time with that person in real life? I think you can’t! At least, I can’t! But that’s another post.)

Part of what made the book such a slog was that the disliked narrator was about ninety percent of the story experience. He was allowed to parcel out the story with all this bloodless exposition and all the ostensibly exciting stuff – and seriously, how crap is a book that can’t make gunplay and human sacrifice, if not entertaining, at least, attention-getting? – just sort of breezed by in an expository haze.

And the plot points? There were so many of them! But with barely 200 pages to make it all happen in, it felt rushed and there was no time to figure out why I should care about one thing happening before it was over and something else was happening.

So to the metaphor part. (I didn’t forget.) What occurred to me is that the difference between a plot-packed book that works and a plot-packed book that fails is a lot like the difference between a good beef stew and a yucky one. Even if they have mostly the same ingredients.

A lousy stew is thrown indifferently together, brought to a boil and then immediately served. Because hey, all the ingredients are there. That's all you need, right? Stop crying and eat it! The carrots are supposed to be crunchy?

A good stew, on the other hand, simmers on the stove for a few hours after everything’s put in the pot. The meat flavors the vegetables, the potatoes release their starch, and so on. It takes a certain amount of time for the flavors to unify from disparate flavors into a satisfying whole.

(The foregoing may have come to me when my blood sugar was low.)

So I have to conclude that you (dear writer) can’t have murder and kidnapping and down-and-out detectives and cover-ups and sex crimes and religious cults and race crime conspiracies and oh yeah fishing plus a bunch of other subplots I’m probably mercifully forgetting, in a book this short. You. Just. Can’t. (Well, some writers maybe can, but it didn’t work here.) It doesn’t work because you haven’t given yourself enough TIME to spool it out. So you end up with this warp-speed mad dash to a finish line no one cares about and the story ends up feeling rushed and two-dimensional. And if the plot seems like a connect-the-dots, and the characters flat, then what was the point of the reading experience? Eye exercise?

The First Step is Admitting You Have a Problem

2011-05-27T07:00:00.003-06:00

I hate this Slate article bemoaning the use and abuse of the em dash. I hate it because it's a darned convincing case, which is hard to reconcile with my own use and abuse—heavy on abuse—of the things.

This paragraph pretty much nails it:

[I]t's the lack of hard-and-fast usage rules—even the AP's guidelines are more suggestions than anything—that makes the dash so popular in our post-sentence-diagramming era. According to Lynne Truss—the closest thing we've got to a celebrity grammarian, thanks to her best-seller Eats, Shoots and Leaves—people use the em dash because 'they know you can't use it wrongly—which for a punctuation mark, is an uncommon virtue.'
The em dash as a mark of rambling, fuzzy thinking?

*checks brain*

Sounds about right.

Apparently Some Laws of Cartoon Physics Do Apply In the Real World

2011-05-25T15:00:00.001-06:00

So far over the course of my life, I’ve managed to injure myself in quite a few inane ways – including spraining my ankle when a car parked on my foot (chunky heel saved me from a break, to the ER doc’s amazement); suffering a bad concussion and temporary amnesia from a hit sustained after falling of a tire swing, nearly biting off my tongue after an accidental head-butt, another messy head injury walking haplessly into the path someone else’s rock fight, tearing the nail off my big toe opening a door, and partially severing my thumb while cutting up chicken for dinner (they reattached it at the ER), to name but a few. Yet none of the embarrassing ways in which I’ve hurt myself compare to this guy, for whom the combination of air compressor, pierced hiney and rapid skin inflation almost turned him into a cartoon-themed casualty. (Apparently he’s OK, and on the bright side, he now has a fantastic bar story.)

Unforeseen Six-Week Interruption Over, Back To Business As Usual

2011-05-23T07:00:00.002-06:00

Chops, such as they are, rusty -- here and elsewhere -- but with any luck, it'll come back to me.

A Moderately Tortured Metaphor

2011-05-09T07:00:00.001-06:00

Today is Day 30 of the Ongoing Bathroom Remodel From Hell™. (Project motto: Who needs a toilet, anyway?) I haven’t updated this blog in weeks. I feel like I’ve lived the last month of my life in that damn bathroom. When I close my eyes, I see tile, and construction dust on every surface of every room in the house. I can’t stop thinking of trim and grout sealer and connector hoses. (And I’m afraid I won’t even be able to enjoy that beautifully tiled bathroom when and if it’s ever finished because all I’ll be able to see is the psychic pain that my better half and I have thinset into the very walls and floors.)

So lately I haven’t updated this blog. I haven’t had time to write at all (something I’m used to doing every day). I barely have time to eat and sleep.

Maybe it’s various chemical fumes fraying the wiring of my brain, but I’ve been recently struck as to how much this slogging, endless, detail-ridden home improvement nightmare is a lot like the process of writing a book.

In both cases, it’s nearly all-consuming. It’s terribly difficult to keep the whole picture in your head as you’re working on the million little things you have to work on to make up a coherent whole. There are at least a million things you didn’t think of when you started, and another million things you have to go back and tweak if you want it to come out right. It takes a million times longer than you thought it could. The only way it will ever get done is if you press on, even when you’re exhausted, even when you want to set it on fire. And no matter how much you think you can’t get it done, that it won’t get done, you simply have to get it done if you ever want to use your own toilet again. OK, that last bit only applies to the bathroom.

Yet no matter how onerous, how painful the task, when you take the time to do it right—half-assing is faster, but why even bother?—turns out it’s totally worth the suffering. Almost. I’ll let you know.

Channeling John Buchan On This, Day 10 of the Great Bathroom Remodel

2011-04-20T12:00:00.000-06:00

"It's a great life if you don't weaken."

One of My Favorite One-Hit Wonders

2011-04-18T07:00:00.001-06:00

Not Quite Tin Pan Alley

2011-04-11T07:00:00.000-06:00

Overheard

2011-04-08T07:00:00.002-06:00

"The kibble I just bought looks like Cap'n Crunch. Unless I gave my cat Cap'n Crunch."

Paging Marty Stu, or, I Might've Been Cranky That Day

2011-04-06T07:00:00.013-06:00

Last week, I did something I rarely do: I gave up on the novel I was reading at about 100 pages in. (It was a library book, at least.)

I just couldn’t make myself finish it, even though the clever, adventurous central conceit of the thing was fantastic (was, in fact, the reason why I picked it up in the first place). It was the style that put me off. Specifically, the main character – the guy I’m supposed to follow and root for and let be my guide through this tale – didn’t seem like a real person, and I didn’t care what happened to him or anyone else in the story. He was too perfect – and by "too perfect," I mean in a not-backed-up-at-all, I’m-supposed-to-believe-this-simply-because-the-author-said-so kind of way. It struck me more like authorial wish-fulfillment than rounded characterization. I couldn't get past it.

Mind you, I love a heroic character, and over-the-top-awesomeness is no problem for me as a reader, when the author makes me believe it by how the character chooses to act, and the way the character thinks, and the way the character talks. When the author works to make his case. I didn't dislike this Marty Stu for his merits, but because those merits were merely alleged.

There sure was a lot of exposition on the main character’s alleged merits (poor fella’s almost too attractive, too manly, which makes women want him and men hate him; he’s a peer of the realm but preternaturally possessed of the common touch; he’s also braver than everyone else, and definitely smarter), which the reader knows because the author said so. Told, but declined to show.

Yes, lots of exposition, together with as-you-know-Bob revelations (exposition in disguise) from the other characters as to how they have to acknowledge (something admiringly, sometimes grudgingly) how awesome a dude the main character is. Even the way the character spoke made me think, there’s a disconnect between the way the he’s supposed to come off and the way he actually comes off. There was little demonstration of who this guy was, only constant assertions. And that's why I didn't care: he wasn't real to me.

None of the other characters fared better; this book was peopled exclusively with two-dimensional sorts, which made the stakes incredibly low for this reader, no matter what the author wrote at me.

The way my growing irritation finally trumped my enjoyment of the book got me thinking about the relationship between style and story, and a certain tipping point where the way in which the story is told overwhelms the story itself. Where is that tipping point? Everyone has a different answer. (There's a related tipping point between likable and obnoxious, but that's a discussion for another day, if ever here.)

But there’s something almost … heartening … here, too. After all, this is a book that is not only the first in a series, but one that got some really positive trade reviews, and presumably has many readers for whom it totally hit the sweet spot. Maybe I was cranky, or it hit some nerve and I, in turn, picked it cruelly apart. I definitely feel I’ve missed some merit a lot of other readers saw. It comes down to a matter of taste in narrative style. No story – or style of telling – will be to everyone’s taste, but heck, that doesn't mean it won't find an audience.

Spring, and McDonaldland's Fancy Turns To Baseball

2011-04-04T07:00:00.002-06:00

And Your Breath Stinks, Too

2011-03-31T08:00:00.000-06:00

In a pinch, this inscription could double as a dedication.

With Compliments

2011-03-28T07:00:00.001-06:00

Actually, I'm Still a Little Freaked Out By Lord Kuruku

2011-03-21T07:00:00.005-06:00

A departure this Monday -- instead of a music video, a clip from a childhood remnant.

Even though my nightmares received another bogeyman into their numbers courtesy of The Island of Magic, I did love the Unico movies when I was a kid.

Overheard

2011-03-17T07:00:00.000-06:00

"'Cthulhu Stu' is the name of my main character."

Kinda Awesome

2011-03-15T07:00:00.001-06:00

Sci-fi classic + beloved children's book = Goodnight Dune

Apparently Mondays Are YouTube Video Days Around These Parts

2011-03-14T07:00:00.000-06:00

Cattle To Be Charged With Harboring

2011-03-11T18:00:00.007-07:00

I have this theory that folks in other parts of the country have never stopped fetishizing the Wild West. The fact that this odd little story of a wanted Boston gangster hiding out in little ol’ Marsing, Idaho (population 1,000-ish), appeared online in the US section of The New York Times yesterday did nothing to persuade me otherwise. (Favorite/most telling line: "‘He wore bib overalls and straw hats,’ said … a neighbor and a longtime rancher. ‘People did wear bib overalls* here — in the 1930s.’")

*I knew a gent in Marsing who wore bib overalls. Actually.

Watching This Nearly Hypnotized Me

2011-03-07T07:00:00.001-07:00

(Good song, too.)

In a Nutshell

2011-03-03T11:30:00.004-07:00

Do you ever find yourself listening to yourself talk, and even though things feel quite calm and lucid inside your head, the words actually coming out sound fevered and odd and less-than-coherent?

You don't?

Yeah, me either.

And So Another Week Begins

2011-02-28T14:14:00.004-07:00

(Some people use the interwebs to share their thoughtfully crafted, world-enriching meditations. I'm ... I'm not one of those people?)

I Can't Stop Reading These

2011-02-18T07:00:00.001-07:00

Here. (Don't say I didn't warn you.)

Yes, This

2011-02-10T07:00:00.002-07:00

"When it comes to dialogue, characters should say anything but what they're actually thinking."

(That Bransford is so S-M-R-T!)

My Friend Sent Me This.I Think He's Still My Friend.

2011-02-06T08:00:00.002-07:00

Behold: 1978's Star Wars Holiday Special. All two hours of it.

I Don't See How This Will Work

2011-02-01T22:28:00.005-07:00

I read an interesting entertainment news item today: Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale will be a movie.

*scratches head*

How's that?

Somehow they're going to press this sprawling, epic, gorgeous novel into a coherent movie? One that also stays true to the source material?

(I love movies, but cramming a book into a film too often results in something akin to what happens in that chapter of A Wrinkle in Time where the three Mrs. W's accidentally land the children on a two-dimensional planet.)

If this movie really happens, though, I hope at least it helps the book sell a million or two more copies.

So Sayeth Stay-Puft: Pontifications on Pontifications

2011-01-26T07:00:00.006-07:00

A recent post (titled "Being Published Changes Everything") on writer Stacia Kane’s blog has been making the rounds and stirring the pot in the blogosphere this week. Gist of her essay: Published writers oughtta cool it on publishing reviews – specifically negative reviews – of other writers’ works. (Don’t go on my thumbnail sketch, though; read Stacia’s original thoughtful post. Go ahead, I’ll wait.)

While I don’t necessarily agree with every niggling point and argument in the piece, the spirit of the essay makes sense, and is, at the very least, food for thought for authors and aspiring authors in an increasingly public and blurred-boundary world.

Lately I’ve been thinking about online over-sharing in general (probably not helped by a smart post by lit agent Jennifer Laughran on her blog), not in relation to myself, precisely, but more as an ongoing conundrum for those of us living in the internet age. (No question but that a lack of online circumspection has bit more than one person in the ass.)

But I’ve meandered off the path a bit. Back to the question raised: Publishing negative reviews – should professional authors (that is, people who write, publish and hope to publish books) be in that game?

"Should." All I mean by this loaded word is: Is it a good idea?

(A few years ago, part of my day job was writing and/or wrangling book reviews. Even then, my preference, if not always adhered to, was to use it as a platform to endorse stuff I – or the reviewer I was wrangling – thought was good, rather than tear down the stuff that was … not so good. My point being, I’m probably a bit soft on this point in the first place. Call me Stay-Puft and take what I say with a grain of salt.)

This is the thing I keep coming back to when I ponder the author-as-public-critic question: Anyone who has ever seriously attempted to write novels and then actually completed one (let alone two or ten or twenty) knows that writing a book is hard. Even if what you come up with is an unmitigated turd (and I don’t know about you, but my first efforts sure stunk), it’s hard. Like, really effing hard.

So I’m at a place where I can’t get around the feeling that life is nasty/brutish/short enough without me compounding the misery. Not intentionally, anyway. (I’m not saying I never fall short.) It’s a burden of knowledge thing. Once you know something – like in this case, how hard writing a book is – you can’t unknow it. And if you can’t unknow it, you can’t not take it into account.

(In real life – private life – I’m a total hard-ass critic. Head Critic and Literary Mud Slinger of the House. Obviously a storyteller who doesn’t form strong opinions on the merits and shortcomings of the works of other storytellers is an unlikely animal. But I mostly inflict my, er, wisdom, on my better half, sparing the rest of y’all.)

Then there’s the practical aspect. Not even professional courtesy, but just the inherent conflict in trying to wear the PUBLIC author hat with the PUBLIC critic hat. They’re two different jobs, two different focuses, two different responsibilities. And anyway, too often (or too often for my comfort), when an author trashes the work of another author it comes off as meanie sour grapes (even when it absolutely isn’t).

So-yeah-but what about professional critics/reviewers? I’m absolutely of the opinion that people who have made it a vocation to craft critical reviews do valid, important work! (As a reader/consumer, critical reviews tend to have more weight with me when they’re without the confusion engendered by a whiff of conflict of interest – whether real or imagined.)

There’s also the (perhaps more salient) matter of effort, of time and energy. The too-few hours in a given day, and the too-few hours from those to devote to developing skill and building a career. (What do you want to be, an architect or a doctor? And if the answer is "a professional concert pianist, actually" then why neglect your etudes?) I’m feeling these days like for myself, time spent picking out others’ stitches is simply time wasted. (Yes, we’ve jumped ship to a knitting analogy.)

Of course, there’s also the likely eventuality that you’ll step on some toes you’ll later wish you hadn’t. For whatever reason. Fair or not fair. What goes on the web today lives on in infamy.

And how many fictional works are so HARMFUL that little ol’ me needs to be on the front line working to actively squelch ’em? (I mean, even if it’s total crap – in my fallible opinion – it’s not like the author set out to hurt me by writing it. Unless the thing’s like, seditious, violent, hateful, or an actual personal attack – in such a case, sure, game on in the spirit of righteous opposition.) But as to run-of-the-mill dreck: Rather than expending the effort to tell people not to read some book they’ve probably never heard of in the first place, I beat my friends and family over the head (metaphorically) with books I LOVE until they also read them. (By the way, you’re welcome, friends and family, for increasing your felicity.) I feel like sharing the great stuff produced in the sphere I love increases my little corner of the world’s happiness in a way that a cold bucket of water can’t.

I should make it clear that I believe that everyone should feel free to say whatever they want in any forum they’re allowed. But it’s like that old proverb: Take what you want and pay for it. Frankly, any opinion proffered publicly will probably piss off someone. It’s really not about pissing off or not pissing off whomever, but a cost-benefit analysis. In this case, for me, anymore, I don’t see any huge benefit to tearing apart another author’s work publicly, and I see multiple downsides.

Check It

2011-01-12T16:00:00.002-07:00

Yesterday, the ALA wrapped up its annual Midwinter Conference, bestowing this year's big-time book awards and announcing selected booklists.

And get this: The Last Good Place of Lily Odilon is on YALSA's 2011 Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults list!

Am I thrilled or what?

Was Ma Reading Coma? (That Would Explain a Lot)

2011-01-10T13:00:00.001-07:00

I think this kind of stuff is fun: Stop by BibliOZ.com to find out which books were at the top of the New York Times bestseller lists the week you were born. (I've read exactly one from my birth week, and it's James Herriot's All Things Wise and Wonderful.)

(link via)

Overheard

2011-01-03T07:00:00.002-07:00

"When grandma makes it, the secret ingredient is love. When I make it, it's turpentine."

One Last Thing (In 2010)

2010-12-31T07:00:00.001-07:00

And also.

We Made Some Christmas Cookies

2010-12-20T07:00:00.003-07:00

One afternoon just before Christmas, Pip and Chip were cutting through the woods on the way to a holiday shindig at their friend Milt's house, when suddenly a crazed squirrel leaped from a tree and began gnawing viciously at Chip's head.

Pip and Chip's screams echoed through the trees, drawing even more hungry squirrels ...

... and also Milt, who when he arrived on the scene was so dismayed by the squirrel offensive that he failed to notice the looming air assault.

Cabin-Fevered Haiku Whilst Waiting on Beta Reader

2010-12-01T22:26:00.005-07:00

We're snowed in but that's
fine; I have lots of snacks and
my light revisions

So Yeah, That's Been My Week

2010-11-12T22:18:00.003-07:00

Final drafting of the current WIP of Doom™ is going well. Swimmingly well. Suspiciously well. Which my little brain cannot handle, and so accordingly is refusing to attend to the .docx at all tonight, instead forcing my helpless hands into clicking out long Amazon.com wish lists (Helprin! Ferry! Bananagrams!) and my tired eyes into just now noticing that somehow I've managed to manufacture an actual mountain of candy next to my desk. A pile including but not limited to two bags of Starbursts, a bucket and a large tin of Dubble Bubble, a bag of Hawaiian Fruits Livesavers, a bag of Nibs, three packages of Drooble's Best Blowing Gum and a box of Strawberry Fruit Roll-ups.

Bestest/Weirdest

2010-11-08T08:00:00.002-07:00

... candelabra ever:

Today's As Good a Day As Any (To Add to the NaNoWriMo Wall of Noise)

2010-11-04T06:00:00.002-06:00

I’m not often moved to pontificate—

*shouts to be heard over the laughter of people who know her*

—publicly, but today I feel a twitch, a November-y kind of twitch. There are few novelists and would-be novelists who aren’t at least aware that there’s this thing called NaNoWriMo and that it’s here. Now. Lurking. Exerting pressure. Causing inner turmoil. Inciting debate.

Myself, I’ve never participated in NaNo and have never been moved to, though I can totally see its value, especially if your goal is learning to churn out words (a surprisingly difficult endeavor, actually, but then again, I tend to write like I'm driving with the emergency brake on—which is as painful and damaging as it sounds) and your weakness is motivation. But like the author of this negative and kinda mean anti-NaNo screed (up at Salon.com last Tuesday), I am skeptical of the correlation of output to quality, and the blithe certainty—whatever protestations to the contrary—of this infinite-monkeys-in-a-room faith that if you write enough, eventually you’ll barf out something good. (Not that this is never the case, only that the other crucial ingredient—whatever it is—is ignored in the frenzy.)

And as a writer, I admit that I did take pause at this pretty much undeniable bit:

"Even authors who achieve what probably seems like Nirvana to the average NaNoWriMo participant -- publication by a major house -- will, for the most part, soon learn this dispiriting truth: Hardly anyone will read their books and next to no one will buy them."

Honestly, it did make me question why I myself write novels, and more to the point, why I want to see them published when statistically speaking, they won’t be much read anyway. It's sure a lot of trouble for rather questionable returns.

But then I couldn't help thinking that as a reader, I’m so thoroughly glad someone like Susanna Clarke, for instance, didn’t take the obvious truth of these observations to heart. I hate to think of all the good stuff ignored by an indifferent reading public—picture the Cemetery of Forgotten Books—but I hate more to think that something wonderful might never exist—and I won't then be able to experience it—simply because its author was discouraged. (Though maybe that’s to the point, too: talent wilts without persistence, and perhaps a soupçon of delusion. It can’t be discouraged.)

I'm pretty sure I can forgive the universe whatever baffling crap—NaNo-generated or otherwise—comes along, as long as the true gems slip through, too. (I’m neither an agent nor an editor, so it’s easy to be magnanimous.) Because man, I love stories.

A Picture Worth at Least a Thousand Words

2010-11-03T08:00:00.004-06:00

October's Gone, November's Here

2010-11-01T08:00:00.006-06:00

Yes, November, a most questionable month for turkeys ...

Cartoons From Beyond! (Part 3 of 3)

2010-10-29T08:00:00.000-06:00

Cartoons From Beyond! (Part 2 of 3)

2010-10-28T08:00:00.001-06:00

More for your spooky viewing pleasure:

Cartoons From Beyond! (Part 1 of 3)

2010-10-27T13:51:00.006-06:00

Even more than candy and costumes, vintage Disney cartoons -- those little gems of artistic detail and whimsy -- put me in the Hallowe'en mood. (Though I do also like candy. And dressing up.)

Here's a marvelous specimen from 1929:

Legibility Not Guaranteed

2010-10-21T13:34:00.004-06:00

Pilot (the pen people) has this cool program that will turn your handwriting into a font. How spiffy is that?

In Re Saturday's Book Launch:

2010-10-18T07:00:00.001-06:00

It was a blast and a thrill, made so by each and every one of you wonderful people. My most sincere thanks to everyone who came!

Just As Halloween-y As It Was a Year Ago

2010-10-15T08:00:00.000-06:00

Let's hear it for the ghosts of cheezed-off kids.

Neil Gaiman Interview at NYMag

2010-10-14T16:28:00.005-06:00

It's 25,000+ words! Go on, I know you want to hop over now to read 'em.

Interview w/Y.T.: Up at Cynsations!

2010-10-11T10:06:00.004-06:00

About the first bit I did to get the word out about this debut YA novel of mine was take up an invitation to do an interview for Cynsations' "New Voices" series, and it posted today.

Cynsations is maintained by Cynthia Leitich Smith (a talented, successful and undoubtedly busy writer and educator), in what seems to me a generous labor of love for the kidlit writing community -- especially generous, perhaps, to greenhorns like myself. (Thank you, Cynthia!)

Holy-Crap-I'm-Old (Gesundheit)

2010-10-05T23:07:00.005-06:00

So I went to a show this weekend -- a sludge rock show, even! -- and all I could think was (a) wow, I'm going to be up kinda late, (b) what are the kids wearing to shows these days?, and (c) better buy earplugs!

(Postscript: Wore black and scored the earplugs. Good call on the latter; as it was, I had my atoms rearranged by a two-drummer -- that's two! drummers! -- rhythm section. What I'm saying is, it was awesome. Guess I'm not ready for the retirement home just yet.)

If I Should Fall From Grace With Ugh

2010-09-29T08:00:00.000-06:00

My tender adolescent sensibilities are crushed ... I've just heard the Pogues splattered all over a lame Subaru Forester commercial. Nothing kills a great song quite so decisively as snippet repetition coupled with crappy visuals. Sigh.

attendre-et-espérer

Oh Dear God She's Fussing Around in the Anthologies Again

"Venture Afield" (Ha!) That Was Totally Unintentional

Sweet Sour Times

Happy Valentine's Day

I May Or May Not Have Difficulty Avoiding That Time Life "Classics of Country" Infomercial...

b r a i n s m e l t e d s e n d h e l p

Six Enjoyable Weekend Bits

“Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.”~ Robert Benchley

This Is How You Upgrade Your Day

Why Do I Find This So Funny?

Madly

The Doctors Are (All) In (My Head)

Merry Christmas!

It's That Time Again

File Under: Writer/Nerd Fantasy

Six Things That Are Just Swell in Fiction But Would Be Horrible in Real Life

"I Know You Like Videos of Cute Kitties and Furry Things" Is What the Misleading Email Said

Five Recent Opportunities TO LAUGH IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITY

Succor (You Takes It Where You Finds It)

Happy Halloween

This Video Is So Upsetting Yet the Song Always Sticks In My Head

Overheard

What's Your Deal, Gendered Nouns?

Backward Through the Wormhole

Overheard

A Favorite

Story and Marketing

Overheard

Some People Ask, “Why?” … I Ask, “Why Not?”

I'm Pretty Sure There Was Also An Undercurrent of Fear of Abandonment

This Past Weekend’s Desert Camping in Six Sounds

And Here We Have the ’80s Serious Story Song Video

My Cat Loves This One

Overheard

Vignette

Yet Strangely, I've Never Had a Dream Where I Could Fly

Food for Thought

Overheard

Certified 100% Realistic

It's Been a Week and I'm Ready to Go Back

Don't Be Afraid to Come Dancing

Next Time You See the Sherman Monument, Really Look at It

Hair of Tintin, Sound of Awesomeness

Summer In Five Sounds

Overheard

Go Ahead, Amadeus, Rock Him

Sometimes I Wonder Why I Bother Making Crap Up When Life Is So Much Stranger Anyway

it's like that thing of when you have a high fever but then you take some Nyquil and your head just sort of floats away and it's nice

#truestory

Sometimes an Unlikeable Main Character is Just the Ticket

Six Things I Realized Over the Weekend, In No Particular Order

*smacks forehead*

Overheard

Oh Crap, Not Another Metaphor

The First Step is Admitting You Have a Problem

Apparently Some Laws of Cartoon Physics Do Apply In the Real World

Unforeseen Six-Week Interruption Over, Back To Business As Usual

A Moderately Tortured Metaphor

Channeling John Buchan On This, Day 10 of the Great Bathroom Remodel

One of My Favorite One-Hit Wonders

Not Quite Tin Pan Alley

Overheard

Paging Marty Stu, or, I Might've Been Cranky That Day

Spring, and McDonaldland's Fancy Turns To Baseball

And Your Breath Stinks, Too

With Compliments

Actually, I'm Still a Little Freaked Out By Lord Kuruku

Overheard

Kinda Awesome

Apparently Mondays Are YouTube Video Days Around These Parts

Cattle To Be Charged With Harboring

Watching This Nearly Hypnotized Me

In a Nutshell

And So Another Week Begins

I Can't Stop Reading These

Yes, This

My Friend Sent Me This.I Think He's Still My Friend.

I Don't See How This Will Work

So Sayeth Stay-Puft: Pontifications on Pontifications

smacks forehead