Right around this time four years ago, we went to this fish/sushi casino restaurant called Oceana. You can read all about that medicated visit by clicking HERE.

Tonight, we dined UNDER THE SEA at Oceana. Again! Casinos are twisty, turny places, but we followed the large floating aquatic mammals until we saw the entrance.

( So. Many. Pictures... )

I can't really talk specifics right now, but I've been in this kind of stress place for a long time. I think there were maybe just one (or 39485493) too many pressures in my world, my brain revolted a bit, and then the panic set in. But these last two weeks were really cathartic for me in a lot of ways, and I thought I'd share the cryptically out ( Read more... )

And that's why I hate illegally downloaded books.

Yeah, I know. Just wait for it...

Okay, so he was really more of a FOLK MUSICIAN, but still. I grew up in a house that was 100% funded by the money my dad made through his music. He booked 200 concerts a year for the first 13 years of my life and recorded and produced 10 albums. We counted on the ( Read more... )

There's a great outrage spinning around the internet this week over a blog on the Marie Claire site. I'm not going to link to it, because I think, as always, the outrage has drawn more hits to the site than any blog would get for the magazine itself ( Read more... )

So, every once in a while I hear about a book coming up that makes the INSANELY LONG WAIT seem like torture. And today, I'm lucky enough to give you a sneak peak of one such novel:

The Near Witch is only an old story told to frighten children.
If the wind calls at night, you must not listen. The wind is lonely, and always looking for company.
There ( Read more... )

Today, the book community is speaking out about SPEAK, Laurie Halse Anderson's controversial and award-winning book about rape and how hard it is to give voice to our pain.

And, of course, as it's the season for book banning, someone wrote an article about how disgusting it is that there are books in our school libraries, being taught in the ( Read more... )

So, this is how the conversation started ( Read more... )

Just a quick post today. But since I've seen this question a lot lately, I thought I'd try to define voice as it pertains to writing ( Read more... )

 I had an interesting conversation with a friend this week about what it means to be a writer and to market yourself and your work in the land of social networking. He was under the impression that as an author there were three things that really were REQUIRED:

1. Twitter.
2. Facebook/MySpace/Etc.
3. Blogging

He had thought through his position, of ( Read more... )

So, I took the night off tonight. Between beta reading, critiquing, revising, and working on my new project, I've been filling every free moment with something. Both of our cars broke down and we're trying to take care of all the details surrounding our house and what we're going to do going forward. My head has just been so full of stress and ( Read more... )