-
Another weird, but good Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is usually a weird holiday at our house and this year is no exception. While the rest of the country feasts with family and friends, the three kids and I... do something else, and feel a little bit weird about it ( Read more... ) -
L.K. Madigan interviews me for her "Authorial Intrusion"
Lisa interviewed me and posted it to her lj about a week ago but I am just now figuring out how to share the link to it: http://lkmadigan.livejournal.com/86122.html
I thought Lisa did a great job of making me sound like a real live author. Don't you sometimes feel like everyone thinks you're a joke, and even though YOU know how hard you work at it, ( Read more... ) -
Your opinions, please, on a question about Ambition/Relationships
Whether or not I should scrap a story--a story I've worked on for years--hinges on this: I have a definite problem, something the character wants more than anything in the world. I have obstacles that get in her way, people who want to hold her back from her single-minded pursuit of her goal. But my question concerns the character’s growth. If she ( Read more... ) -
Enjoying the HP Mania even though I do not enjoy HP
I am not into the whole Harry Potter thing because I just don't enjoy stories with little talking animals and creatures and ghosts. I read only the first part of Book I before giving up and telling my daughter she could finish it herself. I have seen a few of the movies and I did enjoy two of those though (slept through the last half of the 4th ( Read more... ) -
TELL AN AUTHOR YOU CARE DAY
In honor of TELL AN AUTHOR YOU CARE DAY, I will try to sneak in a post before the day is over ( Read more... ) -
When it rains it pours...
It's not been a good week. The washer broke two days before we left for our trip to California, a family crisis back home occurred the day we arrived in California, I lost my credit card while in California, I got a cold sore, the pool pump broke the day we got back from California, the phone line went dead a day later--which mean no internet ( Read more... ) -
Quaking
I'm excited for my friend and critique group member, Kathy Erskine, whose YA novel QUAKING (Philomel)comes out in two days. It is a great story and I knew the minute I read it as a WIP that this baby would be published! My well-read and hard-to-please daughter was 15 at the time, and I passed it on to her to read. She finished it in one night and ( Read more... ) -
travel sports, ARG!
I've been so busy that it's been over a month since I posted an entry--hope it's not so late that they've cancelled my lj (I heard if you are inactive for 30 days, it can be... we'll see if this comes up ( Read more... ) -
The Book Thief
By the way, I can't in all fairness say good things about the book I did in my last post (The Boy In the Striped Pajamas) without also recommending THE BOOK THEIF, by Markus Zusak, which I recently read and which is also a World WarII Holocaust story and truly amazing. I came to love the characters in that book in so much deeper a way than I have ( Read more... ) -
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
When I first saw this title I was intrigued and really wanted to read it, but then I heard some criticisms of it from some people I respect and I wasn't sure I wanted to bother with it anymore. But an email came from the library saying that they'd gotten it in (I'd forgotten I'd put in a request for it) and I thought, why not?--my son and I read ( Read more... )