She was a small orange tabby cat whose picture graced our business website as a mascot. She had a rough start to life, born to an alley cat on the west side of Indianapolis and then nearly crushed under a mattress when a nearby house was being cleaned out by the landlord's crew after the tenants were arrested during the bust of a dog-fighting ring ( Read more... )

There's a new vignette challenge over at Sarah Hoyt's blog. My effort is from the Grissom timeline, as a bully continues his old games.

marycatelli has a new vignette challenge on her Dreamwidth blog. My effort is also from the Grissom timeline, as a stats class gets an introduction to various common distributions.

There's also a new writing challenge at ( Read more... )

Now is not a great time to live by the Great Lakes. States all along them are getting lake effect snow, some measured in feet. The Upper Peninsula (UP) of Michigan is getting up to two feet of snow off Lake Superior. Parts of Pennsylvania and New York are getting blitzed with snow off Lake Erie, with reports of drivers being stranded on various ( Read more... )

Thanksgiving Day should be a day for remembering all the ways in which we're blessed -- but sometimes it's a struggle to see any blessing in a situation where someone's done a bad turn to someone who's already struggling

This morning I was going through my usual run of websites and found this appalling news story about a woman whose already ( Read more... )

I originally wrote this piece for Odd Prompts right around Thanksgiving a few years ago. One of these days I'd like to polish it and turn it into a proper e-book, but I just wanted to share it again ( Read more... )

It's sad that Thanksgiving Day is getting crowded out as Christmas decorations go up earlier and earlier every year. When I was a child, Thanksgiving was the beginning of the winter holiday season, and only on the Friday or Saturday after Thanksgiving did Santa Claus come to the mall to hear little children's Christmas wishes. As a result, ( Read more... )

Have you ever read a book and been frustrated by the way the author handled it? Whether it's a book in which an interesting idea is tossed out but never followed up on, or one in which an author takes an idea that's absolute gold and turns it into complete dross, it often leaves the reader with a feeling of if onlyAs Mary Catelli notes, for authors ( Read more... )

This week's Odd Prompts writing challenge at More Odds than Ends is from AC Young: Only the second sons of nobles were considered for the role of battlefield messengers.This suggested a fantasy setting, and raised the question of why. Protecting the heir? Or a consolation prize for not being the heir ( Read more... )

There's nothing like getting the words really flowing, to the point you just have to keep that momentum up and push right on through to the end. I should be getting ready for bed now, but this is a story I want to get finished and on an editor's desk before we leave for Thanksgiving, because it has a hard deadline at the end of the month and it's ( Read more... )

Sarah Hoyt's still recovering from last week's illness, so the book promo and vignette challenge post should go up tomorrow.

marycatelli has a new vignette challenge over at her Dreamwidth blog. My effort is from the Chongu Empire, a reflection on misapprehensions on both sides.

There's also a new writing challenge on the Victory Girls blog. My effort is ( Read more... )