Another writing-and-reading PSA. Go here to check out author Brenda Novak’s annual online charity auction. She’s been doing this for a number of years, and the prize board this year looks amazing. Forget the antique jewelry, art, and unique vacation packages you might win – check out some of the professional services available. Query-writing assistance.…
Read More Brenda Novak’s Annual Online Auction for Diabetes ResearchThere’s a standard bit of advice every new writer gets: ‘Show me, don’t tell me.” As a reader, may I add another request? Make me feel something when I read a story. Twist the knife a little. Make me laugh, cry, cringe, burst with pride and love. Make me yell at you, dear author –…
Read More Twist the KnifeI recently attended an Al Stewart and Dave Nachmanoff concert at the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) in north Scottsdale. (Aside: Al and Dave are brilliant guitar players and polished singer/songwriters who not only craft songs with several-hundred-word vocabularies, they’re also wickedly funny in between songs. Come for the music, stay for the comedy.) It was one…
Read More A Tale of Two MuseumsI’m joining such august company as John Scalzi, Cory Doctorow, and Popehat, so I feel included in the wave of righteous anger spilling over the internet right now. This stands to get me in more trouble, but I feel so strongly about it that I must post. I simply must. To that end: Space Marine…
Read More $pace Marin3Etsy.com and Amanda McKittrick Ros are brilliant examples of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, “a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes.” Or, in street-speak, “You are not only not as talented/smart/beautiful as you think you are,…
Read More Etsy.com and Amanda McKittrick RosThis isn’t yer momma’s romance, kids. I’d like to share some breaking news cross-posted by romance writer Tara Lain: Hi everyone— This was just posted on RRW about the new J R Ward book— Hi guys, I just thought I’d share that earlier this morning the virtual signing opened for J.R. Ward’s Lover At Last…
Read More The walls come tumbling downWell, it may be one of those great, brilliant, heartbreaking lost causes – but I can always hope that some of Mesa’s finest might wake up and realize what a treasure they’re close to losing. The employees of the Monsterland Bar & Grill are putting together a fund-raising campaign to buy the bar and keep…
Read More Monsterland updateI just found out that one of my favorite places in central AZ is closing: the wacky, gorgeous, always-fun Monsterland Bar & Grill. http://www.azcentral.com/thingstodo/dining/articles/20130111monsterland-mesa-closing-party.html This place opened as a Halloween haunted house, added a bar, added music and parties, and then a restaurant. The spooky vibe carries over in twisty entryways, gravestones, animatronic werewolf heads,…
Read More Adios, MonsterlandThis is a post about art, because I’ve been an artist a lot longer than I’ve been a writer. Playing with useless objects and patterns seems not only to be a primate penchant, but one found in upper avian species as well. Smart creatures may not be able to eat shiny, pretty things – but…
Read More Celebrating Mindful BeautyA lot has happened in the world since I last chimed in on this blog. I could talk about gun violence and mental health, in the wake of numerous high-profile and tragic shootings. But many people are already doing that, to far better effect. I can shake my head at the political gamesmanship over the…
Read More ‘My Turn’ and the end of an eraThanksgiving Day (cooking, eating, couch-nesting, and family fights.) Black Friday (shopping in the chain stores and big-box stores, for often illusory bargains.) Shop Local Saturday (support your local businesses! Trust me, you will mourn them if they go.) Cyber Monday (buy everything online, some of which you probably cynically priced at a chain or local…
Read More The stages of ThanksgivingAndrew Piper says that e-readers will doom the act of reading. He even has a new book out about it, from the University of Chicago Press, which I am fairly certain will also be available in digital form. Edited to add: yep, it’s on Kindle. He wrote a Slate article about it, too. I call…
Read More The death of reading?Last May, author Neil Gaiman gave a commencement speech portraying the artist’s life. “Walk toward the mountain,” he said, meaning do those things that will add to your chosen career. Give weight to choices that will help you become a better artist, not merely those which pay bills and siphon time and love. Really, I…
Read More Neil Gaiman explains why we are hereToday, the Supreme Court is hearing a case that almost no one in America has heard about, and everyone who buys and sells online SHOULD know! Ebay, Etsy, Craigslist, and even the old-fashioned garage sale are under threat from big business…who wants to make sure that consumers do not have the right to re-sell things…
Read More Kirtsaeng vs John Wiley & Sons, and why you should careOkay, okay, so I grabbed this off the HuffPo site after a friend frantically texted me about it. My first thought was ‘Oh, noes, the Joss has Drunk the Powdered Poison-laced Artifical Beverage!!’ But I just couldn’t see that from the man who made Buffy and Browncoats. And I was right. Go. Watch. Laugh. And…
Read More Joss Whedon endorses Romney apocalypse…so, I’m just going to post the link to Toni McGee Causey’s blog post about why we need ‘escapist’ fiction. http://www.murderati.com/blog/2008/11/23/comfort-reading.html Many times in my life, books have carried me through some rough real-life situations. Maybe they were not all brilliant literary examples. But they told me stories that transcended the world, for just long…
Read More I could not say this so wellDoes our entertainment culture value sampled products over original works? Is this creative sloth, or a calculated shot at maximizing profit via audience familiarity with tried-and-true stories? When done by professional writers via publisher license, the trend gives us dozens of ‘Star Wars’ novels, John Scalzi’s affectionate and awesome H. Beam Piper reboot FUZZY NATION,…
Read More Sampled Fiction, Serial Numbers, and how I might have just mortgaged what was left of my soul.I’m a writer and artist living in the American Southwest. I’m lucky enough to work in creative industries as diverse as commercial analog and digital art, art instruction, bookbinding, jewelry-making, and film cell retouching for a major theme park company. My artwork is collected by numerous private clients and university special collections, and has been…
Read More Crane Hana Books begins.