November Brings the Crazy with NaNoWriMo!
You know how you’re standing in line behind someone at the post office, or maybe waiting for an appointment, or for someone to serve your beverage of choice, and you overhear a story that ends something along the lines of, I’m telling you, you can’t make this shit up. Well, just in case you’ve never had the experience… I’ve shared before that rural east Hawaii has a hint of Wild West flavor. We live in a development (using the term loosely) where everyone is on catchment water (i.e., if it doesn’t rain, you don’t shower), where electricity poles run down Read more…
Who Put the Short in Short Story? Not Me
Happy belated International Private Investigator Day! My website went up shortly before P.I. Day in 2014, so it’s sort of my informal two-year anniversary as well. I was just feeling nostalgic rereading my previous two P.I. Day Posts (here’s Year One and Year Two; and yes, aloha shirts still make me feel like a walking armchair with buttons.) Last week, I promised something special to celebrate. Then this pesky little tropical storm swept in, distracting me and throwing me off schedule. It was so humid the day before the storm hit that you could watch our bare feet leave footprints Read more…
Will The Robots Help Me Tie my Shoes, Too?
I’m ready for the Evil Robot Overlords to take charge. Then there will be no need to worry about our calendars. Regular blog readers probably know by now that making decisions (or making myself make decisions) is not my strong suit (About to Get Grounded and Inner Blue-Slapper, for example). You know what’s even worse than making decisions? Putting those decisions on a calendar. Of course, committing something to your calendar sucks you back into the decision-making matrix, often making you reconsider the original decision you’re now trying to schedule. (Well, I know I said I would, but come on–who really does that Read more…
Pity the Writer’s Heavily Laden Nightstand: Part II–No Intervention Necessary
I mentioned in last week’s Blog Post that many of the books cluttering up my nightstand (and my desk, and the floor) are research books for my next project. First of all, I have to get this out of the way. Please don’t throw your mouse at me because I won’t feel it, but the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Technology might come for you… My next book is probably not going to be a Sydney Brennan book. Don’t hurt me. I love Sydney, and I have a bunch more adventures in mind for her (one scene in particular Read more…
Pity the Writer’s Heavily Laden Nightstand: Part I–Brain Canines
I’m generally a fiction reader, but I’ve been hitting the nonfiction hard lately. I go through phases where I dip into half a dozen or so different books scattered around the house. A few hardcovers and an ereader will be stacked on my nightstand (along with a couple of notebooks, and pens, and receipts, and whatever else hasn’t fallen off yet). No more than one book from the “currently reading” pile will be fiction; I am constitutionally incapable of reading more than one fiction book at a time. The nonfiction books fall into subject clusters—often a book or two about writing, and the Read more…
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