I was looking at this picture of Callista Gingrich and realized that I’ve been wrong insinuating that she’s a Stepford wife, when in fact she’s Lady Penelope of the Thunderbirds.Continue Reading

Check out this Goodreads infographic about who loves Twilight the most. The pattern is, intense Twilight love in the south and midwest, shading gradually to “meh” on the coasts. The red/blue split looks a lot like red/blue voting results, which is kind of interesting. It could be driven by theContinue Reading

I had a major aha! moment when I read this quote in the Stranger: “you can split the world of theater between people who prefer Chekhov and people who prefer Shakespeare.” I realized that this aesthetic scale, with the Chekhovian (restrained, thoughtful, subtle, naturalistic) at one end and the ShakespeareanContinue Reading

Aspiring writers’ hearts are notoriously brittle. Why else would anyone query only once, or twice, or a small handful of times, then give up altogether, assuming (wrongly) that if his book were really meant to get published, it would have been snapped up instantly? —Anne Mini Quoted for truth.Continue Reading

I almost did Nanowrimo this year because I had an idea I wanted to work on, and I thought that maybe it would help in the novel-selling project to be working on a completely different project. Then I decided that was a stupid thought. I'm doing Nanosellmo instead. That isContinue Reading

Dan Savage provides a (slightly tongue-in-cheek) defense for the "sexy" Halloween costume. I don't actually disagree with him on most points — I just really hate those costumes.  Jesus Ween is not, as you might suspect, an indication that Jesus has joined the band, or that the band has foundContinue Reading

Last night Paul and I went out with our recently-moved-to-San-Diego niece, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend's sister. The last Saturday before Halloween and we were in the Gaslamp District, which is the historical/party district of San Diego. Sort of like Pioneer Square used to be, but bigger. (Not like theContinue Reading

I did more or less meet my goal of having the rewrite done by World Fantasy Convention. I say "more or less" because I was still monkeying with the climax yesterday, and I was hoping that the version called "done" for today would be an even more polished version. IContinue Reading

So, I thought I had the werewolf novel all figured out, then I stepped away from it for 6 weeks of write-a-thoning. When I went back to take another look and get on the finding-an-agent thing again, I realized OMG! The protagonist doesn't want anything! She is totally protagging insufficiently!*Continue Reading

I got to #3 — You Miss Game Storylines That Were Actually Compelling — of 5 ways to tell you’re getting too old for video games and had an aha moment regarding the whole “video games as narrative art” question. Wait a second. Is it possible that those old gamesContinue Reading