Long Time No Update

So, it's been a while. Right now I'm waiting to hear about the test results from my uncle John's biopsy. The tumor was siginifcant, to say the least, but the doctors seem to think they got it all, whatever it was; I'm hoping and praying. It's been a lot of waiting, and between that, carrying old german shepards that can't walk through down pours in the middle of the night after all the lights on the block went out. Oh, and I've been writing, too.

I'm reading the new Harry Potter, one of those ten million people that are, and so far it's fantastic. There's still some parts where the editors went soft on her, but this penultimate book has the same feeling of a giant snow ball rolling down hill that Revenge of the Sith did. Which Sugu HATED by the way. I'm itching to chat with him to see just why, although he explains some on his site. And in Book Six, Harry finally notices Ginny. I knew it all along. His mom had red hair, you know.

And goodbye to Scotty. James Doohan, world class guy, dead at 85. He was the heart and soul really of 'Star Trek', wasn't he?

Ben mentions some of the links here on his blog today. You should check his out, too. I want to add a lot more literary links, there's so many out there, and I plan to do that soon, at the same time I give the site a little overhaul. Ben is going down to Iowa City to take part in the Summer Workshops and I so wish I was going with him. Man.

And London was bombed again today. There aren't words anymore to express a person's outrage, and I think that's the collateral damage of terrorism: it thieves your outrage. It becomes routine, expected, inevitable. And so it becomes pointless, because it's like the weather. There's weather everyday. So go right ahead, Osama. You'll eventually lose the ability to frighten us, and some day, sooner or later, you will be found, and you will be killed.

Oh, and I found out Karl Rove's wife's name is Darby. Ugh.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mirror, Mirror

Image
Recently I bought a copy of a pretty well reviewed and promoted speculative fiction novel.  About two chapters in, the main character looks in a mirror and describes themself.  I literally closed the book and stopped reading.  The novel had other issues, but this put me right out of the story.  This technique - being generous here - occurs a lot in first person narratives, about as often as a story beginning with the main character waking up from a dream.  The mirror device is best avoided, but not necessarily because it's so overused - it's best avoided because simply put, it's so easy.  A character, especially a protagonist, should never be described; they should be imagined.
Read more

Conversations With: Dr. Daniel Dahlquist

Here's what I hope is the start of a new weekly (or so) feature on the blog: a mini-interview with writers about the craft. My good friend and teacher Dr. Daniel Dahlquist inaugurates the series. Dr. Dahlquist is a wonderful poet; his poetry has appeared in respected literary journals such as Prairie Schooner, New Virginia Review, River Styx, Kentucky Poetry Review, and the Louisville Review. He graduated from the University of Iowa's storied Writer's Workshop and holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from Southern Illinois University. His first book, SPEECH TO THE DEAD PEOPLE, was published in 1997 by Cedar Creek Press. You can read an excerpt from the book (and my favorite of his poems) here . Without further adieu: Q: What poets or other writers do you consider influences? A: The apocalyptic poets appealed to me when I was very young. I started writing poems at age sixteen, on my grandfather's 1928 L.C. Smith typewriter, largely to impress my English teacher.
Read more

My Advice For Writers

More and more I get asked for advice from aspiring writers. Mostly this is because I have a book, not because I really know anything. I'm not good at giving advice. Actually, I'm pretty good at it, just not very good at following it myself. So take all of this with a grain of salt. Actually, you should probably just click away to some other website right now. If you're still here, or have just reached the end of the internet, seriously: I've given a lot of thought to what I say to a serious writer who is asking me for serious perspective, and in so much as I can give it, I usually speak to these things: Find your faults . You have them. We all do. One thing my day job has taught me is to actively seek out process improvement. Usually we wait for problems to come to us - it's how we know they're problems - but most often in business, this can get you in trouble. The same applies to your art. It is a process; you should actively seek to impro
Read more