Thanks to my webmaster duties for Lea Schizas and her publishing venture MuseItUp Publishing, I have the privilege of listening in on the conversations among editors and artists for the press. They’re an interesting group, and a lot of fun, but this time one of them, Karen McGrath, offered something so profound that I asked for permission to share it with the rest of you.

Whether your days of being edited professionally are still ahead of you, or you’re in the thick of it right now, I think all of us can benefit from considering the following stages a writer goes through:
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Several people have been asking me about my pulse pen and what I thought about it. Only thing is that I hadn’t had the chance to take it out on a road trip yet. Well, now I have and here are the results. This is what the pen captured. You can see my lousy handwriting in its full glory…and I was even sort of trying to write well, okay, trying when I remembered :p. Then I ran it through the OCR software. It certainly isn’t perfect, but the reason for the picture is so you can see what it had to work with. My older son wrote a sentence to test it in his cursive and it translated perfectly. Maybe I should improve my handwriting? Oh, and the pen also recorded the audio for the whole presentation in a usable sound file despite sitting in the left-hand, second to last row of a curved lecture hall.

Anyway, on to the show! (more…)

As I mentioned a couple posts back, I volunteer at the Nevada Humane Society. It’s a no-kill shelter that is overloaded with cats and dogs of practically every shape and size. We even have various rodents and bunnies.

My Humane Society is running a free adoption deal this weekend (starting Thursday) and it got me thinking about how much people might not know about shelters. So, here are some of my thoughts on the subject (prompted by replies to my notice about the adoption deal).

First of all, while I only know the specifics of my shelter, it’s easy enough to find no-kill shelters no matter where you are. And these shelters, because they keep their doors and hearts open to animals in need, are desperate for help, whether volunteering, donating, or even adopting one of the residents. (more…)

I come before you today bruised and battered, scabbed and turning colors. The most important decoration on my body? It’s the smile on my face. I’ve posted canary posts before about odd incidents where things went out of control, but this isn’t a canary post. In fact, it’s pretty much the opposite of a canary post.

When I was a kid, I was fearless. I didn’t let broad waters, high cliffs, or even revolutionaries stand in the way of getting out and doing things. I fell down not one but at least two of those cliffs. I once bicycled from the outskirts into downtown Athens, Greece because I didn’t understand how hand brakes worked on a borrowed bike. What did I do then? I got my bearings and pedaled back home as soon as I’d slowed down. Hey, you can get going really fast when you go down Devil’s Hill (our name for it) without knowing how to brake). I back-pedaled my heart out, but nothing ever happened.) Still, I didn’t panic. I treated it like an adventure.
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Dragons have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. My father told us bedtime stories about an unusual dragon he met while boating in Lake Michigan. My parents were Peter, Paul, and Mary fans, so Puff the Magic Dragon was a common song on our many road trips. Even Elliot made an impression as he tried to rescue Pete from slavery in the Disney movie, Pete’s Dragon.

Since those days, I’ve been introduced to mechanical dragons in real life, the thought that dinosaur bones could have begun the belief in dragons in the first place, wise dragons, horrible dragons, dragons that were brought to life through myth and magic and those crafted by genetic science. I can’t imagine a world without dragons in it, whether you hold to the Smaug image of a monstrous creature that hoards treasure and eats people, the helpmates of Pern, or the wise creatures who try to steer humanity in the proper direction only to fail time after time. (more…)

Books I’ve Read

I have decided to post the book reviews, even mini-reviews, as separate posts again. I swear this decision has nothing to do with the fact that I’m still 100 pages or so from the end of the novel I’ve been reading this week and barely started with the non-fiction one. That’s no reflection on either book. I just started very late and haven’t had much time to read, though every time I start reading the novel, Magic to the Bone, I have to tear myself away.

There are a couple reasons behind this: (more…)

I’m sure someone has already had this thought because it just makes too much sense, but it dawned on me that finding an agent is a lot like online dating.

First, you sit down at home and make up a list of criteria for what you want or need from the person you’re seeking.

Dating: Cute, smart, likes movies…
Agent search: Covers my genre(s), years in business, philosophy… (more…)