I have been reading at least one picture book per month, this year. I love picture books. I sometimes feel like that’s cheating, to read a children’s book, but there is no cheating. I am making this up. I read Doug Salati’s Hot Dog because it won the Caldecott and Ezra Jack Keats awards a…
I may have written this post in 2014, but I haven’t done much in a decade to learn from it. Honestly, I’m personally glad I came across this bit of wisdom, right now. Because that’s what it is: a bit of wisdom I gleaned from a simple interaction with my fourth-grade daughter (who is now…
A couple weeks ago, I was listening to a writing podcast (Write-Minded) and there was an interview with an author (Tzivia Gover) who uses dreams to write (and teaches classes on using your dreams to write). In the course of the interview, the interviewer and interviewee touched on the subject of writer’s block, a subject…
For National Novel Writing Month (November) this year, I was working on a YA fantasy adventure trilogy. It was a new project to me, and I admit to not being as versed in YA or speculative fiction as in some other genres. In the past, I have made playlists to get in the writing mood…
I can’t seem to get much published (yet. I’m being a little facetious as I’ve technically only been doing this full-time, head-on for a few months, during which I had two family vacations, Covid, and some major life transitions). These days, actually, I am sitting down to work, heading on Tuesdays to my workshare, attending…
I have begun a new season in my life. On New Year’s Day this year (2022) I looked out over the panorama of the coming year and I could already see that it was going to be a year of change. Like a lot of change, big changes. What I didn’t know was that there…
This hardly counts as a book review, but if you are anything like me, you will thrill at the revelation that The Antiquarian Sticker Book exists. Actually, these books, but we’ll get to that in a second. I was wandering a bookstore, actually looking for a souvenir. In this interesting area near the journals, I…
I have boarded the dot/bullet journaling train. Let me explain. First, there is some argument about whether or not it is called dot journaling or bullet journaling and about whether or not those are the same thing. From what I can tell, they can be used interchangeably to refer to journaling in a blank book…
This afternoon I am doing a thing. I have been building up to it lately, though I might have been building up to it for years. There is a part of me, for the last several months, that has thought, “May, 2022. It’ll come soon enough.” Turns out it’s not soon enough. So this afternoon…
As I have said before, since I was a little girl I have been looking forward to the milestones on the journey of the writing life. This summer I encountered a milestone that I didn’t see coming. Indeed, I didn’t know it was a thing to look for. Maybe you do and that makes you…
I already wrote a blog recently about my making an altered book. I am only one page and half a cover in, by the way, because my life continues to be too busy for life. But enough about first world problems for a second. I have enjoyed so much figuring out how to make an…
I have been obsessed lately, and it has something to do with books but not exactly what you would guess. We could go easy on me and call it distracted instead of obsessed. I just know that I have to keep myself as far as possible from the temptation while I am otherwise engaged with…
Since the next paragraph sounds derogatory, I’m going to give it to you straight here: I loved reading this book. Now… I did not LOL. (I might have smirked.) This book was not a mystery. It was only half-satire. And it cheated with the epistolary form (as many epistolary novels do). It might have been…
Is a writing residency worth it? For me, it has been the lifeblood to a career that is crowded out by life as a mother, wife, hobbyist, home school educator, and middle class American (Lord, help us). This is, true, only my second writing residency. It is also the same residency as the one I…
I admit that my book reviews have not been very even. I intend to review a whole lot of great literature over the years, but my progress has been uneven and my writing of the reviews has also been uneven. I spend more time keeping up with my kids, for example, so review more Middle…
I apologize if you saw this review and clicked on it because you thought, Look at that beautiful cover, and “falling cloudberries?” Poetry? Literary fiction? That sounds super intriguing. Because this is not a novel, and since no one can read the cute-yet-obnoxious font that was chosen for the subtitle, you didn’t know that the…
I love this book and everything about it. When my daughter was an infant, it was cool in our circles to buy this Bible for your children, and a friend of the family bought a copy for our daughter. Over the years, there have been many children’s Bibles that I have seen that did not…
The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art, by Erwin Raphael McMannus, HarperOne 2014. The book has been a national bestseller in both the religious and secular markets. I read this book because it was assigned for an art group. I believe the leader chose it because he had read McManus’ book,…
The last two months have seen as many publications from my indie publishing company, Owl and Zebra Press’s imprint, Muldover Books. While finishing up on a reprint project (which you’ll hear about next month), I decided to take a little flu-recovery-time to jump on a couple “quick” projects that I knew I could handle while…
I am headed into hibernation. Let me first apologize for the lack of posts on this blog. For a time, I have been too busy to post and, honestly, I haven’t known what to say. I haven’t known what to say for two reasons, and the most important is that I didn’t know what the…
the starving artist 