I lurve me some Halloween. I’m not big on the grody stuff, like vampires and tombstones. What I love is dressing up, the fall weather, carving pumpkins, caramel apples, candles flickering, and neighborhood kids running around in the night. What I also love is re-reading Harry Potter. There are two series of books I try…
Making that Best Books List for Comedy a few weeks back really made me wonder why I didn’t include comedy on my Best Books List. Then I wondered why I didn’t include memoir, history, travel, nonfiction, food, journalism, graphic novels, YA, and literary. Besides (already included) philosophy and religion, these are all things I love…
Inevitably, when someone asks me a writer- or reader-question in real life, it is going to end up on the blog. This used to happen with my food blog. The thing is, if someone has taken the time and effort to ask a serious question, there are probably other people wondering the same thing. Plus,…
The Hero With a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell and published in the third edition by New World Publishing in 2008. The original was published in 1949 by Pantheon Books. Before I begin my review of this particular book, I want to answer a question for those of you who don’t know the answer. What…
The Doctor Proctor’s Fart Powder series for kids, by Jo Nesbo. Currently, there are four books in the series. I read them in English translation by Aladdin Books, 2007-2012, illustrated by Mike Lowery. The series includes: Doctor Proctor’s Fart Powder Bubbles in the Bathtub (Doctor Proctor’s Time Traveling Bathtub) Who Cut the Cheese? (The End…
What is Wattpad? In theory, many of you don’t need to be told, because, after all, it has 25,000,ooo users. In reality, however, I have found not a single person who knew what I was talking about at the word “Wattpad.” I had read a blurb about Wattpad in some sort of What’s New? section…
It’s not easy to find a good laugh. But I often find myself thinking, “I sure could use a good laugh.” Comedy is tough business, which is why most nights when I go looking to laugh all I end up with is crossed eyes from an optical illusion and an urban definition for the phrase…
Magnificent Principia (2013), by Colin Pask, as a way to read–without actually reading–Isaac Newton’s The Principia, or more correctly, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica or Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 1687 (last edition, 1726). Magnificent contains important chunks of Principia, although what percentage I am not at all clear on, and it digests those chunks for…
I have been having such a good time journaling, lately. Now, I have always been a journaler, which is not surprising, as a writer. I have also always been a doodler, which also isn’t surprising, as a visual artist. (I also love photography, which means, taken all together, that my family is going to have…
The Clarice Bean trilogy by Lauren Child, published from 1999-2006. The series includes, in order, Utterly Me Clarice Bean, Clarice Bean Spells Trouble, and Clarice Bean Don’t Look Now. There are three more books related to the series, but they are picture books and I did not read them. Best I can decipher, Child started…
Magic Beyond Words: The J. K. Rowling Story, 2011. Available currently on Amazon Prime. First thing I learned: her name is pronounced ROE-ling, not R-Ow!-ling. I had no idea. Second thing: this movie is cheesy, sometimes painfully so. And yet, I did not want to turn it off. I guess I was willing to take…
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte, published in 1847. I read the Barnes & Noble Classics edition, because it was given to me for free, but I did not read much of the front matter. Jane Eyre is a Western classic, easily on any list of top 100 novels of all time. Part of what makes…
I know that many of the people who follow my blog are not writers or publishers. I also know that, as a writer, I often get in a discussion (about being a writer) with people who have a very hard time understanding what I am talking about. This is because of the revolution you didn’t…
Secrets of Ebook Publishing Success and Smashwords Book Marketing Guide, by Mark Coker. Both of these are free ebooks. Mark Coker is the founder and current head guy at Smashwords. He started Smashwords when he and his wife had written the book Boob Tube, but–despite obvious promise–could not get an editor interested enough to publish…
The Ender Quartet, by Orson Scott Card, which includes Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind, and was published by Tor between 1985 and 1996. There are plenty of other series-related materials, which I did not read. I figured 1,668 pages was enough. In fact, 706 pages might have been…
Far too quickly, I am writing yet another biographical eulogy for another literary giant. Maya Angelou died last week at age 86. She was another of my inspirations (I started out as a poet, did you know?) and her name is one even the lay-person would recognize. Not all too often does a writer gain…
Who Could That Be at This Hour?, the first book in Lemony Snicket’s four-part All the Wrong Questions series which acts as the prequel for the A Series of Unfortunate Events series. Published 2012 by Little, Brown and Company and illustrated by Seth. Normally, I would wait until I had read all the books in…
Yeah, that’s right. I “won” Camp NaNoWriMo. That means I wrote 50,000 words during the month of April, toward a brand-new novel. I am on Chapter Seventeen: Trades and Deals, of approximately twenty-seven, which means I am 50,187 words into approximately 70,000-80,000. As a note, I also managed to write more than 15,000 words in…
The Sisters Grimm series by Michael Buckley, published from 20015-2012 by Amulet Books and illustrated by Peter Ferguson. The entire award-winning, New York Times Best-selling series: The Fairy-Tale Detectives The Unusual Suspects The Problem Child Once Upon a Crime Magic and Other Misdemeanors Tales From the Hood The Everafter War The Inside Story The Council…
Parade’s End, by Ford Madox Ford. First published as a series of books, Some Do Not…, No More Parades, A Man Could Stand Up–, and The Last Post, in the 1920s. I read the Vintage edition of all four stories together, published in 1950/1978. All authors have their overused words. For Rowling in the Potter…
the starving artist 