A Single Layer

In a few days, I'll be running off to the desert to housesit for some friends. Housesitting is always an interesting opportunity to devote yourself to projects that would otherwise take a back-burner to normal life. I'm working on a list of things to do - manuscripts to proof, books to read, Buffy to watch, that sort of thing. If you have any suggestions, let me know. We'll see how I do.

1. Favorite childhood book? The Golden Book of Fairy Tales (still a favorite)   2. What are you reading right now? Joseph and His Brothers, and 2012 manuscripts 3. What books do you have on request at the library? None. Though I requested so many books at my old library growing up, that I memorized my 13-digit library card number years before I knew my social security number. 4. Bad book habit? Using coffee table art books as food and drink trays or laptop desks in bed. Sorry, Impressionism. 5. What do you currently have checked out at the library? Nothing. I know. The mighty have fallen... 6. Do you have an e-reader? My iPhone does qualify as an e-reader. I have read a few paragraphs of free ebooks here and there, but that was about a year ago when it was a novelty. I have also used it for last minute Bible references, and on more than one occasion, have pulled up documents from my email. I am more likely to use my phone for emergency writing than reading. Th...

Everyone who has read Divergent has loved it, and for good reason. (If you are one of the nonexistent who disagree, just keep quiet.) Usually when I finish the first book in a good series, I can't wait for the second. Divergent is the kind of good that makes you get to the end and want to read it again. Most people in the Veronica Roth fandom are asking each other which faction they'd be in - or if they, too, are Divergent. This is an obvious question to arise from the book, as it explores a society split into four factions with essentially unique characteristics. But an equally obvious question would be about our fears. In the novel, Tris joins a faction bent on overcoming their fears to become - as their faction's name claims - dauntless . At one point, Tris undergoes a test in which she has to face each one of her fears in order to overcome them. In comparison with her other Dauntless friend, she has surprisingly few fears to combat - though that doesn't make ...

November is a month and a half away, but I'm already thinking about National Novel Writing Month and whether or not I will participate. I am thinking that maybe this will be the year I do it. Not that I remotely have time, but the whole point is to make a goal regardless of your commitments and find the time in the cracks and crannies of the usual crazy world. It helps, of course, if you know what you want to write about beforehand, and there are some significant things you can do to help yourself prepare without officially jumping the gun. For example, an outline, drafting character sketches, writing sample dialogues, reading similar works, collecting first and last names so you don't leave a bunch of these ___ scattered through the manuscript... that sort of thing. Figuring out the very mechanics of how you will write the thing (pen and paper? trusty laptop? occasional twitter posts?) may seem overly specific, but may be just the sort of initial decision-making that will se...

The other day as I was driving down the freeway, thinking about my perception of all the cars around me and the noise of their engines, I was struck by the similarity of light and sound in that they are both waves. Or rather, I was struck by their dissimilarity, because light and sound seem thoroughly disassociated from one another in our perception of them. And yet, atomically, or subatomically, they are these shivering waves coming at our senses. Bumping our neurons and sending the dendrites shuddering toward the brain. It seemed like such a phenomenal revelation, this wave business. It took my mind in a hundred different directions all at once, and I found myself rattling off these wonders of nature and perception that were all somehow tangentially related to the fact of the sensory wave, from modern art to the temptation in the Garden of Eden. It occurred to me that I was just as thrilled by these different ideas and their connections as I was by the fact of thinking of them at...

This is going to be one of those posts that reflects just how much I wish Pinterest had a blog feature. Not that that's remotely a good idea, as I wouldn't honestly be too interested in reading other Pinterest blogs, but... whatever. Here are some pictures for you: From the Boca Raton Museum of Art exhibit "The Magic of Realism," by Robert Vickrey You never know when you might need a flickr collage of ancient maps and such. The Bucephalus living sculpture by Robert Cannon. Just follow the link to the other "accidental mysteries" featured here. Tapping into my inner melodrama for this one. I really do love it, and no less with the knowledge that it will probably grace the cover of a teen paranormal romance novel some day. Found somewhere on the blog Blue Velvet Chair . Click through at your peril. From a collection of incredible book paintings by Mike Stilkey.