I wanted to post this on Monday, but, well, I had a deadline yesterday and had to finish reading a few series of review books at different grade levels before I could justify posting. So, just pretend this is my Valentine's Day post, ok ( Read more... )

Here's the press release from the Mythopoeic Society. I'm reading in two categories -- the MFA for adults and children. I think the lists are pretty good. There's only one major oversight from the adult category that I wish had made it, but I'll keep hoping that the author's next work will be a top choice. (And, in theory, eligibility runs for two ( Read more... )

Getting ready for the trip, I'm back to reading Barfield, hoping I'll be able to finish it before I meet up with the students in the airport, since they'll all be much fresher with it than I am. I've also been thinking a lot about subcreation from the perspective of Tolkien, since that's one of the topics I'm writing about soon for Journey to the ( Read more... )

I wish I had had my camera as we hiked up East Rock in New Haven for the sunrise service this morning. I often comment on asakiyume's blog about how I really enjoy seeing the world through her photographs. This morning, I had the experience of watching the sun rise, first over a hill in the distance, and then over a stretch of clouds that formed a second ( Read more... )

There have been a couple of really interesting posts lately, both in livejournals I read (irysangel and sartorias) and in other blogs (Genreville) about what we carry with us as readers when we approach a work of fiction. Sometimes we as readers demand a happy ending, or "good writing" (whatever that means). Sometimes we have expectations that a work of fiction will ( Read more... )

You may notice that I've been missing all week. This is because I noticed something about having jimhines's tag at the end of my posts: if I didn't get enough work done, I was too embarrassed about my lack of progress to post a blog entry. This meant I tried to get busy writing, but it's very hard to quantify work on an adventure when you're working on ( Read more... )

This is about the time of year when it occurs to me that I actually need to start marking time in 2009. In part, this is because our library has Sunday hours for the school year, so we volunteer to work shifts on Sundays, usually one a month or so, right around now. To do this well, it requires actually having some idea about how the next year is ( Read more... )

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that most of you are aware of the conversation between C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien that was one of the final steps of Lewis in Lewis's conversion to Christianity. One of the most interesting things to me about that conversation was always Tolkien's notion of Christianity being Truth made Fact. The ( Read more... )

I have been a bad blogger this week, and for that I apologize. On the up side, not blogging has meant I did more fiction writing, and I finished "Don't Let Go" last night (clocking 6447 words yesterday for a grand total just over my total word-count limit; I'm hoping Dylan will have suggestions on cutting it down the hair it needs to be cut ( Read more... )

First off, there are just a ton of great author interviews out there this week. Tiffany Trent is all over the blogosphere this week (she'll be here on Friday), and has the listing of her events here, along with information about a contest that none of you are allowed to enter, as I want the prize. So there. (Just kidding. Definitely go visit her ( Read more... )