Today, a return of my once-established Sunday tradition: a quoteskimming post. As it appears I sort of lost the habit back in July of this year, I shall explain what the word means. It's a term I coined in September 2007 - I shall be pulling some writing-related quotes from here and there and sharing them with you ( Read more... )

The quote in today's icon is found throughout A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. As the inventor of Lemony Snicket, Daniel Handler, celebrated his birthday yesterday, I thought it appropriate ( Read more... )

Today is the birthday of Daniel Handler, the man who created Lemony Snicket, who created The Series of Unfortunate Events. Those books were some of the first small, inexpensive hardcovers that I remember seeing, coming before Spiderwick or the Araminta Spookie books. And I scooped up the first book as soon as it came out, because it looked like fun ( Read more... )

Today's icon reads "If writers wrote as carelessly as some people talk, then adhasdh asdglaseuyt[bn[pasdlgkhasdfasdf." It's from the book Horseradish by Lemony Snicket.

Stephanie Ruble went to the SCBWI conference in NYC not long ago, and when she came back, she compressed their verbal nuggets of coal into this shiny diamond, which I've ( Read more... )

The quote in today's icon is from A Series of Unfortunate Events by Daniel Handler. It appears more than once in the 13-volume set. On my little inspiration board to my left (which needs some rearranging, methinks), I have a tear-out postcard from a movie-related thingummy (I think it was, in fact, a book of tear-out postcards?) showing Klaus ( Read more... )

It being Sunday, 'tis time for some quoteskimming. Without further ado . . .

On being a "famous author":

"[F]amousness is probably about as useful for an author as a large, well-appointed hiking backpack would be for a prima ballerina. Honest." ~Neil Gaiman.

On author appearances

When the books were first published, the publisher asked me a ( Read more... )

I've got two for you today, plus a kind of reprise.


( Read more... )

I would like to be able to tell you that in this book, the unfortunate Baudelaire orphans find answers to all of their questions, are happily reunited with the people who have been kind to them along the way, and that they sail off into the sunset at the end. Alas, while much of what I've just relayed is true, this is not a happy book ( Read more... )