First, a quick piece of writing news: I recently finished the first draft of Ballad for Jasmine Town, my next book! It takes place on Eidolonia, the island of fae and witches where Lava Red Feather Blue is set, but you won't need to have read Lava Red Feather Blue to understand it. Each book can be read as a standalone. The manuscript is currently ( Read more... )

Hello all,

I have been not getting a lot of work done lately, since our household was on vacation for two weeks in England and Wales! I had not been there since 2004 and it was fabulous to be back, despite the heat wave. (Luckily a "heat wave" in Britain only means temperatures around 85 F/ 29 C. Still, I would have preferred a bit of iconic ( Read more... )

Everyone knows what Valentine's Day is really about: chocolate!

I ran a search on my books, and predictably enough, nearly all of them mention chocolate. Some examples:

Summer Term:
He set down the glass, thought a moment, and said, “I would like to make chocolate chip cookies.”

Persephone’s OrchardAdrian peeled the plastic wrap from the brownie, ( Read more... )

While (badly) playing songs on piano tonight from my book of Christmas sheet music, I found myself amused, as I am every year, by the repeated insistence on figgy pudding in "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." I mean, it's the subject of three of the four verses. So I tweeted about that, and got an even more amusing response out of the blue within ( Read more... )

Here in Seattle, cool drizzle has moved in, and I was outside just now enjoying it, and listening to Dead Can Dance, and thereby having a delightfully Halloweenish feel to my lunch hour, and that led me to a revelation about Halloween and the Southern Hemisphere:

I have friends in Australia (e.g. writer Dean Mayes​) who have expressed ( Read more... )

Our geekiest pumpkins from Halloween: Minecraft swords, Avatar Aang (with somewhat messed-up eyebrows)...


( Read more... )

It is ready! Our Halloween multi-reader performance of Dr. Seuss' What Was I Scared Of? and Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" can be listened to here. It's only 5 minutes long and it's super fun to hear all the voices and accents, so gather your friends (and kids!) around and enjoy.

Super extra thanks to Michael Gordon Shapiro for allowing the use of ( Read more... )

Happy October!

I skipped this project last year, but this year am reviving it: the Halloween read-aloud! The selection this year is kid-friendly and only a little bit spooky: What Was I Scared Of? by Dr. Seuss (full text here); with a bonus feature, if we have enough readers signing up, of "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll. Sound good? Of course it ( Read more... )

Halloween approaches! Source your costumes now. And may I highly suggest Take Back Halloween for some awesome ideas? They are the nicest and smartest people, and the costumes are doable even for those of us who cannot sew. The Persephone costume, for example, which I'll likely try, just requires folding and pinning a sheet over your shoulders and ( Read more... )

34 wonderful voices from awesome people all over the world, coming together in one file to read a crazy dragon attack scene from a little book called The Hobbit - it has finally come together and is ready as my Halloween present to the world ( Read more... )