Because of all the Langston Hughes posts I made around the RNC, one of my friends sent me this information about a fundraiser to preserve Langston Hughes’s brownstone for an arts collective. Interesting stuff, and I thought some of you  might want to know too.

It reminded me that some of you don’t know we’re trying to get an arts center and various ( Read more... )

I interviewed Max last summer when he wrote a book for my birthday, and look! he’s been kind enough to do it again! So here’s another interview with everyone’s favorite Max Gladstone, better than all the other Max Gladstones on your block.

1. Are you going to keep writing books for my birthday? I think this is a pretty good tradition.

Let’s make ( Read more... )

Last night I didn’t read Anna Karenina. I didn’t watch Simon & Simon or consume walnuts or gluten or alcohol. I didn’t play Moonlight Sonata on the harmonium. I didn’t buy a hamster.

All the things you don’t do are pretty boring to write about.

For one of my friends, though, not consuming alcohol was a little more interesting, because she was ( Read more... )

Something delightful has happened.

This won’t make any sense unless you have read the story I posted as a Christmas present for you all-you still can read it, How to Wrap a Roc’s Egg, go ahead. But. My friend Mary has gone and written a poem to answer part of it. And she said I could post it for you to enjoy, so when you’ve finished the story, here ( Read more... )

Today I’ve got an interview with Lawrence Schoen, author of Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard (not to mention tons of short stories over the years). If you missed my review post, it’s over here.

Interview with Lawrence M. Schoen

Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard features dozens of anthropomorphic species. Was there any species you wanted to fit in but ( Read more... )

My dog does also, but less in the short story department.

Last week a friend of mine was worrying about tagging things with the label “best,” because she hasn’t read everything, and what if she has missed things that are best-er than the things she currently thinks are best? And: look. No one has read everything. But it is okay to just say: here ( Read more... )

There is a curious hollow feeling that comes from sending a draft of novel off to be critiqued.

It has been eating focus, attention, concentration, energy-it has been monopolizing as much brain as is available and then some-and now it is done. Gone. Off to other garner other people’s thoughts. Not productive to fiddle with it any more for awhile ( Read more... )

I sent Max Gladstone a list of interview questions a little over a month ago for his blog tour. Now here we are with his answers!

First: Happy Birthday!!!

Hey, thanks, Max! It’s a pretty good way to celebrate.

1. How do you like to balance secondary world inventions with historical cultural references in your worldbuilding?

Cirque de Soliel style, ( Read more... )

So it turns out there’s a lot of stuff I like. I like our new dishwasher and how it sings a happy song when it’s done-oh, I am unreasonably gleeful about that dishwasher. I like the fact that strawberries are in season. But that’s not why I’m doing these round-up posts-I’m doing an every-so-often post of short stories I’ve read and liked, that ( Read more... )

This weekend I sold a story, “Draft Letter on Research Potential Suggested by Recent Findings in Gnome Genomics,” to EGM Shorts. It started with an offhand tweet about how I have to read carefully because both gnome and genome are words my friends could reasonably be writing to me, and then it snowballed from there into a short-short. I love all ( Read more... )