It is a truth universally acknowledged that it is nigh-on impossible for me to write fiction while a baby is sleeping on my lap. Nevertheless, driven by my upcoming deadline, I decided to make an attempt this morning. Within 200 words, my typing had woken MrD; by the time I finally gave up, after 1200 words (of retyping/revising, not brand-new ( Read more... )

Sadly, I couldn't participate in yesterday's "Support your local indie bookstore" day (or whatever the official internet title was), because as far as I've been able to discover, Leeds has no local independent bookstores. Sigh. If I had been in East Lansing, I would have gone to Schuler Books, my favorite independent general bookstore, and if I had ( Read more... )

Sigh. It's always sad to come home on the last day of a con. Life suddenly shifts from being this intense, fabulous round of socializing with cool people who love all the same stuff I do to being...well, being still pretty good, actually, but on a much smaller scale. (It also helps that my husband and I share many of the same obsessions, and I live ( Read more... )

This is a red-letter publishing week, for me. After nearly four months of not publishing any short stories, I found out that my story "Blue Joe" was also published yesterday, in Issue No. 10 of Shimmer. Better yet, in celebration of their tenth issue, Shimmer is giving away copies of the issue as free PDF files. There are lots of fabulous authors ( Read more... )

First of all, and before I forget - I'm looking for a good, vegetarian spaghetti sauce recipe. Can anyone recommend one? We've been relying on jars of pasta sauce for years, but lately I've been getting itchy to make my own. (Forbidden foods in our house right now include all dairy and soy products - MrD is allergic, and thus I must avoid them like ( Read more... )

It's been a while since I posted a journal entry, but the problem is, in the last week, Mr Darcy has suffered through a nasty stomach bug (thankfully now safely past!) - and, as I hope every other parent will be able to corroborate (surely this can't just be me? please??? lie to me about this if you must, to make me feel better!), his illness = my ( Read more... )

Happy Valentine's Day to everybody! :) This is our first Valentine's Day as a family of three humans. (We were a three-person family last year, of course, but one of the people was a dog; now we're a four-person family, although Maya doesn't always think we remember that, poor neglected pup). Last year on Valentine's Day, Patrick and I had only ( Read more... )

My lovely winter weather continues, complete with falling snow, and verily, I am happy. :) I'm not alone in my snow bliss, either - Maya is right there with me! She loves thick snow. She follows scent trails across the top layer, digs down to find what's underneath, and sometimes even bites off snowballs to toss for herself! She's a very happy ( Read more... )

Yesterday, Mr Darcy turned 4 months old. Patrick posted a perfect journal entry about it last night, with updates about Mr Darcy and some beautiful photos (including one with his snuggly new best friend, Mr Bingley). (So named because he is a loyal & affectionate friend whose company Mr Darcy enjoys very much, but who is rather less independently- ( Read more... )

Whew! Mr Darcy's new stroller has already more than proven itself in this household. Yesterday morning, while Patrick was still asleep, I took Mr Darcy out for a long walk in the stroller, and by the time we got back home, not only was he asleep, but I had finally worked out in my head exactly how my vampires-in-East Lansing story should end. Back ( Read more... )