On Zusak, Gadhafi and Surprise
An unexpected ludicrous moment, a twist into tragedy, a flash of tenderness: surprise by a character is a crucial element of a riveting story. Speaking yesterday at the College of Mount Saint Joseph in Cincinnati, Ohio, Marcus Zusak discussed this as well as...
And Then There Were Three
No fault of the chicken gynecologist’s, but Meg didn’t make it. She'd seemed much better shortly after the stuck egg removal by Nik and bathtub treatment by Diana, but then she worsened steadily over the next couple of days. Desperate stabs at word combinations on...
The Chicken Gynecologist
Here’s another story about the urban chickens. I have to admit that research for the next novel is accumulating much faster and more conveniently than material for the one I'm currently writing. On which I should be concentrating. But we’re in the first crisis with...
Write What You Don’t Know
Everyone's heard the line, "Write about what you know." If I only wrote about what I know, I'd have run dry years ago. It's learning a subject that I've stumbled on and become fascinated with, and discovering how it fits with a story idea in my head that keeps me at...
Book Banning: Seriously?
An article on the front page of USA Today caught my husband’s eye while he was standing in line to pay for coffee last week. Apparently he made a spectacle of himself because he laughed so uncontrollably that he spit the coffee all over himself and the person in...
Using Sense Memory
My husband and I have just watched the movie Stand By Me for at least the tenth time. About every two years we seem to crave another viewing, usually in high summer, which is when the movie is set. This time instead of renting it, we gave up and bought the Deluxe...
You’ll Use It All Later
It turns out that those monster thighs and herding tendencies that Amy, Diana’s chicken, was developing made a lot of sense. You didn’t even have to notice the red comb on top of her head; Amy cleared her throat and let out the first crows right after Diana and her...
Update on Chickens and Posts
I think everyone is due an update on my friend Diana’s urban chickens, aka the world’s easiest research. My blog post of May 13 introduced the chicks (Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy) when Diana was beginning to wonder if Amy might be, oops, really an Amos. Recall that hens...
From The Mailbox
Last week a note from a Massachusetts reader appeared in my inbox regarding my book, Where The Trail Grows Faint. The book, published in 2005 by the University of Nebraska Press, is creative non-fiction about working with my chocolate Labrador retriever, Hannah, in a...