Every so often, I have an encounter with readers (usually academics, but sometimes not) who are happy to tell me, in detail and at great length, all the reasons why I wrote something, or wrote it in this or that particular way. (Usually because they object to
Read more →The day I spent at the American Library Association convention was long and intense, full of talking to exceedingly intelligent librarians. How I know they were exceedingly intelligent is this: I do not normally talk in my sleep, but the night after the convention, I woke myself
Read more →I have a confession to make: I have never deliberately written a trilogy before in my life. Yes, I know, there are four Enchanted Forest books, and three Kate and Cecy books, and the Lyra series, and so on. But with all of those, I didn’t set
Read more →When I was a kid, my father told us bedtime stories. The five of us would get together in our pajamas and sit around on the biggest bed in the house, and Dad would turn the lights down or off and start talking. Unlike many parents who do
Read more →Rain is a good thing, at least right here, right now. We’ve been badly in need of it…and we finally got some this weekend. It’s still wet and drippy and dark out, which means that a) I don’t have to do any yard work today, and b)
Read more →(I meant to put this up right after the con, but … oh, well, better late than never.) More or less in chronological order: 1. Sitting in the Governor’s Club Thursday night listening to Ellen Klages tell stories and having chocolate martinis and flourless chocolate cake. 2.
Read more →Do not go out of town for a week and FORGET TO TAKE THE NEW PASSWORD for your shiny new blog.
Read more →The new modem is now working, but the wireless still isn’t. I probably should have expected it–it’s one of those corollaries of Murphy’s Law: The week before you leave home on a trip, everything that can go wrong will. But I am going to ignore my chore
Read more →Yesterday morning, my modem died the ultimate death. Dead modems turn out to be dreadfully hard to diagnose, or at least, that’s what I conclude after spending two hours on the phone to tech support trying to determine why my Internet connection was unstable. Add another hour
Read more →As you may have noticed, I was in Chicago earlier this week, doing publicity for Thirteenth Child. It was a little strange; I haven’t really done the school-visits-and-bookstore-signings thing in my home town before. Oh, I’ve signed at bookstores, but it’s usually been me calling them up
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