Monthly Archive

No point today except April Foolery. I didn’t take any of these pictures–they came to me in a much-circulated e-mail. If a picture is worth a thousand words, you can consider your writing done for the day.

This woman rescued a lion cub in the jungle, malnourished and in bad shape…she nursed it back to health and raised it until it was too large to handle and care for any more so she gave it to a local zoo to care for…this is a video of what happened when she visited the lion at the zoo.

“…having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.”

—Hermann Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

A carrier passed by our house this week.

I wonder where they’re off to…I hope they all come back safe and sound.

My kitchen was boring. This house is all about the view outside, but still. Off-white formica and linoleum squares were starting to get really depressing.

Then the garbage disposal broke and I thought…I never liked that sink. And while I was at it, I hated the countertops, the cooktop, the backsplash and the floor. Time for a makeover! Time to go green!

My habit of watching “Living with Ed,” the Ed Begley show about going green, finally made sense. I ordered bamboo floors, Vetrazzo countertops (in Hollywood sage, just like the ones in Ed’s house; they’re made of recycled Coke bottles) and stainless steel tile. Oh, and something called a magnetic induction cooktop which looks like a flat sheet of black glass. Check it out! NOW we’re cooking!

 Here’s a wider shot of the space:

…and a close-up of the cooktop:

But still, I spend most of my time looking out the window….

He’s so humiliated.

So…..On our beach walk today, Barkis homed right in on these skeletons. They’re 3-4 feet long. NO CLUE what they are. I call them Thing One and Thing Two. Anyone?

This is the only cookie recipe I’ve ever committed to memory. These are pretty much the best rolled cookies on the planet. Just ask Barkis.

• 1-1/2 cups pure unsalted butter at room temp
• 1-1/2 cups confectioners sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 cups flour

(You can add optional flavorings like lavender, almond oil, lemon extract, etc.)

Cream the butter together with the sugar until light and fluffy. Add vanilla, then salt and flour. Roll and cut. Don’t make these too thin, because they’re very tender and will break (see above). Make them nice and thick. Lay on ungreased baking sheets and bake at 325F for about 10 minutes, just until they start turning brown at the edges.

Icing: Make a glaze of confectioners sugar mixed with an egg white. Sprinkle on colored sugar.

Seattle author Stephanie Kallos is a born storyteller. After all, she grew up in a place where sofas fly–Nebraska’s “tornado alley.” She’s also been an actress, a teacher and a nominee for both a Raymond Carver Award and a Pushcart Prize for her short fiction. Her incredibly charming first novel, BROKEN FOR YOU, was a selection of the Today Show book club, propelling her onto bestseller lists and into book clubs nationwide. Other honors ensued, making this novel one of the most auspicious debuts in publishing–A Book Sense Selection, a Library Journal Best First Novelist of 2005, winner of a 2005 Pacific Northwest Bookseller Association Award and a Quill Book Award finalist for Debut Author of the Year.
So while her talent is not in doubt, none of that tells you how funny and down-to-earth she is. For that, you have to visit her web site and read her bio. Or better yet, meet her in person at the Field’s End Writer’s Conference on Saturday, April 26.
Like most every writer you’ll meet, Stephanie is a lifelong library patron. “I remember the first library my mother took me to in Lincoln, Nebraska–which is where we moved when I was five. It was only a couple of blocks from my father’s office and we would walk there after visiting him.
“They had something called ‘viewfinders’–you see these in antique stores now. You slipped a thick, cardboard card bearing a photo into the back of these goggle-looking devices. They gave a sort of 3-D look to the scenes. I actually wrote a 1960’s-era library scene in my new book and included these – along with a mean-spirited, censorious small town librarian who is absolutely nothing like [Seattle’s über-librarian] Nancy Pearl.”
Regarding that new novel, it’s called SING THEM HOME and is slated for publication from Grove later this year. Stephanie’s working title on the book–for years–was HOPE’S WHEELCHAIR. “My publisher hated that title,” she admits. “In retrospect, I can understand why. Bit of a downer.” Ultimately, her editor’s assistant came up with the final title.
For a long time, Stephanie believed it would be her first novel. The germ of the idea originated with a 1974 National Geographic photo. “Until I was five, we lived in a very small town in southeastern Nebraska in that swath of territory known as ‘tornado alley.’ My mother’s best friend, Hope, lived on a farm a few miles outside of town. In one of those examples of random tornadic behavior, a funnel cloud bypassed the farmhouse across the highway and then drove northeast directly into Hope’s farmhouse, destroying it completely. Hope was home (she suffered from MS and was confined to a wheelchair) along with her youngest child. She was badly hurt, but the baby was found wandering the fields, wearing a diaper, slightly scratched but otherwise unharmed.
“The photo – which was taken in a milo field about four miles away, near Blue Springs – shows a farmer leaning over the remains of Hope’s grand piano. It’s the only thing that came down in any kind of recognizable form. My mother used to say, ‘How can a deep freeze just disappear? How can a refrigerator just disappear?’ This is the kind of magic one lives with in tornado alley. I heard one author describe magical realism as ‘sofas that fly.’ In Nebraska, sofas fly all the time.
“The story centers on three siblings – Larken, Gaelan, and Bonnie Jones – who grew up in a fictional town in SE Nebraska called Emlyn Springs. When they were 13, 12, and 7 years old, their mother Hope was carried up in a tornado and never came down. It’s about the special kind of grief that surrounds such a loss (i.e., one which leaves no gift of bones) and how that grief has resonated throughout their lives and informed their identities.
“I’d like to think that anyone who has struggled with the strangeness of grief will be engaged – and hopefully comforted – by the characters’ journeys.”
Stephanie is a working mother, and juggles family and writing with grace and a writer’s eccentricity. “There are times when I’m at my desk from 9 until 4, a schedule which aligns with when my kids get on and off the bus. There are other days when family obligations mean I can only squeeze in some journal-writing, or tinker with a paragraph, a sentence, the placement of a semi-colon. I do tend to get very grumpy if I don’t set aside time to write at least a little bit every day.
“On the other hand, it’s extremely counter-productive to allow writing to become punitive, an exercise in punching the time card. I really have to guard against that, as I’m somewhat hard-wired for self-punishment. Sometimes inspiration comes when I’m taking an early morning walk, driving to the grocery store, standing in line at Starbucks, or running errands. One must be constantly open for business. When in the middle of a book, I’m really thinking about my characters all the time. If someone makes the mistake of asking me how I’m doing, I usually launch into a description of how my characters are doing; I don’t stop until I notice my friend’s glazed, slightly concerned expression. For me, being a writer involves cultivating a benign form of schizophrenia. I have notepads everywhere; I adopted this practice years ago after reading an interview with Anne Tyler, who raised four kids while writing her early novels. Yes, being a writer consists largely of applying the seat of one’s pants to the seat of the chair, but there’s a quality of attention one must maintain, a continual vigilance/readiness to receive the odd idea/inspiration.”
“In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion remembers, ‘Had [my husband] not warned me when I forgot my own notebook that the ability to make a note when something came to mind was the difference between being able to write and not being able to write?’”
Stephanie is an avid and eclectic reader. She’s a huge fan of the Salinger oeuvre, Anne Tyler, John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany, The World According to Garp, and The Cider House Rules. “My dear friend Sheri Holman writes brilliant books; I’ve learned so much from her. I’ve also learned a great deal from Myla Goldberg, Ian McEwan, A.S. Byatt. Lately – as I await feedback from my editor on the latest draft of Sing Them Home - I’ve been indulging in thrillers: Chelsea Cain’s Heartsick, and the Japanese novelists. I really like a change-up when it comes to reading.
“In terms of my work on Sing and exploring the landscape of grief, the greatest writer-to-writer gift came from Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. My father died suddenly a few months after the publication of my first novel; my mom followed him a year later, almost to the day. Ms. Didion helped me understand why my mother was able to donate all of Dad’s clothes to the Goodwill but left his shoes in the closet: How else would he be able to walk home to her?”
In addition to writing, Stephanie is a knitter. “It’s a tremendously valuable discipline in terms of reminding me of what writing is about and how a book is built: stitch by stitch, row by row, occasionally having to unravel everything you’ve done and start over.”
Stephanie Kallos has a lot more to share. She is this year’s opening speaker at the April 26th conference.

Hey! Come to a reading by my favorite suspense author at Eagle Harbor Book Company. It’s on Thursday, March 20 at 7:30pm. Author Robert Dugoni will have you on the edge of your seat, guaranteed.

Oooh, this was painfully funny, about the devastating effects of the Novelists strike.

Please click this link for a beautiful slide show of the Irish countryside. And here’s a little something to read from a favorite author and friend, Malachy McCourt. And if you just don’t have enough controversy in your life, here’s a bit about the banning of “Danny Boy.” As a child, I memorized a piano piece called “Irish Derry Air” and while playing it, I was always picturing this enormous green-clad derriere.

Slainte!

We already know I compulsively take online quizzes. Here’s one from my e-mail. Rumor has it Dr. Phil did this test on Oprah, but I have no idea whether or not that’s true. It’s still fun enough, ten simple questions, so grab a pencil and paper, keeping track of your letter answers to each question.
Answers are for who you are now — not who you were in the past.   Have pen or pencil and paper ready. Don’t peek, but begin the test as you scroll down and answer.
  
Ready? Begin.
   
1.   When do you feel your best?  
         a)  in the morning
         b)  during the afternoon and early evening
         c)  late at night
   
2.   You usually walk…
        a)  fairly fast, with long steps
        b)  fairly fast, with little steps
        c)  less fast head up, looking the world in the face
        d)  less fast, head down
        e)  very slowly
 
3.  When talking to people you. .   
        a)  stand with your arms folded
        b)  have your hands clasped
        c)  have one or both your hands on your hips
        d)  touch or push the person to whom you are talking
        e)  play with your ear, touch your chin, or smooth your hair
   
4.   When relax i n g, you sit with .  
          a)   your knees bent with your legs neatly side by side
         b)  your legs crossed
         c)   ;you r legs stretched out or straight
         d)  one leg curled under you
   
5.  When something really amuses you, you react with… 
         a)  big appreciated laugh
         b)  a laugh, but not a loud one
         c)  a quiet chuckle
         d)  a sheepish smile  

6.   When you go to a party or social gathering you…  
        a)  make a loud entrance so everyone notices you
        b)  make a quiet entrance, looking around for someone you know
        c)  make the quietest entrance, trying to stay unnoticed
   
7.   You’re working very hard, concentrating hard, and you’re interrupted…  
        a)  welcome the break
        b)  feel extremely irritated
        c)  vary between these two extremes
  
8.  Which of the following colors do you like most?  
        a)  Red or orange
        b)  black
        c)  yellow or light blue
        d)  green
        e)  dark blue or purple
         f)  white
        g)  brown or gray
 
9.  When you are in bed at night, in those last few moments before going to sleep you are…
        a)  stretched out on your back
        b)  stretched out face down on your stomach 
        c)  on your side, slightly curled
        d)  with your head on one arm
        e)  with your head under the covers
 
10.   You often dream that you are… 
         a)  falling
         b)  fighting or struggling
         c)  searching for something or somebody
         d)  flying or floating
         e)  you usually have dreamless sleep
          f)  your dreams are always pleasant
 
POINTS:
 
1.  (a) 2     (b) 4     (c) 6
2.  (a) 6     (b) 4     (c) 7     (d) 2     (e) 1  
3.  (a) 4     (b) 2     (c) 5     (d) 7     (e) 6
4.  (a) 4     (b) 6     (c) 2     (d) 1
5.  (a) 6     (b) 4     (c) 3     (d) 5     (e) 2
6.  (a) 6     (b) 4     (c) 2
7.  (a) 6     (b) 2     (c) 4
8.  (a) 6     (b) 7     (c) 5     (d) 4     (e) 3     (f) 2     (g) 1
9.  (a) 7     (b) 6     (c) 4     (d) 2     (e) 1
10. (a) 4    (b) 2     (c) 3     (d) 5     (e) 6     (f) 1
  Now add up the total numbe r of points.

OVER 60 POINTS :  Others see you as someone they should handle with care.  You’re seen as vain, self-centered, and who is extremely dominant.  Others may admire you, wishing they could be more like you, but don’t always trust you, hesitating to become too deeply involved with you.

51 TO 60 POINTS :  Others see you as an exciting, highly volatile, rather impulsive personality; a natural leader, who’s quick to make decisions, though not always the right ones.  T hey see you as bold and adventuresome, someone who will try anything once; someone who takes chances and enjoys an adventure. They enjoy being in your company because of the excitement you radiate.

41 TO 50 POINTS:  Others see you as fresh, lively, charming, amusing, practical, and always interesting; someone who’s constantly in the center of attention, but sufficiently well balanced not to let it go to their head. They also see you as kind, considerate, and understanding; someone who’ll always cheer them up and help them out.

31 TO 40 POINTS:  Others see you as sensible, cautious, careful & practical They see you as clever, gifted, or talented, but modest.  Not a person who makes friends too quickly or easily, but someone who’s extremely loyal to friends you do make and who expect the same loyalty in return.  Those who really get to kno w you realize it takes a lot to shake your trust in your friends, but equally that it takes you a long time to get over if that trust is ever broken.

21 TO 30 POINTS:  Your friends see you as painstaking and fussy.  They see you as very cautious, extremely careful, a slow and steady plodder.  It would really surprise them if you ever did something impulsively or on the spur of the moment, expecting you to examine everything carefully from every angle and then, usually decide against it They think this reaction is caused partly by your careful nature.

UNDER 21 POINTS:  People think you are shy, nervous, and indecisive, someone who needs looking after, who always wants someone else to make the decisions & who doesn’t want to get involved with anyone or anything!  They see you as a worrier who always sees problems that don’t exist. &nbs p;Some people think you’ re boring.  Only those who know you well know that you aren’t.
 

It’s my little sister’s birthday today. She’s a maniac on the slopes, but I’d follow her anywhere.

Lori is the first to read all my books. She’s an expert reader, too, and a PR specialist, getting all her friends to race out and buy them. She spotted the error on page 175 of Snowfall at Willow Lake, something I hope can be corrected in future editions.

Home Before Dark is dedicated to her, a teacher and orientation and mobility specialist for the visually impaired. Other than my daughter, she’s the only person I’ve known every moment of her life. Good thing we get along, eh? Tell me your sister stories!

How much do we love that phrase? I hadn’t heard it before, but it perfectly describes the nails-on-blackboard annoyance of randomly misplaced apostrophes. Or apostrophe’s, as our eponymous grocer would say. [Any grocers out there? Is this phrase disrespectful of grocers?] I figured I wasn’t alone in my crusade against apostrophe abuse. There’s even a flickr photo group documenting some of the worst offenders around the globe.

That’s the working title of The You I Never Knew, in case you’re wondering. Finding the right title for a book is always tricky, and sometimes the results are just downright odd. The Bookseller Magazine awards the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title. Readers are encouraged to vote here.

The shortlist for the 2007 prize has been announced, with the winner to be announced on March 28. The nominees are:

• I Was Tortured By the Pygmy Love Queen - Jasper McCutcheon
• How to Write a How to Write Book - Brian Piddock
• Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues - Catharine A. MacKinnon
• Cheese Problems Solved - P. L. H. McSweeney
• If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start with Your Legs - Big Boom
• People Who Mattered in Southend and Beyond: From King Canute to Dr Feelgood - Dee Gordon

Previous winners of the award include Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice (1978), How to Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art (1989), High Performance Stiffened Structures (2000), Living with Crazy Buttocks (2002). There’s a complete list here.