Summer Days Make Me Feel Stupid
I used too much shampoo in the shower this morning. And then I had that moment in front of the mirror when I wondered, comb? Brush? Fingers? What is the appropriate hair-wrangling tool for this sudden lack of hair? Ahh, the summer haircut… one of the best parts of summer. (Very short is my preferred year-round haircut in Hawaii, but the last few times I’ve succumbed to, “But what if we tried a little longer?”) It felt so good being shorn! The cold water shampoo/head massage in the middle of the day didn’t hurt. Of course, I’ll let it go uncut Read more…
Magpie Moments: Animals with no Restraint
[Quick reminder: Magpie Moments refer to bits I snatched from real life and incorporated, magpie-like, into my fiction.] The post title doesn’t refer to twelve-year-olds at a pizza party or college students on Spring Break, but rather to beloved pets, and a scene from my most recent novel, The Perils of Panacea. In it, Sydney asks a couple about the origin of their pet pig’s name. “Why Banana Whiskers?” I asked. Danny smiled. “BW was the runt of his litter, and so sickly when he came to us that Sam wouldn’t let me name him. She didn’t want me to get too Read more…
Magpie Moments: You Can’t Make This Stuff Up
Many interviewed authors say there’s no shortage of story ideas, those little “what if” nuggets that can be rooted in character or place or plot. Some keep files with newspaper articles or bits of research that they consult from time to time, while for others the act of gathering the shiny bits (aha, here comes a Magpie Moment) is enough for them to burble in the subconscious until something else emerges. In that vein, yesterday I came across an article about a book of unsolved crimes that mentions an Australian fisherman discovering a body tied to a steel crucifix. This morning Read more…
Excavating for Trees, and for Story Structure
My husband and I had a bunch of holes dug a few months ago while we were getting some other things done on our property. “Dug” isn’t really the right verb, though. Not quite blasted—pile-driven? Our whole neighborhood rests on relatively recent lava flow with a thin veneer of cinder, the perfect habitat for native ohia trees and lots of non-native, invasive green crap. In other words, we don’t do a lot of “digging” around here. We’d already transplanted two trees we’ve had for several years—a bonsai (not intentionally, just stunted) avocado and an unidentified citrus (it’s never fruited and Read more…
Sydney Brennan’s Summer Vacation… Not!
It’s Friday, and that means it’s Blog Post Day! Bet you didn’t know that, did you? Well, that’s just one of the status-type things I’m going to share on my two-days-early Summer Schedule Post. (Please–no songs from musicals; I am so not a musicals person.) Until recently, I’d been writing a couple of blog posts a week, but with no set schedule, just posting one every four or five days. That meant within a couple of days of posting, I was thinking, Is it time yet? When did I post? What am I going to write about this time? Not that Read more…
^