Christmas can be a tough time of year, especially the first year or two after you’ve lost someone close to you. After my father died, it took me some time before any of us could face producing the sorts of cookies he always baked for the season. Eventually, my mother started making the individual fruitcakes…
Read MoreThere’s a new Laurie King on the shelves—a new LRK short story, at any rate: Long long ago, in a galaxy far away, I did an event we called “Writer’s Improv,” which meant I sat down one lovely May morning and wrote a story with the world looking over my shoulder, online. That day I…
Read MoreSorry for the silence here, my Mac was off playing with friends at the Apple store, and in the meantime the copyedit for The Language of Bees landed on my desk—oh, and isn’t today some kind of a holiday? Because my house is awfully full of people all of a sudden… But I just wanted…
Read MoreMy good buddy Dana Stabenow is a video star! It’s a great example of how to make, and use, a video, with pizazz, personality, and humor. This is how it came about, in her words: 1. I saw the Reduced Shakespeare Company in London. 2. I moved back to Kachemak Bay and joined the Homer…
Read MoreRemembrance Day in Commonwealth countries, Veteran’s Day here in the US. Ninety years ago, November 11, 1918, the guns fell silent for the first time in more than four years. In London, there was silence, and the bells rang, and people wept. I was 13 when the first US combat troops landed in Vietnam. That…
Read MoreAfter the excesses of the past couple of weeks, when I wrote and deleted countless furious posts, I was for a time written out. Now I feel slightly hung over. However, regularly scheduled programming will resume shortly. I just wanted to say that I really like you guys a whole lot. Some blogs would have…
Read MoreHuge relief. Great pride. Dawning hope. Yes. We can.
Read MoreI don’t talk about my two kids much here, because I’m a great believer in the family’s privacy, but you have to know how proud I am of them, right? Well, yet another example of how the two of them just make my heart glad appears on the local paper’s web site–here, just take a…
Read MoreEvery year in early October, my county holds an Open Studios for its artists, when people can wander around studios, buy things, talk to the artists, and generally enjoy the gorgeous autumnal sunny weather and have an excuse for hanging out with friends. My agent usually comes down from San Francisco for one of the…
Read MoreIf you missed the talk on politics and fiction that Rick Kleffel, Karen Joy Fowler, and I did on local KUSP radio last month, here’s the link. And because it’s politics time in the U. S. of A., here’s a superb essay by Rebecca Solnit (thanks to Ron Hogan at Galleycat) on the whole man/woman…
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