In Which Frodo and Sam Are Friendship Goals, Gollum Is Pitied, and I Offend Every Sam Gamgee Fan Ever

Happy birthday to Bilbo and Frodo! I am late (and unlike Gandalf have no wizardly excuses), but hopefully I am early enough to snag a few pairs of silver spoons? Anyway, it is not only a special birthday, it is also fall, which means adventuring time, which means Hamlette over at The Edge of the …

Meet the Books! ~ Jennifer & Fred

Once upon a time not so very long ago, I told y'all about this story I was working on, ANNA. And how it was my precious child and I loved it. And how I was rewriting part one before moving on to part two and how I would literally die for half of my characters...and …

Summer’s Stories ~ Wherein Are Pirates, Nazis, Nonsense, and Asthmatic Lions

Howdy, folks! Summer is over, and September is here, bringing in her train cool nights, perfect sailing weather, and spiders. Spiders in the air. Spiders on the ground. Spiders along the eaves. Spiders suspended between car window and mirror. Spiders at every dadgummed pair of trees you try to walk between. The point is, it's …

Humans Are Sinners, Friendship Matters, and Jess Harper Is the Best

Greetings, friends, foes, and neutrals! Have you ever watched a wonderful old show called Laramie? If you haven't, you should. (If you like Westerns, unnecessary drama, or friends who cheerfully risk their necks for each other on a regular basis you should, that is.) My sister and I have been watching it, and it has …

Meet the Books! ~ ANNA

It's always fun to start new writing projects - or to come back to beloved old ones. Now that I've tucked The Dream Peddler out of sight (and hopefully out of mind) for a while, I've been able to get back to my very favorite child, ANNA. Never mind that I keep getting distracted by …

On Being “Not Like Other Girls”

Hello, lovely blogger friends. Because you are all lovely and I like you, let me take this moment to warn you to hold your ears while I SCREAM FOREVERRRRR. (Warning: the following post is basically one long rant. Enter at your own risk. Also, when I talk about girls, I mean girls in fiction. Since …

The Mystery Blogger Award (because it never hurts to do good things again. and twice.)

The lovely Maya Joelle and the lovely C.M. have both tagged me for the Mystery Blogger Award. (C.M. tagged me first, to be quite frank, but the sentence sounded better in the order I wrote it.) I thank you both from the bottom of my heart. (That sounded super sarcastic, but it...wasn't. I'm sorry, guys.  …

The Weapons Tag (in which I fling references about willy-nilly while knowing very little about weapons)

Good old tag backlog. When I can't adequately marshal my words to craft an original blog post (or answer comments, or comment on other people's fabulous posts - I'm sorry, guys, my brain Just Ain't Having It, and hopefully it will start Having It again with dispatch), you are always to be depended upon. Many …

Things I Like About Books I Don’t

I feel the need to be aggressively positive today; hence this post. Spoiling its own ending: The Book Thief I know it bothers some people that our friendly narrator Death is continually going, "Oh, and by the way, this person is going to die, tragically - but we've got at least two hundred pages to …

The April-May Story Report: Editing, Westerns, and a Whole Lot of Fluff

"Ah, summer," says Russell Baker, "what power you have to make us suffer and like it." Russell Baker is a man of uncanny prescience, because he said that a long time ago, and yet here I am, in the Present Day and Age, positively rejoicing that summer's here. Well...almost here. It's going to be hot …