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My First Solo Author Reading
Last week I gave my first solo reading. And it was in person. I hadn’t done any public reading since my short story collection came out, but that hardly mattered. There’s a huge difference between being given five to ten minutes with a bunch of other authors and having to fill an entire hour by […]
Q&A Part 2
Several years ago, I did a Q&A with the wonderful Women and Words (sadly “on hiatus”). A lot of the answers are still good, and I’ve updated some others. Here’s Elaine! Part 2 Tell us about your biggest guilty pleasure. For example, do you sit naked in your pantry in the middle of the night […]
Construction Day Done!
The work is finished. I can’t even begin to believe it. Seven days and they took several tons of rock and sawed and hand chipped into shape two lovely patio/walkways and stairs. I thought I’d be blogging the long process of this project because every project undertaken at this house and my last one took […]
Construction Day 1
There’s a phrase, live lightly on the land, that would be nice to adhere to, but sometimes to get there you have to make a mess first. When my wife and I moved to our little slot of paradise a few years ago, we knew we wanted a nature preserve vibe. We’ve worked to remove […]
There’s Birding and Then There’s Birding
The house wren is back. This insouciant little guy clicks and clatters a call that sounds more like a baseball card in bike spokes than a bird. For a couple of years he tried building a nest in my satellite dish (for internet before my small town finally got wired). His girlfriends never went for […]
Setting: A Sense of Place
Have you ever been on a cruise? I’ve only done it once, a small-ship cruise in Alaska’s Inside Passage. The ship had about a hundred tourists and we were able to go into smaller coves and closer to the glaciers than the big Princess ship we saw a few times along the route. The contrast […]
A Question of Character
There’s much discussion among writer about how to craft characters and reader questions about how writers come up with their characters. Are they based on real people? I’m surprised at the number of writers who admit they are. I can’t imagine that. I mean, lately when I’m deep in the writing and I’m trying to […]
So, Back to Writing
I’m reading a very cool book, In Search of the Canary Tree, by Lauren E. Oakes. It’s early yet, and in it she’s just starting her Ph.D. research project analyzing yellow-cedar forests on an island in the Alexander Archipelago of southeast Alaska, near Sitka. What does this have to do with writing? I’m enthralled by […]
The Message That’s Missing from News of Climate Change
It seems incomprehensible to me that one senator can block legislation designed to literally save our way of life, but this is where we are. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) doesn’t like President Joe Biden’s climate bill, likely because the senator, made a millionaire by the coal industry, which he still makes money from (not to […]
Elaine Burnes 