So let your heart hold fast For this soon shall pass; There’s another year ahead. –Fort Atlantic, Let Your Heart Hold...

Wendy, the Super Librarian, is doing it again. “It” in this case is the 2013 TBR Challenge, an opportunity to go through the TBR pile you’ve got stacking up either in physical books or on your tablet/iDevice and actually read some of them. Considering I’ve got a house filled with books I haven’t read yet and I don’t want to admit...

“We are not human beings trying to be spiritual. We are spiritual beings trying to be human.” — Jacquelyn Small

Relatives are what happen when you’re busy making other plans. (Be back soon, hopefully.)

Proof Twitter has it’s uses: I encountered Jeannine Bergers Everett via the #MyWANA tag and discovered she writes snarky haiku about her teenagers. These little bits are seriously funny and a great break during the day. Consider He Didn’t Notice the Big Black Plastic...

The plot is not just simple but simplistic, the “black moment” lasts all of 15 seconds, there is no deep characterization or expertly layered subplots. There is, however, a street, a song, a rainstorm and Gene Kelly in one of Hollywood’s most iconic and joyous moments. Who needs plot? Singin’ in the Rain is considered by many the pinnacle of...

I highly recommend popping over to Routines for Writers today and reading Kitty Bucholtz’s post on “When Shouldn’t I Write?” Funny, but she’s talking about some of the same things I wrote about yesterday. Kitty also takes on one thing that consistently bugs me about how writing advice or classes are phrased, no matter how good the...

The writing’s been going well this week, but Saturday morning found me oddly out of sorts. Got up late and when I settled down to write, the mind wouldn’t focus and I found myself staring at the blinking cursor, my mind a complete bank. Part of it was the fact the weather was steamy and, as Cole Porter so eloquently put it, too darn hot. But another part...

Our blu-ray player gave up the ghost Monday night. Froze on start-up to the point we had to simply unplug it and, worse, the husband had left one of his discs in the player and now we couldn’t get it out. Naturally, this was a terribly frustrating situation because a new player isn’t in the budget right now. Plus, the husband was somewhat grumpy that his...

When I was thirteen, my mother took me to see a great star of the silent screen who was signing a coffee table book she’d done about the films of her and her sister. When we reached the front of the line, I couldn’t help myself and gushed, “Oh, Miss Gish, you’re my favorite actress! I loved you in Broken Blossoms and Orphans in the...