Even though I’m actually on a writing break, I’m managing to get in a good deal of reading as well. Last week I got through a couple of young adult novels: Paper Towns by John Green and Gone by Christine Kersey. John Green is likely to be familiar to readers of YA. His novel The […]
Week #8: Writing broken
When you want to write and there’s an almost-four-year-old underfoot, there are a number of things you could do: tuck it under one arm and deposit it in the next room; it might come back, so you’ll need to shut the door; turn on the TV to distract it; lock your door; leave the house. […]
Week 7: New horizons and some ongoing ones
This week 7 post is just a bit late, but for a change it’s not because of the usual excuse (in other words, laziness). In fact, I’ve been very busy with all things reading and writing—a publishing conference and a workshop on literary innovation in children’s writing. Digital future I was an accidental audience member […]
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Sims 3: The madness continues
This is an unscheduled post—and it’s all Marie’s fault who put temptation my way and caused me to stir up my Sims 3 legacy family. So, guess what happened within ten minutes of loading the game? I had twins, of course. It resulted in a seven-people household, with one toddler and two babies (which soon […]
Week #6: Five books I want to write
Ten years back, all I knew was that I wanted to write a book some day. The terms “young adult” and “fantasy” never crossed my mind. Who knows what I’ll have written (or not) ten years from now, but it’s fun thinking about what I’d want to have written. Would you call that a sense […]
Week #5: Falling in love between the pages
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve fallen in love. Fortunately, there haven’t been a proportionate number of heartbreaks since an overwhelming majority of these have been fictional characters. I spent the last weekend revisiting my fondness for one such memorable individual from someone else’s imagination—Sergeant Wield from Reginald Hill’s Dalziel and Pascoe series. […]
Week #4: Living the dream? Er, not quite!
Since I’ve wanted to be a writer since the age of eight or so, in some sense you could say I’m living my dream. But is it really anything like I’d imagined? Ha! Truth be told, I had some preconceived notions about my cloud cuckoo land, though, in my defence, I had no idea why […]
Where’s the cake?!
Yes, it’s time to bring out the cake (chocolate only, please) and blow out the candles. Maybe since I’m turning 1048 years old, it really shouldn’t matter any more, but until all my brain cells decay, I don’t think I’ll stop getting excited about my birthday. Which is mostly because I love presents. The 37-year-old […]
Week #3: The birthday list
It’s my birthday week so and I usually use that as an excuse to buy myself some books. Here are the books I’m going to buy/have bought me this year: Already waiting in my shelf: The Blind Goddess (Anne Holt): This is the first of the series starring the Norwegian detective Hanne Wilhelmsen. Last year […]
Week #2: Inspector Rebus is back!
(Skip the rambling and go straight to the review of Standing in Another Man’s Grave by Ian Rankin.) Confession time—I am a Rebus-head. Enough of one, in fact, to have orchestrated a trip to Edinburgh just so I could put a face to some of the locations I’d read in Ian Rankin’s series about John […]