I first read Ellen Raskin’s THE WESTING GAME (affiliate link) when I was about eleven. It was the first, and I believe remains the only, book that I have ever finished reading, stared at a moment, and then gone back to the beginning to read again immediately. I then read it again many, many times in my tween and early teen years, but I don’t remember re-reading it for…well, a very long time. But it came up again recently, possibly in context of Ellen Raskin as a cover designer, and…
oh my GOD the noodle place is back at the Temple Bar Market!!!! Honestly I can’t tell you how happy I am about this. It’s a little food booth at the Temple Bar Saturday market in Meeting House Square, and I always used to order prawn fried noodles even when they weren’t technically on the menu. (Prawn skewers were, and othermeat-fried noodles were, just not prawn fried noodles. BUT GUESS WHAT’S ON THE MENU NOW!!!!!) The guy always remembered my order, because it was different. He used to give me…
Picoreview: The Blue Beetle – Ted and I both really, really liked Blue Beetle & if you’re doing movies in cinemas these days and like superhero films a tall, we think you should see it ASAP bc here, at least, it’s only got 9 showings a day in the largest cineplex (as opposed to Barbie opening with 36 & Oppenheimer with like 16) & it feels like the studio’s way of making sure it fails, at least partially so they can justify having not released Batgirl, another superhero movie with…
Ask the Author – The Question: What makes an author’s style of writing unique? This will sound sort of trite, but: personal experience. Here’s the thing, and this, again, sounds trite, and indeed, it’s overused, but it’s also true: no one can write the story that *you* can write. Because everyone’s personal experience shapes them differently, and they approach stories differently. I have an exercise I do when I teach creative writing classes. I give everybody the same 5 sentences, the opening of a fairy tale type story written in…
I’ve had the first of Stephanie Burgis’s Regency Dragons books, SCALES & SENSIBILITY, on my shelf for over a year. I admit I’ve been kind of afraid to read it because I was afraid it would trigger an overwhelming urge to work on the sequel to MAGIC & MANNERS, and I haven’t had time to do that. But this summer she sent me the sequel, CLAWS & CONTRIVANCES, for an early read because I was having a very bad week, and she hoped it might cheer me up. So obviously…