Pearls Before Swine

So. The news from the agent isn’t good. It’s sad. Not so terrible. But heartfelt and sad. Dear Jeffe, Well, this is an unpleasant letter to write. I really do feel that OBSIDIAN is hugely improved with your revisions. You’ve done an enormous amount of work, and I felt that, especially with the ending, the changes were dramatically clear. However,…

If I’m a Prick, Do I Not Still Bleed?

David is studying acupuncture and oriental medicine, as some of you may or may not know. The upshot of this is, there’s all these diagrams around the house for identifying various characteristics or the location of acupuncture points and meridians, etc. What’s funny is they all have this look that I find particularly creepy. It’s kind of like attack of…

An Ounce of Prevention Is Worth a Pound of Flesh

So, the last few days turned out to be crazy. Par for the course in my life, you say? Yeah yeah yeah. There’s this idea that the more something is worth doing, the more difficult it is. That the universe makes you pay for what you want, in sweat and pain. The old idea of blood sacrifice: if you truly…

A Time to Every Purpose, Heaven or No

It’s coming up on that time of year. No, not Christmas, despite the rumored store displays. Fortunately I haven’t been to a Target or like store recently, so I haven’t been bombarded yet. I’m a strict holiday-orderist (yes, I just made that up). All holidays in their proper order. No Christmas activity of any kind until after Thanksgiving. No Thanksgiving…

Mierenneuker

Yesterday, David told me the Dutch word for editor. He wrote it down for me in class, because he figured I’d be amused, given how I’m spending my life editing lately. No, he’s not studying Dutch. He’s learning basic Chinese for his acupuncture certification and the teacher happens to be Dutch. Which makes for an interesting class, David says. Added…