And Now, A Word From Our Spammers

It’s amazing what you catch in the lint blog filter. I scan the spam file regularly to ensure no real comments get lost in the wash. In the five years since I started working with blogs (my own and those of others) the spam-bots have come a long way. On occasion, the digital Pinocchios almost sound like real boys. Until you put their comments in context. Cases in point: A comment on “A Roaming Gnome Gathers No Moss” – letting me know that the commenter “learned a lot from this post.” Really? Apparently the Gnomepocalypse is closer than we anticipated.

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Remember Where You Came From

September 27, 2011, is “Ancestor Appreciation Day.” In honor of the occasion, permit me to tell you a story. Once upon a time, a sixth-grade girl had to do a report on her ancestors. Not the long-dead Viking captains her parents praised in eulogy, or the subsequent generations that made their living on the sea as captains of clippers and other sailing ships. No, this report required a living ancestor, though the little girl could select any one she wished. But she didn’t find any of them very interesting. She had an aunt with a PhD in mathematics, but the

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Safety Dance, Apple Style

The iPad autocorrect is the bane of my existence. (Full disclosure probably requires me to mention that my existence has almost as many banes as interactions and objects, and that they vary from pull-tabs that break instead of pull to The Guy Who Can’t Decide What He Wants In The Drive Thru Lane And Makes Me Wait Seven Minutes For My Cheeseburger. I fail at placid. I also digress….) The people who brought us The Most Awesome Handheld Technology In The Universe (except for bacon) have also discovered the fastest connection between happy end-users and raging maniacs pounding furiously on

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A Roaming Gnome Gathers No Moss

Capital High School in Helena, Montana, recently suffered a gnome infestation. At least 22 garden gnomes mysteriously appeared at the school at the end of May. They had apparently taken up strategic positions around campus, most likely to avoid detection. All of which points to Chuck Sambuchino‘s brilliant (if under-recognized) forethought in preparing a manual to help us counter the gnomish insurgency. The gnomes’ plan, as best I can determine: Step 1: Seize educational institutions. Step 2: ????????? Step 3: PROFIT!* They’re still working on step 2, so the Helena High squad was clearly an advance team looking for weaknesses

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It’s all in the POV

Tesla and I like to watch bad movies. Really, really bad movies. Sci-Fi original movies, to be exact, along with anything else that most people would rather endure a root canal without Novocaine than admit to voluntarily wasting two hours of irretrievable life upon. Yeah, that kind of movies. Not every night, of course, but about once a month we’ll sit down with the remote, big bowls of popcorn and assorted soda cans (Dr. Pepper for Tesla, the diet version for me) and root for the snakes on the plane. Or the massive snowstorm that threatens to destroy the universe.

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Embracing the Inner Blonde

This morning my son (we all remember Tesla , right?) mentioned that he liked a phrase from my new manuscript. He also mentioned that he noticed one of his favorite books on my desk: Secret Weapons of the Ninja (looked for a link, seems to be out of print). At which point I responded, “I like that one too, but it’s out because I needed to check the Japanese word for shuriken*.” A very long pause ensued. After which Tesla replied, “Mom…that would be shuriken.” I’m not really a blonde, but I play one…in real life. What’s the strangest thing

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In Which I Fail at Conference Posting and Require a Short Break

Unfortunately, a lack of Wi-Fi connectivity in my hotel room and an exceptionally busy conference kept me from posting the expected updates. A brief recap of the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers’ Conference highlights: – I met a large number of fantastic writers, both published and seeking publication, made several new friends and heard about many wonderful projects in progress. Readers, take note: there are definitely some exciting books in the works. – I made contact with some amazing agents and editors, who shall remain nameless but whose energy and enthusiasm helped to make this conference absolutely amazing. – I ate

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Drumbeats and Smoke Signals…Must be Conference Time

I’ll apologize in advance for the next five days. Posting will be regular – in fact, possibly more than once a day – but largely writer-geek in inspiration. Friday marks the opening of the 2011 Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers’ Colorado Gold conference. I’m presenting twice this year, a contracts class on Friday morning (Note to the “Contracts and Copyrights” Master’s Class attendees: I am bringing hard copies of the handout with me, so there’s no need to print your own) and a copyright session on Saturday afternoon. In between, and for the rest of the weekend, I’ll be wearing two

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How is a Crab Like a Manuscript?

I couldn’t decide what to post today, which made little sense until I realized it’s National Waffle Week. Which, of course, reminded me of the Mad Hatter’s famous unanswered riddle, “How is a raven like a writing-desk?” And from there it’s only a tiny jump to “How is a Crab like a novel manuscript?” (This is the world I inhabit. Sometimes it scares me too.) Carroll’s riddle never had an answer, but a crab has quite a lot in common with the average manuscript – at least if you use the right crab. This one’s name is Banzai: Banzai is

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Planulae

I’d planned something else for Friday, but once again a shiny dinglehopper has intervened. Last night I witnessed something few people get to see, and I thought I’d share. This is a sun coral (Tubastrea sp.), a variety of non-reef-building, large-polyp, stony coral that prefers dim lighting conditions: Sun corals produce in two different ways. The parent colony can either clone itself (asexually) by producing new polyps that grow out of the “parents” sides or produce “planulae” (singular “planula”), which are free-swimming larval babies that settle elsewhere on live rock and produce new colonies of their own. In captive reef

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