Month: June 2012

I’ve been tagged and charged with telling you all a story – or at least a piece of one. Technically, the tag requests a piece of my work-in-progress, but since I’m under contract not to free that particular literary cat from its burlap palace until the appointed time, I’ll share a story about the work-in-progress instead. We’ll call it “A Tale of Two Kitties.” When I started writing the Shinobi mysteries, I decided my detective needed a pet. Historically accurate ninjas aren’t the most sympathetic protagonists, after all. My detective, Hiro Hattori, was a successful assassin before he was charged

Every time we interact with another person, we have two options: to build that person up or to tear his confidence down. This is true regardless of the message we want to deliver or the purpose for interacting. I was at the market a couple of months ago buying food for dinner. I was in a hurry, but as usual I’d piled the cart with more than just the three or four items I needed. The half-full cart (and my distractable nature) had put me behind and I needed to get home ASAP. As I reached the checkout counters, I

Today is official World Ocean’s Day. In honor of the occasion, I thought I’d talk a little about something that lives in the sea. Aquatic Worms. The worm above is a “hard-tube” feather duster, of the family polychaeta. The family includes a wide variety of worms, not all of which are sedentary or tube-dwelling varieties. In fact, the bristle worms which hide in live rock and feed on detritus are also polychaetes. Whether you know them as “fan worms,” “peacock worms,” or “feather dusters,” the tube-dwelling polychaetes are popular with reefkeepers for their bright colors and feathery feeding cones. The

June 8, 2012 is official “Oopsy-Daisy Day.” I wasn’t sure exactly what to make of this observance, but fortunately the spam filter was happy to help me out. When I checked it this morning, I found a comment from the operator of a “new website of excitement” who’s “starting a new scheme on the Internet” and was hoping to “excehange link possibilities” (yes, that’s a quote) with someone of my sterling expertise. I’ll pass on an explicit description of the “commenter’s” URL  (suffice it to say “explicit” is, in fact, the operative term). While I’m sure the Internet needs new

Last week at Writers in the Storm, I wrote about authors’ need to make writing a business (and treat it as one). Several authors commented about the difficulty they encountered in finding reliable resources about the publishing business, so in response I’m starting a Wednesday series about the publishing business and how it works from both traditional and independent perspectives. Over the next few weeks, we’ll talk about the business of writing and the publishing process, with possible detours to answer questions posted here or sent via Twitter’s #PubLaw Hashtag. Many times, authors forget that writing is a two-pronged calling.

June is upon us (and I have the cloudy Monday to prove it) so without further ado, here’s a list of this month’s celebratory observance offerings: Adopt a Shelter Cat month (Note: If you actually use said cat as a shelter, I suggest protective headgear. They’re sharp on 5 of 6 ends.) World Naked Bike Ride Month (We’ll file this under ‘things you can’t un-see.’) National Bathroom Reading Month (Because nobody likes an illiterate bathroom.) Potty Training Awareness Month (See the diapers? He’s not potty trained. Now you know.) Corn and Cucumber Month (It terrifies me that Google Recipe Search