We put up this platform in the backyard for Coffey to use, and use it she does. She supervises the yard work, lounges regally at times and surveys her kingdom. Or is that queendom? Anyway, I thought I’d post this.
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Category: Home
Catcher In The Rye
I just completed an essay for a newsletter about books we never read, but it is assumed, because we are Readers, we have. Catcher In The Rye is such a book for me. Never read it. Know a lot about it, through some kind of osmosis, rubbing up against people who have read it. You can glean a lot that way.
I made the statement in the essay that I probably don’t even own a copy. I just checked. I do. It’s not actually mine, the name of the person who apparently loaned it to me is stamped inside the front cover. …
My Dog
Okay, this is too cute. I need to do videos, but they might mean something only to me. So what?
My dog…her name is Coffey. About 35 lbs, the color of coffee beans except for the slightly spotted white on her chest, around her neck, her paws, and a streak like spilled milk on her face from forehead down to around her nose. Marvelous ears.
Happy.
I’m not in a great mood these days, for a variety of reasons, and this morning I seemed stuck in a funk. I have to go in to the Day Job earlier than usual and it’s too damn cold outside to either go to the gym (can’t wait for winter to be over) or walk Coffey. …
Chapter the Next
Yesterday, I stayed home from work again. Nothing to do. In a way, I like this. I’d go on contract with the company if I could, go in only when there was actually something to do. But it’s not that much money, so it’s a quandary.
On the other hand, I finished a chapter in a book that’s been teasing me for a couple of years. I’d walked away form it to write something else, and I’ve been finding it difficult to go back. I have a lot written—almost a third of it, at least—and I’m loathe to just give up on it, but with one thing or another I just haven’t been able to get any forward momentum.…
Why I Write
From time to time someone asks me (as, no doubt, they ask other writers) why I do it. Why, specifically, I write fiction as opposed to nonfiction. It really is hard to explain to those who seem tone-deaf to what we call Art. Sometimes it’s hard to explain to yourself. The short answer for me is that I love it. I love creating stories and weird stuff and making up plots, because I always loved stories. (When I was a kid, I’d watch movies in which a group of people are thrust into a really cool adventure and at some point one of them would talk about wanting to just go home and having everything return to normal. …
Little Lost Book
We returned home one year from a worldcon (world science fiction convention, for those who may not know the nomenclature)—I forget which year—and promptly I lost a book. Or a box of books. You see, we’d early on gotten into the habit of mailing our purchases home rather than try to take boxes of books on the plane. (The first worldcon we went to in 1984 resulted in about three hefty boxes going back, all of which cost around a hundred and fifty dollars. Today that much would fit in one (small) box.) This system worked pretty well until this time.…