I am happy to announce that I have finally taken the plunge and created my independent small press, Leaping Hart Press. It has been an exciting process, watching as each requirement for an LLC falls into place (though not without some anxiety and middle-of-the-night worry.) I am now busy re-reading the original manuscripts […]
A New Undertaking: Leaping Hart Press Read More »
I have been going back and forth, trying to decide which of my out-of-print novels to reissue after Hannah's Garden. The stand-alone novels seem easier, cleaner, less complicated, and at least well-edited. But how wondrous and strange it is that the Oran Trilogy, a barely edited three-volume sprawling series, continues to be the most asked
Reorganizing Priorities: What to Publish After Hannah’s Garden Read More »
My notes on re-reading Harold Scheub's work on oral narrative structures and performance. They have shaped the way I think of the fantastic in narrative and how it functions, and by extension, how those "electric moments" when the real and the fantastic are combined in narrative. Notes from Harold Scheub's Story: an evident
The Shaping of Story: Working Through Ideas Read More »
Amid all this heavy lifting of my research notes, I re-read my essay, "A Chorus of Clowns and Masked Comic Theater" " written for Realms of Fantasy on the history of clowns, from antiquity to the Marx Brothers. It's funny, and I enjoyed re-reading it as it provides a comprehensive view of the different
Interlude in the Research: Call in the Clowns, Satyrs, Fools, and Nymphs. Read More »
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could publish our novels with such lovely marginalia? There is something so unexpectedly tender about these two snails meeting and kissing in the margin. Marginalia art has a vital life of its own — existing side by side with text but not necessarily commenting on the reader. It's the
Marginalia: Kissing Snails Read More »
I am excited to see the first of my revised novels about to go live in a Kindle Edition. It has been a long journey for me (with more than enough roadblocks and frustrations along the way) but joyful, too, as my dream starts to come true. You can find the Kindle edition of the
Hannah’s Garden Available in Kindle Edition Read More »
One of the greatest pleasures is reading Sicilian folktales midday while drunk on a dense-full-bodied beer (16.2 percent) produced locally in Boulder. Like the beer, the stories are rowdy, naughty, mythic, and full of gullible and wise fools who make donkeys appear to shit gold, drive menial men to do self-destructive things and conspire to
Plank’d and Research Read More »
I am heading to the desert for a while and bringing new projects along….looking forward to the dry cool nights, and the stars high overhead. And then I found these fall beauties from Madeleine Tosh! Let's see how fast I can knit while trying to finish preparing a second novel for re-release (Flight of Michael
By the Work of Hands, We Heal Ourselves. Read More »
In anxious moments while working on the current novel, I turn for assistance to a 1968 Paris Review interview with the great Canadian author Robertson Davies, where he describes his writing process, a laborious and methodical investigation long before the narrative is written. "I am at the moment winding up to write another novel, and
When Struck by Fear of Writing, Refer To The Masters For Help Read More »
