A Halloween Message from the Author

Boo!

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Fumbling for Fiction Interview

Chandler Craig of Fumbling for Fiction is interviewing several debut authors of 2009… mine went up today.

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Forty Years, Forty Posts #31

Today is the second anniversary of our life with Bertie, our gentlemanly tabby cat. We found Bertie at the humane society, and ever since he has inspired us with his grace and good nature. He gets along with everybody, and enjoys the simpler things in life: a bowl of milk, a tumble with Torii, and [...]

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Reading Report: August-October 2008

I haven’t done one of these in a while, and the truth is, I haven’t read that much… at least not books. I’ve been distracted by all the things going on in the world, and busy with my own work in progress. In August I read an advance copy of a book called Winnie’s War, [...]

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Forty Years, Forty Posts #30… bonus material

In follow up to my last post about my collegiate juvenalia, here are: A. A sample newspaper column… Read more B. The story the lady liked… This story requires a bit of explanation. At the time I was on a bit of Taoism kick, and had the audacity to write my own “classic Chinese stories,” [...]

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Forty Years, Forty Posts #30

It’s with a kind of sinking feeling that I realize Chuck Klosterman‘s novel Downtown Owl sounds kind of good. I might even read it. I know Chuck, marginally, and mostly through other people, but for a year we shared an op-ed page in the college newspaper, The Dakota Student, and I suffered the indignity of [...]

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Forty Years, Forty Posts #29

From time to time, in election season, I start to fantasize about alternate realities where I had gone into politics. It must be nice to matter so much to other people. I ran for exactly one office in my life, the student senate in college. There were about 25 eligible voters for this one seat [...]

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Forty Years, Forty Posts #28

In 1993 I went to the University of Maine for an M.A. in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing. I proposed to write a tough book about (and possibly for) kids, and was accepted on the strength of a short story about a kid living in rural Minnesota whose father works at a dairy [...]

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Three Events

My first three events have been lined up in conjunction with the release of Mudville. Sunday, January 25, 2009 (Time TBA) “It’s a First” Cocktail Party* ALA Midwinter Meeting, Denver, CO * For those attending the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting only. Meet me and five other debut authors from Random House Children’s Books. Plenty [...]

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Forty years, Forty Posts #27

I met my wife online, which is how people meet these days. Now we rarely see an ad for matchmaking sites without rolling our eyes and scoffing at the kinds of freaks and weirdos you’re likely to meet that way. We saw that we matched up well on paper: same taste in music (Wilco, Ryan [...]

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