The Lazy Writer’s Secret to Revising
A few years ago, a friend (picture book author, blogger, and bookstore owner Elizabeth Bluemle) was giving me her editing notes on an early draft of my first novel when I stumbled onto a trick that has...
View ArticleAnthropomorphic Alliterative Animals!
About a year ago, I attended a Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators conference where Yolanda LeRoy, an editor with Charlesbridge Publishing, gave a very entertaining talk about the good...
View ArticleHaiku Death March(?)
I’ve begun an experiment to see if I can write one new haiku every day. It is now day ten. So far, so good! I don’t know how it will be 20 days from now, or 50, or 200, though. Will the quality of the...
View ArticleHave your Pi and read it, too
I just learned that today is International Pi Day and thought I’d share this poem I wrote a while back: Formulae I. e πi – 1 = 0 Shadow cast by the flight of goose populations and the spread of moss,...
View Article50 haiku in 50 days
Two days ago, I posted my 50th haiku in 50 days on Haiku Diem, and this seems like a good point at which to reflect on how the effort is going. Scarcity Shortly after launching Haiku Diem, I blogged...
View ArticleMy picture book texts
A few months ago, after I submitted my YA Joan of Arc novelization to yet another publisher and was feeling like I was moving into a wait-and-see phase concerning all my YA novels, I decided to turn my...
View ArticleOn the Norway attacks
First, read this courageous comment on the bombing and shooting in Norway. We had our own “Oslo moment” here in the U.S., of course: the 9/11 attacks. In the aftermath, there was a lot of talk about...
View ArticleA 9/11 poem
The Pull Bodies of every size falling at the same rate, no one more or less anxious to achieve the finality of ground, all equally compliant or ineffectively resistant to gravity’s slippery slope....
View ArticleCreateSpace: a Review
I recently self-published a collection of my best haiku from the first year of my daily haiku writing experiment, Haiku Diem, through CreateSpace, the Amazon.com affiliated print-on-demand service...
View ArticleJefferson
A poem for the 4th. (The day Thomas Jefferson died, in 1826, on the 50th birthday of the nation.) Jefferson He returned, whose name never was attached to any legend of the great leader not dead but...
View ArticleSolstice lullaby
photo by Biswarup Ganguly An excerpt from my work in progress, The Death of Arthur. (A sequel to The Light of the Grail, which I’ll probably be self-publishing some time soon after I self-publish...
View ArticleThe Gun’s Thunder
On this day of the March For Our Lives, I’d like to share an excerpt from my current work in progress, Matoaka, a novel of Pocahontas, John Smith, and John Rolfe. The entire novel is written in the...
View ArticleCoverage
A poem I wrote 30 years ago, in the days following the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Coverage Oakland, October 17-19, 1989 I. When structures already improbably huge simply break like some toy they...
View ArticleThat The Power Might Take Knee
Police kneeling with protesters in Miami-Dade County (photo by Miami- Dade Corrections) In the course of the protests sweeping our nation, police in many cities transformed potentially incendiary...
View ArticleBeware the Award-Industrial Complex
The publisher of one of my books just informed me that the book won an award from a contest they entered it into, but instead of posting about my win everywhere I can, I'm writing this post in which...
View ArticleNovel excerpts: My herbalist father
Ng Tin Sheung (1913-2012) On this Father's Day, 2023, I'd like to share two excerpts from my forthcoming novel about the Chinese immigration experience through Angel Island in the early 1900's (Bridge...
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