Embracing mediocrity

Me, on LinkedIn: Geez, you people are wound so tight. It’s just hustle hustle hustle, be A-MAH-ZING 24/7, be so good no one can ignore you . . . y’all make me need a nap. I mean, even mediocre people deserve to make a living. Gen Y person: I was a member of the Mediocre…

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The breath of Leoma

When I was writing The Wanderer, in several scenes I showed Lucinda making offerings to the gods in the morning. At one point she feels the breath of Leoma on her face. Leoma is the Old English word for ray of light, and I figured it was an apt name for the god of the…

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On fairy tales

When I was a child, I had an insatiable appetite for fairy tales. Rumpelstiltskin, Jack and the Beanstalk, the Elves and the Shoemaker, Three Billy Goats Gruff. I mean, their fantastical aspects aside, fairy tales are a lot like life: an unprepared person enters a chaotic, upside-down world, and tries to survive. Resourcefulness is necessary,…

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Punctuation marks

I started this morning trying to remember the phrase for “quotation marks.” I came up with “word hole.” Which, in fact, is a perfect description of how I feel about my current work-in-progress, an apparently neverending story that just isn’t quite there yet. All the words go in and nothing comes out. Well, not yet.…

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