Poetry inspired by Shakespeare

Destination Shakespeare is a book of 24 poems published by Vancouver-based Misfit Press. You can see an animation of one of the poems here (just click on the book cover). I wish I'd known about this book before Christmas because I know a few people who would have loved to find it in their stocking (including ME).

I'm old enough to remember the last arms race

I was just a little girl when the US and Russia went eye to eye and toe to toe in Cuba. I remember sitting on our living room couch next to my mother as she watched John F. Kennedy's speech to the nation during those terrible days in October. (My father wasn't home. A career Army officer, he was "on alert" and getting ready, if need be, to be deployed.)

I didn't really understand what was going on so I asked my mother. "The president's telling us we're going to war," my mother said. I was terrified. The word "war" was still pretty abstract to me but I understood that if we went to war, it meant my father would be fighting it. In this Strangelovian world Americans now find ourselves in, I am more frightened now than I have been in decades.

Donald Trump is going to kill us all. It is no consolation at all knowing that Trump Tower and the White House are both at Ground Zero and no matter what nuclear horror follows the apocalypse he is threatening to unleash, he won't be around to profit by it.

Stephen King...

I couldn't have said it better myself. But then, I can rarely say anything better than Stephen King.

Cory Booker's Book Club

This is what he has to stay about it:

This past summer we read Just Mercy, a powerful memoir about our criminal justice system written by human rights attorney—and one of my heroes—Bryan Stevenson. It was an honor having Bryan join us for a live video chat to discuss his book and answer many of your questions. I look forward to having many similar discussions this year.

To kick off our 2017 Book Club, we’ve chosen a must-read book that takes a hard look at the human impact on our environment. Elizabeth Kolbert’s Pulitzer-prize winner, The Sixth Extinction, has been recommended to me by so many people I’ve lost count. And as we head into a year when we’ll need to fight even harder for a more sustainable future, it’s an especially important read—I hope you’ll join me and open this book right away.

Here's where you can sign up for it.

A new series for a new year

Thanks to cover designer Daniel Weiss of the Book Cover Designer, I have a shiny new cover for my new series of SF books that will be coming out next year. I have another book already planned, Data Witch, and the two covers look like a set. (My designer is still working on Data Witch.)

The two covers were my Christmas present to me and thanks to a holiday sale, I snagged both for less than $100. I have about thirty on my "wish list," so I suspect that a little more of my Christmas cash will go to the site. (I have been a remarkably good girl this year, although I didn't write nearly as much as I wanted to.) Daniel gave me three different options on where to put my by-line but I think I like this one best.

Advent Ghosts 2016

Photo by Sally Columni/Pixabay

This year I am participating in Loren (I Saw Lightning Fall) Eaton's writing challenge--a spooky little drabble (a story of exactly 100 words). You can go to his site for links to all the other stories. Check them out here. My story is below.

                                                      COLD COMFORT

It was snowing when Ella reached the cemetery. She didn’t really mind the wet smack of snowflakes on her bare skin; icy kisses that melted into her hair and trickled down her neck. Although the cemetery would not close for another hour, Ella was alone as she made her way to a grave heaped with blood-red roses that had faded and freeze-dried in the frigid air. 

She looked down, trying to imagine her husband sleeping beneath her feet. She supposed he was with Jesus now but she wouldn’t know. Neither murderers nor suicides go to heaven and she was both.

Syria needs the White Helmets; the White Helmets need Us!

What's going on in Syria is beyond words. The White Helmets, the Syrian Civil Defense, is just about the only organization left to help.

Here's what they do:

When the bombs rain down, the Syrian Civil Defence rushes in. In a place where public services no longer function these unarmed volunteers risk their lives to help anyone in need - regardless of their religion or politics. Known as the White Helmets these volunteer rescue workers operate in the most dangerous place on earth.
As the conflict in Syria worsens, ordinary people are paying the highest price. More than 50 bombs and mortars a day land on some neighbourhoods in Syria. Many are rusty barrels filled with nails and explosives, rolled out the back of government helicopters -- bakeries and markets are the most commonly hit targets. When this happens the White Helmets rush in to search for life in the rubble - fully aware that more bombs may fall on the same site. These volunteers have saved 73,530 lives - and this number is growing daily.

Here's what you can do. Donate.

The Blue Hour

It's been a really long time since I've lived somewhere it snowed. I've lived in Europe and states up and down the East Coast, and all of them got their share of snow. (In New Jersey it would sometimes drift over my head.) The whole time I lived in California, it only snowed once in a place where I was living, an inch in Northridge, just before the big quake. It barely coated the ground and yet people were calling in "snow days." Hah. Amateurs.

One of the things that fascinates me about living in the Pacific Northwest is that the light is different here. We'll have days where the sun is almost bronze in a gray sky. My bedroom faces southwest and the sunsets are sometimes apocalyptic looking. And this is what it looked like yesterday at midmorning when the snow was coming down thickly. The light went all blue. It was really pretty.

A book for the Wish List

I love cook books. I've edited them. I've written them. I've belonged to cookbook clubs and bought them at yard sales. When I moved away from Los Angeles I gave almost all of them away. That was partly out of self-defense. As a diabetic, my cooking these days is pretty simple and confined to dishes I like and that work for me managing my disease. I did not need forty-seven books on chocolate or baked goods or Sothern cooking. (I make amazing biscuits but seriously, my biscuit-making days are over.)

Every so often, though, a book grabs my attention. I love spicy food and I love learning bout the herbs and spices that combine to make those meals. This book is on my radar.

Random Reindeer Cat

For the record, I don't approve of dressing animals up in costumes. Except maybe on Halloweeen when their dignity won't be ruffled. But my sister used to have those silly reindeer antlers for her dog Lucy, and I have to say, Lucy was pretty cute. So maybe there can be Christmas exceptions as well. Or not. Seriously. It's one thing to dress up a dog--they'll do anything to make people smile because they're dogs. But cats...that's not how they roll. And yet, random reindeer cat!!! You can find all your animal's holiday costume needs here.

Books to Prisoners

Books to Prisoners is a Seattle-based group that provides books for prisoners. You can donate books--they're always looking for dictionaries, books on auto repair, on legal self-help, on Spanish and American Sign Language instruction, and African-American fiction and non-fiction, as well as westerns and horror--but because their warehouses are full, they prefer money. One of the most requested books is Sun Tzu's The Art of War, and they also have an ongoing need for true crime books.

This is an organization where a modest gift can do a LOT. Just twenty-five dollars sends a package of books to seven prisoners. One hundred dollars covers the postage for an entire day's worth of requests. (This year, Books to Prisoners received 13,000 requests for books.) Check this organization out and consider donating.

The Goblin Crown by Robert Hewitt Wolfe, a review

Like Guy Gavriel Kay’s FIONAVAR TAPESTRY and Suzanne Collins’ wonderful UNDERLAND CHRONICLES or C.S. Lewis’ CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, Robert Hewitt Wolfe’s THE GOBLIN CROWN, is a story of ordinary people suddenly thrust into an extraordinary, magical world. We know up front that this world is a dangerous place and that the stakes—whatever they are—will be real and that actions will have consequences for Billy, Lexi, and Kurt, as well as all they meet.

Billy, our hero, is an outsider, a kid who has NEVER felt he fit in anywhere and who certainly doesn’t expect that his high school experience is going to be any different. Billy is, a familiar enough character, but Wolfe nails him, bringing him to vivid life on the page. But pretty Filipina Lexi—who really isn’t very good at minding her own business—and bullying jock Kurt are also three-dimensional and believable people. These characters are grounded—no, rooted—in reality and we believe they act in a way that has context. (There’s a lovely, magical moment when Billy meets all the freckle-faced, redheaded men who came before him and takes courage from the encounter.