Friday, February 14, 2014
Brandy's Valentine's Day Massacre
Brandy's having a lousy day. Check out her blog at www.brandyandthebanshees.blogspot.com!
Monday, February 3, 2014
Brandy Connor's blog....
I wanted to call your attention to my teenaged alter-ego, Brandy Connor, and invite you to check out her blog. For no strange reason to those who know me, I find it very easy to speak in the voice of a teenaged girl.
Brandy is about 16 and a half now. She's a junior in high school this year. She has cropped burgundy hair, fancies herself to be somewhat of a tomboy (a logical result when you have been raised with five brothers), and her personal dress code gives just a tiny nod to Goth - tees, tanks, jeans, black nail polish. Regardless, she will probably be attending prom this year. But I can't tell you why she'd break down and get into a dress or who she might go with. (Her beau, Farrell, from last year is, after all, on again/off again. He might be off again by prom season.)
Last time, Brandy battled banshees. She is ever and reluctantly involved with fantasy and the paranormal. Still, she manages to face her fears and whatever the supernatural world throws her way with creativity, pluck, courage, and good critical thinking skills! How else to save her family from a curse last year? This year she has to find...well, as River Song might say, Spoilers!
As I'm working on that spunky little wise ass's next book, The Darkest Book on the Shelf, she will be posting on Brandy's blog from time to time to tell you what she's up to. She will try to avoid spoilers.
Brandy is about 16 and a half now. She's a junior in high school this year. She has cropped burgundy hair, fancies herself to be somewhat of a tomboy (a logical result when you have been raised with five brothers), and her personal dress code gives just a tiny nod to Goth - tees, tanks, jeans, black nail polish. Regardless, she will probably be attending prom this year. But I can't tell you why she'd break down and get into a dress or who she might go with. (Her beau, Farrell, from last year is, after all, on again/off again. He might be off again by prom season.)
Last time, Brandy battled banshees. She is ever and reluctantly involved with fantasy and the paranormal. Still, she manages to face her fears and whatever the supernatural world throws her way with creativity, pluck, courage, and good critical thinking skills! How else to save her family from a curse last year? This year she has to find...well, as River Song might say, Spoilers!
As I'm working on that spunky little wise ass's next book, The Darkest Book on the Shelf, she will be posting on Brandy's blog from time to time to tell you what she's up to. She will try to avoid spoilers.
Friday, January 31, 2014
The Pleasures of Panera
Hmmm. It wasn't my intention to have my heading sound like the title of a sci-fi novel. What can I imagine for planet Panera? A place where folks made of baguettes sail on endless rivers of onion soup?
Never mind.
I want to talk about possible havens from the solitary task of writing and bastions against its accompanying loneliness. I may be a loner in some ways but the constant isolation of writing at home is too much for me. So, like many of my compatriots, I've explored writing in other atmospheres.
Of course, you have the library. That's a given. Good place to meet readers for obvious reasons. That's why I try to appear there dressed in one of the t-shirts I have had emblazoned with my book covers. The result is cheap advertisement and one of the few situations where I won't be offended if I catch a man staring at my boobs.
When I write at home in my tiny office/den I feel like an aesthete stuck in a cave on a mountain top in the Himalayas. (Gotta keep the heat down at home. Another benefit of working in a warm public place where someone else is paying the oil bill.) The library is warm, but it's almost as quiet as my office. More so when you account for the fact that I almost always have the Weather Channel blaring just to hear the sound of a human voice. And even if someone at the library should notice my shirt, a conversation about my work would be much more difficult to initiate than at a coffee shop or even a book store.
Larger book stores with cafes are another option. Unless the cafe is small. Then you might be asked to move if your food-consumption-to-time-writing ratio doesn't meet the management's expectations. This happened to me once. I wrote for an hour over tea and was just about ready to order lunch. My appetite didn't coincide with the manager's patience.
This is why I prefer Panera's. Unlike the library, there is food and drink if I get hungry. Like any cafe, it smells of coffee and soup and cinnamon. There is water there, and bathrooms for what happens after you drink it. All the necessities of life and then some. One of the Panera's I frequent even has a fireplace. And they've never asked me to move. Not even when all I ordered was a latte. A possible negative for some - on most days it is noisier than the library or most bookstore coffee shops. Sometimes much noisier. This is not a deterrent for me. Personally, I find that the white noise of others' conversations cheers me. (Okay, except for the time the women in the table behind me were speaking about their highly personal problems LOUDLY.)
Actually, the chatter is the best part. If I'm having a particularly lonely, isolated-writer day, I can wear my "Careful or you'll end up in my novel" tee and be assured that someone will start up a conversation with a lonely author.
Never mind.
I want to talk about possible havens from the solitary task of writing and bastions against its accompanying loneliness. I may be a loner in some ways but the constant isolation of writing at home is too much for me. So, like many of my compatriots, I've explored writing in other atmospheres.
Of course, you have the library. That's a given. Good place to meet readers for obvious reasons. That's why I try to appear there dressed in one of the t-shirts I have had emblazoned with my book covers. The result is cheap advertisement and one of the few situations where I won't be offended if I catch a man staring at my boobs.
When I write at home in my tiny office/den I feel like an aesthete stuck in a cave on a mountain top in the Himalayas. (Gotta keep the heat down at home. Another benefit of working in a warm public place where someone else is paying the oil bill.) The library is warm, but it's almost as quiet as my office. More so when you account for the fact that I almost always have the Weather Channel blaring just to hear the sound of a human voice. And even if someone at the library should notice my shirt, a conversation about my work would be much more difficult to initiate than at a coffee shop or even a book store.
Larger book stores with cafes are another option. Unless the cafe is small. Then you might be asked to move if your food-consumption-to-time-writing ratio doesn't meet the management's expectations. This happened to me once. I wrote for an hour over tea and was just about ready to order lunch. My appetite didn't coincide with the manager's patience.
This is why I prefer Panera's. Unlike the library, there is food and drink if I get hungry. Like any cafe, it smells of coffee and soup and cinnamon. There is water there, and bathrooms for what happens after you drink it. All the necessities of life and then some. One of the Panera's I frequent even has a fireplace. And they've never asked me to move. Not even when all I ordered was a latte. A possible negative for some - on most days it is noisier than the library or most bookstore coffee shops. Sometimes much noisier. This is not a deterrent for me. Personally, I find that the white noise of others' conversations cheers me. (Okay, except for the time the women in the table behind me were speaking about their highly personal problems LOUDLY.)
Actually, the chatter is the best part. If I'm having a particularly lonely, isolated-writer day, I can wear my "Careful or you'll end up in my novel" tee and be assured that someone will start up a conversation with a lonely author.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)