Most of my blogging happened on blogger before I had much of publishing or social media presence. In the interest of getting all of my better non-ficiton pieces in one place on my own site, I’m going to start reblogging from there and from Facebook and other places I’ve parked things over the years.
Friday Cat Blogging
Hey girl…
Don’t even go there.
Are you two going to fight?
Y’all do whatever you have to. Ima be over here melting…and loving it.
This is a most excellent vintage, but the presentation is lacking.
Hey, where’s my Dixie cup?
Snow-Motion Science
First, this awesomeness is a thing:
Now, let me explain. This weekend my friend Kyle Cassidy was in town for the 50th birthday of another friend, the Fabulous Lorraine Garland. Kyle is a fantastic professional photographer and always up for doing cool and silly stuff involving pictures. I’ve been wanting to get him together with my photographer/geologist friend and frequent co-conspiritor Matt Kuchta for ages. I figured this was a perfect time, and since both of them had been hoping to meet at some point too, it was a low risk, low effort plan.
With some back and forth on twitter it was decided to go with high speed video madness rather than straight up photography—Matt and another friend, Todd Zimmerman, both work in my wife’s physics department and have been doing some amazing work with an incredible high-speed video camera that the department bought for the doing of SCIENCE. Kyle’s really liked what he’s seen on that front and wanted to check out the cool toy. Add in another friend, Dill Hero, husband of yet another friend, Joan of Dark—both also up for Fablor’s birthday—some quick thinking, and Castle Gaiman as a backdrop and you get SCIENCE + ART + SILLINESS with Matt and Todd behind the camera, and Kyle, Dill, and me in front of it.
The end result is Snow-Motion Science*
(click on space above if video doesn’t appear immediately)
*Linked for those who can’t see the embedded video.
Friday Cat Blogging
Isabelle, the prequel.
Likewise, Jordan, part I
Isabelle 2.0 sits with Jordan 1.0
Jordan 2.5 (there’s at least the much of her)
Wait, is that a camera? Is this my good side? Why is the sky darker in…is that my tail?
I had a plan, but then I frightened myself into forgetting it.
I am trying to kill fish with my mind. But there are no fish, and that makes me angry.
Thumb-monkeys brought me a heat. Finally!
My butt feels sooooooo good!
My life is so sad, I only get tuna once a night, and treats when I ask—
and none of it comes on a silver platter.
My tail is the yummiest thing EVAR!
Friday Cat Blogging
Go ahead and tell the story without me. I’m kinda tired today.
Dude, if you’re not gonna show, then don’t actually show. I hate working with amateurs.
So embarrassed.
Is this episode where I run onna wall!? Like dis!
No, I think this is one where I play the walrus on the ice flow. Like dis. Cheap set.
Wonder what’s going on down in the next panel with the cats of Castle Gaiman…
I found a redhead, and I’m so excited I could…eh I’m a cat, excitement isn’t my thing.
It is mine! I’m a dog! Dogs Rock! Do you think she’d hold me like that next?
I see dead people…well, once I kill them that is. Sorry, just thinking. Is that camera on?
Broken Blade, The German Cover
I love this cover. It was done by Jan Ditlev Christensen and it’s fabulous!
Friday Cat Blogging
Photobomb!
What the hell was that?
I don’t know, but it went thataway!
We are not amused. The smelly white invader must go.
I think it was a d.o.g.
Where? I will destroy it with my laser breath!
Did you know my nose has a flavor? Wait, did I miss something.
Writing and Publishing and Despair
I wrote this for a friend of mine who is in that hard place where you know you’re good enough to be published and the professional writers that you show your stories to all agree that you’re good enough, but you just haven’t hit the right editor yet. My friend knows that I had a long road to walk to get to where I am now in the writing world and wanted to know what I had done when I was in the hard places. This is my advice:
Mostly, it’s just write. I know the publication side of things is a goal that we all aim for. But it’s not, at root ,what keeps most of us writing. Certainly not me. I write because I can’t not. I write because it makes me happy. I write because it gives me a place to put all the shit in my head. I write because it keeps me sane. I write because not writing hurts.
I write because deep down in the bone, it’s all about the work. Publishing is what I do so that I can keep writing. Publishing regularly means that I get to do a lot more writing than I would if I had to do something else to put bread on the table, but publishing isn’t the goal. Writing is. It always has been.
That’s where I go when I hit my worst writing moments. Sometimes it takes me a while—days, weeks, months once—to find my way back to that place. To remember that publishing is a tool in service of the writing, which is the real goal, and not the other way around, but it’s coming back to that place that keeps me going on the bad days.
You didn’t write that last story to get published. At least I don’t think you did. Though publishing it was certainly a goal, I don’t think that’s what got you excited about the idea. I don’t think that’s what got you to sit down at the keyboard and work on it.
I think you wrote it because it was a story that you wanted to tell. A story that only you could tell, because you were the one who cared enough about it to give it form. Without you, that story wouldn’t exist. That would be a loss for the world of story because it’s a good one, no matter what its eventual fate.
We build the world of story. We do it one word at a time. We do it because no one else can. That’s what it’s about.
Friday Cat Blogging Special Saturday Edition
Reading Lord of the Rings to Cats Edition.
A long expected party, the day after, or: I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.
Hobbits, hobbits, hobbits. Does this book ever talk about cats?
Wake me when we get to the cats.
Oh no. Frodo’s been stabbed. I am so worried. Woe. Worry.
What will I see if I look into the mirror?
None can. Also, all will love me and despair.
Friday Cat Blogging
My nose, it has a flavor, and that flavor is…eeevil!
What is this eeevil of which you speak? May I subscribe to your newsletter?
Screw eeevil, somebody help me climb this thumb-monkey.
To dream the impossible dream…to climb the unclimable monkey…to
Y’all are just freaking weird, you know that right?
Not weird, eeevil! How many times do I have to…ooh, sritchy…
No, she’s right, y’all are weird.
Weird and eeevil. I have the car keys! I just have to figure out how to reach the pedals…
