Author: deborahb
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Ditmar season
It’s Ditmar season! I know this because of the flurry of emails I’ve received from people reminding me of their eligibility. I had 2 short stories published last year, necessarily down from 6 in 2009 (the year A BOOK OF ENDINGS was published): No Going Home in SPRAWL and Home Turf in BAGGAGE. I’ll happily send…
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What you get when you type ‘women’ into Harpers
Kaaron Warren proclaimed the virtues of Harper’s magazine on her blog (& mine), so I went to the Harpers website & found a search engine where you can interrogate the magazine from 1984 to 2009. The site is kinda utilitarian, so there I am with a blank search engine all the way back to 1984…
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In today’s consumptions
Some kind of weird sleeping sickness has taken over me & is attempting to right the balance of the last several weeks’ insomnia. It’s kinda inconvenient. But, since I’m stuck in bed, I did invest some time in reading The New Yorker’s lengthy article on Paul Haggis (writer of Due South, Million Dollar Baby, and…
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Free Books put the fear into booksellers
World Book Night, 5 March, is freaking out booksellers. One million free books on the market are gonna kill independent book selling. (Obviously they’ve never heard about Bookcrossing. Shhh!) Which goes against a lot of the authorial commentary on Creative Commons & the value of the ‘first one free’ approach. And hasn’t Cory Doctorow discovered…
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I guess that’s why it’s called ‘average’
You know, when someone roams the world photographing the first hundred people they find in each city (who agree to be photographed), & then average those hundred faces & call each composite by the city name — it’s surprising how similar we all look. Or, well, maybe it isn’t. But somewhere in there is a…
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The War of Art
Years ago I stumbled across Steven Pressfield’s THE WAR OF ART (no, I didn’t write that down wrong) & loved it. Loved its passion & determination. Loved it so much I bought a copy for a friend’s birthday. Only to shortly hear that he didn’t want gifts that birthday. So I shelved it until an…
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Gothic Valentine!
If you’re near the Library Gallery at Lone Star College, Houston, TX, USA this Monday before midday, make sure you check out the book launch and have some ‘heart-red punch’ for me. And say hi to Danel Olson, editor extraordinaire of the 21ST CENTURY GOTHIC tome, launching that day. And it is a tome! It…
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Testing
Today is Writing Day at chateau deborahb. Many days are writing days, but this is the official writing day, as it is a day I have bought from my f/t employment specifically to be alone & write. It is, then, my favourite day of the week. Today I am playing hooky from my regular writing…