Yearly Archives: 2013

I’m alone in an enclosed cubicle not much bigger than an old-fashioned phone booth, trying to simulate the sound of a giant hamster farting. This, after impersonating an eight-year old boy, a Midwestern phone operator, a military general, and an eccentric scientist responsible for said flatulating giant hamster.  Volunteering doesn’t get much better than this.  […]

Had my first taste (a small one, admittedly) of geek celebrity-hood this past weekend— was part of a panel at Blizzcon, the gamer convention for Blizzard Entertainment. Those of you who play Diablo or Warcraft or StarCraft will be well familiar with this online multi-player company; everyone else will be completely in the dark. I spent […]

“And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-end of my days and ways And how should I presume?” —T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock It is real, folks. I’m hitched. I’ve just […]

I will keep this short, and it is oh, so sweet: I’m living in some kind of Disney fairy tale right now, where dreams do come true. My book, Still Life Las Vegas, has been picked up for publication. It happened so quickly I’m still slightly delirious. Deliciously delirious. My most excellent agent Christopher Schelling […]

There was, oddly, no sleeping last night. I’d doze for a couple of hours, then gradually find myself awake again. In and out, in and out. It wasn’t the heat, it wasn’t caffeine, it wasn’t a snoring husband (for a change). It felt like the sleeplessness that comes the night before the first day of […]

My head, Drusilla, my heeeeeaaadd! There is a constant pounding, pounding in my head, inescapable as guilt in an Edgar Allen Poe story. All day, this endless cacophany–I  feel like John Hurt as Caligula in “I, Claudius.” But it’s not impending madness which comes my way, oh no, it’s something much more momentous, and, in the […]

It is 8:30 in the evening at our household, the Cuddle Hour. It’s the time when Ben, loathe to go to sleep, will actually acquiesce to having a conversation with us, as long as we stay in the room by his bed. This is the time when he sets his charm on stun, the better […]

Looking back, perhaps it wasn’t so great an idea to visit Tulum, Mexico, a place replete with Maya ruins and relics, during the exact time when said Mayans were allegedly predicting apocalyptic disaster.  Nevertheless, thence we hithered at the end of December. What was my favorite moment of the end of 2012? Oh, could it […]