November 1st will mark the beginning of the 5th annual National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), founded in 1999 by Chris Baty and friends as a simple framework for writing a novel in a month. That’s 50,000 words in 30 days. No small undertaking. NaNoWriMo has grown by leaps and bounds each year and now features […]

I had been debating with myself on whether to even discuss this topic on a pseudo-public forum, but then a friend of mine overheard me and shared her own gynecological hilarity, so I decided to plunge ahead. (Kate is welcome to post her experience as a comment, if she dares….) Plus, I’m a Scorpio; I’ll […]

The Current Electoral Vote Predictor 2004 page (http://www.electoral-vote.com/) this morning features a run-down on the current Supreme Court justices, who appointed them, how long they’ve been on the bench, and how old they are. While there are a few errors in this information (e.g., Ginsberg was appointed by Clinton, not by Carter), it’s still quite […]

Every author has a unique and personal process of bringing new characters and a new story to the blank page. As I now immerse myself in the created world of my current book project, I find a familiar phenomenon manifesting. When I was writing ‘rhythm,’ I got so deeply under the skin of the two […]

This evening, I received a call from a local MoveOn.org organizer, while I was thawing out a piece of meat I’d forgotten about in the freezer and attempting to gauge the freezer-burn damage. He was looking for volunteers to go door-to-door in my community, urging people to vote — more specifically, urging supporters of the […]

I received my ballot in the mail over the weekend. While I am used to going to the polls each year on election day, Oregon — my new state of residence — operates on ballots instead. You know, the mail-in kind. They tell me that using the ballot system has dramatically increased voter participation, and […]