Reading Tonight in Minneapolis
February 7th, 2009Just a quick reminder that I’ll be reading and signing 6:30 tonight at Dreamhaven Books in Minneapolis. If you’re in the area, come on by. Should be fun.
Minneapolis Reading (SOON!)
January 27th, 2009On Saturday, February 7th at 6:30pm, (that’s just a week and a half away), I’ll be doing a reading and book signing at DreamHaven Books in Minneapolis. I give pretty good read, so it should be a fun time.
Here’s the location info on DreamHaven Books, taken from their website:
The store is located in south Minneapolis, on East 38th Street, between Cedar Avenue and Hiawatha (Hwy 55).
We have free store parking in back of the building (you can enter from E 38th St).
The 22G, 22H, 14B, and 23 buses run by the store. There is also a Light Rail stop 7 blocks away on E 38th St & Hiawatha Ave. You can use the Metro Transit Trip Planner to to find a connecting bus route from your area.
ADDRESS:
DreamHaven Books & Comics
2301 E 38th Street
Minneapolis, MN 55406-3015
USA
Mercury mercury everywhere.
January 27th, 2009Mercury found in high fructose corn syrup. Which is found in basically every packaged product in the grocery store.
Just another example of what happens when you treat your food like an industrial supply chain.
Thailand and novelists and jail sentences
January 19th, 2009Interesting bit from the Land of Smiles. The Thais revere their royalty, and back it up with serious punishments. It highlights an interesting conflict between local values and identity vs. liberal democratic values such as free speech.
The realistic perspective is to observe that when you enter a country, you adhere to its values. Simple as that. But I also think that a country benefits from honest discussion–and particularly, honest political discussion–and have to think that aggressive laws like this ultimately hurt a society more than help it.
A little more on the topic, from The Economist.
OH NOOOES, Little Debbie maybe makey barfey
January 19th, 2009http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28695782/
Yet another window into the industrial manufacturing system we call “food.”
THE WINDUP GIRL…
January 7th, 2009…has sold to Nightshade Books. It happened while we were in India, and I am very pleased. As I mentioned in an earlier post, this story is set in the same world as “Yellow Card Man.” More on this later, but I thought I should at least mention it.
Back from India
December 29th, 2008I’m going through the photos of the trip, mostly wedding photos and family stuff, but this was a funny moment in Ranchi. We got shaken down by an elephant on the outskirts of the city.
Through the windshield:
Looking over the roof of the SUV:
He blocked the SUV, and wouldn’t let us pass until we handed rupees to his elephant.
Headed for India
November 28th, 2008I’m going to be in India for the next three weeks, visiting relatives in Kolkata, Ranchi, and Mumbai. Probably checking email sporadically. And yes, I am feeling a little hesitant about this. We stopped watching CNN yesterday because it just fires up lizard-brain panic functions that aren’t really relevant to our situation. We won’t be in touristy or upscale areas for most of the time, so even though the visuals coming out of India are horrifying, they aren’t really indicative of where we’ll be in the country. Still, I can’t say it didn’t give us pause.
“The Gambler” now available online
November 24th, 2008Thanks to Lou Anders at PYR Books, my short story “The Gambler” which appeared in the original anthology Fast Forward 2 is now available online for free reading at PYR’s website.
When I wrote “The Gambler,” I had just finished a stint as online editor of a non-profit magazine, where I worked primarily on the question of how a print publication could transition online and not die in the process. Blogs and RSS feeds, community-building tools and payment models, push and pull technologies and social networks filled my days. And along with it, always, the business pressures we faced: How to generate revenue from our online work? How to measure value? How to make sure that print and online products didn’t gut one another? We were in a constant state of experimentation.
I can’t say that I found the answers; more like found a lot of questions. Everything from our budget to our staffing to our content focus imposed limits on what we could do, or even imagine doing, and there was always more that we could have been doing. But our magazine’s struggle to transition to a world dominated by new revenue models, customer expectations, and measurement technologies — and what that might imply for news gathering and journalists — really hung with me. “The Gambler” was the result.
In light of recent events in the publishing industry, everything from the Christian Science Monitor’s decision to go electronic to the New York Times’ precarious financial state, “The Gambler” has been feeling weirdly relevant. Maybe that’s just me, because I was and remain obsessed with these technologies and the fourth estate. Thanks to Lou Anders and Fast Forward 2, though, you can now take a look at one version of journalism’s future and decide for yourself.
Read “The Gambler” in its entirety at the PYR Books website.
new eyes on old objects
November 21st, 2008Last night as Anjula and Arjun and I were coming home from a school event, Arjun looked up at the sky and said, “Look at all the stars.”
The night was absolutely black, no moon, and the sky was full with them, the Milky Way clearly visible. Arjun said, “They’re like snow.”
And in that moment, I could see what he saw. And I could also see that where I struggle for simile and metaphor, to take something common and make it visible again, even to myself, let alone a reader, Arjun, at 4 and half, when everything is still new, does it effortlessly.
