Happy birthday, Greg Rucka!

Today is Greg Rucka's birthday, and I would be a bad fan and quite remiss if I didn't shout out my favorite comic book writer. He has written many of my best-beloved heroines, including Wonder Woman, Batwoman, the Question, Tara Chace, Huntress, Black Widow, and more. His talent is legendary and rightfully so.

So blessings and many happy returns, Greg! You continue to give me and thousands of other fans great joy.

Body Appreciation Sunday: Roots

First there was Waldenbooks (remember them?)--a tiny outlet in a mall already beginning to be run down, where I wandered in the speculative fiction aisle, touching the spines of books I didn't have money to buy yet: Green Rider, The Glassmaker's Apprentice, Vector Prime. My money had to be strictly reserved for Animorphs books, a new one nearly every month.

Then there was the brand-new Barnes and Noble, the biggest bookstore I'd ever seen, bursting with more books than even the library had. I hoarded money earned from digging weeds and cleaning the pool. I replaced my falling-apart copy of Little House on the Prairie. I bought All Over but the Shoutin' and The Handmaid's Tale for school. I stared at the strange new menu of coffee drinks which my friends bought, while I stuck to hot chocolate.

Then there were six years of discovering the joys of small, non-chain bookstores, of ferreting through narrow aisles of used books and giving my money to local business. There was Inkwood and Mojo and Wilson's, weird little stores crowded and crossed with interesting things (Dancing With Cats? Taxidermy Step by Step?), and my bookshelves at home exploded. A Wizard of Earthsea. Her Smoke Rose Up Forever. Six nearly-mint volumes of 100 Bullets. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Keep the Aspidistra Flying.

And now here I am, a brand-new city unfurled around me, and my great fortune is to discover Visible Voice, a beautiful bookstore in a beautiful neighborhood, a meandering shop whose exterior is shrouded in fallen leaves and bears the legend "Resist much, obey little," and whose interior is just bright enough and just wide enough and just welcoming enough. I can feel my roots going into this new Ohio soil already.

Tales from the interstate

IT LIVES.

Yes, dear readers, it's true--I have returned. And here, in a nutshell, is my experience of a few of our Union's states.

• The stretch between Ocala and the Georgia border in Florida is a Cthulhu-forsaken wasteland of anti-choice billboards and strip joints.
• Athens, GA remains adorable and full of good food and beer. Given its size, I know a disproportionately large amount of people living there who are mostly unconnected to one another (seven, at last count)
• Asheville, NC is downright magical. I highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend Dobra Tea on Lexington, and Never Blue on Broadway. Three words: chocolate assam tea. Three more: mini meatloaf sandwiches.
• Waynesville, NC is also pretty magical. North Carolina is forgiven for making me drive in Actual Falling Snow.
• West Virginia seems to be a mostly awful place. Notable highlights: outrageous toll money on the turnpike, winding mountain roads with no lights, a bucolic scene of several kittens dragging a roadkill'd and/or still-alive unidentified animal across a street. Someone speak out in defense of West Virginia, please!

And, well. Now I'm in oHIo. Hire me, Cleveland companies!

Aaaagggghhhhhhh

There were weddings this weekend, and now I am moving. Count me out of this biz for at least a week.

I know, you'll all pine and balsam.

Surfacing

Yes, dear readers, this blogge has been a graveyard for the past few days. This is for a couple of reasons, among them that my beloved Tamora Pierce has a new book out and every spare minute between last Friday and today has been spent with my nose in it, and I'm still barely halfway through because it, like Aerin Dragon-killer, is so splendidly large.

Also people are getting married (not me) and getting ready to move (me).

Life happens sometimes.

30 Characters Challenge

Each year when November rolls around I consider doing NaNoWriMo, and each year I discard that idea, because it isn't really the way I write. At all.

But this year, I am doing the 30 Characters Challenge. Draw or write character sketches for thirty new characters, one each day for the entire month, and ta-da! You have a library of characters to use in current or future projects.

If you'd like to take a gander at who I create this month (character profiles with inspiration images, since I can't draw a nice stick figure), my profile is here. There's already tons of amazing art and stories on the site.