Last year, the good folks at the ChiSeries readings decided to banish the August doldrums by having local writers read from some of their earliest attempts at fiction.  The laughter was so loud that everyone promptly agreed that we needed another evening of writer humiliation in 2018 and it’s almost upon us. Mark your calendars […]

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Sadly, my goal to start as I meant to go on fell apart under the pressure of adding another job, an upcoming flamenco performance, and dental stuff to my schedule. On the other hand,I bought a fabulous coat from Annie Thompson and I can now pay for it.  

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So last February, after a year of saying “I think I’d like to do that”, I signed up for an introductory flamenco dance class at a local studio.  When the option came to do another four weeks with the same class, I signed up for that too. And then one more time.  I wasn’t really good […]

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As the venerable Canadian poet says “You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone”.  It’s not gone yet but the Chiaroscuro Reading Series (fondly referred to as ChiSeries) needs a bit of help to continue its mission of supporting all that is dark and weird in Canada. If you’re not familiar with this series, here’s what […]

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I am not an art critic. These days, I feel barely able to throw together a coherent thought about anything. But I had a lot of thoughts, coherent or otherwise, while viewing the huge show by Damien Hirst (or Damien Fucking Hirst, as one of my friends calls him) in Venice. It spans two locations and includes […]

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SPEAK, DON’T SPEAK V.  Hereafter follows the first-person version of IV. A sharp-edged gust of wind threatened to snatch my hat from my hand and send it cartwheeling down the beach. I was out of practice at this, it seemed. My skirts were too long, my coat too thin, my hat nothing more than a […]

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Suzy McKee Charnas’ novel The Vampire Tapestry was a formative influence on The Night Inside, though I could certainly never equal the cool, elegant, and fine-honed prose she brought to bear on this brilliant depiction of the vampire as alien creature making its way among humans that were both its prey and an irresistible source […]

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  Continuing the variations on a theme exercises I did from Wonderbook.  I’m sparing you the “dialogue only” version, which did not really work, and the combined “description only/dialogue only” version, which was not much better. Today’s version is third person and ended up being past tense vs. present. I think I might need to […]

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The hardest character to find a decent picture for has been Leontine.  After hunting around for a while, I finally decided to go back to my first inspiration, which was a little girl in Fillippo Lippi’s “The Coronation of the Virgin”.  And lo and behold, Signor Lippi had a few other lovely paintings, one of […]

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  Or more precisely, Here’s How to Finish that Fucking Book, You Monster, courtesy of Chuck Wendig’s Terrible Minds blog. To the surprise of no one who has been paying attention, I find it very hard to finish books.  Hell, I find it hard to start books. And as for the stuff in the middle, […]

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