• Wicked Lovely, Melissa Marr.  Listened to this one as an audio book, and it lived up to its title:  It was both wicked and lovely.  A short, engaging YA novel about one teenage girl’s struggle to find her identity — while also struggling with her unusual ability to see a world populated by fairies, with a love story thrown in for good measure.
• Uglies, Pretties, and Specials, Scott Westerfield.  I’d heard a lot about Westerfield’s far future YA series, so I decided to give them a shot.  I was not disappointed.  Tally Youngblood proved to be a very engaging main character, and well worth spending three books with.  I can also see why the first book became a bestseller, because it has one of the best opening chapters I’ve seen in a while.
• Baby, Would I Lie?, Donald E. Westlake.  Short, punchy and fun.  An aging country western star is on trial for murder.  Throw in a spunky female journalist, and a nice twist ending, and you’ve got yourself a good read.  I’d never read any Westlake, and always wanted to try him; now I have to go find more of his books.
• What Do You Care What Other People Think?, Richard Feynman.  A short nonfiction memoir by the Nobel Prize laureate.  I’d read and enjoyed Feynman’s Surely You’re Joking, Mister Feynman?, and I liked this one too, especially the chapters that focused on his part in the committee investigating the Challenger space shuttle disaster.

•  Outliers, by Malcom Gladwell.  The story of success.  I’ve read Gladwells other two nonfiction bestsellers, and this one was just as compelling a read.  Gladwell focuses on the circumstances — both good and bad — that allow people to become extraordinarily successful.  The lesson?  If you understand that the “self-made man” is only a small part of the story, then you can grant more people the opportunity to become successful.  However, I’m not sure I buy the author’s premise completely.  There are obviously people who are granted the same opportunities and don’t do anything with them.  Determination and persistance will still take you far in life. 
• Nightmare in Pink, by John D. MacDonald.  A young NY banker is killed and McGee goes looking; ends up falling in love with the young man’s fiance.  Drugs.  An experimental wing of a psychiatric ward.  I’ve now read about half of the Travis McGee series (there’s twenty-two in all), and you could definitely tell this was one of the early efforts.  Still, it’s always great to spend a few hours with McGee.  It’s like seeing an old friend.
• Stephen King, Duma Key.  A wealthy Minnesota building contractor suffers a terrible accident and loses his right arm.  He soon discovers a buried talent for painting — and finds himself summoned to Duma Key, off the Florida coast.  The rest is typical King, and fun — ghosts, paranormal power, etc.  You always want to go along for the ride so long as the characters are good, and Edgar Fremandle is a good one.  Perhaps not his best, but good.  I was, however, struck with how similar the ending was to “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.”  For a writer, all the stuff about the life of an artist was an extra bonus. 
• Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin.  A great, Pulitzer-winning biography of Lincoln that focuses on his bold, judicious cabinet.  It’s all the talk today because of Barack Obama’s fondness for the book and his own choice to fill his cabinet with strong opinions and strong personalities.  A long book, though, and it took me months to get through as I kept getting distracted by other books.  What I found so fasincating was how this little-known prairie lawyer, who was at first seen as a lightweight his other cabinet members might boss around, quickly came to command the respect, adoration, and even love of his once-time rivals for the Republican nomination. 
• Rogue Moon, by Algis Budrys.  A short (180 page) classic of science fiction regarding an alien “death machine” found on the dark side of the moon, a transporter that essentially duplicates a human being (which indeed plays a part), and a fascinating assemblage of characters.  I’d been meaning to get to this one for a while, and I’m glad I finally did.  You can see how many later works of science fiction owe a debt to Budrys.

• There’s nothing better than listening to an author you enjoy read his or her own work — if that author knows how to read for an audience.   I’m currently listening to Neil Gaiman’s M is for Magic on my MP3 player, and he really does bring his fiction to life.  Gotta love that English accent, too.   
• If you’re a serious writer who needs help getting your craft to a publishable level, or even a professional writer whose career has stagnated, then you really should check out the workshops taught by Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith here on the Oregon coast.  Every few years, they do a slate of workshops, and they’re in one of those phases now.  They’re pros, having made their living from their writing most of their adult lives, and so you’ll be learning from people who have actually walked the path.  I can’t recommend them enough.  Be forewarned, however:  they’re not for the faint of heart.  You should only consider attending if you’re serious about writing commercial fiction — and by commercial, I mean fiction aimed at reaching the widest audience possible.
• Check out the The First Book blog.  Sara Hantz is up with her book, The Second Virginity of Suzy Green.  A snippet:  “I’d been writing chick-lit for a couple of years, when in November 2005 I decided to try a teen-lit. After writing 3 chapters I did what you’re not meant to do and started to send it to agents, to test the water. Ooops!!! That’ll teach me. The story seemed to hit the right nerve because straight away five agents asked for the full manuscript and six for partials.”

Two minor things for a cold and damp Friday afternoon here in the Willamette Valley:

• If you’re into the social networks, check out my Myspace and Facebook pages.  And add me as a friend, if you like.  I doubt I’ll ever be as into these things as some people are, but with a book coming out down the road, I’ve been trying to put a little more effort into my Internet presence.  And it can never hurt to have a few more friends, can it?  Well, unless you’re someone like this guy.
• Check out the First Book Blog:  the focus is on James Van Pelt, and his book Summer of the Apocalypse.  Van Pelt’s a great example of someone who used a quality small press — rather than a big NY publisher — to great effect.

A few minor things:

• I’ve decided to do an Internet Fast for three weeks, which is basically limiting my personal Internet time to less than fifteen minutes a day. Some mental toxins have crept into my system, and this is my way of clearing them out. The fifteen minutes will mostly be spent checking email and keeping up with writing-related business, but it will also be a challenge to see how much I can keep up on with those fifteen minutes. I’ve been doing it for a few days already, and it’s been good, but it is a challenge even dealing with all my email in that time.
• I turned in the mini-collection to PS Publishing: A Web of Black Widows and Other Stories of Love and Loss. Thirty thousand words. Six stories — four or which are original to the collection. Right now it’s scheduled for an early 2009 release, but we’ll see. I’ll be posting a page with more information about the collection in the coming months.
• Check out the First Book blog: Jennifer E. Smith and The Comeback Season.
• Read Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s Hugo-nominated novella, “Recovering Apollo 8,” for free over at Asimov’s. Wonderful story. Plus if you want to see how a great writer can break the rules (not that there is such a thing in fiction), this is a good one to study. There’s only a few scenes and much of it is told in narrative summary, with the first third almost entirely exposition, but it works beautifully.  It works because it gives you a sense of a small story within the larger scope of history, which was the right tone and approach.

One of my frustrations the last couple years has been how hard it is finding time to read.  Any writer (heck, anyone) with young children can probably relate — there’s just not enough hours in the day anymore.  But a writer needs to read as much as he or she needs to write — it’s the creative fuel that keeps the fires of the imagination burning.

I’ve always liked audio books as a way to squeeze in more reading, but now that my daughter, Kat, accompanies me out to the university (where she goes to preschool), listening to them in the car isn’t much of an option.  Usually, we end up listening to one of her CDs:  “Head . . . and shoulders, knees, and toes, knees and toes . . .”   

I’ve had an iPod for a while now, but purchasing audio books is expensive and importing CDs checked out from the library is too time-consuming.  So I was happy when I stumbled across the Library2Go program, which allows library patrons to “check out” audio books to be downloaded to computers and MP3 players.  The iPod wasn’t compatible, so I sprung for the $35 (man, have the prices come down on these things) for a 1 gig Sansa.  I’ve been using it on my walks at lunch here at the day job, and it’s been great so far — tiny, easy to use, and even the 1 gig player fits three to four books at a time.   

While I’ve never been one to get excited about technology for technology’s sake — it’s always about what technology can do that matters to me — I have to say this has me pretty stoked. 

Had a great time attending the Denise Little workshop on the Oregon coast this past weekend. Since Kris and Dean hadn’t done any workshops in several years, it was like a reunion for many of us, though I met plenty of new folks, too. Among those in attendance were Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Phaedra Weldon, Steve Mohan Jr., Ken Scholes, Adrian Phoenix, Peter Orullian, Loren Coleman . . . the list goes on an on.  A very talented bunch.

That’s one of the reasons I like Kris and Dean’s workshops so much. It’s not just the teachers (who are fabulous). It’s the students. There’s nothing better than being surrounded by a lot of writers who treat the craft as seriously as you do. Believe me, that’s a rare thing. The focus was on writing for anthologies, and I certainly learned a lot about that, but I also got a reminder on a very important lesson — one that I needed right now.

Everybody’s got excuses not to write. Everybody’s got excuses not to meet a deadline — whether it’s in a workshop or in real life. But no matter how good your excuse is, there’s always another writer who’s got a better one, and they met their deadline. So when I hear myself trying to reach for an excuse, and I’ve certainly got plenty of good ones (a day job, two young children, etc.), I’m going to ask myself if I want to be one of those people who uses excuses as justification for not writing, or instead one of those people who does the work anyway and then uses those challenges as a bragging point. “Hey look,” you can say, “I was sick as a dog and my bank just called to say I’m bouncing checks, but I still wrote ten pages.”

That’s not say some excuses are good reasons to not write — there’s plenty of awful things I can imagine happening that would stop me from writing. It’s just that it’s always my choice whether I allow them to stop me or not.

On another note: go check out The First Book blog. Up today, Kelly Simmons and her book, Standing Still. A snippet: “I’ve never been one of those people who has to have a certain kind of pen, or notebook, or desk. If I’d waited to have all the right things I’d never have written a word.”

I’m about to head out to the Oregon coast for a writing workshop I’ve been looking forward to for some time.  The very talented Denise Little of Tekno Books will be leading a workshop on writing for anthologies.  It will also be a chance to catch up with many talented writers, many whom I’ve known for years.

But before I go, I thought I’d try to start something new, a Friday post on interesting things I bumped into over the course of the week.  Here you go:

• Up on The First Book blog this week:  Mark Henry, and his novel Happy Hour of the Damned
• “Are Women Human?” And other publishing highlights.  I especially liked this book title:  How to Write a How to Write Book.
• John Scalzi’s Unasked-For Advice to New Writers About Money.  Some ponts worth pondering.  He’s surprisingly frank about how much he’s made and where his income has come from.
• My agent, Rachel Vater, has some interesting posts on the value a website has for a professional writer — even an aspiring one.  Here and Here.

My sister tipped me off to a great article on why novel publishing can be so slow — sometimes taking several years, from when an agent sells a manuscript, before a book sees print.  Well worth the read:  “Waiting for It,” at the NY Times.

I just received word from Weird Tales that my story, “Directions to Mourning’s Deep,” certainly one of the strangest and shortest stories I’ve written (only a couple of pages, and written in second person), is scheduled to appear in the April/May issue. They’ve done a major revamp of the magazine, and in honor of this, they’re doing a subscription drive in which you can get six issues (a full year) for a mere $12. A fantastic deal. If you like weird fiction, take advantage of it. Here’s a shot of the new cover:

Also, you may have noticed a few changes to the website. I decided that the old site needed a little revamp, and since my day job is working in instructional technology for a university, it was a good excuse to learn a little more about PHP, CSS, and other geekery, things I needed to learn anyway to help faculty and students. I wanted to better embed my blog on my site as well as take advantage of tools which allow me to have the same content appear on multiple pages without actually having to update that content on every page. I’m still by no means a professional web designer, and it’s still not exactly what I want, but I’m happy with the progress. Probably more small tweaks, as time allows.