Entries from December 2008 ↓

“I wonder if you have to have a dog if you want to take a dog obedience class.”

Complete awesomeness.

Couch got selected as an Indie Next List pick for January by Josh Cook of Porter Square Books in Cambridge, MA.

Also – I learned a new term: “Shelf Talkers” are those little piece of paper that hang under books in book stores (or under wine bottles in wine shops?) to recommend a book. I like this. I wish I had talkers for lots of other bits of my life.

Here’s the website for Indie Bound.

I taught Coen how to play a game I used to play in elementary school tonight – a sort of sketch war, an interactive drawing where you advance on each others’ base ships using pencil-stroke-powered fighters. I had to help a little, but I think it no exaggeration to say he was ecstatic about it. Here’s a photo of our ongoing game (click for a close-up).

Anyone know the real name for this and/or play this as well?

My good friend David Naimon, who is a member of my writing group, had a piece published in Zyzzyva this month. It’s his first fiction in print and it’s a great and very funny story. 

You can read an excerpt of The Golem of Orla Shalom, or subscribe to Zyzzyva here.

It’s so cool (and inspiring and satisfying and pride-filling and validating) to see something go through the writing group process and then make it into the larger world to see. Our group is called the Super Dangerous Writers, incidentally, since there was already a group in Portland called the Dangerous Writers, and because the group thought that my suggestion of calling it the Extra Super Duper Dangerous Writers was a bit too wordy. 

I received my copy of Zyzzyva yesterday and I love the cover – especially the back:

David doesn’t have a blog per se, but does blog on Walker Tracker.

Congratulations David!

In case you can’t read it, it says:

Together, we can

Cure Confusion

wtf? I think you mean ‘spread’, not ‘cure’. This seems more like an ad that the Black Magic Insurance Agency would run rather than a health insurance provider.

The agency had its first serious meeting in three years:

Keep your schedules open and your ears to the ground.