writing seeds: tiny ideas you can't see inside

I have a guest blog up at the Enchanted Inkpot today about the importance of keeping things teeeeeny tiny at the beginning of a writing project. Maybe throughout a writing project, to tell the truth. 

Happy seedlings don't know they were planted too late (or don't know YET).

It's called "Tiny Shells, Each With a Wilderness Inside" (which I immodestly feel is a splendid blog title--I should hire out!). Now that blog is written and posted I'm wishing I'd leaned more not just on the tininess of the ideas, but also their initial opacity. It feels like both are important. 

Thus I mix up my two current obsessions, writing and beginning to reclaim our yard.

that red raging sun

Hello all. I have poison oak all over my face and arms! Ahhhh summer.

Speaking of summer: I have a new scary story up at the Cabinet of Curiosities -- I hope you like it. Our theme this month is travel, and this is a story about southern climes and the terrible things that might, theoretically, lurk there.

Also, it is really way too hot now in the southern clime where I live. 

Photo by Todd Campbell.

last-minute giveaway

Because I am the dumbest Curator of them all, I forgot to post here two rather important things. READ THE SECOND ONE TOO.

1. We accidentally sold a book! You know that website where I occasionally post creepy stories, along with Stefan Bachmann, Claire Legrand, and Emma Trevayne? Greenwillow Books (HarperCollins) will be publishing a collection of those stories, including lots of new material, in Summer 2014. More details right here.

2. To celebrate he book and our schmancy new website, we are doing a GIVEAWAY--you can win one of four signed and personalized book packs. Instructions for entering are here (and there are tons of entries at our old site too, so don't get overconfident.)

Bad news is that the giveaway ends on May 30, so get going now!

comicpalooza this weekend

For those of you planning to frolic with Sir Patrick Stewart & René Auberjonois this weekend in Houston: I just wanted to let y'all know that I toooooo will be at Comicpalooza, aka the Texas International Comic Con. My schedule is:

​This is sort of cosplay, in that I am wearing a cos in a play (boom, by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb, June 2012, Capital T Theatre).

• Friday, May 24, 5pm - 6pm: Read Aloud and Q&A (Room 340, Children's). I will also be taking questions about my DC Universe Online and Wizard 101 voiceovers -- and the anime ones, though I don't remember those very well!
• Saturday, May 25, 10am - 11am: The Bumpy Lumpy No Good Road to Publication (Panel Room 6) with Deborah Frontiera, Dottie Enderle, Lane Riosley, Hayley Gompertz, Katherine Catmull. Good luck? Talent? A great story? Perseverance? An agent? Or just doing it yourself? There are many paths to publication, as these authors can attest.
• Sunday, May 26, 11 AM - Noon: Middle Grade: Caught Between Children’s and Young Adult (Panel Room 4) with Katherine Catmull, and Deborah Frontiera. What separates Middle Grade from Children’s and Young Adult? Are there rules? How are the heroes/heroines different? Discover what these authors have to say about their love for writing Middle Grade.

Come talk to me/us! That last one is an especially interesting question to me.

I have never been to a con so I am excited, especially about the cosplay, which I think is awfully cool (how big a nerd do you have to be to think cosplay is awfully cool? Well that is how big a nerd I proudly am!)

fusebox wrap-up

Still recovering from the Fusebox art-and-talk marathon. It's given me so much to think about, and I can't wait to dig back into my own writing.

Just for completeness' sake, here are the last four blogs I did responding to various shows in this international hybrid arts festival.

Miriam & Sex Idiot: Excellent if lll-Planned Evening:

From the sublime (Zimbabwean choreographer Nora Chipaumire's extraordinary dance piece) to the sublimely goofy (Bryony Kimmings’ charming one-woman piece about her sexual misadventures) 

A photo from "Wind and Waves" at Zilker Park, part of Johnny Walker's Night Gardener project for Fusebox.

Watch Me Fall, But Maybe Not Quite Far Enough: Mixed feelings about Action Hero's take on action heroes (were we just a dead house?)

Nothing to Declare: Crossing Borders: The Dictaphone Group's documentary piece about the abandoned Lebanese railway and about crossing borders.

Final Fusebox Four-Show Kaleidoscope: Rudely cramming together Poison Squad, Electric Midwife, Phone Homer, and Zen Songs and Prayers.

delicious delicious fusebox treats

I am still blogging faithlessly but unstoppably for the Fusebox Festival, and holy crap I've experienced some fantastic stuff this year, and written about most of it. The blogs so far:

The downtown alleyway "20 Foot Wide" installation.Forest of Future Pigs: Austin's multi-group collaboration River of Gruel, Pile of Pigs (they give you dried cranberries, pistachios, and lapsang souchong tea! and later miso soup! and later -- well, just see it), plus The Future Show and Motor Vehicle Sundown via the Edinburgh Festival's roguish twin, the Forest Fringe.PIg Pile attendees feted with tea and treats.

Sitting Inside Seven Dreams: Ant Hampton's fascinating three-day "Fantasy Interventions" workshop, about sparking a site-specific flash.

I Self-Flagellate Over Stop Hitting Yourself: in which I wrestle the the Rude Mech's marvelous and worrisome latest.

Deborah Hay: A View from the Security Camera: ergh don't ask, but some gorgeous dance

…oh my GOD I loved the Wellman….: Steve Mellor KILLS the Mac Wellman story Muazzez. (I forgot to send a title with this piece, so my editor took the title from the subject line of the email I sent it in. It is a good summary, I'll say that.

More to come, will post then, just so you don't think I'm being lazy about blogging. PS if you're in Austin, don't be ridiculous, go see some of the Fusebox. It runs through April 28. 

fusebox @ culturebot: Guest by Courtesy

Jenny Larson and Hannah Kenah in Guest by Courtesy.I have a wee piece up at Cuturebot.org about Guest by Courtesy, one of the Austin-based pieces in this year's Fusebox Festival It's a terrific piece of physical, clown-ish comedy about gender and class (with marvelous passages of slowed-down time that they call "durations," in reference to the Anne Bogart's Viewpoints work, which inspired them).

The piece was written by Hannah Kenah and devised in collaboration with Jenny Larson and Salvage Vanguard Theater, and is performed by Larson, Kenah, and Jason Hays. And it's all scored live by Graham Reynolds, what more do you want? This week only at the Scottish Rite theater, 3pm.

PS: My piece includes bonus reference to my youngest brother's pre-school, gender-based arguments for refusing to eat grilled cheese. 

playing war and creepy trees

It's the second Wednesday of the month, so it must be my new Cabinet of Curiosities post. This one is almost all in the voice of an 11-year-boy who is quite upset, and with good reason, after a game of war near a creepy tree goes badly & weirdly wrong. It was a nice reach back to childhood for me (I LOVED playing war), and I hope I reached far enough.

I also hope it gives you major creeps.

I took this with some ominous filter in McKinney Falls, a non-ominous state park.

What else I'm doing is preparing--though how can you really prepare?--for the Fusebox Festival, the international time-based arts festival held in Austin each spring. I'll be blogging for them again this year, and linking to those blogs here, and I hope something I write sends you to see something at Fusebox. It's insane that some of the most exciting theater, dance, music, and visual and performance art being made in the world today converges here every April. Come get your mind blown a tiny little bit. There are a number of free and free-ranging events, as well.

While I'm here, can't resist posting these two recent beautiful reviews of Summer and Bird. One's from a website called Girls Underground that tracks books and art about girls who travel Down. The other is from the blog of the Butler Children's Literature Center at Dominican University. Both of them made me so happy.

lucky lucky

New creepyish story up at the Cabinet of Curiosities, about a very lucky girl and the hideously unlucky people around her. This one is meant to be rather blackly funny as well, but you should be the judge of that.

It's also illustrated with this creepified photo of a perfectly lovely girl:

I wouldn't trust that smile.

unsettling valentine

Happy Valentine's Day! Yeah I know I have mixed feelings too. My husband and I usually leave each other several cards scattered around the house (refrigerator, washing machine, car windshield)--this year I bought some pretty paper and used my new alphabet stamps to MAKE CARDS. Childish, awkward cards, but still. 

(And yet sleepy husband was surprised to hear I'd made them. He actually thought I found a card that said "hey ken, nice hair gorgeous.")

Anyway: to further explore my mixed feelings about compulsory hearts & flowers, I wrote a creepy piece about the dark side of love for the Cabinet of Curiosities. If you'd like to add a little bitter to the day's unrelenting sweetness, check it out.

I stole this very nice black and broken heart from a place that sells t-shirts with this image. Click the image to go there and buy one so I won't feel guilty about using it.