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I have now passed the 25K mark, one day early! “Frank,” Nancy joked, “I’m unpredictable. Ellen just does things for reasons you don’t understand. I think it’s because she likes people and she wants them to be happy. Me? I could care less.” “You?” Frank asked. “I know you too well. You’re the predictable one.” […]

I had no idea that 1) Daft Punk has been around that long or 2) the tropes in the Charleston were so similar to modern dancing (including breakdancing).

Back in college, I had some friends that were always joking about making “organic techno,” or electronica-sounding music just using their mouths. (They weren’t very good. They only had one song, which went on interminably. But it was funny.) This is actually called beatboxing these days. Mix Bobby McFerrin with techno, there you go. Kid

What’s a chateau? A château (plural châteaux) is a manor house or residence of the lord of the manor or a country house of nobility or gentry, with or without fortifications, originally – and still most frequently – in French-speaking regions. Where clarification is needed, a fortified château (that is, a castle) is called a

As I sat down to supper, I noticed that Ray had left long, purple marker streaks on the table when she was making elephant pictures last night. This led, naturally enough, to experiments: what takes purple marker off a Southwestern-style table? Water doesn’t.Murhy’s oil soap doesn’t.But magic erasers do. After seeing exactly what the magic

Carrie’s presentation. She showed a scene from Medium in which a mother and daughter are waiting in a doctor’s office. The daughter is called in and tells her mother she doesn’t need to come with her, she’ll be fine. Too much time passes, the mother asks what’s taking so long, the nurse discovers the door

Carrie Vaughn read a suspenseful scene from her third book, Kitty Takes a Holiday. She explains the techniques she used: CV: I use pacing. I like little cliff-hanger chapter breaks. I like to end with a “gunshot moment,” a shocking image or event. Let the reader absorb it. Smell, memory is tied to smell. I

A caveat: I tried to catch everything I could, but I missed a lot and paraphrased even more. PPW: How can scaring your readers be combined with other genres? CV: Horros can be found in anything; it’s a trope rather than a genre. Like suspense. There’s scaring someone versus grossing them out. Making readers think

November 3 was the PPW workshop, “Scaring Your Readers.” Steve Rasnic Tem, Melanie Tem, and Carrie Vaughn attended; Ed Bryant was ill and missed. Turns out writers, both amateurs and professional, like to talk about random stuff that just happens to be interesting. I could get used to this… A caveat: I tried to catch

A list of foreign words (and phrases) for which there is no good English translation, part of a book named Toujours Tingo, by Adam Jacot de Boinod (a forthcoming sequel to The Meaning of Tingo). “Snyavshi Shtany, PO VOLOSAM NE GLADYAT – Russian: once you’ve taken off your pants it’s too late to look at