I started making Coraline’s body. I’m going to walk you through the process to make an arm; the rest of the body follows pretty similar principals. To start with, I take the initial scale drawing that I did of Coraline and turn it into a technical drawing. Which is to say that I decide where […]
Oh, great internet. Please grant me a good recipe for no-bake cookies. One with peanut butter and chocolate married with oatmeal. One which does not crumble into a zillion pieces when I try to eat it.
A prayer for no-bake cookies Read More »
Eric James Stone pointed out this press conference which I had completely missed. While I do try to stay up to date on politics, I had somehow overlooked Bush’s concerns about zombies. This is one of the few policy points where I agree with the president. Also check out his press conference about the danger
Bush Speaks About the Threat We Face Read More »
Charles Stross has some excellent advice on Readings. Check it out. A friend, who recently sold her first novel, wrote to me paraphrased: “help I’m supposed to be giving a reading from my work at a science fiction convention. What do I do?” Readings, like signings, are one of the epiphenomena of writing: not a
Charlies Diary: Tools of the Trade: Readings Read More »
We were invited over to Jonathan Judge’s place to listen to jazz on his front stoop. Every year, his neighborhood association brings the Jazz Mobile in to play. They’ve got a bandstand on wagon that they haul around to different venues. It was a lot of fun and a much needed break. Jonathan provided sushi.
Key Lime Pie and Jazz Read More »
I did a color test on the botched head. The painterly quality tends to hide the glue spots, which is a bonus. Unfortunately, the hard line under her mouth shows where I didn’t get the seam tight enough. I’ll let you in on a secret. Coraline only has one ear. The way her hair is
Mmm…. our favorite Icelandic treat is at Whole Foods. Now if I can just convince them to carry the pear flavor.
Skyr at Whole Foods Read More »
Woot! Look what I got in the mail. My story “Suspension and Disbelief” is in Destination Prague and one of the only two stories I’ve written with a puppeteer as a character. It normally seems like such a dull job, but it made sense here. Hey! Until recently, almost everyone I knew was a puppeteer.
Dr. Who contributor copies! Read More »
So that’s the question du jour. Should I get a New York number for my cellphone or keep my Oregon number? I can keep the Oregon number active, so that’s not an issue. The question is about getting work. I feel like the area code on the phone is becoming a sort of non-issue these
Should I get a NYC phone number? Read More »
When I was in elementary school, someone told me that if you twist the stem off your apple, saying a letter of the alphabet with each turn, that it would break off with the initial of the man you were fated to marry. Naturally, this favored the people at the beginning and middle of the
Michael Livingston, in addition to being one of my favorite people, also happens to be a scholar of Middle English. I have just finished listening, twice, to his Chaucer’d excerpt of John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. In a fit of rage against working on my syllabi for the coming term, I took a snippet from
Scalzi Chaucer’d (Listen!) : Michael Livingston Read More »
I finally hit on the final pattern for Coraline’s face, today. Just for kicks, I took a picture of all the drafts that made it to pattern stage. There were, I don’t know, maybe five other iterations of her face that weren’t good enough to pattern. Making the lips happen was a pain in the
The many faces of Coraline Read More »
Finally, we got our futon. Whew. We also picked up a gorgeous bookcase from the early 1900s. The folks that sold us the futon said, “Need anything else?” And we said, “Bookcases?” Behold, for reasons that are unclear to me, they wanted to get rid of this glassfront bookcase which had belonged to the husband’s
The living room comes together Read More »
My business and creative partner, Jodi Eichelberger, has been doing some podcasts. Here’s the description of his latest: From August of 1994 through the spring of 1997 Mary and I toured a production of “Pied Piper†with Tears of Joy Theatre. We were particularly close to this show because Mary designed it and I wrote
Who stole the show? Read More »
“All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.” Charlie Chaplin Look at that. A setting, a conflict and a goal. Why does Charlie Chaplin make things look so simple?