I’m a little late with this news (new house has been devouring my time; more on that later!) but I am pleased to announce that I have a story coming out in a new anthology, Skull X Bones!
Skull X Bones is a pirate-themed anthology featuring many kinds of pirates in diverse settings. My entry, Juggernaut, takes place in a world of steam and airships.
You can visit the Skull X Bones Kickstarter here, or shop the ZNB online store here.
Nature is wild, yo.
(Well–nature sometimes has some assistance being wild, given the poor job humans tend to do as stewards. The freakish weather patterns certainly aren’t helped by our burning the rainforest and boiling off our planet’s fresh water supply so lazy humans can use AI to do all the thinking and creating for them. We can really only blame ourselves when nature comes for us.)
Thanks to global warming and the polar vortex, our local weather has been growing stranger and hotter the past few years. It’s currently October 22, a date traditionally at risk of frost or snow in my part of the Midwest–and I have both lilacs and roses blooming, because it’s been so unseasonably warm that the plants think it must be next year’s growing season.
This particular rose is an amazingly hardy heirloom climbing rose that I propagated from cuttings of a plant at my last house. That house was built in the early 1940s, and the rose may have been close to the same age. It could be pruned aggressively and would still climb to the second-story deck within a few months, and it wasn’t uncommon for it to produce 300 blooms at once. The bright pink flowers smell amazing and flood the whole area with their scent. Many modern cultivars aren’t particularly fragrant, but these roses smell exactly like all those candles and lotions tell you roses are supposed to smell.
I really loved that climbing rose, and the prospect of leaving it behind actually made me reluctant to sell my old house, but once I got some cuttings to root, I was able to bring it with me to my new home. Now, after twelve years of free rein at my current house, the second-generation rose has established itself just as firmly as its predecessor. This year it climbed up two full stories and is currently trying to entangle itself with the power lines that connect to the house just under the second floor roofline (memo to self: prune rose before the power company has to get involved).
And now I’m on the eve of moving again, so I’m trying to propagate the rose with more cuttings, but these aren’t having great success. Only one or two of the dozen cuttings seem to be doing okay. (I think I may have missed the ideal time to take cuttings, but I didn’t know I was going to be buying a new house.)
But I’ll keep trying. After all, I can’t sell this house until I have a viable baby rose to take with me!
I can chalk part of that up to a massive multi-year pandemic, which messed with a lot of people’s productivity. But the rest is just life getting away from me and me forgetting to write about it.
I laughed when I looked over my last post — shared exactly five years ago — because the room pictured hasn’t had carpet or been used as a closet in years. I built myself a custom corner desk to fit the end of that room more than four years ago. Oh, and Sparkles the Wonder Pibble (pictured at right, now a senior who spends a lot of time napping) is no longer a foster dog. After spending two years of lockdown with me, I couldn’t exactly explain to her that she wasn’t really my dog, y’know? She thought she lived here.
A lot has happened since then. A lot has happened in this year alone, from wrecking my ankle (ow) and spending several months in a wheelchair/scooter, to sustaining my first concussion (uh …yay?), to buying my dream house (yay! well, almost yay; I’m still a few weeks out from closing), so I won’t even try to summarize the previous ones. Suffice it to say I’m still kicking, albeit with only one ankle at times. I have a new story coming out in early 2026, I’m doing some costume work for a brand new holiday musical by a brilliant writer/composer, and I’m getting back into voice acting. I’m in the process of updating my laser cutting equipment (day job) and will be expanding my business after I move, and I’m also launching another fun pin campaign with my creative partners (more news on that to come in January!). I’m also overseeing the renovation of a historic home for the nonprofit historical society I work with, which is… an adventure.
With all that going on, I can’t promise to write regular updates here, but I’ll try to report on the big things as they happen!
After months of being in lockdown and struggling to work at home with no good home office space, I knew I was going to need to make some improvements to my work environment before NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) began. During the cold winter months, I have a bad habit of turning on my heated mattress pad and sitting in bed to write, which is really bad for my already-damaged spine. I do have a vertical projector that allows me to project my computer screen onto the ceiling over my bed so I can write lying down, but that only works when it’s dark outside.
So I spent most of today cleaning and overhauling my closet (actually a small bonus room off my bedroom that’s about the size of a walk-in closet, so that’s what I use it for) and setting up my drafting table as a writing station. Most importantly, I placed the table against a wall with an outlet in the center, so I can turn on a space heater under the desk! (My bedroom is not well heated.)
Sparkles the Wonder Pibble, my foster dog, was deeply disturbed that I moved her crate in order to put my desk in a more efficient spot. She protested by flopping down on the freshly-vacuumed carpet and taking a nap.
I’ve been pretty quiet online lately, because my life — and house — have been completely taken over by the Franklin Township Historical Society’s fundraiser rummage sale. I sit on the executive board of this small nonprofit organization, and since the pandemic nuked most of our in-person activities this year, I suggested that we have an online auction to help raise the necessary funds for repairs and maintenance on our 149-year-old building.
That’ll teach me to make suggestions.
So in the end, I found myself in charge of running the sale, which meant collecting and sorting through hundreds of donated antiques and collectibles, photographing them, researching their value, and listing them individually on eBay. The downside of this was the couple hundred hours I put into the process over the past two months, the frantic few days of packing and shipping that I have to look forward to, and the loss of my entire kitchen and office to boxes of antiques. The upside is that we had some REALLY COOL STUFF donated, and I got to look at all of it!
We have a large number of rare and antique books, vintage Star Trek collectibles, antique furniture, vintage Victorian and Edwardian (and later) garments, antique bisque dolls, kitschy midcentury toys, and even some more modern things like DVD sets and comic books. So if you want to start your holiday shopping early, might I suggest supporting a good cause while you do?
I know, it sounds weird. A cookbook? For s’mores?
But hear me out: S’mores made with bacon. S’mores made with fresh fruit. S’mores made with chocolate-dipped bananas. S’mores made with balsamic vinegar. These are NOT your ordinary backyard campfire treat (though we’re big fans of those, too!).
I collaborated on S’moregasbord with fellow s’more aficionados Laura VanArendonk Baugh and Julie Bickel. Each s’more in this book was lovingly prepared in my back yard over a wood fire. We went through many, many bags of marshmallows.
Curious? Check it out now!