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Paper Hearts

February is Women in Horror month and my favorite fiction podcast is joining the party with a line-up of female writers who love their craft, or their Lovecraft, as the case may be. So if the standard February world dripping in red paper hearts is too much for you, you might head over to Pseudopod and check out some stories dripping in something else. If that's your cup of poison, that is. I found last week's story "The Godsmaid Clara and Her Many Smiles" by Sharon Dodge greatly entertaining, and the reader, Kim Lakin-Smith, nails it.

What to Read When You're on a Rock in the Middle of a River

The last few weeks have taken me on many adventures, traveling some of my favorite veins of California's water system. I've been camping in the woods along the Big Sur river, swimming with family in Lewis Creek, and drifting on lazy parts of the Merced River in Yosemite. A couple of the state's greatest hits, really.

Head for the Hills

Every now and then you have to bail and get out of town. My husband and I found ourselves suddenly without the offspring last weekend. We looked at each other, looked at the house, and decided that if we stuck around here, we'd probably feel obligated to clean something. So we packed a bag and got the hell out of dodge.

Fair Enough

Exhausted though we were when we arrived home from a 5 day vacation on Sunday, there was still more fun to be had. After a few hours of unloading the car, reloading the refrigerator, and lying comatose on the couch, we got up again and headed out to the county fair.

Yolo County is not remarkably grand or influential. We include four cities, in the technical sense, and sport a total population of 168,000. Aside from the university in Davis, the only thing that brings folks here is corn, rice, and tomatoes.

California Burning

Forget Mississippi, it’s California that on fire now. The whole north half of the state, or so it seems. Up until the fourth of July, it seemed like maybe things were getting better on the whole. At least the air outside was clearing here in my home, smack dab in the middle of the Central Valley. It didn’t hurt to breathe and if you looked straight up you could see a little blue in the sky. One night the very beginning of July, Shawn and I saw stars. That’s a step in the right direction.