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Tiger Woods, athlete
Dec. 30, 1975-

Tiger Woods by David R. Collins, illustrated by Larry Nolte (Pelican, 1999)

Tiger Woods, the gifted young African American golfer, faced prejudice with positive character and determination as a child and as an adult. He won his first U.S. Amateur Championship at the age of 19.

Visit the Tiger Woods Official Website to learn more about this great golfer.

Judith Shulevitz reviews Ben Yagoda's Memoir: A History in this week's New York Times Book Review, and I read, with fascination, lines such as these:

Yagoda uses the words 'memoir' and 'autobiography' interchangeably. But they are not the same thing; practitioners know this.

If the flux of life conforms so readily to the constraints of convention, and conventions come and go, then how do you draw a line between truth and art? The last time I checked, truth wasn't boxed in by convention.

... maybe what makes a memoir edifying is not truthfulness but the memoirist's ability to justify a life appealingly. In the five memoirs I have written I don't ever recall working toward or away from a justifying impulse. I recall wanting to understand, wanting to reach out, wanting to write my life in a manner that opened doors for readers, set them thinking about their own journeys, their own choices. The memoirs that I love to read do the same thing. Is, to use our Penn class examples, Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family a justification? Is The Diving Bell and the Butterfly? If so, what are they justifying?

Truth is the least of memoir, he suggests, though truth can't be dispensed with. (There's that little matter of having to speak in good faith.) The power to persuade is all. Is it all about persuasion, then? I'm wagering that the best of memoir aspires to something greater, something more.

I respond here to a review, of course. Ben Yagoda is a terrific writer; I need to read this book for myself.

The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future by Robert Darnton

Reviewed by Gerry Donaghy
Powells.com

At a recent Book Expo America, author Sherman Alexie, in speaking to an audience of independent booksellers, expressed his desire to hit a woman who he saw using Amazon's Kindle on his flight to New York. I wonder if Alexie would have been so quick to resort to fisticuffs if the woman in question was reading one of his books (he claims to refuse to allow electronic versions of his novels to exist, but he seems okay with his poetry on the Kindle).

But such is the emotional power that books have over readers. They inspire thought and action, and they are brandished as totems to express who we ... Read the rest of this post

This is a little round-up post of things on my mind. Above is a sketch of Mike Mignola's Hellboy, one of my favorite comics of all time. I draw Hellboy all the time but this is the first drawing I've done that I like, probably because I did it in my own style rather than copying Mignola.

First, I wanted to share this BBC article with you. It's a Front Row radio episode about comic books and posits that we are now living in a golden age of comic books. Whatever you think it's a great article. The bit about comics starts about 13:13 into the show.

On my iPod is a new playlist called Chamber Pop. I'm obsessed with all these little musical subgenres that Wikipedia has articled to an almost academic point. Chamber Pop began in the 1960's as Baroque Pop with the release of the seminal pop album Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys which was a major showcase for the genius of Brian Wilson. The idea is a type of pop music that introduces atypical instruments ans arrangements more associated to classical music. This music has continued and found a renaissance in the 1990's with music from Neutral Milk Hotel, Apples In Stereo and now The Decemberists, although now it's referred to as Chamber Pop. If you like rich, layered pop this might be for you.

Something else worth mentioning is my new addiction to audiobooks. It appeals to both my love of multitasking and my boundless laziness. What really love about them, other then being able to "read" while drawing, is that I can finally read all those classics I've just never gotten around to like the Crying of Lot 49 by Pynchon and Joyce's Ulysses. Lazy, lazy, lazy.

“Let our testimony be our pen.” – Anonymous African American Male from Chicago I found myself rushing to get my lunch from the Reading Terminal Market so I could eat it while listening to Alfred W. Tatum yesterday afternoon.  My sandwich landed up sitting in the bag for an hour and 15 minutes since I was [...]

Day 21 of the Golden Coffee Cup! That's three weeks, folks. Only a little more to go. You can do this! Take time to imagine yourself completing your goal. See the end of your work. Keep working. No clue what a Golden Coffee Cup is? Click here.

Today we get a smoking-the-pipe high five from one of my favorite poets, Edgar Lee Masters.



Edgar was the first author that awakened me to the importance of silence and what it communicates to us. It is in this silence that we may find the chinks that let the light in, that we may hear the still small voice underneath the chatter of the world. Silence can also be white hot anger or a reflection of intense suffering. There are so many colors to silence.

I hope that you think about silence today. I hope you try it out. Empty your mind and just float. I often have such vivid flashes of imagery when I choose to be silent within.

See if you can inject some silence into your work. Search for what is not said. Can you make your reader pause? Can you still the heart of the observer of your work? I hope you find something surprising, unique, or, even better, profound as you explore the boundaries of silence.

Keep working and come back tomorrow for more of the java.

I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea,
And the silence of the city when it pauses,
And the silence of a man and a maid,
And the silence of the sick
When their eyes roam about the room.
And I ask: For the depths
Of what use is language?

from Silence by Edgar Lee Masters

I got into a discussion with a friend last week about the horrible theatrical cartoons of the 1960s. I call them “drive-in cartoons” because I see no use for them except to be filler at drive-in theaters, allowing time for kids to get concessions or for teenagers to make-out before the main feature. Almost all 1960s Walter Lantz cartoons, Terrytoons and later Warner Bros. cartoons (the Larriva Road Runner and Daffy-Speedy crap) fall into this definition. Most would include the Paramount cartoons into this club. I don’t, but here’s one that’s pretty bad - and a perfect example of what I’m talking about.

Two By Two has the distinction of being the cartoon that got Howard Post fired from his position as head of the Paramount Cartoon Studio. It wasn’t the abysmal quality of the film, the awful character designs or the lame jokes. It was the fact that he was spoofing a story from the bible; it offended someone (A Paramount exec? An exhibitor?) and got him canned. Personally, I’m offended that the highly creative Post - whom I am a huge fan of - conceived such a poor rip-off of Daffy Duck (aka “Quacky Whack”). At one point, Quacky impersonates God… perhaps this what ticked off the Paramount brass? Shamus Culhane (Post’s successor) says in his book that Paramount was pressuring him to create a “Bugs Bunny” type cartoon. Perhaps Post was simply trying to give his bosses what they wanted… unfortunately, he failed quite miserably. Here… you be the judge:

Last week at church, chatting with Dave and his wife Sue, I discovered he plays Santa for us at the Feast of St. Nicholas. I never knew it was him. He nodded over at my Buddy and said "He's gotten so tall this year. How is he doing in school?" Sue laughed and said "Santa is watching!" "It's true," Santa said, "I keep my eye on him. He has been my special project every year." "We are a little

When the Mountain Meets the Moon By Grace Lin Little, Brown and Company $16.99 ISBN: 978-0-316-11427-1 Ages 8-12 On shelves now. When an a... Read the rest of this post

Before my first novel was published, I used to write short stories. After a few years of sending out my work, I realized I was selling about one story in every ten. Often “selling” merely meant publication in return for free copies of the magazine it appeared in, but I’m not talking about money here, I’m talking about an editor liking my story enough to publish it and bring it to a wider readership (which for short fiction is often as good as it gets). So for every story of mine that made it into the wider world, there were another nine hopefuls that saw only the inside of my computer. Other writers talk of their bottom drawers, but I prefer to think of my published work as the tip of an iceberg, or – because ice seems too cold for creativity – the tip of my “storyberg”. The unpublished stories make up the much larger chunk below the waterline that nobody can see.

Since I have published around 50 short stories, that means 450 unpublished ones floating around below the surface… a fair amount of work! Was it wasted? Out of interest, I recently went back and re-read a few. Some of my earlier efforts clearly deserve to be drowned in the depths for all eternity, but others aren’t so bad. They just didn’t fit the market at the time, or (more likely) never found the right market because I gave up sending them out. But those 450 unpublished stories were clearly necessary in order to write the 50 that did make it into readers' hands. Every single one of them needed to be written, or the tip of my storyberg would not exist.

These days I write books, and the process is similar. “Song Quest” was my twelfth novel, but the first to be published. Since then I’ve had 12 more books published, but have about 100 other projects in various stages of progress in my files, most which will never see the light of day. At certain stages of an author’s career, it seems necessary to grow the storyberg below the waterline rather than above so that the whole thing can continue to float when the next project makes it into the sunlight. Sometimes it seems as if no progress is being made, and other authors' storybergs seem to be growing so much faster than mine - but, of course, I cannot see how much is lurking below their waterlines and I suspect the author who publishes everything they write does so at their peril, since top-heavy storybergs will not stay afloat for very long.

I've only seen this anthology listed on LJ's Specific Markets, so I thought I'd post it here too...

Music For Another World: An anthology of Strange Fiction, is looking for speculative fiction stories between 2,000 and 6,000 words. Payment is £80.00 (that's about $130 - $140 depending on r.o.e. and one copy of the paperback), and the submission period is now until 30th April 2010. Click the above link for full details and good luck.

(Click on the picture and see all the little people gawping

The first thing I should have realized was that it's a bad idea to act fishy to the border guard.

“You only gave me two passports,” he said. “There are four people in this car. Who are the two in the back seat?”

“Oh, those guys are artists, sir. Art teachers, actually. I mean, also”

"Doug Anderson and Dennis Nolan." He read their names and studied my face. "Why do you want to go to Canada?”

“We want to go to the museum to look at the paintings of a guy named John William Waterhouse.”

The second thing I should have realized was that it’s stupid to make smart remarks.

“How do you all relate to each other?” he said.

“Very well, thank you.” I glanced over at Jeanette. Her eyes widened. She wasn’t smiling. Neither was the guard.

He snapped the passports shut. “I see that two of you have never been to Canada before. We would like to get to know you better. Please pull over to Detention Building 2.

We sat in a bleak room with a lot of desperate looking people and signs about FIREARMS written with capital letters. An hour went by. Finally my name got called. A hard looking lady started asking me a bunch of questions. I pulled out the sketchbook. What did I have to lose now?

“Could you make this take as long as possible?” I asked. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to draw your portrait.


This time it worked. She through the sketchbook and actually smiled a little and eventually sent us on our way.

We lost a lot of time before we finally arrived in Montreal, and we’ll have to make up for it tomorrow.

I have been trying something different with the Snorrie board. Here is the latest version of the Snorrie board, I pick smaller sections from the entire story and try to play with different camera angel and cut ... This week will be a bit crazy, with CTN Expo and Thanksgiving coming up ... I may not be able to put up any new post till after Thanksgiving! So Early Happy Thanksgiving!!



Also I would love to invite all of you to two of my my coming Gallery shows:

“Gifted Artist” is a charity art show and auction to benefit the Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital in Loma Linda, California. The event will be held on Saturday December 19th from 5 to 10pm at the CCAA Museum of Art in Rancho Cucamonga.






POWER IN NUMBERS 4
At Nucleus Gallery
December 12, 2009 - December 28, 2009
Opening Reception / Dec 12, 7:00PM - 10:00PM

I have been up-dating my web-site lately. Please come by and check it out!! Happy weekends!!

My Philadelphia visit has to be cut short a few days, but I thought I'd quickly share some of the fun times and cool people that made these two days so special.

On Thursday, I gave two library presentations where several high schools sent students. Every student had been given a copy of Thirteen Reasons Why before their visit, which always makes the Q&A much more interesting. And I finally autographed a book for someone with the title "Sister"!


On Friday morning, at the National Council of Teachers of English conference, I was on a panel with David Levithan and Lauren Myracle to discuss intellectual freedom. I'd never met Lauren before and had only caught a glimpse of David in the past, so I was really looking forward to this panel. We've all had different experiences with our books being banned or challenged, so hearing their thoughts was fascinating. But beyond what they had to say about tampons, thongs, erections, and the word %$@&, they both seemed like genuinely wonderful people.


After I signed books on the conference floor, I grabbed some autographs and photos of my own. As many of you know, Gordon Korman is a rock star to me. When he offered a blurb for my book, I was in heaven. But I actually haven't seen him in person since before I'd even finished writing Thirteen Reasons Why. So it was great to catch up!


I love Gene Luen Yang's Printz Award winning graphic novel, American Born Chinese. Though I already have a copy back home, when I saw that he was signing books, I had to buy another so I could have it autographed.


Of course, when I heard that Sandy Asher was nearby, I had to finally meet her. But no, we aren't related...though we tried to find some distant relative in common.


Though I've seen Laurie Halse Anderson at a few writing events, chatted with her briefly a couple times (and sent her a gushing fan letter for Chains), I've never had the pleasure to actually hang out with her. Suddenly, I'm sitting behind a table with her at a booksigning! For this event, with Laurie and Lauren, I temporarily changed my name to Laurel. So here's Laurel Asher, Laurie Halse Anderson, and Lauren Myracle...


The people who showed up were brilliant! They had such amazing questions. In this photo, I think Lauren's showing the crowd how she can make her hand disintegrate...


And in case you were wondering, yes, of course I devoured a Philly cheesesteak during my visit!

You are invited and urged to attend the "Saipan For Peace Candlelight Vigil" for the victims of yesterday's horrific shootings.

This event is to be held this Sunday (tomorrow) at 6PM, tentatively at American Memorial Park (if the location changes I will post an update).

It is an ecumenical and multi-cultural event of various faith-based and community coalitions and all are invited. This needed event is non-political and spiritual leaders of all religions have been invited to speak.

The healing begins as soon as possible for as many as possible. Join us to denounce this violence coming to our paradise. Evil has no border, but together, as a movement of "one voice, one people," we can affirm that it is not welcome here.

Please join all of Saipan as we hold the victims, their families, and our community in thoughts and prayers.

Sat in on the Game Art Preproduction class today at AiPD. They're working on a very cool project this term! These are some demo sketches I did during the critiques.

       I'll be in conversation with Austrian author Josef Haslinger at the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York on Tuesday, 24 November (at 18:30), with John Cullen reading from his (unpublished) translation of Haslinger's Phi Phi Island, describing his experiences during the tsunami of 2004.
       Maria Simma interviewed him for Transforum, and we'll certainly be covering some of that ground, too.
        (The film version of Haslinger's Das Vaterspiel is also set to premiere (in Germany and Austria) next week; the English title is, apparently, Kill Daddy Good Night (which can't hurt at the box office ...).)

Look in the sidebar right next to this column. Scroll down just below the ads and genre list. What do you see?

Our new widget!

Yes, you too can have this glamorous widget for your website or blog. It shows off a different nominated title whenever you refresh the page -- though you can customize it to show just your favorite genres. 

It comes already loaded with our Amazon affiliate ID and you can customize the colors too.

Many, many thanks to Tracy Grand at JacketFlap once again for our fabulous widget.

--Anne

Ok, I decided to get in on the fun. I love the Avalanche blog, and the topic this week was none other than Twilight, and they are having way too much fun making fun of it.

I personally, haven't seen the new film New Moon, but the first one was absolutely ridiculous in my opinion. I did read the books, and loved the books though, except for the last one.

But I have to admit, the characters are just too easy to make fun of. ... And I tried to think of some ideas, but just ended up with a portrait and some blood on it.... yuck.

STATUS: I’m done for the night.

What’s playing on the iPod right now? LANDSLIDE by Dixie Chicks

Considering all the chatter over the last two days, today has been relatively quiet. SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) did issue a statement. You can find that here.

Also, the Ashley Grayson agency blogged with their response.

On a wholly different note, I have a Friday funny—sort of. Do you remember my blogging about an Eddie Murphy movie being shot on our street about two summers ago? For two days in a row they had the extras and the movie crew filming. Sara and I remember it vividly as a car alarm kept going off incessantly. With our windows open on a nice summer day, it was all we could hear for two days running.

Can’t imagine why if you don’t remember. That was a year and a half or two years ago. I only remembered a couple of weeks ago when my husband said he caught the film while on an airplane trip.

The movie is called IMAGINE THAT and no, neither Chutney or I are in the film. In fact, I can’t imagine what they were doing on our street for all that time because in the film itself, there is a brief flash of the front façade of our office in the SH Supply Company building in the scene where Eddie Murphy is fumbling in his briefcase for something while driving. About 10 seconds later, the car drives down the alley behind the building.

Exciting stuff I’m telling you. Grin.

There is one big scene where Mr. Murphy dances on a concrete wall and there is a beautiful lit up staircase behind him. This leads to the bridge that goes over the railroad tracks and into lower downtown. Very noticeable by the bridge support which looks like a ship’s mast. (You can actually see that scene in the movie trailer.)

Well, that takes place right in front of the Platte River Park where Chutney and I often go walking on nice days.

Anyway, highly amusing to watch a movie set in Denver and in Lodo where our office is located.

I’m out. Have a great weekend.

It seems like I've been apologizing a lot for being absent from the blog lately. Kind of a bummer, since I hate it when life gets in the way. And although I've been kind of boring lately, I will make it up to you in December. Promise.

Anyway, don't have much to talk about tonight, but I am cleaning out my bookshelves again. It's that time of year again when I go through all the books I have and reorganize, reshuffle and decide which books I maybe can live without.

Which is really kind of hard for me, but maybe great news for some of you, especially if you're participating in one of the upcoming swaps. I guess I need to look at it as making room for all those wonderful new books I'll (hopefully) get for Christmas.

Meanwhile, don't forget about my Design a Button contest. You'll get a book of your choice if you win...

Now I'm off to go organize shelves. I'll come back when maybe I have some pictures.