Susan Beth Pfeffer's Blog, page 31

The Longest Journey Begins With A Single Step (In Black Jeans)

I was so busy yesterday telling you about all the things I lost that I never got around to telling you about the thing I found.

I went shopping at Macy's and found black jeans. I've been looking for a pair of black jeans for (approximately) ever, and was so excited I bought two pairs.

Speaking of shopping (this is the kind of transition us professional writer types know how to make, so I trust you're duly impressed. Or dully impressed as the case may be), in my emails this morning was a shopp...

If You See It, Let Me Know

Tomorrow night is Yom Kippur and I've been prepping up.

For starters, since I fast on Yom Kippur, I ate a chocolate peanut butter cream (or more likely creme) cupcake for supper last night. This falls, as so many things do, into the Not My Fault category. I was in New York City, making my way from seeing the movie Mao's Last Dancer (which I liked a lot) to the KGB Bar, a walk (or in my case more of a limp)of 10-12 blocks (there were some avenues in there). I was scheduled to do a reading along...

What I Remember That I Forgot

After having spent days and weeks (and possibly months and years), whining in preparation for the Blood Wounds Copy Editing Massacre, I sure didn't to into much detail about it in my blog entry yesterday.

Well, it wasn't that bad. If it had been, you certainly would have heard about it.

My editor very shrewdly included paragraphs from a cover letter the copy editor had sent her, and while there were certain moderately large changes the copy editor suggested, she also said (at least according to...

Thoughts On The Mule

I've been thinking about that Rosh ha-Shanah resolution I made a few years back, straight out of the Bible, that should I happen upon my enemy on the side of the road, and my enemy's mule had tripped, I shouldn't make fun of the mule. Most likely though, what I wasn't supposed to do was kick the mule. I could make fun of it as much as I wanted, which is a good thing, because there's something about a mule tripping on the side of the road that's irresistibly amusing, just so long as I didn't m...

The Calendar Says September (The Weather Says August)

It's hot out there.

Seeing as I live in New York, it's hot and sticky. I just walked over to my mailbox to get my essentially non-existent mail, and I can attest to both the hotness and the stickiness.

I'm still waiting to get the copy-edited version of Blood Wounds, which, when it arrives and I start working on it, will no doubt make me feel hot, sticky, and irritable.

It's always good to have something to look forward to.

September is a very celebratory month in the Pfeffer family. My mother'...

I'm Sure They Had Nothing Against Foxes

I spent much of yesterday feeling melancholic. I don't know why, since on the whole my life is going very nicely.

It could have been because summer returned, not that I asked it to. I like autumn and I've never been particularly fond of August. But the temperature has returned to nearly 90, which it generally does in time for the new school year (I remember as a kid, how it always drove me crazy that the weather was never better than for the first week of school). Or maybe it's something phys...

What I've Been Reading

This has been a tricky summer, with a lot of fun stuff and a lot of not fun stuff, but in the midst of it all, I've been reading.

Generally, I do read in the summer, because reading is a good thing to do while baseball is on. I'm at the point in my life where I take my glasses off when I read, but I can't see what's on TV without my glasses, but with my giant new TV set, I can figure out what's happening. Since I tend to read with the TV on, but the sound off (I frequently keep the sound off t...

The Way You Do The Things You Don't

Recently, LemurKat left a comment asking why I'd written This World We Live In from Miranda's perspective, rather than taking a different approach and writing instead about Alex and Julie's journey through what remained of America.

Also recently, blog regular Fear Death By Water put a link to his own blog review of Life As We Knew It, and he had questions also, wondering (among other things) why there were no marauders to make Miranda's life even more difficult.

Even though I'm a firm believer...

A Couple Of Other Things

We've sold the German audio rights to The Dead And The Gone, which, of course, greatly pleases me. I really need to start learning German.

I've been remiss in not putting this link to an article about Emily Bauer on the blog. Emily, of course, is the actress who did such an amazing job as he voice of Miranda in the Listening Library audiobook versions of Life As We Knew It and This World We Live In. Google was kind enough to let me know about the article, and I'm passing the information along!

Worry Abhors A Vacuum

I used to spend my summers at my family's country house in the Catskills, and one of my summer rituals there was to worry about money. How much did I have. How much was I likely to make. How soon would what I have run out and what would I do when it did.

I worried on the front porch. I worried in the front yard. I worried in the forest overlooking the stream. I probably worried other places and other seasons, and undoubtedly every time I worried, I had cause to be concerned.

My guess is all fr...