Kurt R.A. Giambastiani's Blog, page 62
January 23, 2014
Permanent Code
If you were born before 1980, it’s likely you are writing in code. That’s right. Cryptic code. We have a young houseguest staying with us. She’s nineteen. I literally have t-shirts older than she. Needless to say, having her with us has been an education, on both sides. The other day, she watched with fascination […]
January 21, 2014
Golden Mac and Cheese
During our last trip to Bath, we stopped in at Same-Same but Different, a little bistro on Bartlett Street. It had a distinctly Parisian feel to it, but with an English twist–sidewalk tables and chairs, but wicker and steel, not wrought iron; creaky floors of dark wood, but well-lit from lamps and windows; a laid-back, […]
January 17, 2014
Odd Ducks
It’s happened to us all. That moment when a word–a perfectly innocuous, everyday word–suddenly looks weird. It happened to me the other day. The word was “dirt.” I wrote it down and suddenly it looked misspelled. I stared at it. I tried “durt,” but that was even worse. Dirt. Dirt. Dirt. Oddly, when I wrote […]
January 14, 2014
Babies and Bathwater
If you don’t have one, you need one. In fact, you need several. I’m talking about beta readers, those folks you lure/ wheedle/ cajole/ beg/ entrap into reading your baby, promising them anything from sex to chocolate to whisky—for the record, that last one is the coin of my realm—in order to get their input, […]
January 9, 2014
Cioppino di Famiglia G
Cioppino is an Italian standard, a fish stew in a tomato-based sauce, but before we get into the recipe, let’s have a lesson in correct pronunciation. First, in Italian, the initial letters “ci” makes a “ch” sound, like the word “ciao.” Next, know that the word has onlythree syllables, neverfour; say it cho-PEE-no, not chee-oh-PEE-no. […]
January 6, 2014
Who I Read and Why
Writers aren’t like normal people. When writers read–be it a book, an article, or sometimes even a headline–we study, parse, and edit. We re-word what we read (“It would be better like this”), we laugh out loud at ugly phrases (“He threw up his hands”), and we will kick a book across the room before […]
January 2, 2014
Be It Hereby Resolved
Yesterday, New Year’s Day, was Global Hangover Day. It was also Global Magical Thinking Day. Call me a cynic, but there is nothing special about New Year’s Day. It has no potency, no power. It signifies nothing of interest in the physical world, marks neither solstice or equinox, time to sow or time to reap. […]
December 31, 2013
It’s a Rule
It’s Blogging 101: Thou shalt recap the year. The books: First, my sincere thanks to all the folks who tried one of my novels this year. The “free giveaway weekend” was a great success, numbers-wise, with over a thousand copies downloaded in three days. That’s a thousand potentially new readers out there, and it increased […]
December 30, 2013
An Inconvenient Idea
It is an unfortunate truth that inspiration usually strikes when you are least able to act upon it. The perfect solution to your living room furniture arrangement comes when you are away on holiday. The critical piece of a work problem comes when you are in the shower. Today, I got an idea for a […]
December 19, 2013
Conflicted in Seattle
When it comes to snow, Seattle is conflicted. We love it. We hate it. And tomorrow, we’re gonna get it, or so says Cliff Mass, a scholar of weather in the Pacific Northwest. Snow in Seattle is rare and unpredictable. It’s also a huge pain in the ass, precisely because it is so rare and […]
