Katherine Center's Blog, page 9

time in the country

We've spent time in the country the past two weekends at my grandparents' ranch.  This is my favorite place to be.

Posted in crazy personal stuff, news!, random, visual art

what I'm working on

I'm taking a little break from novel-writing this week to make a video essay for the upcoming Mom 2.0 Summit in Houston.

My friend Laura has organized an art show during the conference that will try to honor the amazing things that women are doing online–and the way that having a public place that we can access from our private lives helps moms reach out and tell their stories.  And how women telling the truth about their lives can make us all better, wiser, more compassionate people–and make...

my new new novel

About five minutes ago, I sent the first three chapters of my new novel to my editor at Random House.  It doesn't have a title yet, and it won't come out until Spring 2012. But it's a crazy thrill to have the beginning in solid shape, and to send it off for feedback.

I've been watching this new story unfold in little pieces in my head for a long time.  I know a lot already about what's going to happen.  But it's pretty thrilling to see it all actually happen.  Does that make sense? It's one...

loving this today

I stumbled across this German cover for The Bright Side of Disaster this morning!  At first, because of the cake, I thought it must be Everyone Is Beautiful.  But there's nobody pregnant in Everyone Is Beautiful–not really, anyway–so I think it must be Bright Side!  The German version is extra-fun because I have some relatives in Germany.  My mom's father's family moved from Germany to Texas in the 1880s.

So far, rights to my books have been sold in the UK, Portugal, Germany, Russia, the...

my holiday gift to you

One of the most perfect, delectable, romantic movie scenes ever.

Happy holidays.

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Posted in random, videos Tagged: Donna Reed, It's A Wonderful Life, Jimmy Stewart, love scenes, movie clip

hello?

I can never find the phone.  Ever.  I spend about half my day circling the house, looking for a ringing cordless. But it's not there. It's buried under something. But I don't know what.

I don't know why I can't remember to put it back on the base when I'm done talking.  But I can't.

So I just bought a wall phone from the '70s.

Just found it online.  It's exactly like the phone that hung in my kitchen for my entire childhood and beyond.  When my mother sold my childhood home, she took the phone...

"winter"

Down here in Texas, we have to work hard to create winter.

It's not really a season in Houston, exactly.  It's more like a series of fronts that blow the heat away for a few months, a couple of days at a time.

So holiday decorations have a kind of make-believe quality.  Like we're pretending it's winter.  We're insisting it's winter, dammit.  And the whole city has to work together as a group to pull it off.  And we're going to make cider and feel cozy even if we have to run the air...

my exquisite mother

I have one of those moms who's a superhero.  There is nothing she can't handle.  She should have been the President, and I'm not kidding.

But then I never would have gotten to see her.  And I love to see her.  So it was a good deal for me that she wasn't the President.  But I'm not sure it was a great deal for the world.

She just had her 50th high school reunion, and she pulled out a bunch of old photos.  Here are a few. I could flip through her old photo albums all day long.

 

Posted in crazy...

the girls

I've been feeling feisty lately.  The brouhaha over Publishers Weekly's Top Ten books of 2009 — which had no women authors on it — has left me thinking a lot about women's place in our cultural conversation.  

And, as I've been driving my carpools and snaking the grocery store aisles, I've been composing an essay about it — fully aware of the irony that my life as a busy mom was going to make it pretty much impossible for me to ever write that essay.  

But then I remembered I'd already written...

s i s t e r s

I stumbled on this little moment in our old home movies over the weekend and couldn't believe how sweet it was.  And so I made this video.

(I'm the little blond sister, by  the way…)

Posted in news!