A.M. Offenwanger's Blog, page 50
January 14, 2016
Goodbye, Colonel Brandon
You’ve probably heard it by now: Alan Rickman died this morning at age 69. For most people, it’ll probably mean “Goodbye, Severus Snape”, but for me, it’s “Goodbye, Colonel Brandon”. That’s the first role I ever saw him in, and the one I’ve watched most often, over and over – Sense and Sensibility is only one of my top ten favourite films. I love it so much, I’ve written grad school papers on it – including a fairly detailed analysis of Rickman’s Colonel Brandon compared to David Morrisey’s v...
January 13, 2016
Wordy Wednesday
It seems time is just slipping through my grasp these days. Time, and the ability to generate words. It’s not that I don’t have things to say, but somehow, sitting down at the computer, opening a document, and putting those things into actual words and coherent sentences seems to not be happening.
There’s just been too much other stuff occupying my time and, more importantly, my headspace. For one, there’s a new project I’ve got in the offing which I will tell you about soon. [By the way, did...
January 8, 2016
The Tale of Us Against the Monster…Introduction
I don’t often get personal like this. But this post by a grad school friend of mine just needed to be shared. She wrote her Master’s thesis on Monster Stories in Popular Culture – Frankenstein, Zombies, that sort of thing. Now the monster is coming after her – and the courage with which she is facing it is heartbreaking and inspiring. And as she says: “…maybe someone suffering with their own monster will read this ‘tale of us against the monster’ and know that they are not alone.”
January 6, 2016
January 5, 2016
Reading Break
A friend of mine posted a meme on Facebook on Sunday. It went something like this: “Enjoy your last pyjama day. Tomorrow, we have to go back to adulting.” Sigh, yeah. Adulting. That’s where you have to get up in the morning, get dressed, and be responsible. You can’t just stay in bed all day and read books.
What, that’s not how you spent your holidays? I sure did. I had a great reading break. (That, my dear college students, is a break for reading, not from reading. Just in case you were conf...
December 30, 2015
December 25, 2015
Happy Christmas, and CAT AND MOUSE
Christmas Greetings from my house to yours!
If you’d like a bit of a different seasonal read, give Cat and Mouse a try. A fair chunk of it takes place in winter – there`s lots of snow to be had, and even [teeny tiny spoiler] a Winter Solstice Feast!
Here`s an excerpt from the scene when it first starts snowing:
By the time they were finished supper, the snow was already three inches deep, and the wind was picking up. Cat could hear the snowflakes hissing as they hit the inside of the chimney...
December 18, 2015
From the Shadows … Here!
So I didn’t get CHECKMATE published before Christmas – but here’s the next best thing: My good friend E. L. Bates is putting out her SciFi novel FROM THE SHADOWS today! I love that book in so many ways – and I don’t just say that because Louise is my friend. This story made me laugh, cry, cheer, fall in love with the characters… It’s so very worth reading. Get yourself a copy!
Whisked from her troubled, solitary life to a spaceship centuries in the future, widowed folk musici...
December 17, 2015
December 10, 2015
News from the Writing Trenches, December Edition
So, you know how back in September, I said that I was hoping to get Checkmate published by at least Christmas? Uh, yeah. Not gonna happen. I’m sorry…
I don’t actually know what happened there. Where did October go? I mean, I must have done something during that month – other than cook Thanksgiving turkey, and wrap up the last bit of garden, and throw a book birthday party for Seventh Son, and stuff like that. It feels like I’ve been busy non-stop…
And then, of course, after that, NaNoWriMo hi...
