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Showing posts from September, 2008
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Image by fmc.nikon.d40 via Flickr It's officially autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. For North Central Florida, that means our days have a nip in the air--temps are in the 80sF instead of 90s. I'll know it's winter because we can turn off the air conditioning.
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Image via Wikipedia Ahoy, mateys! Yes, once again it's International Talk Like A Pirate Day. Do not neglect to embrace your inner swashbuckler, and here's a helpful instructional video to get you going.
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Image via Wikipedia International Talk Like a Pirate Day is September 19. In honor of this special day and because it's international and because Darlene Marshall's pirate novels are international, here is a link to ITLAP Day for German speakers . Even though I'm the author of Rache & Rosen and Samt & Sabel, I credit my wonderful translator, Barbara Schnell, for any glorious piratical lingo that comes through in German.
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Image via Wikipedia IT'S FINISHED! I typed "The End" today on the first draft of A Sea Change. Now the fun begins as I whip the manuscript into shape, but dang, it feels good to know how the story ends!
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Image via Wikipedia I have to admit, when it comes to books I can be a complete snob. When I find people who don't read, and I mean quite literate adults who choose not to read, I have to wonder what I have in common with them, if anything. But today I want to praise an area of literature that I believe too many adults overlook as not worth their time, YA novels. "YA" is shorthand in bookstores and libraries for "Young Adult" and covers the novels written to appeal to a teen audience. So many of them are outstanding, and adults who don't seek them out are doing themselves a disservice. Today I read A Countess Below Stairs by Eva Ibbotson , and I adored it. I laughed, I cried, I was totally enraptured by the characters and their tale. Russian emigre Anna, with her commitment to being an excellent housemaid at an English estate, was a heroine in the mold of Cluny Brown , another favorite of mine. Despite the loss of almost everything in her short life