Month: July 2013

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How Do I Love Chocolate? Let Me Count the Ways….

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(I wanted to be blogging this week about the Midwest Writers Workshop and the coolness thereof, but I’ve been considerably distracted. So please accept this pre-written post about chocolate in the meanwhile.)

What does dark chocolate do for me?

Well, it provides the caffeine which I don’t get from coffee. (Yeah, I’m one of the maybe four writers in the hemisphere who don’t drink coffee. Makes me the odd one out at conferences and workshops, where I have to find my own soft drink or something.)

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Teaser Tuesday: A Short Walk Home

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One of my own corn fields. This stood probably nearly 8 feet tall when taken in July.

Today’s Teaser Tuesday comes from the short story, “A Short Walk Home.”

I don’t know why I even reacted; it was just a rustle, probably an opossum or raccoon. But I became newly aware I was beside a corn field, not soybeans, and I couldn’t see a thing in there. Soybeans can hide rabbits; corn can hide axe murderers and zombies.

…I know, I know, my Hoosier roots are showing.

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Write-Aid, or, A Submitted Story

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This is the story of how I submitted a substandard short story to an editor this week and am sorta proud of it.

Laura & Doberman Shakespeare
Laura & Shakespeare

It’s been a turbulent week, and it’s only Wednesday. You may know that my day job is animal (and human) behavior, and I have two dogs who are both family members and sort of business partners. Last week, I got a call that my sleek, shiny, very active Laev had tested positive for lymphoma. Monday afternoon, we met with the oncologist, confirmed Stage 4 (of 5), and had her first chemo treatment. On Tuesday morning, my other dog Shakespeare was diagnosed not with an infected tooth as expected, but with very fast-moving bone cancer, and he was given as little as 3 weeks to live.

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I Dine with Ninja

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Ninjutsu (Naruto) (246375091)
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I talk a lot about Japanese folklore here on the blog, for obvious reasons, but I haven’t talked much about ninja. And ninja have certainly entered national pop culture and folklore, so they’re as valid a topic as any other.

Plus, I got to have dinner with some lately. I don’t mean I dined with students of Bujinkan Taijutsu or other martial arts heirs of ninjutsu skill, I mean the dressed-in-black, popping-out-of-ceilings legend of thousands of movies and cartoons and books. Those ninja.

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