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A small red brick building with a domed roof, arched windows, and a front entrance featuring columns and steps, surrounded by greenery and a brick walkway.

The TASTE of Montgomery County, a tasty fundraiser

Every year the General Lew Wallace Study & Museum hosts this fundraiser designed especially for people who like to eat. Like me. This was only my second year to attend, but wow, I wished I’d brought a couple of extra stomachs.

The TASTE features a lineup of nearly 20 local restaurants and caterers bringing their A-game to the study grounds. For very reasonable prices, you can buy little (and not so little) samples of fabulous foods. And by “reasonable,” I mean nothing costs more than $4, lots of items are $1, and many of those big-ticket items could be meals in themselves, if you didn’t need to save room to sample everything else.

Treadmill desk, alpha version. Totally caught me checking Facebook.

I Walk a Lonely Road: my new treadmill desk

English: 2009 ESPN Zone Chicago Ultimate Couch...
2009 ESPN Zone Chicago Ultimate Couch Potato Contestant – Steve Janowski (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So, it turns out that sitting on your butt for long periods of time, like writers do, is really bad for you.

This should be one of those no-brainer things — sedentary lifestyles are bad, this isn’t news — but it really came home to me when I realized that since I became a published author and started really taking my writing seriously, I’ve gained almost 20 pounds. Ouch.

Time to take back my life!

A page of handwritten script featuring several lines of text in an unknown or undeciphered language, with each line containing clusters of curving and looping characters. The text appears dense and evenly spaced.

Vintage Books Are Art

A page from the mysterious Voynich manuscript,...
A page from the mysterious Voynich manuscript, which is undeciphered to this day. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I respect books. I hate to see books damaged, even — especially — in the name of decor. At a decorators’ show house recently, my sister, mother, and I looked in horror at shelf art made of cut up books. “Oh, thank goodness,” my sister soon identified, “they’re just Reader’s Digest Condensed Books.”

Walking through a decorating fair using vintage books and paper as disposable materials makes my blood run dark. The current trend of tearing up old books to get aged or interesting paper is infuriating and wholly unnecessary. My mother has decorated her bathroom with delightful antique book illustrations, everything from Sinbad to Sherlock Holmes, all color-copied from the originals for a neat aesthetic with no damage.

Snow and ice cover utility poles and power lines along a rural road. The weight of the ice has caused the power lines to sag and droop toward the ground. Trees and the ground are also heavily coated in ice.

How I Survived the Arctic Blast and Beyond

“A well known American writer said once that, while everybody talked about the weather, nobody seemed to do anything about it.”
— Charles Dudley Warner, Hartford (Connecticut) Courant, August 27, 1897 (often attributed to Mark Twain but probably mistakenly)

English: "Besides disrupting transportati...
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s said that there is no bad weather, only bad clothing. While I can’t agree wholly — I’m from the midwest, and no clothing in the world will save you from a tornado — I agree with the sentiment that a little preparation goes a long way toward making one safe and comfortable.

the West Baden angels, restored

The Angels of West Baden

Inside the atrium at the West Baden Springs Hotel.
Inside the atrium at the West Baden Springs Hotel. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You may not have heard of the West Baden hotel, which is a shame. It was built in the town of West Baden Springs, near the better-known today French Lick, and was a luxury hotel to offer the wealthy leisure and access to the natural phenomena of the area — mineral springs considered medicinal.

Today’s travelogue is a bit different, since while I’ve visited West Baden, this isn’t that trip. It’s just the necessary backdrop.

A group of people sit and stand in a brightly colored room. A woman in white and a man in a red checked shirt dance while musicians play instruments and others watch. Decorations hang from the ceiling.

The Joys of Research – Truth or Dare

Being a writer means you get to look up all kinds of wacky stuff and pretend it’s valid work. While researching for a story, I learned that the party game we call “Truth or Dare” is actually centuries old even in its current form. In fact, per some… 

A wooden post with two signs: one is a triangular warning sign with a silhouette of a bull and the text "Beware of bull"; the other points right and says "Public Footpath" with a walking person symbol. Dense foliage in the background.

Beware of Writers

English: Beware of Bull Beware of Bull on publ...
This photo is not directly relevant to being cautious of writers. It’s just great on its own. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve said that people just passing through a hotel hosting a writers’ convention must be frequently alarmed. For example, I was sitting in the hall at my last such conference and overheard someone pleading for ideas on how to dispose of a body. “I tried burying it, but that didn’t work,” he said, “and I’ve thought about acid in a tub but it didn’t seem likely to clean up well. Can you help?”

A young girl in a pink hoodie holds a frying pan up to a person dressed as a zombie, who is wearing a dark hoodie with face paint and fake blood. They are standing near playground equipment outdoors.

Zombies on the Playground

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I don’t do Wordless Wednesday much, but sometimes you’ve just got something to share.

Zombies on the Playground

My friend the talented Amanda Irwin of Elemental Photography wanted to recreate this fun image of children fighting off zombies on playground equipment. She issued an open call for predators and prey, and this happened.

Burne-Jones-le-Vampire

I (Heart) Vampires

Illustration in Carmilla, Joseph Sheridan Le F...
Illustration in Carmilla, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s vampire story. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I (blood-red heart) vampires. Not any particular incarnation of them (though there are some incarnations I do particularly dislike), but the mythos of them. Creeping, skulking, life-stealing, blood-drinking, vein-piercing, sexual-metaphor-but-not-sexy-themselves vampires.

How do I love vampires? Let me count the ways.

A circular graphic with a pirate illustration on the left and the words "Talk Like a Pirate Day" in red and yellow text on the right. The date "September 19" appears at the bottom.

Pirates! and a free sample

International Talk Like a Pirate DayAarrrgh! It’s offic’ly Talk Like a Pirate Day! And in honor, we’re goin’ t’ look at a burnin’ question: Why d’ our pirates talk like this?

Of course, thar aren’t a lot o’ recorded pirate speeches. Even court records o’ tried and convicted pirates don’t capture t’ dialect o’ t’ accused. What we think o’ as “pirate speak” developed rel’tively recently in modern media.