I guess Ashamet, Desert-Born was born out of annoyance. I’d been reading a fantasy in which yet again the ‘power’ character was badly advised or corrupted – and stupid. Because that was the only way the writer could make the plot work. And I thought: why does the ‘prince’ always have to be the stupid…
There’s a line in one of the short stories in the collection, “One-Night Stand,” where a young stand-up comic says, “L.A. isn’t a city; it’s a state.” I’ve always thought that as well. In fact, I always utter this when telling others about L.A. It’s disconnected and messy, sprawling and vibrant. But this city offers…
What was the inspiration for this story? What a great question! The short answer is that this story came from my habit of asking, What if…? and dreaming up answers. What if there was a land where… What if there was a young trickster who… And what if his lover… Stephen King talks about stories…
I always enjoyed business-related writing and thought a non-fiction self-help book, with life-lessons I learned along the way, would be a fun project. But, as often happens when you put yourself out there, I discovered another path and took it: I developed a TV pilot about New York in the seventies because, as they say…
Some years ago I started working on a memoir. I was in a writing group with two other women at the time, and the plan was that we would each get something done on our respective projects and take turns reading a portion of our new work at our weekly meetings. My memoir was slow…
I make my living as a puppeteer and stilt walker. It’s a great life. I get to create everything from large puppets for parades to intricate colored shadow puppets. I stilt with my buddies in a group called Chicks on Sticks. Part of the job also includes teaching puppetry and art in schools. The work…
This book started as a stack of notes to myself, based on conversations with parents, as well as questions from students in my classes for future teachers at the University of California, Irvine. What are the institutional causes of low U.S student achievement? How can parents prepare students to resist peer pressure? What can parents…
After studying the great books at St. John’s College I dreamed of writing the next great American novel, so I enrolled in a graduate writing program. My fiction-writing teacher told me to write about what I knew but since I didn’t seem know much of anything then, medical school seemed like the easier option. In…
Growing up, I was the oldest of three kids. My brothers and I made up stories all the time. Our ideas were all over the place. Most of them barely made sense, but they had one common thread- action. We were always running, always fighting the bad guys. Someone always needed to be rescued. Hiding…
This is a strange and tragic story. My college roommate sent me a scene he had written in longhand without any explanation called Quantum Level Zero. We had never, ever talked about writing in college or in the 15 years since. In fact, we were both engineers and tended to discuss geeky stuff like Maxwell’s…
The Story Behind the Book 