Fuzzy Valentine

It’s Valentine’s Day. So where’s my snow? I took Dulcinea to the dog park, and she kicked up great clouds of dust. I ought to know better, but I’m still shocked by how warm it is on the Front Range. Tiny shoots of crocus and Dutch Iris are springing up in my garden. (Don’t they […]

Garden of Rohan

When I’m not reading or writing fiction, or taking my dog for epic walks, I’m knitting. My knitting queue over at Ravelry is currently filled with unfinished objects, in part because Dulcinea is obsessed with yarn. It’s hard to knit when a Golden Retriever thinks you’re playing an interactive game. But now I have two […]

Rachel Hartman’s Seraphina

One cannot fly in two directions at once.  I cannot perch among those who think that I am broken. A lyrical novel about music, art, philosophy, and prejudice, Rachel Hartman’s Seraphina has got to be one of the most ambitious YA fantasies I’ve recently read. Seraphina‘s protagonist is a brilliant young musician who must conceal […]

Chichén Itzá

When I found myself within striking distance of the Yucatan Peninsula, I knew I had to go to Chichén Itzá. I got up before dawn and took a ferry through rough waters from Cozumel, then climbed on a bus and headed across the swamplands to the Mayan ruins. Exhausted but happy, I arrived at noon […]

Coast of Haiti

On the way home from my holiday, I met a group of men in bright yellow shirts at the Miami airport. They’d been in Haiti, building shelters. We chatted about their work, and I asked one of them if he had a background in construction. “No, ma’am,” he said. “We’re just a bunch of knuckleheads […]

To the sea I went

To the sea I went, my heart full sore For the Norns, whose wrath I would now escape; But the lofty billows bore me undrowned, Till to land I came, so I longer must live. –from Guðrúnarhvöt (Bellows 1923 translation) One of my favorite passages about the sea, Gudrun’s Lament is from The Poetic Edda. […]