Remember when I said that Fashion Friday would be back after a hiatus, but only occasionally? Well, it’s baaaaack… (but only occasionally).
We’ve had some seriously wintry weather down here in the south lately. You might have noticed? Now, in Houston we’ve been luckier than in Atlanta — oh, those unfortunate folks! — but it’s been sort of intense here. We’ve had TWO Continue reading “Fashion Friday 1/31/14”
Today my post is just to touch base with all of you about a few interesting things going on right now.
First, an update on the current haiku contest, which I know you’re all dying to hear about. For the month of January, I’m asking you to send in a haiku on the subject of New Year’s resolutions. The deadline is midnight on January 31st, central time, which means this coming Friday night. So far lots of people have submitted entries, which is wonderful! Not all of them are actually haiku, unfortunately, but I really appreciate that people took the time to enter, so I’ve decided to hive off the ones that don’t adhere to the submission guidelines into a separate short poem contest, because part of the challenge of writing a haiku is to create something beautiful while sticking to the form. More details on that spin-off contest later. If you want to read more about the haiku competition and see the entries so far and even enter one yourself, please click here. Only entries submitted on the original post (the one I just linked to in that last sentence) will be considered. The winner will be determined by a reader poll, so please keep watching this blog for information on how and when to vote.
In other news, The Milk of Female Kindness: An Anthology of Honest Motherhood, an anthology I was recently published in, is now available for purchase on Amazon.com (or from me directly, if you prefer), and the second edition, which includes even more writing, is now out as well. Two of my essays and two of my poems are in the first edition, and the second edition contains those plus another one of my poems.
Next, I’ll be giving a reading on February 13th as part of the LitFuse Reading Series! So if you’re in Houston (or know anyone who will be in Houston you could pass the word on to), please consider joining us at this event. The series takes place on the back patio of Kaboom Books (3116 Houston Ave. in Woodland Heights, Houston, Texas 77009, 713.869.7600). If the weather isn’t good, the reading moves inside, so no worries about the rain, if there is any. Here’s the Facebook page with more information, including bios of the two other authors reading with me that night. I would love to see you there! (And just so you know, copies of The Milk of Female Kindness will be available for sale that night at the reading.)
Some of you may remember how I told you a while back that my Fashion Friday series was going on a bit of a hiatus. It was taking up a lot of time that I needed for other writing projects, but I didn’t want it to go away forever. Well, it is coming back, just occasionally, as promised. I have some fun hat stuff for spring coming soon in that forum. (Don’t forget this is also a great opportunity for guest posting here, so if you’re interested, query me about it.)
Finally, look for some news this spring about a new publication of mine, a novelette called FINIS. It’s an unusual story that’s too long to be a short story but not long enough to be a novella, and its genre is magic realism. (Try finding a publisher for that! Yeah, it takes a while, no matter how good the writing is.) More details on that — and an excerpt — coming in the foreseeable future.
So stay tuned, everyone, for more details on these and other exciting tidbits. See you again soon, same bat-time, same bat-channel…
Hello! Our Fashion Friday post this week comes to us from guest blogger Sarah Warburton. (View her blog here.) Sarah writes mysteries, has read pretty much everything, and is my awesome Saturday morning writing date. I’m not sure anyone else could lure me from sleep before dawn on a weekend to drive down to a coffee shop with my ancient (read: heavy) laptop to write, but Sarah’s company and keeping-you-honest presence make it more than worth the effort. In addition to being a really wonderful writer and reader and writing partner…
…she knits.
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Amy Pond: I thought…well, I started to think you were just a mad man with a box.
The Doctor: Amy Pond, there’s something you better understand about me ’cause it’s important and one day your life may depend on it…I am definitely a mad man with a box. Continue reading “Fashion Friday 8/9/13”
This week’s installment of Fashion Friday comes to us from Alanna McAuley, who is actually a former student of mine. (Long former. She’s graduated from college now.) She recently stumbled upon a really wonderful advancement in fashion geared toward a highly specific and selective group of people… Continue reading “Fashion Friday 8/2/13”
Welcome to another installment of Fashion Friday! To make up for showing a picture of flip-flops last week, here are some exquisite shoes that used to be available from ModCloth. Alas, they are no more, and I sort of wish I’d gotten a pair when they were around, though I balked at the price (which is why I didn’t buy them in the first place).
Since ModCloth doesn’t allow pictures to be yanked from their site, please click here to see this marvel of footwear, the Nest Big Thing Heel by Brighton-based designer Irregular Choice.
Maybe if I get some free time one day I’ll get crafty and make a DIY version of this shoe. Of course, that would require free time.
Don’t hold your breath.
But if I do embellish a shoe in this way, and if it looks halfway decent and is wearable, you can be sure I’ll post it here.
Have you made any interesting DIY fashion accessories? I’d love to know about them!
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Something cheery this week.
Near our front door we have a tiny pond with some ferns and shade-loving flowers and butterfly plants and a couple of rustic benches. The whole area could use a redesign, but it’s been too busy a year for that, so maybe we’ll look into it over the winter when the weather is cooler.
We used to have turtles and fish living in the pond, and one spring we had thousands of tadpoles, too. But then the turtles ate most of them, and so for the last several years we’ve had just two frogs. They stay in this Continue reading “Fashion Friday 7/19/13”
Just a reminder: tomorrow is the 13th of the month and thus it will be Le Jour du Cirque des Rêves. Not sure what I’m referring to? Click here for more details!
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It’s important to wear a hat when you’re out in the sun. It’s not so you can avoid getting wrinkles — which no one can actually avoid — but so you can reduce the possibility of getting skin cancer.
For summer, I like this straw hat. It’s soft and flexible and easy to wear but also simple with clean lines, so it counts as relatively stylish even years after I first got it.
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First of all, I hope everyone who was observing it had a Happy 4th of July! I’m spending the long weekend with my sister and some friends at a fancy masquerade ball in Los Angeles, so Tui Snider over at Mental Mosaic is guest contributing our Fashion Friday post this week. (Thanks, Tui!) I’ll be returning to my somewhat regular Fashion Fridays duties next week with a longer piece than usual.
I met the bubbly, fun, smart, and creative Tui at the DFWCon (Dallas/Fort Worth Writers’ Conference) back in May. She graciously posed in her cute black-white-red outfit for May’s rêveurs/rêveuses day and was rocking the most wonderful manicure, which she happily agreed to write up for a Fashion Friday post. Click here to go to her Unexpected Texas blog, where you can see the full post. There are lots of other interesting things to see and read on there, too, so browse around in the archives.
Here’s a photo to whet your appetite for Tui’s post on the “literary manicure.”
Now go on over to Tui’s blog and check out the instructions for how to recreate this conversation starter yourself. Happy weekend!
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Would you like to be a guest contributor to Fashion Fridays? If so, please check out the FF page for more guidelines on how to participate.
This week’s Fashion Friday post comes to us from guest blogger Casey Fleming. Casey is a friend and colleague of mine and an excellent writer. She also routinely comes to work wearing some of the most adorable and benign-envy-prompting outfits I’ve ever seen. Her post is also available on her blog, (Non)Secular Girl. Check it out; you’ll be glad you did.
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When I was in seventh grade, Charlie Chavez asked me to be his date to the homecoming dance. We attended T.H. Rogers, a public school in Houston for “gifted and talented” kids, all bused in from neighborhoods as diverse and far away from each other geographically and culturally as Denver Harbor, Bellaire, and Third Ward. Charlie lived in Sharpstown. His single mother arrived with him to pick me up from my aunt’s townhouse on the Southwest side the night of the dance. Continue reading “Fashion Friday 6/28/13”
A lot of teachers I know and work with — okay, pretty much all of them — often admit they need a week or two to decompress from the school year once summer break starts. Of course, summer is short, and most teachers have a lot of work to do over the summer (even if they aren’t teaching classes). I know this shatters a myth many people like to believe, that we spend a couple of months just doing nothing but draw a paycheck. (Trust me, in seventeen years of teaching, I’ve never encountered any teacher for whom that was actually true.)
Anyway, a week or two out of ten is an awful big chunk of time to spend decompressing. So sometimes, the first weekend of summer, you have to make a grand statement, metaphorically, to shock your system into understanding you really are on summer break.
And the other hand…
This gets the point across nicely.
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Sappho's Torque 