"You think I could share your book?" I ask a neighbor, craning toward their desk like an affable Gumby. "Couldn't fit mine in my backpack." You-know-how-it-is nod to the overstuffed bag on my desk. Closed enough to hide whichever Gurm, Lynch, Rothfuss, or Ericksons are crammed inside.

​I spent a year catching up on the landmark fantasy series that defined my teen years, and accidentally wrote my autobiography. Hop in for book reviews and cringey reveries as I resume a dozen or so series that filled the warlock hours of my adolescence. 

​The latest in a now-annual tradition of intending to review the preceding year in books, neglecting to do so throughout the holidays, and finally capitulating to the creative guilt monster sometime in January. (What’s that? No, I don’t own a calendar, why do you ask?)

I assumed doing another end-of-year book post would just be a depressing summary of another brief, identical COVID year. I’m sitting on the same couch by the same fire on what could be any morning of the last few years, with the same raindrops and ronaballs tapping on the window. Have I ever really left this spot? Read more

​

Flash fiction. 250 words to describe 'rearranging furniture' and the word 'surge' in a suspenseful way.

A wise meme said that life is just a series of obstacles preventing you from reading your book. I must be really living, because my "read" list has been a travesty since college. Gone are the days when I could sit with a book for a day and a night and take down doorstopper fantasy series like pan dulces.

Work/life demands in the time of rona being less outrageous, I made it a mission to read at least an hour a day last year. I failed, but hey, at least I did better than a book a month. 
​
And so here are the books I read in 2020, and a little bit about why I think they’re worth picking up. Read more