-
A Lullaby & The Introduction to My Book, The Light Gatherers {New Music Monday}
This is a very special New Music Monday, and I appreciate that you’re here, visiting my website. I’ve been working on a book for a little over a year, called The Light Gatherers. (You can read the Prologue to the book here, which I wrote as a writing exercise as part of The Habit.) I don’t feel like any book is complete without a poem or a song; most of my favorite books include at least one or the other. The Hobbit includes the songs in which the dwarves sing about helping Bilbo with the dishes and the Lonely Mountain. The Princess and the Goblin includes Curdie’s rhymes, which scare…
-
A Special Autumn Trip Up North
A few weekends ago, I did something I haven’t done since high school: I spent a weekend up at the cabin, along with Brian and the kids, during the month of October. It was beautiful, with the leaves changing and falling, the quiet lake, and the damp autumn air. We arrived at the cabin late in the evening on Friday, unpacked the van, and put the kids to bed. The air smelled like fresh rain and moisture dripped from the trees in tiny, sparkling beads. My parents always say that the cool fall nights up at the cabin make for “good sleeping weather,” and I absolutely agree. It was so…
-
The Story of Rose (A True Story)
Rose sat in the newly-packed dirt surrounded by green foliage. Her bright pink petals, imbued with shades of red, caught the light from the rising sun. She lifted up her head and felt the sun’s rays begin to warm the dewdrops that had settled in between the folds of her petals. A breeze gently shook Rose and the dewdrops slid down her petals and onto the ground. A small group of walking trees, with flailing limbs, high-pitched voices, and stringy petals and leaves, rumbled over the big, rough stone that bordered her garden to the west and climbed into the moving gray rock, a process Rose observed each time the…
-
A Snarky Retelling of Winnie-the-Pooh, and Our Favorite Poem
A Bear of (Supposedly) Very Little Brain Once upon a time there lived a bear. Some of the bear’s friends made a point of constantly telling him that he had no brain. This, of course, could simply not be true because somehow he managed, time and time again, to think and feel and wonder about his life in the woods. One day this bear (who clearly had to think in order to come up with this plan) wanted to get some honey from a beehive swinging from the top of a tree. First he tried to climb the tree, which resulted in much physical discomfort. Nobody likes to land in…
-
The Kitten and the Premier {A Short Story}
I wrote the following story as part of an assignment, which was to show the reader something unexpected about a character in a story. This short story could serve as an introduction to a larger story I’m in the process of writing. The Premier is a totalitarian dictator who uses his unique abilities to keep the planet cloudy, dark, and under his control. The main character in my story is a boy named Alex who can gather light and use the energy from that light to create doorways between worlds. He and the Premier’s People end up at odds with each other. I may post the larger story here in…