Twenty Nine Years After

Categories: education · football · loma prieta earthquake · Sacramento · santa cruz · teachers · teaching · UncategorizedTags: · · · 2 Comments

Twenty-nine years ago the Loma Prieta earthquake happened at 5:04 and changed my life forever after. The Loma Prieta earthquake and the fifteen seconds I spent cowering under a big oak desk while the ceiling came down in the hundred year old building I was working in changed how I viewed every other second that came after. The Loma Prieta earthquake and the two kind people (one who was someone’s love, one who was someone’s dad) who died on the other side of the wall during those fifteen seconds changed the way I treated every other person I met after….

You Write What’s Real: The Secret Lives of Young Adults

Categories: demons and devils · fantasy · Greek and Roman · literary fiction · stories on stage · young adultTags: · · · · · · · · · · Leave a comment

Last December I visited an English class at a continuation high school. The students had read and discussed  my YA novel HOW TO BE MANLY  (Giant Squid Books) and the plan was for me to give a talk and answer their questions. I came bearing a big pink box of donuts (if you read the book you’ll know why). As I put a donut on every desk, one girl jumped from her seat, unable to wait for my presentation to begin to share her thoughts. “I like you,” she said. “Because you write what’s real.”  Her classmates nodded in agreement, glad that she broke…

Notebooks

Categories: demons and devils · environment · fantasy · Greek and Roman · motivation · myths and legends · nature · notebooks · paranormal · poetry · science fiction and fantasy · writingTags: · · · · · · · · · · · · 1 Comment

On the way to the gym this morning, I heard this story on NPR  in which Eric Weiner reported that Moleskine’s business is booming, and research shows that  all the cool kids write in notebooks now. I was fascinated but also horrified by this story. Listening to an interview with a guy who revealed that he wrote in notebooks like it was a new idea made me feel  sort of the way I did when the lady who wrote Freedom Writers came to town and everyone at the school where I worked got very excited about her revolutionary teaching technique of having her students write in journals.  My…