Waking from a Midsummer’s Dream
The Writer Elkhound's next selection. We've left the Shire and The Lonely Mountain. Onward!jl The light of August seeps into paper, weaves into the forest as vibrant as ignited confetti. Sun confetti.jl A crow perches on a high cedar and calls into the air, half- ...
August Lists
The Writer Elkhound's second summer pick.jl Inscribing a list keeps me on my toes. Basic rules when generating a list: go big, be expansive, accept failure as part of the equation, and always use a pencil with a good eraser! jl Categories: books read, books I'm ...
Wordcombing on a Summer Day
Red morning... jl Summer palette deepens. The road curves toward home, overgrown and dusty. Notebooks fill up like baskets full of dry and fragrant kindling. I watch as hummingbirds thrum by - feathered kinetic energy. Studying cloud wisps, I imagine myself reclining on a raft, bobbing through a ...
Corollaries of the Words We Use
A cliff edge that dares the speaker to leap. A journey home. Other words bubble to the surface when you cannot sleep. Northern insomnia. Or are found pressed like flowers between the pages in memory's hefty book.
A January Dance
Red sky in the morning.j. laster A dusting of snowfall transports me to distant winters and the stillness of early mornings at the edge of a wilderness. On the trail. The whisper and long shhhhhhhhh of skis on new snow. Gravid sky.j. laster Impending ...
One Word at a Time
"All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time." Ernest Hemingway Peach and gray daybreak.j. laster Brimming with New Year's resolutions, I find most of them have to with words. I continue to work on a novel that is nearly ...
THE ACCIDENTAL ORIGAMI OF WINTER
“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape – the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.” Andrew Wyeth The wind folded, ice creased
The Healing Powers of Norwegian Elkhounds
The Writer Elkhound trots by my side, then bounds forward to chase after a squirrel running across the fence top. Later she winds around my legs and nudges me as I pause. The weight of the world combines with the barometric pressure of rain that has not yet fallen.
WEDDINGS, WORDS, TALES TOLD AND PORTENTS OF THE NEXT ADVENTURE
“I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.” ― Marilyn Monroe Two of the characters I am writing are falling in love. Everyone knows it. Except for them. They are are like travelers in an unlit subterranean place. And that's when the bullets start flying.
The Forest of Stories
Wilderness whups ass. No one is exempt. Ice cracks. Frozen lakes overflow. Bears charge down steep slopes. An inflatable raft springs a leak. A critical box of supplies gets left behind. WTF: where are the matches? Predators large and small are afoot. As are swarms of the most bloodthirsty of all: mosquitoes and no-see-ems. Weather doesn’t care about your flapping rain-fly or your groundcloth pooling with water.