I just started Nightmares! by Jason Segel and Kristen Miller, illustrated by Karl Kwasny. It's great! Creepy fun and really well written. I love the scene where Charlie moves the boxes each night to block his bedroom doors.
Go out and get it now! We’ve been fostering two dogs while their owner traveled over seas. When she decided to move permanently, she asked if we’d be interested in adopting the dogs. It took us a week to decide; taking care of any living being is a big responsibility.
Gracie (8) and Willy (7 1/2) are stepbrother and stepsister, a Maltese Shih Tzu mix. Gracie is smaller, completely white except for light brown ears and a light brown spot on her back. Willy has an underbite, an abnormally long tongue, and large light brown spots all over his white coat. They both love to cuddle, sleep, and bark at animals on TV (especially Eddie from Fraiser). We joke that they’re like living stuffed animals because they’re so well trained. After a week of long talks, we decided to adopt Willy and Gracie. We took them to the vet for a checkup, then on to the groomers. Here are their before and after pictures. Rewriting is always hard.
I thought my first four chapters were done! Arrrg! When I got to chapter five, I realized the first four chapters weren’t working. Not enough was happening and I was jumping between plot lines way to much! In one chapter! So now I’m back on chapter one. “Sigh,” as Snoopy said. Rewriting is hard. I'm working on my first presentation!
In December, I'll present to the Fullerton School District's Young Writer's Group. I'm pretty excited, and kind of nervous—I've never done anything like this before. Here's the image I'm thinking of using (my dad helped me make it, and the artwork is from an artist named hchjjl on iStockPhoto). I'm starting to get into TED talks (TED stands for Technology, Education and Design). Here's a talk by Julie Taymor, one of the creators of the Lion King on stage, my favorite musical of all time.
In the video below, she talks about the challenges of doing anything creative, and how sometimes you have to just look at the line in front of you and keep moving. There are a few graphic images in the video, but it's a great talk. |
Nara DuffieTeen fantasy novelist and TEDx speaker. I love nature, books, movies, origami, singing, cooking, knitting, roller coasters, dogs, and a lot of other things. Archives
July 2016
Categories
All
|
Nara Duffie: The Monster Realm |