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This past weekend, I went to the town in Maryland where I went to high school for a friend's bridal shower.  I've been back once or twice since I've moved to the West coast, but not to the town itself, and I was nervous.  I don't have the best of memories of high school, so I wasn't sure what to expect. One of the places I was able to get to was the public library near my old high school.  I worked there most of the time I was in high school, and it was the place (other than the theater at school) were I spent the most time, especially after my father died.  While I had always loved books, that library was the first place where I felt comforted by the presence of so many books in one place.  Bookstores were always a little too cold, but the library...the books were welcoming, the tables and ridiculously uncomfortable chairs were the perfect place to hide when things got to be too much.  Even when I wasn't working, I still spent countless hours hiding out, fill

I've always been a re-reader.  Growing up, my father instilled in me the desire to buy or otherwise obtain books that I could keep, rather than borrowing them, so I could always re-read them if I wanted to.  Naturally, this led to the kind of library that causes moving companies to glare daggers at you, but that's beside the point. I discovered early on that there are some books that I enjoy re-reading multiple times, because they make me feel better.  Something about revisiting a story I already know well, and characters I've met before, can be very soothing.  Some of them are books I read about once a year; others I cling to when I need something specific, even if it's undefinable.  Below are some of my favorites: A Wrinkle in Time  - probably my favorite book of all time.  This was the book that taught me it was OK to have a female protagonist who wasn't the prettiest/smartest/best at everything, but rather someone a little more like me.  It also showed me th

So, April ended and my Camp Nanowrimo story...didn't.  I managed to make a little over half of my goal, but there's no winning certificate for me this year.  I tried to figure out why that was, since Nanowrimo has gone pretty well for me the last few years. One of the big issues I came across was that I lost interest in the story I was writing.  By about ten thousand words in, I realized that I was having a hard time caring about what happened to my characters.  Even as they were doing things that were off-script (as characters are wont to do), it didn't really interest me.  I found myself drawn back to the world of Paranormal Investigations, which had been put on the shelf for a few months. Once I shifted to the other story, my momentum moved much faster than before.  I knew these characters, I'd spent time with them, and I cared about what happened next - all of these things were lacking in the original story I tried to write.  Honestly, what it taught me is that