Fiction author Robin Brande talks about writing, reading, and other vital matters

I love this lecture! Watched it once already this morning, and will now go watch it again.
I especially love the line, “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”
And I especially, especially love the whole discussion of what it would be like to have a young William Shakespeare [...]

This week’s installment of Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s Freelancer’s Survival Guide shares some pretty ugly stories of what can happen to you once you become successful–or at least more successful than your “friends.”
Really fascinating, and some great advice for dealing with it. Enjoy!

There’s a website out there called GirlMogul.com, and it celebrates and encourages smart girls. So you know I’m loving that.
Even more to love: This month their book club is featuring my novel FAT CAT. As part of the kickoff, I wrote an essay to the girls that you might like to read.
It [...]

Lately a lot of people have been asking me for recipes from FAT CAT. Some of the recipes in the book are ones I made up and experimented with, some are from other sources, including chef and cookbook author Colleen Patrick-Goudreau of www.compassionatecooks.com. I loved Colleen’s work so much, I asked her to do the [...]

I don’t have this problem, because my family is lovely, but I know that many people extra-enjoy the holidays because they have to be around their bickering, critical, snide, judgmental parents, in-laws, and siblings. Oh, what fun.
But I saw this great solution in the New York Times the other day, and thought I’d pass [...]

In case you were wondering.

Just got in from our short backpacking trip. Massive head cold. Sore throat, possible fever, head full of more liquid than I knew the head could hold.
Spending this one hotel day catching up on over 200 e-mails, doing laundry, resupplying. Leaving in the morning for our longer backpacking excursion in the Wind [...]

One of the sweetest notes I’ve ever gotten from a boy was in fifth grade, when Tony T. wrote: “You would make a great author. You’re a great student too. You get your work done too.”
And though of course I love the part about how I would make a great author, it’s [...]

I do this thing, and I wondered if anyone else does this thing, or if it would be useful to you to consider it for your own purposes.
It started a few years ago when I was sitting here one summer, sweltering in the Arizona heat, and I happened to read an article about backpacking in [...]