Big Cat Pepper in Brooklyn

My pal Allyson spotted this: Big Cat Pepper, on a ramble in a forest of books. Maybe Pepper was wandering back to Lauren Castillo's Brooklyn drawing board where he sprung to life.

Pepper has been getting some nice blog love, as Lauren noted on her blog.

Challenge of writing fiction

In high school I hung out with the theater/music/arts/protesting hippie crowd. These were a bunch of really interesting people. One thing we liked to do was get up into the wild hills above the city. If it was daytime we would hike. At night, we talked about big things -- the way the world was, what we wanted, how we would get there, what we hoped we could change. Lots of philosophizing. One of our group, Roo Borson, was an especially serious, deep thinker. Staring down into the bowl of the bay area one night at all the twinkling lights, she said, "have you ever imagined how many other ways your life could go? How many different possibilities there are? Infinite."

I was staggered.

Now, I think of Roo's sentences as I write a novel. The possibilities are infinite. I have some lovely, earnest, difficult characters, and who knows what they will do? How will they really feel and act when the going gets tough? This is where non-fiction writing is so much easier. Something really happened. My challenge with non-fiction is to do a good job with those facts, dig deep for how people really did react when the going got tough, and make it a fascinating read. There is a map.

With fiction, there's no map, just infinite possibilities. But today, I feel I may have found the right path, and I'm trusting my feet will find their way.

Beautiful, deep thinking Roo Borson has gone on to become an acclaimed poet. She continues to stare fearlessly into the infinitude and bring us back possibilities, wrapped up as poems.

end of summer and M. T. Anderson

Thunder and lightening, with heavy, short rains washed away the summer dust clinging to the porch. Like an exhalation, summer is finished.

We got the barn almost all the way painted -- still have some very-high-up trim to complete. In fact, we have a lot of high up trim to paint still. This is not a fun job to do -- the satisfaction comes in getting it finished before the rains. That's Tom at the top in a white protective suit because he's using a paint sprayer, Felix on the lower ladder, handing up and down rollers, paint brushes, and doing follow up with the paint roller. Sasha is getting all the low trim masked and painted.

Tiring? Yes, very. Sasha and Felix crashed out for the night on the porch, until woken by our eager dog Penny, who finally couldn't wait one more minute, and bounded out, wriggling and wagging.

Back to my city life, where we ate bounty from the garden, and Tobin Anderson eased my transition. He was out here in the bay area with his new book, Jasper Dash and the Flame-Pits of Delaware. Besides being a genius, he's got a lovely, dark, irreverent sense of humor, and a big heart. There's a terrific book trailer here: http://www.simonandschuster.com/multimedia?video=36437626001. Very fun. Here he is with several middle schoolers who wanted to tap into his brain and figure out for themselves how he does it.