This week’s YA Highway – Road Trip Wednesday is about The Best Book No One’s Ever Heard Of.  I’m a bit late, but after commenting on the site I decided to post this to my blog too.

I could probably recommend plenty, but the one I went with is Wisdom Hunter by Randall Arthur.  I chose this one because I thought I remembered it going out of print, but it is listed right now on Amazon and has apparently gone through two covers since I read it on its first publication.  So, it’s not so likely no one’s ever heard of it.  Nevertheless, here are my thoughts.

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I read Wisdom Hunter more than 15 years ago, but I still remember how much it impacted me.
It was recommended to me by a good friend and so I decided to read it sight unseen. I don’t like movie trailers (and other spoilers) so I value the recommendation of someone I trust over product marketers trying to convince me of what I’ll like. And I loved it.

This is a story about journey.

It opens with a pregnant young woman, disowned by her father, a conservative, legalistic pastor and a real a$$hole – Jason Faircloth. She tragically dies in childbirth in a traffic jam, but her baby girl survives and is raised the baby’s father (I can’t recall if the two were married), who subsequently takes the baby and moves away. Jason is completely unaware this has happened.

The main character is . . . Continue Reading

I know at times I’m a terrible dreamer.

Some days this is more true than others.  On my good days that inner voice, the one that tells me I need to stay grounded in reality and not let myself get too far ahead of what I can “see”, is just a quiet whisper on the breeze.  On my bad days that voice is like thunder.  And on those in-between days, which can seem as infrequent as leap year or a blue moon, the coast is clear without a cloud in the sky and I can see all the way out to the edge of the horizon (and perhaps a bit beyond it).

Our dreams touch on our innermost, secret selves.  It takes courage to . . . Continue Reading

Until today, I had never heard of a manuscript style sheet.  I was introduced to this term in a post by Mary Robinette Kowal about her upcoming book: Shades of Milk and Honey (Tor, 2010).  While you’re there, why not visit the rest of Mary’s site to learn more about her and her work.

In the world of information technology a style sheet is a master file used to easily manipulate the look-and-feel of an entire graphical user interface system (e.g. a blog, website, certain software applications), but in the world of publishing the style sheet (a.k.a. “style guide”) serves as a . . . Continue Reading

I freely admit that I am terrible at remembering many of the details of my own childhood.  There are reasons for this which continue to manifest themselves in the fiction and poetry I write.  Nevertheless, I DO recall my earliest writing memories.

It was back in the early 1980’s when I middle school and the Halloween, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street slasher-style movies series were just gaining in popularity.  . . . Continue Reading

I don’t pretend to know very much about squirrels.

I don’t know how they remember where they bury their nuts, I don’t know how they socialize, and I don’t know how they stay warm and dry every winter in the large leaf nests they build in the upper branches of our trees, so I didn’t really know what to think about the recent small gathering of squirrels in our back yard.  . . . Continue Reading