Meet the Author: Shevi Arnold

Author Shevi Arnold

Shevi Arnold loves writing, illustrating, and making people laugh—and she’s been doing all three since 1987 when she started working as an editorial cartoonist for a newsweekly. She’s also worked as a comics magazine editor, an arts-and-entertainment writer specializing in comedy and children’s entertainment, and a consumer columnist. Nowadays, though, she enjoys writing (and sometimes illustrating) humorous fiction, fantasy and science fiction, mostly for children and young adults.

Her novels to date include the children’s book, Dan Quixote: Boy of Nuevo Jersey — a modern, American retelling of Don Quixote set in a middle-school — and Toren the Teller’s Tale — a YA fantasy about the magic of storytelling and about one teenage girl’s struggle to accept that magic within herself. Her latest novel, Ride of Your Life, a romantic YA ghost story, won third place in SmartWriter’s Write It Now contest in the YA category, which was judged by Alex Flinn, the author of such novels as Beastly and Cloaked. Two humorous YAs — Why My Love Life Sucks: The Legend of Gilbert the Fixer (book one) and The Secret Life of Mira Levy, Rabbi’s Daughter —  are scheduled for release in 2012. Continue reading “Meet the Author: Shevi Arnold”

Ed’s Casual Friday: Do NOT self-edit. (but when you do…)

This post isn’t exactly covering new ground, it is more along the lines of gathering a number of tips, tricks, and advisories from other posts hither, thither, and everywhither, into one place. Our own KS Brooks trumpeted betas to the heavens only yesterday, and as has previously been stated, it is ALWAYS a good idea to have an editor, a proofreader, or beta readers who are not you looking at your writing. Otherwise, your brain is going to see what it wants/expects to see when it is reading stuff you wrote. Continue reading “Ed’s Casual Friday: Do NOT self-edit. (but when you do…)”

To curse or not to curse…

I love Louis CK. He is our Lenny Bruce. There is something about him that makes everything he says funny. He says things that no one else could pull off. It’s quite amazing. Do some googling if you haven’t heard of him.

I’m thinking about Louis CK this morning because I’ve started doing an advice column, and it’s pretty NOT PG-13. But people like it. My family hates it of course. That is to be expected because it is different hearing your loved one curse (or talk about weird fetishes) than hearing a stranger curse (or talk about weird fetishes). But it raises an interesting dilemma.

Continue reading “To curse or not to curse…”

My Hormones Made Me Do It – Encore

Our L.A. Lewandwoski needed the day off, so for your reading pleasure, here’s an encore of her post “My Hormones Made Me Do It”.

Hormones. You can’t live with too many, and you can’t live without enough. Yes, my friend, without the proper hormone balance you will curl up like the feet of the Wicked Witch of the West when Dorothy removed the Ruby Slippers. Hormones are fascinating little buggers, and incredibly useful to the premenstrual writer. Sit back and enjoy the scene below as written by a woman in the grips of estrogen dominance.

I am the White Ninja.

One evening I sat at the kitchen table and watched my husband walk around the pool surveying his kingdom. Suddenly, I detested him and was determined to arrest his ability to suck in oxygen that should have rightly been mine. I imagined myself as a White Ninja, creeping stealthily up behind him, unsheathing the gleaming weapon I had sharpened only that morning. He turned, eyes widening as the swoosh of my sword smoothly sliced across his neck, decapitating him. It was a clean and perfect cut. His head bounced twice landing in the pool, the crimson clouds spreading smoothly like crimson cumulus clouds. Continue reading “My Hormones Made Me Do It – Encore”