Sara Ryan

Reading the cold-medicine dream that is The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich, I have to slow down my usual reading speed to absorb it all — teenage slutty hobo junkie vampires marauding their way through a dripping mouldering Pacific Northwest landscape, in feral supermarkets and 7-Elevens, subterranean squats and filthy punk clubs, treacherous woods [...]

“If you’re the kind of person who likes that sort of thing, it’s the sort of thing you’d like.” Though I’m a fan of clever Venn diagrams, I could not in good conscience wear the shirt with the above design. I’m not a music geek. I’m relatively musically adventurous, but I tend not to actively [...]

If you’ve ever doubted that books change lives, I suggest you attend a Tamora Pierce event. I took this inadequate photo at eleven o’clock last night (and futzed with it slightly in Flickr’s Piknik mode). At that point, these fans had been waiting about three hours to have their books signed — and more importantly, [...]

I’ve turned in my revisions to the Bad Houses script. This may or may not be the last round of changes. I’m waiting to hear. I’m waiting as I write for Tamora Pierce’s flight to arrive. I always like to be early; knowing that I’m where I’m supposed to be. (Portlanders, do you have tickets [...]

I wasn’t surprised that there were a lot of people, but I was surprised that I knew so few of them; further evidence that Portland’s nerd community is multifaceted. We were mostly quiet while he read. Not, I would attest, because we weren’t appreciating the humor and nuance of the language, but because we wanted [...]

Methland: the death and life of an American small town, by Nick Reding. The stories of several residents of Oelwein, Iowa affected by the meth epidemic in various ways ground a larger economic and sociological narrative that connects the rise of methamphetamines with agricultural and pharmaceutical industry consolidation and patterns of migration. Because I’m always [...]

I’ve been wanting to write about Cheesemonger by Gordon Edgar since I finished reading it, shortly after Gordon’s event at the ever-awesome Reading Frenzy. First off, read Cheesemonger if you like: Punk. Worker-owned cooperatives. Cheese. (Duh.) I am a fan of all three, and also of Gordon, so I was expecting to really enjoy this [...]

Head on over to Chasing Ray for the latest What A Girl Wants post, “On the eternally infamous bad girl.” And as usual, I’m pairing a link to the latest post with a repost of one of my responses to an earlier post in the series. This one was my answer to Colleen’s question about [...]

[A character is in the midst of attempting to describe a church spire that he sees outside his window every day.] Terms swarm up to tempt me in the course of this description: Greek Orthodox, Romanesque, flying buttress, etc. These guessing words I find junked into my brain in deranged juxtaposition, like files randomly stuffed [...]

Still catching up from Boston, black nail polish now very chipped. Have been brooding about tragedies of various scales, also tempests and their associated teapots. Feeling more inclined to shut up than put up, this fragmentary post notwithstanding. But here are three good things, as a counterweight: Tales of the Madman Underground, which I read [...]