Coyote Crossing

Harrison Solow on writing and payment therefor

Harrison Solow, interviewed at Working Writers:

In your opinion, what’s the measure of a successful writer?

My opinion is very conventional and very American. The measure of a successful writer is a published writer who gets paid for her/his

Getting them in the right order, now that’s the hard part

A cloud, constructed using Wordle, of the most commmon words in the first six chapters of the Joshua tree book.

… (continues)

Wow.

This is some great desert writing with a fantastic ending, and I mean that “fantastic” in a couple senses. Go read it … (continues)

Writers write because we must, and other untruths

A week or so ago, eating a late breakfast with The Raven at Canters’ on Fairfax, she said she couldn’t imagine me not writing. It took me by surprise. She sees me not writing most of the time we’re together. I spend most of my waking hours not

Walking With Zeke excerpt

Apropos of not much other than that the trickle of sales of my book Walking With Zeke has slowed a bit, here’s a piece of said book. Like what you see? You can buy it here.  Have a copy already? Tell a friend, write a review on Walking With Zeke‘s

Liars

Is there another group of animals that lies as persistently, as deliberately, as primates? Other animals and plants certainly use deception: the non-toxic Viceroy butterfly mimics the toxic monarch, anglerfish use bait and leopards’ coats fool the

Things of which I have never really seen the appeal

Arena rock. Sliders. The NFL. Cola. Leonard Cohen. Dr Who. The Nashville Sound. BBQ ribs. Grunge. The Sopranos. Gold jewelry. Financial gain for its own sake. Off-roading. Going to Las Vegas and staying indoors. Phish. Cadillacs.  Downhill skiing.

I’m really sorry

I really wanted to write something for the blog tonight. I’m drawing a blank.

Well, not exactly a blank. I’ve had two or three good ideas that needed more development than I had energy for tonight. I wrote the first stanza of a sonnet that I then

The Coyote Clan

“The canyons of southern Utah are giving birth to a Coyote Clan — hundreds, maybe even thousands of individuals who are quietly subversive on behalf of the land. And they are infiltrating our neighborhoods in the most respectable ways, with their

Desert Writers 1: Nabhan, Meloy, Childs

A few days ago in a thread on Facebook I idly mentioned the possibility that I might just make a short list of desert writers whose work I’ve admired over the years. People responded enthusiastically to the idea, so I actually had to put that list

I Ishimaerukoru

Here following, 13 notable leading lines from works of fiction written in English, then fed into the Translation Party engine, chewed up and spit out. See if you can guess the origins of each. If you’re stuck, each result links to the original

How to write

1. Spend most of your time reading. Start as early in life as you can. Read everything — billboards, cereal boxes, books, letters, instruction manuals, correspondence course texts, magazines and affidavits. Drown yourself in a sea of sentences.

About the book

Writing proceeds apace on the Joshua tree book. I’ve finished a chapter that introduces the dynamics of the grass-fire cycle, and am getting ready to dive into the next one without stopping for breath.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking spurred by

Speaking of dogs

Embedded in this remarkable story, part of a documentary in progress by my writers’ group colleague Martin Kent, is a stunning detail — almost a throwaway anecdote — of the true, generous, honorable nature of our companion species, shining out in

On clownsourcing

In a well-thought-out, provocative (as opposed to incendiary) 2006 essay on the perils of online collectivist thought, Jaron Lanier offers the following near-parenthetical tidbit:

The question of new business models for content creators on the

Metaphor of the day

“When late in the afternoon I finally stumbled — sun-dazed, blear-eyed, parched as an old bacon rind — upon that blue stream which flows like a miraculous mirage down the floor of the canyon, I was too exhausted to pause and drink soberly from the

Quick pointers

I just found a blog I’ll be tracking:

The Voltage Gate is a blog about ecology and the creative process, a look at two disciplines both in isolation and through the lens of the other. Here you will find reviews of current and foundational

Of the common VVeefel, or ferret

Page scanned from A description of the nature of four-footed beasts: with their figures engraven in brass (1678); Chapter X. Of the weesels.

The author: Joannes Jonstonus. The scan: from Wisconsin.

(An important note to my regular readers:

Online fires

It’s almost exactly two years old at this point, and it links to a post at the Old Blog that I have long since taken down at the request of the guest blogger, but this post by our friend rrp remains one of the most cogent and thoughtful essays on

Arcane and mysterious texts, deciphered

There’s a cultural document with which you are almost certainly familiar that for most of my life has occupied a place central to my cosmogony — the nature aesthetic, the trickster worship, the sharp inhalation of joy that each new moment in life