My father died Sunday morning, early, after a short downhill slide, the end of a 4 1/2 year sojourn with cancer. Ronald G. Woodbury 3 April 1943-21 August 2011 ? Dr. Ronald Glen Woodbury of Pendleton, Ore., died on Sunday, Aug. 21, 2011. He was 68. Born in Glen Ridge, N.J., on April 3, 1943, the son of Glen and Barbara (Carr) Woodbury, he was raised in Reading, Mass., and attended the Belmont Hill School. He graduated from Amherst College, Amherst, Mass., magna cum laude in 1965. He received his doctorate in Latin American History from Columbia University in 1971. Dr. Woodbury married Melissa Teele in 1965. He started his teaching career at the University of California at Irvine and then taught at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., where he also served as a dean. In 1987 he became Read more…

I’ve been an indie author for eight months now, and a post by the Passive Guy and another by Joe Konrath got me thinking that my original post for today can wait and it’s time to share something of my journey as an independent author.  Some of this appeared in David Gaughran’s book Let’s Get Digital, but not my most recent numbers, and not the money.  http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/lets-get-digital/ When I started writing fiction, academic writing had been a way of life for me for a long time.  Writing fiction was another story. I wrote my first novel in the spring of ’06 on a whim, just to see if I could. My daughter (then fourteen) had always been ‘the writer’ in the family and I even asked her if it was okay if I gave it a shot too. That first book was Read more…

This is the web page to receive a free copy of a book, called “Let’s Get Digital” by David Gaughran. http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/lets-get-digital/ And I’m posting about it today, not only because David is a friend and has written a book about indie publishing, but because I’m in it as one of 33 authors who have found success via the indie route.  How exciting! The pitch: You won’t make any money from self-publishing. MYTH! The internet has revolutionized every business it has come into contact with, and publishing is no different. For the first time, these changes are handing power back to the writer. It’s up to YOU if you want to profit from them. Let’s Get Digital: How To Self-Publish, And Why You Should. This guide contains over 60,000 words of essays, articles, and how-to guides, as well as contributions from 33 bestselling Read more…

I thought about mentioning that 43 is the median life expectancy of the women I’ve surveyed in the Middle Ages, but that is WAY to morbid for today! I don’t seem to have my baby picture scanned in, but you’ll have to make do with 14: This is my husband and me looking dorky in 1983. At Koobi Fora Field School, Kenya (in the back, just to the left of the middle post) At Stonehenge with friends in 1988 (third from left) My eldest and me in 1991. In Belize in 1994. 2000 Akka, Israel, 2008 20 seconds ago

I found this while doing research on Pelagius, believe it or not.  It comes from this page:  http://welshpatriot.blogspot.com/2011/07/congratulations-to-pobl-powys-on-your.html I can’t decide how I feel about this, in part because we are having the very same discussion in Oregon, though it is less the Umatilla Tribe that opposes windfarms than people who live in the Columbia River gorge who don’t want their view spoiled.  I have never heard the building of wind farms framed in terms of nationalism, but it’s all over the web for Wales: This one attests that the white eagle’s habitat is being destroyed.  Wind farms were blamed for eagle deaths in Norway:  http://www.socme.org/may06downloads/birds0506.jpg Though my son points out that more birds are killed (by a magnitude of a hundred fold) by glass windows every year than wind farms.  “Building window strikes may account for 97 to 976 Read more…

In a fit of I’m-not-sure-what, I lowered the price of Cold My Heart to 99 cents across all platforms (though it will take a while for Smashwords to distribute it to Apple, Barnes and Noble, etc.).  Meanwhile, you an buy it at Amazon:  http://tinyurl.com/67v6cfl Amazon UK: http://tinyurl.com/5vxrm67 and  Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52673 And here’s the first chapter and a bit . . . (Translated from the Latin) To Archbishop Dafydd: We must speak of the evils wrought upon us by my nephew Modred and his  Saxon allies, how the peace formerly made has been violated in all the clauses of the treaty, how churches have been fired and devastated, and ecclesiastical persons, priests, monks and nuns slaughtered, women slain with children at their breast, hospitals and other houses of religion burned, the Welsh murdered in their homes, in churches, yes at the Read more…

I am off the grid for 6 whole days!  No cell phone, no internet, nada.  This to keep you entertained while I’m gone . . . “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” –E.L. Doctorow “The first duty of the novelist is to entertain. It is a moral duty. People who read your books are sick, sad, traveling, in the hospital waiting room while someone is dying. Books are written by the alone for the alone.” — Donna Tartt “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” — Jack London “I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I Read more…