There are reasons why my blog will never be a magnet for the public. For one thing, the people around me, when I was growing up, didn’t approve of folks who talked too much—who “shot their mouths off,” as my very laconic favorite uncle used to say. So I tend to feel, with him, that it’s best to keep the mouth shut, or the fingers off the keys. The crowning reason, though, is probably  that the onset of poor vision makes it necessary to squint painfully  through various spectacles and magnifying glasses to see what I’m reading or writing—something that constantly leads to all sorts of errors when I’m dealing with print. (For that reason, writing Pangur Ban  posed constant challenges for me and for my brilliant and steadfast editor, Mary Kim.) But they say that having a blog helps a writer seem more real and read-worthy to the readers out there. So now and then I will produce a few blobs of blog.

When my book’s co-protagonist, Brother Arcadius, started forming in my mind, he came attached to a major anachronism: his family’s brick-making business. Continue reading “Arcadius and the Planet or Whatever of Doom” →