Laurel Anne Hill

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Is this the desk of Laurel Anne Hill or a scavenger hunt waiting to happen?

While I was at Readercon last week, my friend, Emerian Rich, emailed me a marvelous "tour" of a writer's workspace–a single photo of a highly-organized desk with numbers identifying points of interest.

 Although my own writing workspace is not nearly as tidy, it does possess a unique combination of odds and ends.  Check out the picture below and see if you can locate the following:

 1.  Ergonomic bed pillow used to adjust my husband's 45-year-old swivel chair to fit my dimensions

 2.  Postal meter manufactured when the first class postage rate was 25 cents for the first ounce

 3.  Postal meter manufactured when the first class postage rate was 4 cents for the first ounce

 4.  Cup of cold coffee

 5.  Box of tax records

 6.  Instructions for updating my Garmin G.P.S.

 7.  Model of a single-engine plane my husband sold 30 years ago.

 8.  Vocabulary builder I used circa 1960

 9.  Poster showing a space ship, a Barbie car, an astro-lizard and the working title of my parable, "Heroes Arise."

 10.  Telephone so ancient that Ma Bell used to rent it to me on a monthly basis.

 11.  Stack of writing papers, bills and business cards

 12.  Zip drives for a computer I no longer own.

 13.  Screenie Cleanie that is far too dusty to use

 14.  Wind-up computer angel

 15.  Outdated church directories

 16.  Postal receipt for an item mailed to my daughter in 1997

 17.  Diorama of flowers used in lieu of a real bouquet at my wedding in 1975

 18.  Guilded straw anchor given to me by my husband five years before our wedding.

 19.  Address book used before there were area codes

 20.  A thirty-year-old note from my Mom explaining the origin of her middle name.

Desk of Laurel Anne Hill
Desk of Laurel Anne Hill

Visit the website of Laurel Anne Hill (author of "Heroes Arise") at http://www.laurelannehill.com.

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Laurel Anne Hill (Author of "Heroes Arise" Reads "Reaching for Rainbows," Part 2

Five years ago, I first volunteered to cook, serve and share dinner in local shelters for homeless families.  My experiences chatting with shelter residents inspired me to write two award-winning stories: "Heroes Arise" and "Reaching for Rainbows."  "Lynx Eye" published "Reaching for Rainbows" in 2005.  Several weeks ago I recorded the first part of the story to make the piece available again.  Now I've recorded Part 2.

In "Reaching for Rainbows," a ten-year-old girl copes with homelessness, a school assignment about Martin Luther King, and the narrow line separating reality from imagination.  This is a great story for a broad range of ages and backgrounds.  No need to wait for Martin Luther King Day.  This award-winning tale has inspired a number of people to reach out to homeless families and others in need.

Visit my website (http://www.laurelannehill.com) for more about my compelling fiction, including my award-winning parable, "Heroes Arise" (KOMENAR Publishing, 2007).

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Laurel Anne Hill (Author of "Heroes Arise") Reviews "The City & The City"

I'm a guest panelist at Readercon 2009 and working on my assigned reading, which includes China Miéville's "The City & The City."  I never managed to finish "The Iron Council" a couple years ago, so I groaned a little upon ordering Miéville's latest novel.  Silly of me.  My biggest mistake in reading "The City & The City" was starting too late in the evening to finish the book in one sitting.  Alas, my eyeballs turned into bloodshot pumpkins at midnight and I had to wait to discover "who done it."

 

One might consider "The City & The City" as being set in a parallel world.  Yet the sense of place is so real.  As I read the novel, I visualized the eastern edge of Europe in our own world, and stretched my imagination to make room for the cities of Ul Qoma and Bes?el.

 

As the novel opens, an unidentified woman is found murdered in Bes?el.  Unknown at the time, she was a foreign graduate student working in Ul Qoma.  Ul Qoma and Bes?el both are sovereign with restricted passage between them.  Their cityscapes–with some shared areas–intertwine, complicating the subsequent investigation of the crime.

 

Residents of Ul Qoma and Bes?el learn from an early age to see what happens in the city they are located in and "unsee" what doesn't–even if they must unsee something several feet away from them.  Sounds impossible to believe?  Miéville pulls it off.

 

Miéville has given "The City and The City" strong forward momentum.  His protagonist, Inspector Tyador Borlú of Bes?el's Extreme Crime Squad, is sympathetic and compelling.   Miéville has created a plot as intricate as his two sovereign societies and marvelous city sights.  The only downside I noticed was in the paragraph structure of some of the dialogue.  I had to reread some sections to ascertain the identity of the speaker.  All in all, I highly recommend this wonderful and literary piece of speculative fiction.

 

Repeat warning:  this book is hard to put down, a real page turner.  Start reading "The City and The City" many hours before bedtime.  Your eyeballs will thank you.

 

Laurel Anne Hill

Author of "Heroes Arise"

http://www.laurelannehill.com         

 

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Laurel Anne Hill (Author of "Heroes Arise") Reads "Reaching for Rainbows," Part One

Five years ago, I first volunteered to cook, serve and share dinner in local shelters for homeless families.  My experiences chatting with shelter residents inspired me to write two award-winning stories: "Heroes Arise" and "Reaching for Rainbows."  "Lynx Eye" published "Reaching for Rainbows" in 2005.  Now I've recorded the first part of the story to make the piece available again.

In "Reaching for Rainbows," a ten-year-old girl copes with homelessness, a school assignment about Martin Luther King, and the narrow line separating reality from imagination.  This is a great story for a broad range of ages and backgrounds.  No need to wait for Martin Luther King Day.  This award-winning tale has inspired a number of people to reach out to homeless families and others in need.

Visit my website (http://www.laurelannehill.com) for more about my compelling fiction, including my award-winning parable, "Heroes Arise" (KOMENAR Publishing, 2007).

 

Laurel Anne Hill Reads "Reaching for Rainbows," Part One

 

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BayCon 2009: Welcome to the Light of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Steampunk at Pyrocumulon

For the love of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Steampunk, Laurel Anne Hill (Author of "Heroes Arise") and her husband, David, snapped plenty of photos at BayCon 2009 over the Memorial Day Weekend.  This slide show is the result.  Welcome to the Lost Sky City of Pyrocumulon.  (In case you wonder why I've got such a sour expression in one photo, I played "The World's Deadliest Librarian" in a zany fan movie filmed at BayCon this year.)  Be sure to visit my website at http://www.laurelannehill.com. 

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CAPITOL CITY YOUNG WRITERS: THIS ORGANIZATION ROCKS!

May 21, 2009, 10:17 am

May 16th With Capitol City Young Writers

May 16th With Capitol City Young Writers

 

I had the pleasure of addressing members of “Capitol City Young Writers” last Saturday morning in the Sacramento State University Student Union.  Capitol City Young Writers is a nonprofit organization offering literary assistance to young writers on a national level.  All you young writers out there, this organization rocks!

Check out their website at http://www.capitolcityyoungwriters.com.  A slide show of the May 16th event is available at http://www.bubblegumportraits.com/CCYW-051609/. Verna Dreisbach deserves a special round of applause for helping young writers achieve their literary dreams.

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