Sunday, July 22, 2012

The Solution to Climate Change. . .Mouse Version



I wrote the current version of Mousenet in 2007. ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ had just swept the country, and when a friend asked how my mice would benefit the planet once they all had computers, the answer was obvious: They’d stop climate change (to find out how, you need to read the book).

Fast forward to 2011 when Mousenet finally appeared and behold–the subject of climate change had more or less fallen off the radar. I don’t think that children reading the book are affected by that fact–mice present a good enough rationale for concern about the climate. But I’ve had a few sideways looks from adults. Climate change? Really? When the subject is so 2007?

Fast forward again to this year with its many extremes, from massive floods worldwide to the coldest and wettest spring in British history and a slew of heat records in America. And thanks perhaps to financial losses as the corn crop cooks in the fields, some serious discussion of climate change is back.

So maybe it’s time for Washington to ask the Mouse Nation how to fix it. 

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Mice in Mendocino


Next week I head north to the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference, which takes place every year at the College of the Redwoods in Fort Bragg. It’s a boutique conference that has been going for over twenty years and limits itself to 100 participants, who sign up for three mornings of intensive workshop, then choose from a number of discussions in the afternoons.

I’ll be on a panel at one o’clock on Friday July 27th talking about ‘Paths to Publishing.’ And unlike the rest of the conference, this will be free and open to the public. So y’all come.