My Cardboard Balcony

All right, so what do we have on the docket tonight? Well, first of all, and I didn't mention this last week, I started tutoring a fourth grade student who I got to know last year at my AmeriCorps job. Every Tuesday, we meet at the library to read together and practice certain phonemic/phonetic techniques and practice things such as sight words and word endings and all that fun stuff. The student in particular is a lovely young girl who has been through a lot, and I believe that with some extra support, her reading capability can exceed expectations. Currently, we are reading the book The Search For Delicious, which I didn't even know existed until a few days ago and so far am absolutely enjoying. Second, I started a brand new writing project. While I predictably won't go into much detail about it for the sake of keeping a level head in terms of my work, it's a sci-fi trilogy, which I've never tried tackling before. No, it is not the fantasy idea I've had ro...

"Caramel Kisses" is an unfinished novel I began to write back in 2009 and stopped working on in 2010. The two main characters - Adriana Maguire Reynard and Emma Burking - would ultimately be revised for my later completed novella, "The Liffey Is Half-Asleep," in 2011. Several elements of "Liffey" can be found in their original forms in "Caramel Kisses," such as the characters' names, the haiku scene, and Adriana's penchant for writing. Because of its influence on my later writing, I figured that this story, though incomplete, was worth sharing. Caramel Kisses: Chapter Sixteen by Belinda Roddie A success. A sold out house, a small space, but full nonetheless. The front row was packed. The second row was packed. The whole place swelled with breath and sound, each shadow and silhouette darkening the walls. Hands held single-page programs, whispers subsided as fingers clasped other fingers, teeth hissed out syllables into anot...

I finished James Joyce's Ulysses because I was stubborn, ate all the leftover butternut squash soup because I was stubborn, and got one, two, three, four of my friends to go to a baseball game with me, all because I was stubborn. Being stubborn was, sadly enough, my best trait. While others gave up too easily, I didn't know when to quit. And somehow, that kept me alive longer than the rest.