 Red Room Writer Profile
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Charles Purdy's Blog
October 3, 2009
- I haven't blogged in a while because a family obligation has recently been requiring a lot of time and mental energy--but I'm taking a breath now, and I want to write about that obligation and one of my favorite relatives: my Aunt Jerri.When my two sisters and I were little kids, a trip to Aunt Jerri's house in San Francisco was my favorite kind of vacation. There would always be an afternoon ...
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September 16, 2009
- I'm joining the entire Red Room community in writing a short blog post on this week's topic: "Forgiveness." We'll choose at least one of these blogs to be featured on Red Room's homepage next week, and we'll choose one blog writer to receive a free book from a Red Room Author. Submit your blog entry by Friday at 10:30 a.m. PDT [GMT-0700] for consideration. Be sure to tag the entry with ...
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September 3, 2009
- I'm joining the entire Red Room community in writing a short blog post on this week's topic: "Back to School." We'll choose at least one of these blogs to be featured on Red Room's homepage next week, and we'll choose three blog writers to receive free books from Red Room Authors. Submit your blog entry by Friday at 10:30 a.m. PDT [GMT-0700] for consideration. Be sure to tag the entry ...
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August 26, 2009
- I'm joining the entire Red Room community in writing a short blog post on this week's topic: "Bad Manners." We'll choose at least one of these blogs to be featured on Red Room's homepage next week, and we'll choose three blog writers to receive free books from Red Room Authors. Submit your blog entry by Friday at 10:30 a.m. PDT [GMT-0700] for consideration. Be sure to tag the entry ...
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August 19, 2009
- I'm joining the entire Red Room community in writing a short blog post on this week's trio of topics: "Sex, Religion, and/or Politics." The form and the content of the blog entry are open to personal interpretation--you can blog about one or any combination of these subjects. We'll choose at least one of these blogs to be featured on Red Room's homepage next week, and we'll choose three ...
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August 12, 2009
- I'm joining the entire Red Room community in writing a short blog post on this week's topic: "Heroes." The form and the content of the blog entry are open to personal interpretation; whether this topic calls to mind a real-life hero, a fictional character, or something else altogether, we want to read your entry. We'll choose at least one of these blogs to be featured on Red Room's ...
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August 10, 2009
- I'm a city person by choice. But I have a healthy respect for nature--I come from a family of avid campers, and I still enjoy the great outdoors. So I know better than to eat unfamiliar trail-side berries while on a hike, or to offer dinner guests the twisted root of a mysterious plant blooming on the edge of a garden patch. Many of the hapless humans we meet in Amy Stewart's marvelous book ...
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August 5, 2009
- I'm joining all of the Red Room community in writing a short blog post on this week's topic: "What are your obsessions? Your passions? Your fixations?" This topic comes to us from Red Room Author Joyce Maynard; it's an exercise she does before writing a new book, in order to see what it's really about. The obsessions you discuss can be new or lifelong, and the entry can be a quick list ...
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July 29, 2009
- I'm joining all of Red Room's Authors in writing a short blog post on this week's topic: "What was a misstep that you (or your publisher) made with publishing your first book--and how would you do things differently if you could?" (We'll choose at least one of these blogs to be featured on Red Room's homepage next week--if you're a Red Room Author, submit your blog entry by Friday at ...
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July 19, 2009
- I began working full-time at Red Room on June 1. And there are many wonderful things about working here--brilliant, inspiring colleagues and Red Room members, for instance. What's more, the offices are eight blocks from my apartment, so it takes me about 12 minutes to walk to work. I moved to San Francisco almost 20 years ago (I've moved away for a couple of short periods, but I've always come ...
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July 5, 2009
- (Thanks to my colleague Huntington Sharp, whose recent blog post got me thinking of names: I may never be responsible for the naming of a person, but I take the naming of cats very seriously.) Loving a person can be difficult, but loving animals is easy. In the several years that my ex and I were together, my feelings for the man grew complicated (as our feelings for people tend to do). But my ...
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June 24, 2009
- What's the difference between a hotel operator and a governor? This is not a joke. Well, it sort of isn't. In the early 1990s, I worked for a couple of years as a hotel operator in a large chain hotel. Like most corporate entities, this hotel chain had firmly laid-out policies and codes of conduct for employees. There were infractions for which I could be officially disciplined, be put on ...
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June 21, 2009
- I've seen some bad movies in recent weeks. OK, yes, I admit that I watched Bride Wars of my own volition. But springtime allergies and antihistamines had impaired my judgment--I wasn't feeling well, and I needed a couple of hours of pay-per-view distraction. Plus, my therapist recently observed me reading John Kelly's very interesting book The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black ...
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June 14, 2009
- I was looking at a news website last week, and I found a story about Sonny and Cher's 40-year-old daughter, Chastity Bono, announcing that she was becoming a man and changing her name to Chaz. At the bottom of the story was a poll question: "Do you approve of Chastity Bono's decision to become a man?"The word approve really bothered me in this context. And the voting options were ...
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June 7, 2009
- Procrastination gets something of a bad rap, I think. Yes, it's a plague for many writers (and their poor, patiently waiting editors)--but in moderation, it's OK. Isn't it? I think of it as something like red wine: there is an amount that's probably good for me, but more than that might cause irreversible damage to my reputation.When I'm working on a writing project, for instance, I prefer a bit ...
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