Freeman Ng

First, read this courageous comment on the bombing and shooting in Norway.

We had our own “Oslo moment” here in the U.S., of course: the 9/11 attacks. In the aftermath, there was a lot of talk about tightening national security even at the cost of compromising our freedoms. A point that was often made in defense of more, and more extreme, measures was that no matter how strong our security was already, the terrorists would only need to find one crack in the wall, and they’d be in again.

Around this time, I was working on my still in-progress YA novel on the death of Arthur, a sequel to my novel on the Quest for the Holy Grail, and these debates found their way into the following scene, which takes place after Arthur’s victory over the Ten Kings. I offer it now in order to join my voice, in however small a way, to that of “Ola”, the commenter linked to above. (more…)

A few months ago, after I submitted my YA Joan of Arc novelization to yet another publisher and was feeling like I was moving into a wait-and-see phase concerning all my YA novels, I decided to turn my attention to picture book texts. I had already written a few over the years, but they needed a lot of work, and so I plunged into that, and wrote a few new ones, too. After a burst of activity that surprised me a little, I had seven completed texts, which I’m currently submitting to agents. (more…)

I’ve decided to start posting recordings of myself reading some of my favorite poems aloud, and believe that there can be no better starting point than this poem of Wallace Stevens’ that is very much about the act of poetic creation and expression.
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Haiku Diem reached Day 365 today!

In my Haiku Diem blog post about this milestone, I announce that I’ll be producing a book of the best haiku from the past year, and that my readers will be able to vote on the final three to be included, and possibly win a free copy of the book just by voting. (Please do check it out, and cast your votes!)

Here, I’d like to ruminate a little on the other announcement I made in that blog post: that I’ll be changing the format of the haiku I write from 5-7-5 to 3-5-3. And I’d like to begin by confessing that, except for tomorrow’s haiku, which I wrote yesterday and which basically just announces the change in syllable counts, I’ve never written a 3-5-3 haiku! (more…)