It's been a while since I did one of my mega link-filled posts about where I've been published lately.

This is, in large part, because I'm getting lots of juicy assignments for print publications (bucking a trend there, apparently) and am relying less on the sort of pay-per-page-view writing I did early on in my freelancing career. Still, I know some of you are interested in what I'm writing, so I thought I'd post a representative sample.

I'm being published regularly at AnnArbor.com, mainly business articles like these:

Executive Profile: Anya Dale, project manager, Washtenaw County Economic and Development Department

Building trades bringing multiple training programs to Washtenaw County this summer

I am also still writing for some on-line clients. I recently started writing occasional health-related articles for LiveStrong.com, for instance:

The Dangers of Colloidal Silver

Natural Ways to Help Maintain a Healthy Thyroid

Home Remedies for a Sluggish Thyroid

I'm still maintaining my education Examiner page, though posting to it somewhat infrequently as the pay there, frankly, is abysmal:

Washtenaw Education News Examiner

I had a fun feature article about healthy cooking classes in the area published in the Crazy Wisdom Journal:

Bringing Healthy Meals to Your Table

I'm also writing for the Heritage chain of papers, including the Ypsilanti Courier, the Ann Arbor Journal and the Belleville View:

McClanahan officially sworn in as public safety director

Ypsi's Community Records supports youth arts through music, to host booth at Roots Jamboree

And finally, I've kinda-sorta started a separate blog from here. I've felt for a while I need a good Web page to post my resumes, links to my published writing, etc. So, I built one, but haven't put the link out widely as I'm not 100 percent happy. Comcast hosts for free but I find the interface kind of clunky, as is the URL, unfortunately. But it's been good practice, hopefully training wheels for someday soon building a really slick professional site.

The main site is here: Sarah's Write Site

And the attached blog where I'm writing about the craft of writing and media in general, is here:

http://home.comcast.net/~sarahrigg/site/?/blog/

Example of the "clunkiness" of the site? The blog apparently lists your entries by whatever category you have them tagged by instead of chronologically. WTF?!

Found via popfiend , this video is pretty funny: what if Facebook interactions happened in real life?

Bonus: Captions for the hard of hearing

So I don't talk about it much on LJ, but in addition to my journalistic writings, I also do write fiction and poetry and occasionally submit to literary magazines.

I have a story I particularly like that hasn't found a home, and I sent it to Room magazine in January of 2009. They said on their submissions page that they usually reply in 3-4 months, so after I hadn't heard anything for 7 or 8 months, I sent a follow-up. I got an e-mail back saying (I'm paraphrasing) there'd been an organizational shake-up and some submissions had gotten misplaced in the process and they'd get back to me. So, finally, THIRTEEN months after I submitted the story, I got a rejection letter. But a nice one, at least:

Thank you for submitting your work to Room magazine. While we are unable to accept this particular submission for
publication, we would very much like to see more of your work.

Members of Room?s collective read more than 700 submissions of poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction each year, of which about 10% are accepted for publication... All manuscripts are read for quality, and about 30% are then passed on for further consideration... Your submission was one of the 30% that gets passed on to an issue editor. We really liked it, but were ultimately unable to use it in one of our upcoming issues. Please be sure to send us more of your writing.

In other news, we had a nice weekend. I took almost all of Saturday off (other than about 30-40 minutes worth of copy editing) and I had an awesome workout in the pool that left me feeling really limp and relaxed and mellow.

I also did a fair amount of home cooking. Friday night, we made cheesecake brownies. Saturday, I made vegetarian taco salad for lunch and black-eyed-peas and rice for dinner. I kind of melded two recipes into one for the latter, and I definitely think it's a keeper. On Sunday, I had a hankering to make homemade vegetarian lasagna, so I did. I didn't have my recipe for the version where you don't have to cook the noodles in advance, so I winged it and crossed my fingers. It actually turned out quite good, so I was pleased. Now we have a fridge full of leftovers!

On an unrelated note, J. and I have been enjoying some online point-and-click detective/mystery games (not this weekend, but on previous ones where we didn't have much scheduled.). J. always wants to play video games together, but our taste in games is somewhat different and/or we don't have access to ones we would enjoy doing together. So, the mystery games have been a fun compromise.

Here are a few we particularly liked, but I'm open to suggestion if anyone else out there plays them!

Detective Grimoire

Detective Jack French  We only did the first episode on this ( I refuse to use the word "webisode" which I think is an abomination.)

Nick Bounty: A Case of the Crabs

Nick Bounty: The Goat in the Grey Fedora

Also, we looked at a Shakespeare-themed one,  The Seven Noble Kinsmen. It's really beautifully illustrated and looks intriguing, but it was more complicated than what we were looking for. I think you could spend an entire weekend solving it, and we were just looking for something that'd take an hour or two.

1. I'm a "Kids in the Hall" fan, and I noticed the other day that they'd posted a short video interview with Paul Bellini, the silent character from their skits who walks around in nothing but a towel. He talks about being a fat kid and how he got somewhat liberated from body woes by being repeatedly taped in nothing but a towel....

2. I'm doing some research on the Detroit Derby Girls because I will likely end up interviewing them for a newspaper story soon. I ran across a slideshow (I can't find the exact one now) that showed them in action, and I was happy that they include a pretty wide range of body types from thin to chunky, all looking strong and fierce.

(x-posted a few places)

I read a tiny blurb about this in Time magazine and had to follow up and find out more. The part where parents talk about their autistic kids  being targeted for punishment and administrators and teachers thinking parents are "making excuses" for the kids' behavior makes me nearly homicidal...

Report on corporal punishment in schools: Disabled students receive disproportionate share

And before any of my Michigan friends get too smug about the fact that our state bans corporal punishment... it only applies to public schools. Paddling and other physical punishment is allowed in private schools here.

 

Pretty much only my friends who play Magic: The Gathering will get this one...

ETA: oops, my bad. I thought it was reference to MTG rule changes, but actually referring to WOW...

I had to dig for some of these. I don't work directly for ehow.com but for a third party that sells my articles to various sites. I knew some of my articles weren't showing up on ehow but wasn't sure where they were showing up. I ended up googling myself to find some of these:

How do commercial Nicad battery chargers work?

Causes of Decreased Sex Drive

Art History for Kids

Luxury Bedroom Decorating Ideas

Cheap Decorating Ideas

Bathroom Decorating Themes

Careers for a Bachelor's in Health Science

Different Types of Flowers for Your Garden

2009 Consumer Reports Buying Guide

What Can I Do to Stop My Hair from Falling Out?

About Holistic Acne Treatments


While I was googling myself, I found out that some prominent names in the Fat-o-sphere had linked to articles I'd written, which thrilled me no end!

The F-Word blog linked to my review of Linda Bacon's book "Health at Every Size"

and

Kelly Bliss linked my "Tips for Helping Big Folks Feel Comfortable at the Gym" article in her Plus Size Yellow Pages directory

Del the Funky Homosapien has released "Funk Man (the stimulus package)" as a free download on his site. So far, I like it. You do have to give an email address so they can send you the Del fan club email newsletter, but you can unsubscribe after downloading and they promise not to sell your email to spammers.

My public service announcement for the day...

Wallace and Gromit coloring book pages!!!

(apologies to symposiarch  for totally abusing the exclamation point in this post)

I enjoyed a Body Impolitic blog post about one-armed Czech photographer Josef Sudek. If you are interested in photography and have time, follow the links to his photographs- they're really gorgeous.

I followed other links and found the Temple University Disabilities Studies blog. It has a piece about Sudek, and also a really interesting piece about the relationship between Granville Redmond, a painter who became deaf in childhood, and Charlie Chaplin, silent film star.

Excerpt:
Redmond and Charlie Chaplin became friends in Los Angeles (a much smaller town then, of course). Chaplin, being a silent film star, was always interested in visual communication, and wanted Redmond to help him learn how ASL worked--which seems to be what's happening in the photo above. Chaplin also supported Redmond's artistic career--he set up a studio for Redmond on the film set, he bought Redmond's paintings, and he invited Redmont to appear in a few silent films, including the 1931 Chaplin classic City Lights (Redmond plays a sculptor).