So, this is where I do most of my writing, in my office. If you click on the pic, it’ll show you a blown up version (if you are so inclined). One side is three bookshelves (full o’ books) and the other side is a desk with bookshelves on top. The painting on the wall is my own (I call it Angry Dude). The giant frog was a gift from my team when I left corporate life. There’s a kind of matching dragon and fish on top of the bookshelves that you can’t see. Under the Angry Dude is a card designed by Emi Tanji that my publisher sent me when The Max was born. It is ADORABLE. Aw, heck, here it is in all it’s glory:

On the shelves closest to where I work are my writing and reference books, including Writing Magic, Writing Down the Bones, On Writing, The Encyclopedia of Fairies, Critical Theory Since Plato, and many, many more. It’s kind of a random collection. There’s also a great deal of medieval reference books that I’d bought when I was working on an epic fantasy. I still might finish it someday. We’ll see. The heroine was a young girl who could kick butt AND was a heckuva blacksmith. And a young king who’d much rather study than wield a sword.

I also like to write on the front porch with my laptop if the weather was good (which up here in Chicago? Eh, there’s only about 5 months out of the year that’ll work). I used to write in coffee shops, doing the whole writer-y thing, but that was before The Max. Now, I write whenever and wherever I can, sometimes in the middle of the night when everyone else is sleeping. So imagine me in there typing away in the dark with my giant frog flying up above.

By the way, my office? Almost never that clean.