Alison's Journal

Five fantastic things on Friday

2010-07-02T20:09:00.001-05:00

I'm alive! Yeah...it's been months since I posted. Just felt moved to break out the old blog again because there were so many things I was happy about today and I remembered the Friday Five meme! Though it's more like a Thankful Thursday one day late!

Five Fantastic things this Friday:

1. Cozy beds on rainy days
2. Good music
3. Good books
4. Candy
5. Encouraging friends

There are more, so many more...like finally potty-trained 3-year-olds who say cute, loving things, & comfy, lived-in jeans, & thoughtful people, & cooking competition shows on TV, & inexpensive treats that make kids smile, & the right words at the right time...but I'll stop there for today! Thanks for being there, those who are still there ;-) , and may you find more than 5 fantastic things in your life today, too!

If all goes well...

2010-03-03T17:27:00.003-06:00

...the house I'm selling will close tomorrow, 9 long months after we moved here. Time to "March 4th" into the next phase of our lives! :-)

Happy Haiku Year

2010-01-03T19:38:00.005-06:00

Happy 2010! I haven't quite settled on my "theme" for the new year, but it's something along the lines of calmness, peace, rest, & tranquility. Not that I don't want to accomplish anything--far from it--but I want to approach things with a calm, steady attitude instead of getting frazzled or frustrated.

In keeping with that attitude, I've decided, on a lark, to try to write haiku every day of the year. Not "real" haiku with a nature theme and possibly variable lengths, nor anything I'm spending more than a couple of minutes on, but just snippets of words in a 5/7/5 syllable format, to sum up something about the day.

I don't plan to share them all online--some may be too personal, boring, or forced--but I thought I'd share my first two, and maybe some others occasionally through the year, to keep me doing it. These are also subject to revision...I just rewrote the first one from scratch before posting this!

01/01/2010:

Family gathers
to share black-eyed peas and greet
the year we've just met

On 01/02/2010 (note how the date is the same forward and backward), I bought new journals, went over last year's journal to review the year, and watched the 10th Doctor regenerate on Doctor Who:

A palindrome day
is a good day to look back
and to look forward

Farewell, Tenth Doctor
Hello, new journals and year
Let's regenerate

Agent Appreciation Day

2009-12-11T12:03:00.004-06:00

Kody Keplinger, author of the forthcoming novel The Duff, came up with the idea of Agent Appreciation Day, which is today! Many writers are blogging about their agents today (see a partial list here).

I wouldn't want my own fabulous agent, Ammi-Joan Paquette of the Erin Murphy Literary Agency, to feel unappreciated, so I had to come out of blog hiatus to join the celebration!

A few of the many reasons I appreciate my agent:

1) She loves my work! This is obviously huge. She continues to believe in it, and me, and has complimented my writing in ways that have probably made me blush. She told me that even her daughter loved my manuscripts, so it must be a whole family with good taste! ;-) She has even seen potential in manuscripts I'd already given up on.

2) She stays in touch. I've never had to wait a long time for her to get back to me on anything. Sometimes it's a day or two--sometimes it's only 5 minutes! She has called me and e-mailed me just to check in, and she always keeps me informed about the submission process. Even if I don't hear from her for a few weeks, I have complete confidence that she's on top of things, and will let me know if anything comes up.

3) She's enthusiastic and persistent. I hear about agents who give up after one round of submissions, or who send out manuscripts and let editors sit on them for six months or more without ever following up. Not so with Joan. She continues to seem determined to find just the right home for my manuscripts, and to make sure they don't just languish forever. Sometimes she'll ask me to rework something, but so far her enthusiasm hasn't waned.

4) She's patient. Not only has she not given up on my manuscripts, she hasn't given up on me even when I've been slow with things like revisions, or taken some breaks entirely because of other situations in my life. I assume she's patient with editors, too, though again, not to the point of never following up.

5) I trust her agency and her ability. While I haven't met Joan yet in person, she works for the Erin Murphy Literary Agency, and I've heard Erin speak at a conference. Erin's talk convinced me the agency would be a good fit for my writing. They represent picture books as well as novels--and I write both, they're approachable and pleasant, they know the industry well, and they have a great track record of sales. While my books haven't sold yet, Joan has made some great sales since becoming an agent this year. I wondered at first whether to take a chance on a new agent, but I knew she was involved in the writing community and that Erin believed in her, so I happily signed on, and I don't think I could have made a better decision!

6) The agency she works for is a fun, supportive one to be part of, with its own listserv and retreats, and other great writers to rub shoulders with. All the writers I know who are with the same agency are wonderful.

7) She's calm and confident. Every time I talk to her, she's a calming presence as I ramble nervously, and makes me feel like I can do it after all. I assume she projects the same confident, can-do attitude to publishers. While always seeming friendly and laid-back, she also seems like one of those people who can take on 20 projects, get them all done impeccably, and then ask "what next?", which is exactly the type person you'd want as an agent!

8) Joan is a writer herself, and I love writers! Her picture book, The Tiptoe Guide to Tracking Fairies, was named by the Association of Booksellers for Children as one of their Best Books of 2009. I think this also helps her understand the writer's end of the agent-writer relationship.

So, Joan, thanks so much for taking me on as a client, and please know you're very much appreciated! I only hope I can keep up my end of the deal and help you generate some sales! :-)

Why not live in the Austin area? ;-)

2009-10-27T21:46:00.006-05:00

I'm updating this post in December to say we've now lowered our home price by more than $18,000 from our starting price! Please tell anyone you know who lives in the Austin area (or wants to!) and needs a house! It's crazy cheap for 4 bedrooms and a big backyard! Great neighborhood with lots of parks and great schools. And there are big government tax credits in effect for both first-time homebuyers and previous homeowners! ==See the house at realtor.com!==

Thankful Thursday

2009-10-01T11:53:00.004-05:00

I aim to be thankful every day, in every circumstance, even when it looks like things are falling down around me. Today started out pretty cloudy, but silver linings started appearing soon. A few writing-related things I'm thankful for today:

1) I'm close to finishing a revision on a picture book that's been a long time coming. I have a little more to do, but...I'm closing in. And I like what I've written.

2) I've heard positive feedback about another manuscript. Still waiting to see if it more will happen with that, but regardless, I'm pumped that real live editors at honest-to-goodness publishing houses have had good things to say about my writing.

3) VCFA in the Lone Star State this weekend!

Have I got a deal for you!

2009-09-01T17:20:00.005-05:00

~~~UPDATED 10/1/09: It's been reduced by $9,000, so it's a major bargain. (We're highly motivated since we've already moved and have another house payment.)~~~

Our house near Austin FINALLY went on the market today! Please buy it or tell anyone who might be interested! Nice neighborhood, great schools, big yard, lots of storage space, 5 parks & a public pool in easy walking distance, plenty of shopping and restaurants in the area, 3 miles from the mall, only a few miles north of the Austin city limit...and oh yeah, access to the wonderful Austin chapter of SCBWI! ;-) Cedar Park made Family Circle's list of 10 Best Towns for Families in the US last year.

See the Realtor.com or Zillow listings for the house.

(Now come on, if you already live somewhere else, wouldn't you like a second home near Austin? ;-) We never would have left if my husband's job hadn't kind of dropped in our laps from elsewhere!)

What's love got to do with it?

2009-08-20T12:20:00.001-05:00

Some weeks back, my friend Rosemary Clement-Moore won the 2009 RITA award for best young adult romance novel for her book Highway to Hell. (Congrats again, Rosemary!) This expanded my definition of "romance novel," because the romance in that book takes a back seat to the paranormal mystery and adventure.

Last week I began to wonder aloud if any of my own writing might qualify as romance...whereupon my husband pointed out I'm more of an anti-romance writer! And, as my husband, he wasn't sure how to feel about having such an anti-romantic wife. At first I thought he was wrong, because most of my YA stories do have romantic subplots, but as I thought through them, I quickly realized he was right. The evidence:

YA novel 1: At first I didn't think the protagonist would have a love interest, but somehow she ended up with 3. Guy #1 blows her off and then makes fun of her to their other friends. Guy #2 flirts a bit but sees her as just a friend, and then moves away. At the end of the book, guy #3 is her best bet, but she's never really liked him that much. (They don't get together in the end, but there's a sense she could end up seeing him in a different light.)

YA novel 2: The protagonist kisses his female friend, but they decide it's a mistake. She ends up with their other friend, which makes the protagonist feel like the odd man out. This book isn't finished and there may be a hint of romance for him with someone else by the time I'm done, but so far there's not.

YA novel 3: A guy asks the protagonist to be his girlfriend. After she says no, he kills himself. (! It's not necessarily cause and effect, but that's what happens.) She later falls hard for another guy, and it seems to be mutual...until he takes off and she never hears from him again. Ever. (You think this would have teen girls throwing rocks at my door if it ever gets published?)

YA short story: A girl has a big crush on a guy, but finds out he's a jerk and realizes she's better off without him.

Published short story with teen narrator: The narrator's mom travels a long way to look for love, only to decide she doesn't need to be that desperate.

Am I warped or what? To be fair, I do have an abandoned YA I started for NaNoWriMo a few years ago, in which a girl has to choose between going to get the slushie she's craving and a spontaneous trip to the beach with the guy she's had a crush on for years (when his little brother invites her). She tries to pursue both, and crazy hijinks ensue that almost keep her from all of it, but she'd ultimately have a happy ending.

I seem able to write completely fluffy, and often absurd, light romances with happy endings. (Maybe they feel less threatening in some subconscious way.) A few years back, an anthology published a story I wrote about a young man and woman--not teens, but it's very light for adults--who fall for each other after she comes to complain about his loudly quacking duck. It's silly, but I still love it and it has a happy romantic ending. I also once wrote a sappy, likely unpublishable story about a couple who get engaged at a flea market and have a wacky wedding where everything goes wrong but it doesn't matter.

When a story came to me out of nowhere last week, the one I recited to myself while driving and then typed up later, it was a light romance, probably a first-romance story about young teens. Reading back over what I had typed, I realized it was sooo fluffy, there was almost no conflict! The only conflict was that the girl is initially too scared to call the guy, and then it turns out she's lost his number, but then she finds it. Then everything works out great for them. If I do more with it, I'll probably have to add some zany conflict. But I liked the idea of a story where the people just really like each other and almost everything goes right. The story was mainly a "how we met" story, which I admit to being a sap for (the Dallas and Fort Worth newspapers both have Sunday columns about how engaged or married couples met, and I love those). So there may be hope for me yet in the romance department!

The write kind of weekend

2009-08-11T18:37:00.002-05:00

I've been so overwhelmed by our move and the ongoing stress of trying to get our Austin-area house ready to sell that I haven't been blogging or writing much, though I have been reading blogs and writing boards, etc.

This weekend, though, I got refreshed by going to an Awesome Austin Writers' Workshop--my first time back to Austin since moving in June. While I did cry more than once about not living there anymore...the event itself was a treat! 19 of us met at the lovely home of Meredith Davis, founder of the Austin SCBWI chapter, and broke into small groups for intensive critiques throughout the day. My group, The Ramonas, included Chris Barton, Greg Leitich Smith, Lyn Seippel, and Helen Hemphill, and between us we critiqued picture books, middle grade, and young adult fiction. We also had time to talk and hang out with the larger group, and we had fun listening to anonymous first pages by nearly everyone attending. We had dinner afterwards at a casual place on the lake, Ski Shores, where a few more folks were able to join us.

In this lunchtime photo taken by Donna Bowman Bratton, I'm in the front left, and going around clockwise from me are: Lyn Seippel, Don Tate, Debbie Gonzales, Andy Sherrod, Brian Yansky, and Carmen Oliver.

These events are always inspiring! I was also glad to get good feedback on the manuscripts I shared...one of which has been on and off my back burner for 9 years (!), and one of which is almost ready to send back to my agent (I hope!).

It's lucky I got there safely, considering I had to get up at 4:30 am and drive 3 hours to Austin to get to the workshop--and couldn't sleep at all the night before! Not only were my nerves and my toddler keeping me awake, along with my usual night owl nature, but somehow a story started brewing in my head while I lay in bed. I ended up narrating most of it in my mind, in hopes I'd remember it in the morning. Sure enough, I remembered it well enough to recite the general storyline to myself out loud as I drove. I found myself wishing for a tape recorder, but didn't have one handy! But I added more as I went, and saying it aloud helped me remember it, even after hearing everyone else's stories that day. That night, relaxing with my laptop as I spent the night in Austin, I typed up the story from memory, and now I have 2462 words of something--I'm not sure what! It's a light romantic story, somewhat goofy as per usual with me, but I'm not sure if it's the basis of a short story, part of a novel, or just an exercise to get my writing brain jump-started again! Either way, it was kind of fun to have my muse on overdrive like that.

Moved!

2009-06-28T19:57:00.004-05:00

Wow, it's been over a month since I updated my blog, which is odd for me. I have a good excuse, I think--we just moved, and are still in the process of moving to some degree. Besides the Internet connectivity problems I've had, I've hardly had 5 minutes to think, much less blog! Anyway, there's much I could blog about but nothing that clearly begs for me to blog about it, so this is mainly to say I'm still around.

Even though I knew we were moving for 4 months before I did, and even though I've been preparing for it all that time, and even though I'm actually living in another city & house now (in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, where I grew up), it still hasn't completely sunk in that this is where I live now and that we're done living in Austin (still trying to fix up and sell our old house, but mostly done). I'm trying not to think about it much, because for all the positives of living here, I very much love and miss Austin and our lives there. I'd probably be adjusting better if we had some routines and/or it wasn't over 100 degrees every day since I've moved so we could go do more fun stuff, but I'm sure it'll feel more like home every day.

Not much news on the writing front, since I've been so busy and the kids are around all the time. But I do have a couple of picture book manuscripts I need to get back to revising, and have been brainstorming some about my YA projects. Sometimes I fear my stuff is too quirky to find a home with traditional publishers, but a couple of months after signing with a great agent and agency is probably not the time to let myself be overwhelmed with doubt! My resolution for the year is to focus on the positive, after all....

I'm trying to focus on the positive things about change, even though right now change is seeming like way too much trouble. But on the subject of real change being good, in the midst of our move we gathered up all the spare change we'd been collecting for several years and cashed it in at a couple of CoinStar machines, and we turned out to have over $167 worth of change!! I traded it all in for Amazon gift codes (to save the 8.9% fee I'd have to pay if I wanted it in cash), and will probably use it for a new digital camera, or else for some DVD box sets. So, change is good!

If you're in the mood for a movie...

2009-05-19T16:30:00.002-05:00

A couple of years ago, my brother Gavin acted in a movie called A Plumm Summer, which won several awards, including Best Family Film at the Austin Film Festival. It's finally out on DVD, and it's also showing on Time Warner's On Demand cable right now.

The Time Warner site currently has the movie trailer online here (you can see the back of my brother's head in the cash register scene, & later he's getting out of a car with the FBI agents...).

Here's the imdb.com listing for it and the Amazon page for the DVD.

My brother plays Wally, described in Variety's positive review of the movie as "a bumbling general store clerk." He doesn't show up for a while, but shows up several times throughout, including at the climax. It really is a good, family-oriented movie if anyone wants to watch.

Thankful Thursday

2009-04-30T11:02:00.001-05:00

1) Everyone in my family is healthy.

2) I got an agent this month!

3) She started sending my book out yesterday.

4) Isn't that enough? :)

A few steps forward

2009-04-25T17:03:00.000-05:00

I know it's been 23 days since I posted...things have just been hectic since my husband left town for his new job. He's been in the job for five weeks (and loves it, yay!), and it's six more weeks until the kids get out of school. But I can't imagine we'll be ready to move at that point! Not only are we nowhere close to getting out of here, but we don't have anywhere to move yet. Still, we're working on sorting through the garage today, and my husband has driven around some neighborhoods in our new town and visited a couple of schools. (And he's home with us right now, which is great!)

Meanwhile, remember how I said I wanted this to be a positive, purple year? Well, this is going to be cryptic for the time being, but it looks like things are moving in that direction!

What a week!

2009-04-02T10:01:00.007-05:00

I'm so exhausted, I don't have the energy to post much. But at least I did survive my first week handling the kids and everything else alone with my husband gone (to his new job in another city, until the rest of us can join him), and I'm more than halfway through the second.

He did get to come back on the weekend, so I got to go to Laurie Halse Anderson's Wintergirls book signing at BookPeople! A group of us from the Austin SCBWI had a reception with Laurie before her signing, and she volunteered to do a Q&A session for us at the reception. It was a wonderful, inspiring event, and Laurie is very personable, with plenty of hard-earned wisdom she was glad to share. Wintergirls looks like an amazing book, too. I've put off reading it just because I don't have the time right now to plow straight through it, but I can tell from the excerpts I've read, once I get started I probably won't be able to put it down.

Donna Bratton put some photos of Laurie and the reception group on her blog. You can click on either one to see it bigger. (In the group photo, Laurie Halse Anderson is third from the left on the second row, and I am third from the right.) Cynthia Leitich Smith also put a couple of photos from it near the end of Tuesday's Cynsations post.

Before and after that, I was trying to figure out how to write, write, write, while also managing my very high-maintenance kids--especially the wildly active and strong-minded 2-year-old! I recently increased his preschool days to 4 mornings a week, just for the short term, to help me get stuff done while my husband is gone. And that, plus a night-time offer of babysitting by a friend the other night while I wrote in her spare room, is the only way I made it through the week! I wrote and wrote and wrote, trying to get something out by an approximate deadline of yesterday, and got it done! Whew. Turned out my recent freelance writing gigs really taught me how to get in gear and meet a deadline, whether I felt "inspired" or not. I didn't get nearly enough sleep this week, and when I finally had 8 hours in bed last night...thunderstorms kept me up for most of the last 2 hours. Oh well!

Soon I have to go the "picnic" at my older kids' school (I hope it's indoors, given the muddy ground outside and the high wind advisory!). So, I still don't know when I'll get a moment to clean up the mess my house has become as I've ignored it--let alone start getting ready for our move!

Very hungry heads up

2009-03-20T17:48:00.003-05:00

Have you seen today's Very Hungry Caterpillar-themed Google logo for the first day of spring? So cute!

(You can see all their 2009 holiday logos here, including one for Dr. Seuss's birthday earlier this month.)

Books, cake, & pi

2009-03-14T20:24:00.003-05:00

Last month I was fortunate enough to win a copy of Judy Blundell's National Book Award-winning YA novel, What I Saw and How I Lied, from the Young Adult (& Kids) Books Central Blog. I received it this week and started reading it yesterday...and ended up staying up until 4 am today to finish it! Once I got about halfway through, I never found a place I could put it down. :) The author has a knack for building suspense, and the postwar setting was vivid. It was a very interesting read, though the protagonist deals with so much in this book, I think she must age about 20 years, emotionally, instead of just "coming of age" a little!

I did manage to pull myself out of bed a few hours later to go to the monthly Austin SCBWI meeting and hear Lila Guzman talk about increasing the marketability of your books. She had lots of interesting ideas for tying your books into school curriculum or finding relevant groups to market them to. (And made me realize I need to see if the gum recipes I allude to in one of my manuscripts are actually possible! I do have a make-your-own-bubblegum kit, but haven't tried it out yet.)

After that, it was off to a loud, crazy playplace to take my older two kids to a birthday party (at least I had my comptuer and WiFi there until my battery ran down...), where I had a bit of green-frosted chocolate cake, and soon we'll be having chocolate cream pie (storebought--I've been too busy to cook one!) in a Pi dish in honor of Pi Day!

Writing on the brain

2009-03-13T21:56:00.005-05:00

One of the worst things about moving is that my life has to revolve around our move (and daily survival with 3 kids) for the next 12 weeks. And life after that will probably revolve around the other side of the move--unpacking, settling into a new place, developing new routines, etc.--for another few weeks. Which means, unfortunately, writing time falls by the wayside.

But I 've found there's still some time to think about writing. I often find myself stuck in a (stopped) car for a while, or riding in a car I'm not driving, with time to read a little or make notes, and I also find myself stuck under a toddler a lot, which is where most of my computing time comes from (and most of it one-handed, too, with my laptop on the little table next to my couch, which makes it hard to type but too easy to play a lot of online games!).

Anyway, I recently thought of a new book idea...or, more accurately, an idea for a theme I'd like to explore in a book. It didn't really come with a plot or characters attached. Meanwhile, I have some characters and starting points of books in search of a plot, so I thought this idea could work with one of those back burner projects. It kind of fits with two of them. Then I started thinking about ALL the book ideas I have on the back burner and how long it would take me to get them done...and it's really daunting! I started thinking, I need to draft a book a month for a year to get most of my ideas out! I actually find that an intriguing idea, and might even consider it if I had the time, because I tend to write fast when I'm in heavy writing mode, but now is not the time.

I've also been thinking I don't know the main character of my latest YA project well enough. I spent some time brainstorming about her the other day, and when I was in the car yesterday, I browsed a magazine trying to find a photo I thought might look like her. I didn't find one, but did find one that looked a lot like her best friend, and also decided my main character probably has green eyes, which surprised me. So, those are the kinds of things I'm pondering in the minutes between things, so I won't fall out of writing!

Manuscripts and me on the move

2009-03-07T16:32:00.004-06:00

I've haven't been quiet because it's been slow here, but because it's been very, very busy! As much as we adore Austin and had no intentions of ever moving away again...we couldn't turn down the excellent job opportunity that came up for my husband. Soon, he'll become the head of reference and adult services for the Arlington Public Library--a place he's worked before and loved--so we're moving to my hometown of Arlington, TX, after being away for 16 years. At least it's only a three-hour drive away, so I plan to be back to Austin often!

With a major move impending that we're not even slightly ready for, it's easy for writing to fall by the wayside. And indeed, I haven't written anything in quite a while. But I did manage to get it together enough to send an applicaton for the SCBWI Work-In-Progress grant today, and also to send an entry to the Writers' League of Texas Manuscript Contest a few days ago. I sent the same basic synopsis and excerpt of my middle grade novel to both. The requirements for both were similar, though the grant application requires more background information than the contest form, and the manuscript contest has a $50 fee. I decided that, other than a little money and time, I had nothing to lose by entering. Now, if I could only finish my taxes, I could turn all my attention to our move!

In older news, in the past week or two I finally read Joni Sensel's middle grade book Reality Leak, which has been one of my son's favorites for a couple of years but which he had misplaced until recently...and also read Ruth McNally Barshaw's latest book, Ellie McDoodle: New Kid in School, which is especially relevant to my kids right now when we're moving soon. Both books were lots of fun, and highly recommended for middle grade readers! I also went to the Coraline movie in 3D, which I liked pretty well. I was neither as creeped out as I feared nor as blown away by the 3D as I hoped. (Not that the 3D wasn't great, but I've just become jaded because 4 of the last 5 movies I've seen in the theater were in 3D! The others were Meet the Robinsons, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Bolt.)

And I can't believe I never mentioned our great Austin SCBWI meeting last month, with author/illustrator Mark G. Mitchell speaking about school vists. Donna Bratton posted a nice recap of the event, and even a photo of some of us at lunch afterwards. (I'm on the left between Brian Yansky and Greg Leitich Smith. Hidden behind Greg is Debbie Gonzales, then Frances Hill and Shana Burg are at the end of the table, with Brian Anderson between Shana and Cynthia Leitich Smith, who is hidden behind Jennifer Ziegler. At the near end are author Julie Lake's husband, and the back of Carmen Oliver. Unfortunately, Donna herself was behind the lens, so she's not in the pic!) Cynthia Leitich Smith also posted about this event in her Feb. 27 Cynsations post.

Valentine's wishes

2009-02-14T00:10:00.001-06:00

Happy Valentine's Day from my little Cupid & me!

Apostrophe catastrophe

2009-02-01T10:28:00.001-06:00

It's a catastrophe for the apostrophe in Britain. (Okay, the actual headline removed the apostrophe from "Its" in that sentence to make the point, but I couldn't do it myself!)

The website for the Apostrophe Protection Society is no longer functional, so apostrophes everywhere may soon suffer similar fates. Let's just hope all the apostrophes removed in Britian won't make their way elsewhere, to show up even more often in all the wrong places. (Or should that be "place's"?)

Writers and editors should appreciate Debbie Ridpath Ohi's comic on this topic.

Books in danger!

2009-01-23T10:29:00.009-06:00

I was already horrified that the new Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act that goes into effect February 10 is threatening the ability of people to buy or sell children's products through consignment stores, charity stores, small businesses, and even eBay or garage sales. I read that whole chains of children's consignment stores might have to close their doors, and that charities like Goodwill could have to throw away every children's item they have in their stores, just because the cost of testing them for lead (which most clothing items, etc., are very unlikely to have) would be too high! This is especially problematic at a time when many people really need the cost savings of shopping for used products (or the income from selling their old products), and when it would be environmentally crazy to fill our landfills with perfectly good, usable toys and clothing.

Now I have found out that children's books may be affected, too--even books already in libraries and schools! This link is from the ALA so it doesn't mention textbooks, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were affected as well. I suspect it could also affect literacy charities that give gently used books to needy children.

Please read the following link...let's try to change this now!

ALA Action Alert - Save our children's libraries and books!

Here is a Publisher's Weekly article about it, also, and a Forbes article about the whole ridiculous regulation and how it will end up hurting the little companies and individuals. (Some are even calling February 10 National Bankruptcy Day.)

This is just crazy. Yes, a few toys, mostly imported from China, were recalled recently because of lead levels, but has there really a problem with children getting lead poisoning from books?! I have never heard of such, while the lack of access to books would be a real, definite, and major problem that would not be theoretical at all! (Besides, it's not like people are going to get rid of all the old toys, children's clothes, and books in their homes--especially now that there would be nowhere to donate them that they wouldn't have to be thrown out--so the kids won't really be "safer" if libraries stop having books for them!)

First Friday Five of 2009

2009-01-16T19:53:00.008-06:00

1) Last Saturday, I went to the Austin SCBWI meeting at BookPeople to hear the lovely and talented Jennifer Ziegler talk about writing mass market books. Over 90 people attended the meeting (standing room only!), and Jennifer's presentation was great!

2) Wednesday, my middle son turned 8! (Coincidentally, the aforementioned Jennifer Ziegler's daughter has the same birthday as my son, which probably means she's pretty cool, as Jenny's blog entry about her proves. Actually, I already knew she was pretty cool, because she liked my manuscript! :-) ) We celebrated my son's birthday with Denny's (his choice!), cake, and of course presents, and will host some of his friends at an indoor playscape this weekend.

3) Take a Chance on Art: purchase one or more $5 raffle tickets to enter to win illustrator Don Tate's painting "Duke Ellington," and support the Texas Library Association Disaster Relief Fund. It's especially important this year in light of devastation caused by Hurricane Ike. To learn more, read Cynthia Leitich Smith's interviews with TLA librarian Jeanette Larson and illustrator Don Tate.

4) I revise my blog entries (and comments, and message board posts....) compulsively, so #4 is different now than if you read this when I first posted it. ;-)

5) Some of the things I've considered blogging about lately include the craziness of toddlers (impossible to overstate), living without a full night's sleep for 2+ years (see previous item re: toddlers), the world-colliding weirdness that is Facebook (I truly spend hours pondering this), my new addiction to Sudoku (via the BrainAge video game I got for Christmas, as well as online places to play), and cartoons as they relate to writing for children in general. And maybe sometime, I really will write about some of those things!

Positive & purple

2008-12-31T21:21:00.002-06:00

Happy, Happy New Year to all!!

It's resolution time again! I accomplished my primary resolution for 2008--to finish a stranded writing project--when I dusted off my middle grade novel manuscript and completed it. I didn't do as well in organizing my house, but did get more active for at least a while, participating in a race.

I'm sure I'll set various short-term goals in 2009, but instead of having a lot of individual goals to track from New Year's on, I'm setting only one main, overarching New Year's resolution, which is: Focus on the positive.

I don't just mean looking for the silver lining in bad situations. I'm pretty good at that already. I mean that, in nearly every situation, I hope to remind myself, "How can I respond to this in a positive, productive manner?" or "How can I approach this in a positive way?" So, when the kids whine "Mo-om!" for the tenth time in a row and I'd normally snap "What?!" in an exasperated way, I want to remind myself that won't make the situation better. Likewise, when I walk in the door after being out, I want to greet my family instead of immediately complaining about the mess. I want to notice the good things and say "thank you," instead of taking them for granted.

I also mean that I want to focus on the possibilities and things that could go right, instead of letting fear hold me back as I contemplate what could go wrong. When I face a challenge, whether it's revising a novel or organizing my kitchen, I want to replace "I can't do this," "This is too hard," "It'll never work," or "I'm going to fail," with "I can do this," or at least, "I can do some of this, and see what happens from there" "I'll give it a go," and "It might just work."

I hope to focus on the things that will lift me up, and that will lift up others around me. When I'm overwhelmed by the negatives, as I know I will be at times, I don't want to be overly daunted by them, but rather to dwell on the positive steps I can take to make things better and move things in the right direction.

I also expect this to be a purple year! The manuscript I finished in 2008, Purple Panic, is with an agent right now. Whether or not this agent offers to represent me, I plan to market that novel in the new year, so I've been getting into a purple mood. I'm wearing a purple shirt right now, to usher in the new year (I'll add a purple paper tiara or New Year's hat near midnight). I also bought a purple dress and a purple tote bag and even some purple high heels! So, here's to purple, and here's to a positive 2009!

2008 in review

2008-12-31T01:11:00.012-06:00

I'll model this after my 2007 in review post, but with a few tweaks.

The year in summary: 2008 was a year of waiting for me and my family, with few real changes in our lives. It was a hard year. It had some bright spots, of course, but I'll be glad to see it go!

Most outstanding experience: The Awesome Austin Writers’ Workshop I attended in June

Some other great experiences: Connecting with old & new friends online; a trip to Galveston in April; several Austin writing events including an SCBWI conference in April and an Editor Day in December; my kids throwing a carnival for me on Mother's Day; going to my former roommate's wedding; seeing my toddler jump for joy most times that he sees me walk into the room

Favorite new people met: A bunch of writers from the Austin children's writing community (see above!)

Scariest experiences: Heavy-duty economic uncertainty; seeing my toddler (a.k.a. the fearless stuntbaby) perform wild physical feats and risk damage to himself and everything in and around our home (daily)

Saddest experiences: My great-uncle passing away; my husband not getting a job we thought was perfect

Most unexpected experiences: Getting a cat; running on purpose; my toddler jumping right into an indoor swimming pool (which also turned out to be unheated, though it was November); becoming a fan of Doctor Who; finding out my husband hadn't seen the 80s teen movie Better Off Dead, when it's one of my favorites and I thought we'd shared that point of reference for the past 17+ years (I did make him watch it after that!)

Favorite movies seen: Once; Juno; Bolt (it was a good year for one-word titles!)

Favorite TV shows: Survivor; Top Chef; Flight of the Conchords; Doctor Who

Favorite things I read: Several books by writers I met this year (& a few by writers I haven't met); excerpts of unpublished books by writer friends that I can't wait to see in print; several little books & stories my 7-year-old wrote; some great poems my 10-year-old wrote, including a group of haikus for school and a book of "A-Z Christmas Guess-it Poems" he wrote and illustrated for me for Christmas; a request for my manuscript from an agent I queried

Biggest blessings: My family; great classes & teachers for my kids; the generosity of others; the Austin children's writing community

Most impressive accomplishments: Finishing a middle grade novel manuscript; writing a short story that then got published; winning a bunch of games of Word Twist, Scramble, & PathWords (not as many as some of my other writer friends, though!); getting good feedback on my writing; completing a 5-mile race (though I alternated walking & running)

Things I missed most: Like the previous year--sleep; free time; silence; money

Out with the old: After Hurricane Ike hit, we sadly had to bid farewell to many places in and around Galveston, some of which we'd just visited in April

In with the new: A Taco Bueno opened within 30 minutes of our house, when we'd previously had to drive 90 miles to get to one (this also qualifies for the "great experiences" and "most unexpected experiences" categories!); our niece had a baby girl in March; one of our nephews got married; our toddler started Mother's Day Out in the fall (preschool-type thing 2 mornings a week); our cat Pepper was born in April (probably) and came to live with us in June

Song(s) that will remind me of 2008: Anything from the Once soundtrack

Song lyric that sums up the year for me: "Looks like we made it."

Season's Greetings!

2008-12-19T20:32:00.003-06:00

Good tidings to you and yours from me and mine!

Alison is alive and well and posting a Friday Five

2008-12-12T19:56:00.006-06:00

Surprise--I have not fallen off the face of the earth. Turns out it's not even possible! I am around and even have a Friday Five.

1) There's a new blog in town... Laura's Review Bookshelf, where Laura McCarthy will be reviewing young adult books and interviewing young adult authors. Check it out! I'm especially fond of this blog because I was lucky enough to win a $25 Amazon gift code from Laura's blog comment contest last week, which I just used to buy some Christmas gifts! :-)

2) Last Saturday, I attended Austin SCBWI's Day with an Editor, co-hosted by editor (and middle grade author) Jill Santopolo of HarperCollins and author Cynthia Leitich Smith. Jill and Cynthia critiqued the first three pages of about 30 submitted manuscripts, including mine, in front of about 50 attendees, with a ton of general Q&A time mixed in. It was very informative! We also got written critique comments from other participants. And fortunately, most of the comments I got were positive. :-) There are a few photos from the event on Cynthia's blog (most of the way down the blog post).

3) Today, I had the pleasure of sharing lunch with 15 other Austin-area writers (assuming I counted right) at Central Market--what fun! (Though I was a little daunted when only about 8 of us were still there, and I realized I was the only person at the table without a published book!) Thanks to Liz Garton Scanlon for the great idea. Children's writers are cool people.

4) It actually snowed at my house in the Austin area earlier this week! Unfortunately, it only happened after midnight and was gone the next day, so the kids didn't get to see it, but my husband took a snippet of (dark) video of the snow coming down, and they did find some icy slush left in the morning. The weird thing was, it was unseasonably warm earlier that day--according to one site, there was a high of 81 that day and a low of 31!

5) My 22-month old is currently playing around me like a whirling, Looney Tunes-style Tasmanian devil, and let me tell you, if anyone needs a stuntbaby, I've got the child for you! This kid is fearless, has amazing balance, loves running, loves climbing onto everything, and loves throwing himself off things or even just onto the ground--or onto his brothers--with full force. He was just trying to do a somersault (which he can do) down his brother's back while his brother was kneeling, and happily landed on his head on the ground. If he never performs an aerial skateboard, snowboard, or dirt bike trick (or perhaps joins the circus), I'll be surprised! Also, my fondness for children's books aside, Goodnight Moon has nothing on his enthusiastic new "Bye-bye, Moooooo!" yelled out to the moon when we're driving down the street or coming into the house on a moonlit night like tonight!

Got children's books?

2008-11-10T19:57:00.010-06:00

Got children's books? Want to buy some as holiday gifts? This article by Austin author Lindsey Lane lists some of the many children's books by Austin authors, and could serve as a good shopping list!

Another Austin Treasure: Children's Book Authors
from The Good Life magazine

And to her list, let me also add Philip Yates' newest picture book, A Pirate's Night Before Christmas, April Lurie's 3 young adult novels, Dancing in the Streets of Brooklyn, The Latent Powers of Dylan Fontaine, and Boyfriends, Brothers, and Other Criminal Minds, and Lila Guzman's many books including George Lopez: King of Latino Comedy and Lorenzo and the Pirate.

The article also didn't mention authors whose books aren't out yet, but Chris Barton's upcoming books, such as his non-fiction book The Day-Glo Brothers (coming out July 2009) will soon be worth a look! And Christy Stallop illustrated K. Pluta's adorable picture book, There's a Yak in My Bed!, from Austin's own Blooming Tree Press.

And come to think of it, also check out the other books from Austin's Blooming Tree Press, including From the Desk of Septina Nash: The Penguins of Doom by Greg Fishbone, and Summer Shorts, a fun anthology of summer-themed stories and poems for readers aged 7-12, including a story and poem by me...as well as other selections and art by some of my online friends!

P.S. It's completely unrelated, but my former theatre buddy from 8th-10th grades, Shelley Seale, also has a local business profile in the same issue of The Good Life!

After the candy rush

2008-11-01T18:06:00.002-05:00

Halloween was yesterday, so today must be...Christmas! Well, at least that's what the stores seem to think. (I was in Hallmark yesterday and heard a woman say, "Christmas is sneaking up on us this year!" And I thought, well...it's actually 2 months away, also known as 1/6 of the year. And Hallmark has had ornaments since July, so it hasn't snuck up on them!)

Around here, though, it's Candy Day. Actually, we've been rationing it, but there's still candy everywhere I look. I have never seen so much as my kids got from trick-or-treating this year! (The older boys kept going with their friends' family after the rest of us came home, so they went longer than we normally would.)

Anyway, my 10-year-old was Indiana Jones. I couldn't find a dark jacket for him, but I think he looked pretty good.

My 7-year-old was Prince Caspian...we haven't even seen the movie, so we mainly thought of him as a knight. I saw the costume on sale and he liked it. (My older son and I have read the book, but he hasn't yet.)

So, who would win in a fight between a whip, a sword, and...a bear?

My 21-month-old went trick-or-treating in the Pooh costume I bought when his oldest brother was a toddler:

But because I'm such a sucker for baby costumes, I couldn't help buying him a monkey costume at a consigment store for his school festival...as shown in my previous post...and also a Dumbo costume at Goodwill for $5 new with the original tags still on.

Meanwhile, our cat would like everyone to know she is NOT amused to wear a chicken hat!

And meanwhile I am not doing NaNoWriMo this year. Or at least I didn't sign up. The main reason is that you're supposed to start a new novel for NaNo, but I still need to finish last year's NaNo novel! And yet...if I don't actually finish it, I might as well have started a new one, you know? Because I do have an idea... so, I need to get to work on my old novel! But this weekend I have to write a freelance article, so that comes first.

Happy November to all!

Big day for little book (and candy) lovers

2008-10-27T14:43:00.004-05:00

After we took our little monkey to his preschool festival yesterday...

I took my bigger ~~monkeys~~ kids to BookPeople in downtown Austin to attend PJ Hoover's book release party for her middle grade adventure novel, The Emerald Tablet. Here they are with PJ as she signed our copy of the book.

On the right, my 10-year-old is holding (upside down) a guide to the Lemurian alphabet from PJ's book. He did a project on all types of hieroglyphics last year, so this should be right up his alley. On the left, my 7-year-old is holding the cool pumpkin bucket his big brother won for correctly remembering PJ's job before she was a writer (designing computer chips; and since I wouldn't be surprised if he ended up as an electrical engineer himself someday, I'm not surprised he remembered that!).

The bucket contained an Emerald Tablet t-shirt, a couple of glow sticks to stay up reading it, a laminated bookmark, a pencil, and a cool eye-shaped spiral notebook. There may have been more, but I'm not sure because it was buried under the candy my kids grabbed from PJ's generous bucket of candy for the kids! Both kids also got miniature pumpkin or cauldron buckets adorned with laminated Emerald Tablet keytags and filled with candy corn. What a haul! (These kids were spoiled to bits yesterday, between that and the preschool festival, where candy was also plentiful, my 10-year-old ate two slices of pie, and my 7-year-old kept playing a 25-cent game that gave stuffed animals as prizes every time, eek!)

PJ also has a detailed account of the event on her blog--she says over 150 people showed up! It was quite a crowd, and her presentation was great.

Though best, of course, was getting a copy of The Emerald Tablet. We were lucky enough to get one of the last couple of copies before they all sold out...before the event even started! I knew my kids would want to read it right away, and sure enough, Ryan started reading it on the way home and we had to take it out of his hands at dinnertime, because he didn't want to give it up to eat! Good job, PJ. :-) With luck, I will get to read it someday, too!

Writers, writers everywhere

2008-10-24T12:39:00.004-05:00

This week my 2nd grader brought home a book from school--Cork & Fuzz: Good Sports by Dori Chaconas. I got all excited, and said, "I know her! She sent us a toy Wienermobile!" My son was slightly amused and interested to remember the toy Wienermobile & other books we'd read by her, but then added that he had just picked it because it looked like a good book. :-) I realized I do this all the time and must sound odd to other people walking past us at the library, bookstore, or school book fairs: "Hey, I know her!" "I know him!" "We already have a signed copy of that at home!" And I know my kids have told their teachers their mom is a writer (who somehow has no books). They probably all think I'm crazy...!

Speaking of writers I know, last week I went to a great Austin Youth Lit social at the fabulous home of Cynthia and Greg Leitich Smith. It was fun to mingle with everyone and to meet The Gollywhopper Games author Jody Feldman, who was visiting Austin from St. Louis. Cynthia blogged about the evening...and yes, I'm the one in the vampire cape and bunny ears while the majority of guests were dressed normally! (Just to make it clear, that's not how I normally dress. ;-) ) (P.S. Apologies to Shana Burg for not trying her hard-won caramel apples!)

I also joined JacketFlap yesterday, if any other writers there want to friend me.

Busy week

2008-10-14T22:18:00.000-05:00

Friday we had a date night (hooray), and saw Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, our first movie to see in a theater together since our 20-month-old was a tiny sleeping thing in a carrier, and our first without kids since before he was born. Even though I write YA, and liked Nick & Norah pretty well, I have to admit it made me feel old, because I was viewing a lot of it from a parental perspective, wondering where these kids' parents were while they were staying out all night long in New York City, and worrying about them enabling their drunk friend, putting themselves and other people in danger (esp. with their driving), etc.! Now technically, I did stay out until 4 or 5 am all the time even when I was just 17 and 18, and I found myself in stupid and potentially dangerous situations on more than one occasion, but I was in college at the time and these were supposed to be high schoolers, so I often found myself feeling concerned for them more than I was rooting for them. I think I have just entered old fogeydom. (Also, I always like Michael Cera, but...how many movies or TV shows really need the same character? He wasn't playing the Nick character from the book, he was himself as we've always seen him.)

Saturday, as the world should know, the Texas Longhorns beat Oklahoma in football, and are now ranked the #1 college team...Hook 'em Horns! Not that I saw much of it--I spent most of my time shopping for necessities, and my son went to a birthday party, and my poor husband had to record the game and watch it spread out over about 6 hours.

Sunday morning, I participated in a 5-mile walk/run. I was planning to walk the whole thing, not being a runner. My main goal was not to come in last, and I was really hoping to beat 1 hour and 12 minutes, which was the time of the 200th finisher in the last results I could find online for this race. But even though that was a very modest goal, I'd never actually gone that fast before, nor had I ever gone even 4 miles at once in my life before race day. The previous night, I only got 3-4 hours of sleep, and I was having something like sinus trouble or allergies, and had only walked once the week of the race! So I wasn't too prepared, BUT adrenaline and unexpected competitiveness got me to run for probably at least a half mile of it, and I ended up coming in number 217 out of 239 people, with a time of 1:08:22, which was better than I thought I could do, so I was happy. :-) I even found myself thinking, "Hey, if that was 5 miles, a 5K would be even easier!" and looking into 5Ks... However, the knee I fell and twisted a week before the race is in pain now and I've been having to wear an Ace bandage some, so I can't get too into that idea right now.

Later on Sunday, I took my 10-year-old and 7-year-old to see the City of Ember movie. (And wow, is it ever expensive to see a movie these days! Even for a matinee, to get 3 tickets, a popcorn, a candy, and 3 drinks was $38.50!) We liked it. The City of Ember is my older son's favorite book, and he said he'd rate the movie 3.5 stars out of 5, but would rate the book a 5. The poor kid had to have painful dental work today and couldn't go back to school, so he used the day to re-read the book. My younger son also says he wants to read it now, though I kind of doubt he can/will. I haven't read it myself for 4 years. From what I remember, I thought the book was better than the movie, but both were good. The city in the movie looked very much like I pictured it when reading. I'm shocked the movie only got 45% positive reviews (as aggregated by the Rotten Tomatoes site), but then, I can't imagine what it would be like to see it without having read the book. It could be that much of what I liked about it came from my prior knowledge of it and the fuller story. I did think it wasn't quite as exciting as it should be and that the ending came too easily--my son said the movie left out some of the most exciting parts of the book, and neither of us thought the new additions made it any better. I don't have much patience with the reviews that question the whole idea of a dystopian movie aimed at children (and really, it's about overcoming that, isn't it?), but I agree with the ones that said the movie seemed to lack urgency.

Zoo-ming thoughts

2008-10-07T12:14:00.006-05:00

We went to the Austin Zoo this weekend, a small zoo & animal sanctuary. It immediately sent a lot of potential poem or picture book lines scurrying through my head, where they've been trotting around for a couple of days (apparently a hereditary trait, as my 10-year-old son has been making up haikus about everything lately; he made up several about the magic club meeting we went to last night). I'm pretty sure I don't need new picture book ideas until I finish other projects, but it reminded me I should get back to my languishing zoo-themed picture book manuscript. I started it years ago and got positive comments from critiquers, but it remains a bunch of good lines in search of a story arc. I'm trying to think, think, think on that one right now!

As we were leaving the zoo, I was thinking about several things at once and managed to fall off a porch I hadn't noticed was roped off! Unfortunately, my digital camera was in my hand with the lens open at the time, and it broke. I do have an older camera that still works, but can't believe I broke my good one. But at least I didn't break my leg or something. I did twist my knee slightly, so I hope that doesn't affect me in the 5-mile walk/run I'm signed up for this weekend!

Also, see if you can tell which of these photos was taken at the zoo, and which was taken at home. Is my 1-year-old a little monkey or what?

Thankful Thursday

2008-10-02T14:43:00.000-05:00

1) I am thankful we are still alive and, at least for today, have a little money in the bank.

2) I am thankful that an agent requested my manuscript. :)

3) I am thankful that my oldest son, a 4th grader, maxed out the reading level test at school, reading at the level expected for a high school graduate!

4) I am thankful that my middle son, a 2nd grader, has been writing up a storm just for fun, and designed some adorable bookmarks about reading for a bookmark contest at school...even though he claims not to like reading himself.

5) I am thankful my 1-year-old daredevil is still alive and adorable even though he already sets up and performs wild jumping stunts for himself and tries to lie down in parking lots...and that he touches his index finger to mine in a loving gesture nearly every time I say "I love you," even if he's half-asleep.

6) I am thankful I got my garden article turned in earlier this week.

7) I am thankful I managed to walk 3.5 miles today, even though it was so hot I thought I wasn't going to make it.

8) I am thankful I had delicious bean tacos today, even though they probably had the fat content of a small whale.

9) I am thankful my computer is working fine again, after being almost unusable earlier in the week (we made some software changes and deleted some stuff, so the hard drive is no longer basically full).

10) I am thankful that, after writing 9 other things I'm thankful for, I realized I might as well stop now because I'm thankful for so many things I could go on all day.

Sweet 17

2008-09-14T10:18:00.000-05:00

I've been married 17 years today!

Now, I certainly remember turning 17. I felt like I was pretty much grown up then. In fact, I was already out of high school, and heading off to college within a month. I don't even feel all that different now than I did at 17. So...could my marriage really be that old? Old enough to have gone through a whole life's worth experiences for a 17-year-old, as long as the time from my birth until I left home for college? Wow! It just doesn't feel that long!

We had access to a "parents' night out" Friday night, with childcare for all 3 kids, so we celebrated that night with dinner out and then a long walk in a pretty park, and we talked for 2 straight hours about our memories of the past 17 years, year by year. It was pretty cool. And in 2 days, it'll be 19 years since our first "date"!

Here we are 17 years ago, and here we are 2 days ago. Happy Anniversary to us! ;-)

Hang in there, Galveston!

2008-09-12T11:23:00.001-05:00

Wow, the fallout from Ike already looks scary on TV even 10 hours or so before expected landfall! I sure hope Galveston and all the other affected areas will make it through! I've gone to Galveston nearly every summer since childhood so it has a special place in my heart, and it kills me to see the water so high already. Some of those wooden houses and buildings on stilts look like they could be just sticks by this time tomorrow.... :( For anyone out there who is in the path of the storm, stay safe and get out if you need to! Hoping it spares all my friends in Houston, too.

The good, the bad, and the not-sure-yet

2008-09-11T14:43:00.002-05:00

1. The Good - I got my contributor's copy of The First Line literary magazine today, with my story "Mom's Five-Star Good-Bye" in it. Also a check for the story. Oh yeah, baby!

2. The Bad - Because of the potentially scary weather Hurricane Ike is predicted to usher in, our Day with an Editor Saturday has been cancelled. :-( Of the many, many SCBWI events I've attended over the past 10+ years, this may be the one I was looking forward to the most! So, I very much don't like Ike. Though with luck the event will be rescheduled soon.

3. The Not-Sure-Yet - My husband had a job interview at the library today and thinks it went well (he did tons of research and preparation the week leading up to it), but they still have other candidates to interview, so who knows? The job seems perfect for him, and he for it, so if he does get it, this will replace #1 - The Good, and if he doesn't, it will replace #2 as The Bad!

Hoping my luck holds out!

2008-09-10T16:48:00.002-05:00

What a lucky week so far! Let's hope the pattern holds...

Alison Dellenbaugh has rocks in her house!
I won second prize in Nancy Viau's contest promoting her new middle grade novel, Samantha Hansen Has Rocks in Her Head! (See her fun blog entry naming the winners.) I could choose either a cool pail full of goodies like pencils and rock candy, or a rock collection in an egg carton. I let my kids choose, and being 2nd and 4th-grade boys who love rocks, they chose the rock collection (though it was very close and they would have loved the pail, too!). The rocks came today, and my boys were quite excited. They were also excited to find some rock candy lollipops in the box! I think this will be a great thing to take to my 4th grade son's class when they study rocks and minerals later this year, along with a copy of Nancy's book, which will be perfect for this age group!

Here's the new treasure. Also note 2 of the lollipops are already gone! :-)

How deep is my luck?
My luck is so deep that I also won Jama Rattigan's cool blog contest earlier this week to guess her and her husband's song in honor of their anniversary! Because it was their 30th anniversary, she sent me a $30 gift code for Amazon!! And in case you couldn't guess it from the heading above, their song is "How Deep is Your Love?" by The Bee Gees.

I'm thinking I will probably use the Amazon gift code from Jama to buy a copy of Nancy's book! (Among other things.) So, these wins rock all around. (Rock & disco, that is!)

Just thinking about tomorrow...
Tomorrow my husband has a job interview at the local library, and we're convinced that this would be an ideal job for him, and that he would be an ideal candidate for the job! So, here's hoping everything keeps going right tomorrow!

Take a hike, Ike!
Finally, I'm slated to go to our SCBWI Day with an Editor on Saturday, and the abbreviated forecast for Saturday on the Austin newspaper's homepage just says, "Hurricane Ike possible." Eek! How can we get a hurricane when we're hundreds of miles inland?! Some forecasts are predicting 60-70 mph winds, 6-8 inches of rain, and possible tornados! No, no, I don't like Ike! I do not like it in my town, I do not like it swirling 'round. Ike, Ike, go away, let us have a perfect day!

Things I love

2008-08-30T00:34:00.002-05:00

Some random things I love, just because I'm feeling inspired. A very incomplete list!

Chocolate cake
Strawberry sorbet
Fruit tarts
Color
Wide open spaces
My baby's soft, chubby cheeks and dimpled hands
Words and letters
Word games
The Internet
Going to movies
British comedy
The smell of rain
My iPod
Sleeping in
Checking the mail
Grab bags, goody bags, & other small surprises
Typography
Lemon Pepsi
Lemon creme cookies & vanilla creme cookies
Egg salad
Fried eggs
Funky forks and spoons; also sporks
Moonroofs
Trampolines
Getting paid to write
Clouds against the blue sky
Nooks
Surrealism
Improv acting
Winning contests
Dolphins
Rabbits
Frosted glass
Cobalt blue glass
Vellum paper
Confetti
Porch swings
Reconnecting with old friends
Connecting with new friends
Ruins of old buildings
Intricate patterns
Art with texture
Good design
Magazines
Travel
Pajamas
Old typewriter keys
New office supplies
Notebooks
French onion soup
Beans
Tapirs, echidnas, hedgehogs, anteaters, elephants, and giraffes
The moon
Cool chairs
Indiglo watches
Renaissance-style music
Theme parties
Silver or pewter-colored leather (or faux-leather)
The smell of apples
Autumn air
Bowling (rarely do it, but always enjoy it)
Songs with the sound of rain or storms in them
Making progress
Spirals and swirls
The sound of my toddler "singing"

Weekend wrap-up

2008-08-17T15:02:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I went to an Austin SCBWI meeting and heard Helen Hemphill give a great talk on plotting novels. Very helpful info! She's also leading a plot workshop at the Highlights Foundation next month. It was quite a packed-out meeting, too, with more than 70 writers in attendance! While there, I picked up a packet of the 34 manuscripts that are going to be critiqued at next month's Editor Day.

Skimming all the manuscripts today gave me pause, as did thinking about those 70 people at one little children's writing meeting in one city... I mean, there's a lot of competition out there! There are a lot of good writers with a lot of good manuscripts, and I just hope, hope, hope there's at least a little room left for my books! Some days I get so discouraged. I have been at this so long, and it's hard to believe it will ever happen for me. And yet...for some reason, I don't really know why, I keep having this little thought in the back of my mind that this is going to be my year. I don't know if my mind means this calendar year, or just the next one-year period, but it's a nagging hope that things are going to start going my way, and I hope it's right!

Speaking of years, I've been a mom for 10 of them now. My oldest son hit double digits yesterday. We had a nice celebration at a mini-golf and arcade place with his two closest friends. Two mini-disasters (a storebought cake on which the frosting literally fell off, and my middle son forgetting to wear shoes to the arcade!) were handled without much stress, and everything else went well--my son thanked us several times for a wonderful birthday!

Now, one more week until school starts!

I made a sale!

2008-08-13T13:58:00.004-05:00

I just got an e-mail from The First Line. They are buying my story "Mom's Five-Star Good-Bye"! Hooray! The magazine is for adults, but the story has a teen narrator and a YA feel. And it will be out this fall!

Write night

2008-08-08T01:23:00.004-05:00

Around 30 Austin-area children's and young adult writers gathered for a Happy Hour Wednesday at Waterloo Ice House. Unfortunately, I didn't even get a chance to say hi to everyone who showed up, but everyone I did speak to was great company! As usual. Thanks to Cynthia Leitich Smith for organizing the event, and Jennifer Ziegler for finding a good location for the meeting.

Here are a few pictures, and I know P.J. Hoover's blog has a few more.

Donna Bratton looks quite animated as she talks to P.J. Hoover and Madeline Smoot.

This blurry pic shows Brian Anderson speaking to Jennifer Ziegler. Just behind them is Debbie Gonzales.

Lindsey Lane, Debbie Gonzales, and Mark Mitchell were remarkably patient with my attempts to get a decent shot of them.

A very bright-looking Shana Burg (and of course she is bright!) hanging with Madeline Smoot near the end of the evening.

Recent Austin transplant (convert?) Margo Rabb with Varian Johnson, winner of this year's Alumni Award from the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program (congrats, Mr. V!)

And for the record, please note that organizer Cynthia Leitich Smith's absence from the photographs posted does not necessarily have anything to do with the fact that she writes books about vampires, who apparently do not show up in photographs. ;-)

Happy things

2008-07-30T18:54:00.002-05:00

1) My toddler did great at the Parents' Night Out the other night! He even seemed to like it! He was there 4 hours, and the worker was sad to see him go because she said he had such a great laugh!

2) Because of that, we got to go on a real date, without kids, for the first time in 18 months!!! (Technically the second time, but the first time we couldn't stay long and he did cry nearly the whole time we were gone.) He picked up some kind of stomach bug from the childcare that made him get sick about 20 times over the next couple of days...but it was worth it!

3) My husband finally finished reading my midgrade novel manuscript last week, and told me, "I don't see any reason why we won't be seeing this on the shelf at Barnes & Noble soon." :-)

4) To my amazement, Jennifer Ziegler's daughter and son both read and liked the aforementioned manuscript when I gave it to Jennifer to read, and her daughter, who is in the target age group, said it was her "favorite book ever"!! That was so unexpected and wonderful, it probably made it worth it to write the book even if it never gets published!

5) I get to look at this every day.

Friday six

2008-07-25T11:32:00.002-05:00

Six things on Friday, because alliteration is overrated.

1) My baby turned 18 months old yesterday and learned to jump off the ground with both feet in the evening! My other kids didn't learn that until around 2. This one keeps going, and going, and going... We took him to the children's museum during the day, and at night we had a mini half-birthday celebration for him with cookies he didn't care for and popsicles he definitely did.

The very happy half-birthday boy:

2) The older boys went to art camp this week at an ice rink. I went ice skating with them on Wednesday. It was fun, and I especially enjoyed the fact that skating rink music hasn't changed much since my heyday of skating in the 80s! I remember hearing The Doors, Journey, Howard Jones, and other stuff from the 80s or earlier. So, I may have liked it more than my kids did.

Blurry pic of me on ice, taken by my 7-year-old:

3. I need to finish my monthly garden article and turn it in. It's one of those months where I have so much great information, it's going to be really hard to make the article short enough!

4. We're trying a "Parents' Night Out" again tonight for all 3 boys. Last time we tried one, we were called to pick up the baby because he wouldn't stop crying. This was the first week he's ever played in the church nursery instead of crying or sleeping the whole time--still cried a lot, but played in the middle--so maybe it'll work, but I'm not getting my hopes up too high!

5. Our computer broke this week! Just what we need when we can't afford to replace it. It says it can't find the operating system--yikes. That's the family computer. I still have this laptop (with almost no hard drive space available...), so my husband is going to remove the hard drive from the other computer and hook it up to my laptop to see if the data is still accessible. I sure hope so, because it has our whole lives on it...photos, documents, music and audio clips, etc., going back about 13 years! A lot of it has been backed up, but I think we'd lose the last few months' worth.

6. I'm going to Austin SCBWI's "Day with an Editor" in September. I got in while there were still critique slots available--hooray! I think the whole thing is probably sold out by now.

Time management, tongue tattoos, & video

2008-07-19T18:08:00.005-05:00

This morning I went to Austin SCBWI's monthly meeting to see P.J. Hoover talk about goal-setting and time management. She gave out the coolest thing after the meeting: personalized "tongue tattoo" fruit roll-ups with the name of her upcoming book, The Emerald Tablet, printed on them, along with her name and Oct. 2008 (the release date)! A friend of hers won personalized fruit roll-ups and gave them to her. Too fun!

Here are P.J. Hoover and author/illustrator Mark Mitchell showing off one of the fruit-roll ups. Unfortunately, the color in this photo is awful so you can't really see it! I don't think the fruit roll-up, which was reddish pink, was really the color of her shirt, which was somewhat orange. Oh well! P.J. (Tricia) and Cynthia Leitich Smith took close-up pics of a roll-up and will probably post those later.

In other news, I pushed past my inexplicable bias against online videos and watched the much-ballyhooed Dr. Horrible videos last night... which turned out to be right up my alley.

Then, probably because of that breakthrough in online video watching and my memory earlier this week of making lots of cassette recordings as a kid, it occurred to me that my digital camera will take short videos. I've used it many times to take family videos, but I just realized that I could do other things with it. So while my husband has been out swimming with all 3 boys this afternoon, I've been using it to practice reading my manuscripts out loud, and even doing some silly voices, singing, and all kinds of goofy stuff just to practice public speaking, etc.

Why didn't we have stuff like this when I was in theatre??? Okay, a couple of families had their own video cameras, but it wasn't common. They were new then, and I didn't really get to use them. I even bought a strange video camera in college so I could make my own short films, but it was bulky and didn't work with regular lighting, so it really wasn't useful. But if I could have taped myself rehearsing or working on stuff years ago, I think it could have made a big difference! Interesting... I can't see myself doing video blogs because (a) I don't really like them, and (b) I write partly because I'm more comfortable communicating in writing than in person. But every time I can see things in a different way, it inspires me!

Coming back to Earth

2008-07-01T12:45:00.011-05:00

I still haven't come down from the high of the Awesome Austin Writers' Workshop this past weekend (see my entry about that), or recovered completely from my whole insane past week, which also included finishing a novel draft, getting my first-ever cat, getting major car repairs, and doing a whirlwind job of interviewing people and writing my monthly freelance column when the deadline got pushed up.

Yesterday, I never got out of my pajamas! I didn't sleep all day, but didn't leave the house, either (though my kitty cat went to the vet with my husband). Today, I'm slowly trying to get back to Earth. My house looks like a few clutter bombs exploded, so there's that to take care of, plus my older kids decided to share a room and we need to rearrange stuff in a few rooms because of it. But I also need to determine what's next on the writing front.

On the reading front, I can finally start reading The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart, which I bought a few weeks ago and haven't had a moment to read. I also want to run out and get the new books of some of my fellow workshop participants, especially A Thousand Never Evers by Shana Burg and How NOT to Be Popular by Jennifer Ziegler.

As for writing, I have this newly drafted midgrade novel I need to figure out what to do with. With luck I can get it critiqued and get back to that later. Then I'm only 20,000 words into the novel manuscript I had critiqued at the workshop, and people there were after me to finish it (yikes, pressure!). I also have my old YA, which desperately needs a revision. My original idea was to work on the old YA next, to get a better handle on the YA form with something that's more complete, then come back to the new one and apply what I learned. But after the workshop, the characters from my new one are calling out to have their stories told!

Oh yeah, and a few photos from the workshop that I haven't already seen on other blogs...these are courtesy of Cynthia Leitich Smith. Also note Liz Garton Scanlon and Jennifer Ziegler have now blogged about this, too.

L to R: Liz Garton Scanlon, me, April Lurie (in the back row), Erin Edwards, Philip Yates

(I'm in the red again. That's Chris Barton in the center, Carmen Oliver with her back to the camera, and Julie Lake in the very back. Jennifer Ziegler is barely visible on the right.)

L to R: me, Jane Peddicord, Chris Barton (in back), Debbie Gonzales (in back), Greg Leitich Smith

L to R: Brian Anderson (in back), me, Philip Yates, April Lurie (behind Philip), Varian Johnson, Varsha Bajaj, Lindsey Lane

(And don't forget to read my previous AAWW post if you missed it.)

Awesome workshop

2008-06-30T16:01:00.002-05:00

I spent three intense but wonderful days this past weekend at the "Awesome Austin Writers' Workshop" hosted by Cynthia Leitich Smith and Greg Leitich Smith, mostly at their home with the exception of a party at Helen Hemphill's fabulous downtown Austin loft. This involved 25 to 30 writers, in-depth critiques, and excellent food and conversation. I haven't managed to process the whole experience yet, but it definitely lived up to the "Awesome" in its name!

But it wasn't just awesome; for me, I think it even bordered on life-changing. If I look at myself at the protagonist of my own life and try to figure out what I want, what my underlying character goals and motivation are...I think I got some of those things this weekend. While I didn't achieve my external goal of getting a book published, I experienced payoff in some of the areas that make me want to be a writer in the first place. I felt that I was heard. I felt that I was validated. I felt that I was taken seriously. I learned a lot. And the creative charge was amazing!

In my teen years, I was very involved with theatre. I loved the process of acting, bringing new worlds and characters to life (similar to what I still do in writing), but much of what I loved about theatre--the thing that kept me hanging around even when I didn't get a part--was the energy and atmosphere of being surrounded by creative people, bouncing their creativity off of one another, expanding their horizons together, and challenging each other to do excellent work. I have felt a taste of that creative energy again at writing conferences and writing retreats, and even to an extent in my last job as a technical writer, surrounded by other writers, most of whom had their own creative aspirations outside the job. But in my job, we had interesting people focusing on largely boring work. We could spice it up with creative approaches, but I still couldn't get too excited about hardware driver code. At this weekend's workshop, we had interesting people focusing on interesting work, really delving into it and inspiring one another to grow and see things in new ways. This meeting of minds and ideas in the framework of a vibrant and supportive writing community was far more intoxicating than the wine served at the party portion.

At the end of the weekend, Jane Peddicord described Cynthia and Greg as being like fairy godparents for the Austin children's writing scene, and indeed the experience they helped create for us was magical! But I'm hoping that, unlike Cinderella's pumpkin/stagecoach magic, the magic from this won't wear off anytime soon. I feel that I ended the weekend in a different--and better--place than I started it in. It has motivated me to dive back into my own writing with new perspective, and I'm hoping the friendships I made there will continue.

Some of the other participants have also blogged about this: see entries by Greg Leitich Smith, PJ Hoover, and Jo Whittemore. I also found myself in the photos on Greg & PJ's blogs!

Draft done!!

2008-06-22T16:58:00.002-05:00

I am pleased to announce I finally have a draft of my midgrade novel, Purple Panic, completed, a whopping 5 years, 7 months, and 12 days after starting it! (Scroll down to my November 10, 2002 blog entry to see when I wrote about starting it!). The current manuscript is 38,488 words long, a far cry from the short chapter book I thought it might be when I started it. I won't be sure what I think of it until it has time to sit for a while, but it's at least to a point where I can let my 9-year-old finish reading it! And now I have to print out all 144 pages.

Meanwhile, I desperately need to get a freelance article done but haven't managed to talk to my interview subject yet, and I'm trying to read and form coherent thoughts on nearly 300 pages of manuscripts for a workshop in a few days. Not to mention dealing with a crazy toddler and a two stir-crazy boys who are home for the summer! They start Magic Camp in two weeks, but for now, it's full days of wall-to-wall kids. (Indeed they do run from wall to wall and back again, leaping and jumping and crashing into things and each other with more energy than I can handle!)

Cool clusters

2008-06-19T18:30:00.001-05:00

I've seen these on other people's blogs the past few days, and I find them fascinating! These are word clusters of some of the most commonly used words in my manuscripts. The Wordle application generates them in randomly chosen styles, fonts, and colors.

Click on them to see them larger!

Here's one from the midgrade I'm almost done drafting right now, Purple Panic, which is obviously about chewing gum! This one seems perfect to me.

And here's my favorite, from my YA-in-progress, End of the Line. This was the first one I generated, and as soon as I saw it I gasped because it looked just like something my protagonist might doodle about her own story. (I've noticed the protagonist's name doesn't appear in it, though!)

For my older YA novel that's the closest to being done, Chasing Monday, I had it generate a few versions with different fonts and colors, but I think this rather fish-shaped one is my favorite of the ones I saved. Clearly, my protagonist is a little self-absorbed...but since it's basically about her figuring out who she is, I guess "I'm" is a decent word to be the most common.

Then I even made some for the picture book manuscripts I just submitted to the mustard writing contest! Think the word "mustard" is prominent enough? It's certainly more prominent than in a typical manuscript!

And finally I did one for my abandoned NaNoWriMo novel from 2006, which I only got about 7,000 words into. This almost makes me want to go back to the manuscript!

I did a few others besides those, but most of them didn't seem worth saving.

Oh no, my template!!

2008-06-19T11:21:00.004-05:00

I just accidentally overwrote my highly customized Blogger template, which made my blog look like part of my website. It had tons of custom images and my own navigation bar, and made everything look seamless...and now it is gone, gone, gone! I don't even have a copy of it or a printout of it! I have no idea how to modify the new generation of Blogger templates the way I had modified that one years ago, now that I've accidentally migrated to the newer Blogger platform, where everything seems to use more complicated scripts. Argh!! It may be time to retire this blog and replace it with the one I use more often, anyway... but I love the history of this one since it goes back to July 2001! I can't believe I didn't save the old template at all, but of course, I didn't realize I was about to lose it or I would have.

Whoa!

2008-06-17T19:58:00.001-05:00

I sat down to write on my midgrade novel today, and can't believe I ended up writing 5,408 words! I didn't even mean for it to get that much longer at all! It's now at 37,308 words. It's mostly finished, but longer than I wanted it to be, and it still needs a wrap-up scene, which could probably be just a thousand words long or so. I also think I made a plot misstep today, which I'll have to rethink, so I may have to revise the way things go down in the section I wrote today.

The whole manuscript has gotten sloppier and sloppier since I started working on it again this spring, and I've dropped entire characters, etc., that I didn't mean to drop, just because I didn't keep going back to previous sections to get their names and couldn't really remember them or how they fit in. I need to add several characters back in. I won't feel like I'm done with a draft until I actually write a final scene for it, but wow, I did get pretty far and I wrote some stuff today that I really liked! Now I am tired.

No more pencils, no more books? Not quite!

2008-06-05T10:56:00.006-05:00

In 4 minutes, my kids get out of school for the summer. I'm not exactly crazy about this, but at least homework crises will be over for a while!

As for me, I originally set a goal to be done with a draft of my midgrade novel by June 11. I thought I was going to surpass that goal and be done on Memorial Day weekend, but busyness got in the way, and now I haven't written on it in over a week. I tried at the library a couple of days ago, but got nowhere with it. I feel like I've been knocked off my horse and can't figure out how to get back on. But June 11 is still 6 days away, and our busyness is slowing down with school ending, so I'm hoping to get back on that horse within a day or two and make it to the finish line by my goal!

And speaking of my kids and writing, the week before last I helped my older son submit a haiku he wrote to the "Your Own Pages" section of Highlights magazine. When I was a kid, I very much wanted to submit something to a kids' or teen magazine (I remember perusing the readers' writing sections of Cricket and Seventeen longingly over the years), but never got around to sending anything. So I felt good about helping him get this sent off, whether they choose to publish it or not! Though actually, he was already published in our local SCBWI newsletter at the age of 3. ;-)

P.S. Wasn't Alice Cooper clever to write that "School's Out" song that radio stations have been compelled to play every May & June for years afterwards, even 36 years later? And it runs through my head at the end of the school year whether I want it to or not!

P.P.S. And speaking of the end of school, we finished paying off our student loans yesterday! Nearly 11 years after my husband got out of grad school... It was pretty anti-climactic since the debt has been low for a while, but still felt good to pay something off!

Pausing for breath...

2008-05-29T12:10:00.004-05:00

I am thrilled that my monthly freelance article is coming together as well as it is this month. It was nearly painless getting the information. I didn't get writer's block like I did the previous two months (which probably has to do with all the other writing I've been doing lately). And all 7 businesses I requested photos from (the worst part of this gig) got back to me right away! I still don't have all the photos, and not all the photos they sent were good ones, but I have most of what I need to send, and it's pretty much ready to go, with a day to spare. Whew!

In my novel writing, I'm in a weird place. I pushed past a block and finally drafted a couple of scenes about what happens after the main character and her friend make up. I was wondering how to maintain tension when it looked (falsely) like things were mostly resolved, and finally decided that my first-person narrator could just come right out and forecast upcoming disaster. It was kind of a "duh" moment. But then, lying in bed a couple of nights ago, I had a much bigger "duh" moment when I realized I had completely dropped a big plot thread! Just a couple of scenes ago, the MC gave away a secret she'd been protecting for probably half the book. And then I wrote more scenes that didn't address that at all, and I didn't give it any consequences. So now I have to figure out what to do with the scenes I wrote after that, at least one of which I rather like, and how to make it all come back to bite her! I just can't believe I forgot about that when I was writing.

And then...school's almost out, eek! But between end-of-the-year conferences, end-of-the-year parties, Field Day, and the 3rd grade Living History Museum tomorrow, I have to be at the school so much there's hardly any time left to get stuff done without the kids around! (Not that I'm ever without my insane 16-month-old, who, among other zany and heart-attack-inducing things, tried to jump off of a kids' picnic table this week--I caught his head about 3 inches from hitting concrete! He is fearless, endlessly active, and way too physically adept for the amount of sense he has!)

At least I don't need a plot to blog...

2008-05-24T20:14:00.000-05:00

I'm up to 25,482 words in my midgrade manuscript. I anticipate the whole thing will be around 30,000 words or a little more (probably more, as long-winded as I am), so I'm definitely closing in on it! But the plot, which has given me so many fits that I let the whole manuscript sit for years, is giving me more even now. Why can't this be easy?! Also, why would I or anyone else do it? Sometimes I think I'm crazy even to try to write a book!

More progress

2008-05-23T15:58:00.001-05:00

2146 new words! I worry that my pacing is all wrong, but I'm still happy I'm making progress!

Finally!!

2008-05-22T18:50:00.000-05:00

My husband gave me a wonderful secretary desk for Christmas, which I'd already wanted for over a year at that point. Well, two of the legs broke off as it was being carried upstairs, so in all that time, I still haven't had a desk to use. I've only had my lap, or desks and tables at libraries and cafes. The furniture store ordered replacement legs for us at no cost, but they didn't come in until today!!! So, I finally have a desk of my own!!!

We set it up in the bedroom, which I thought was an imperfect solution, since it's not necessarily very private, not like my very own office. I also wanted it in a certain corner, but there wasn't room so we put it against a different wall. But I'd forgotten I mainly bought this house for the big bedroom windows in the first place, and having my desk right by the windows is so lovely! I love it! It reminds me very much of an office setup I saw in a writing course ad once, which stuck in my mind forever as an ideal-looking office.

The pictures are deceiving because they don't show the clutter, toys, etc., in the rest of the room, so it's not really as clean and spare as it looks--but doesn't it look like a nice place to write?! Also, I may have to take out the movable section of drawers that's behind the computer in the picture and put them on top of the desk so it's taller, because otherwise I can't close the desk with my computer on it. We'll see. The drawers may also prove strictly decorative, since anything I put in them will be grabbed by a crazy toddler! But still, I have my desk, and already wrote 1644 new words at it!

I'm happy with my 1644 new words. They surprised me. I wrote a scene that probably shouldn't be that long, and didn't even go as far into the story as I meant it to. It also ended with a twist that didn't fit my plans. And I'm not sure if I'll keep it going in that direction or not, but it made me clap my hands when I wrote it, and just may help things fall into place. Yippee. Writing can actually be fun. And I finally have a desk!

Writing by the numbers

2008-05-20T18:48:00.000-05:00

1.5 hours at the library
1 midgrade manuscript
465 new words of text
574 new words of notes!

(They're pretty helpful notes this time, so I think things should go easier from here on out...)

3 super things about today (so far)

2008-05-17T17:50:00.000-05:00

1) My baby finally kissed me for the first time ever! (He'll be 16 months in a week, and my first two kids started kissing at about half that age.)

2) I heard Jo Whittemore speak at the Austin SCBWI meeting, and it was good.

3) I wrote 1578 new words on my gum manuscript!

Fishing for ducks and ideas

2008-05-13T23:28:00.004-05:00

My kids threw a really cute Mother's Day Festival for me yesterday. They had a balloon/dart game (tossing rubber darts at water balloons), a feet-only dunking booth game, a ball toss game, a wheel to spin for a prize, a game with one of those paper "fortune tellers" determining the prize, and cutest of all, a duck pond game with a homemade fishing pole that allowed us to fish for rubber ducks to try to get a winning one. Most of the prizes were handmade, including a pinwheel my oldest son made from cut and folded paper, a stick, and a thumbtack. They also performed a few physical feats for entertainment, and my oldest son recited some poems he'd written. Very cute! I got some cards & gifts, too.

On the writing front, I tried to make progress on my gum story, even going to the library for quiet space to write. It didn't help much. I started trying to write the next scene, but got bogged down in more questions, questions, questions, about where to take the plot. I tried to just write without necessarily knowing the answers, but ran into walls. So I mainly wrote more notes and questions for myself. For example, I need to figure out when and how my main character should make up with a friend she has alienated. I can't decide if it would be more satisfying if she and her friend make up now and work together to change things, then show up together to face everyone else, or my character should only make up with her friend at the very last minute, during a big showdown when she has to take a stand one way or the other. And there are 8 or 10 more things like that, some big and some small, that are all blocking my path when I try to go further! So, I came home with just a rough start to a scene and a list of things to figure out.

14 places I'd rather be right now

2008-05-02T16:43:00.000-05:00

1) In a wide open space in New Mexico
2) Rehearsing for or acting in a play
3) On a train somewhere in Europe
4) At an 80s retro concert with friends
5) On the beach in Hawaii
6) At an outdoor cafe in Greece
7) Riding a ride at a theme park
8) Behind the scenes on Sesame Street (why not?)
9) At a writing conference or meeting, discussing writing and ideas
10) On an Alaskan cruise
11) Walking aimlessly in Wales
12) Listening to an impressive street musician
13) At a magic show in Las Vegas
14) Almost anywhere signing a book contract

My brother's movie

2008-04-24T11:56:00.001-05:00

My brother acted in a movie, A Plumm Summer (imdb.com link), which is finally coming out tomorrow, currently in a limited release in California, Alabama, Minnesota, and Montana. Given how many film festival awards it won, I think it should get a wider release! I was fortunate enough to see it at the Austin Film Festival last fall, and thought it was a good film...I rated it 8 out of 10. It's also family-oriented, though it does have some rather tense scenes involving the main characters' alcoholic father. The film stars William Baldwin, Lisa Guerrero, Henry Winkler, Brenda Strong, and several excellent child actors.

If you live near any of the theaters showing this movie, I recommend it! My brother plays Wally, described in Variety's positive review of the movie as "a bumbling general-store clerk." I don't think he's that nerdy or bumbling in real life, but I haven't seen him in a few years since he's gone all Hollywood, so I can't say for sure! ;-)

Choices in writing

2008-04-21T18:52:00.004-05:00

Sometimes when I watch movies, I'm surprised by what the writers got away with writing. Makes me wonder if I second-guess myself too much!

I recently watched The Darjeeling Limted and Juno. Of course, both of those are indie movies so the scripts probably didn't undergo all the editing and script doctoring most studio movies do, but people did have to buy into them on some level. The Darjeeling Limited has some very heavy-handed symbolism, and my husband thinks Wes Anderson probably used some of it almost ironically, because it's so obvious, but still...there's one scene near the very end where I turned to my husband and said, "I would never have written that. I'd be embarrassed to write that!" I felt like if I'd written the action I'd just seen on screen, any editor or critiquer would have taken me to task for its groanworthy obviousness (and indeed, some reviewers at imdb.com did mention it, but it's still in the movie, and is really almost the basis of the movie).

Similarly, in Juno, I wouldn't have ended Juno's personal story the way it ended. As a viewer, I liked it, but as a writer, I'd assume everyone would say it was too cheesy and corny for a character like her, or for most teenagers today. Not only that, but I realized one of her main choices at the end of the movie grew out of a scene where her father gave her advice. I'd be scared to write that in a YA manuscript, since people would tell me the character would have to reach her own conclusions without guidance from a parent. While of course, she did reach her own conclusions, she really listened to her dad's advice (which I found refreshing). That may be an indie film, but there's a similar scene near the end of the movie Along Came Polly, where Ben Stiller's adult character gets advice from his dad that helps him see things more clearly. I do have a scene in my Chasing Monday manuscript where a peer helps my main character get perspective on things, but I've always been a little embarrassed to have it in there, and figured someone might question my use of that scene. Yet here are movies, including the one that won the Academy Award for best original screenplay, in which characters use advice from their parents to help them make decisions. Interesting. (Now, if only my own kids would take my advice--even in elementary school, they'd usually rather not!)

Thankful Thursday

2008-04-17T21:22:00.003-05:00

This was a hard day on which to find things to be thankful for...so it seemed even more important that I do it!

1) I am thankful for getting to sleep in.

2) Having gone to the dentist today, I am thankful for anesthesia!

3) I am thankful we got a check today from my husband's recent contract work.

4) I am thankful my parents are celebrating 42 years of marriage today.

5) I am thankful for our short trip to Galveston this past weekend.

6) I am thankful for baby grins, baby laughs, and silly baby dances.

7) I am misguidedly thankful for cheese wontons.

Funky 15

2008-02-28T16:18:00.027-06:00

The ever-talented and prolific Cynthia Leitich Smith tagged me, along with several other Austin writers, to list "15 weird, random things, facts, habits, or goals" about myself.

Since it's hard to think of 15 things I haven't already blogged about, I've decided to use Cynthia's own list for inspiration. So here is my list of "15 weird, random things, facts, habits, or goals about me, all inspired by Cynthia's 15 things."

1) Although I never read superhero comics growing up, as Cynthia did, I did read comics--mainly Archie but also things like Mickey Mouse, Casper, Little Lulu, and other kiddie characters. I even drew my own comic once about a girl who loved reading Little Lulu. Part of this was inspired by readng my mother's old comics from the 1940s and 50s (which she recently found!). I also read MAD Magazine, which wasn't a common choice among other little girls I knew. I'm not sure if it helped form my offbeat sense of humor, or if I read it because I already had an offbeat sense of humor!

2) I wrote my own little comics, like a recurring one called Robin Lee, and once served as the cartoonist for my elementary school paper. I also wrote my own magazines, made greeting cards from a company I named The Creation Box, and oddly, I often created fake homework assignments as done by characters I invented, then switched to teacher mode to correct it as their teachers would. I'd also draw things like, "Jenny as drawn by Sara," and then "Jenny as she really looks," and then a few years later I'd go back and redo them when I thought my drawing skills had improved! (And I did take a cartooning class once as a kid, but I still don't have good drawing skills!)

3) Now that Cynthia mentioned subscribing to 100 comics a month, I don't have to feel too weird for subscribing to so many magazines! I have subscribed to as many as 25 magazines at a time. I love them. I have no idea how many I'm subscribed to now since it's hard to keep up with the subscriptions, but I know I've let a lot lapse... I'm sure we get at least 12 or 14 now, but there are more I mean to renew. I used to excuse the expense by saying, "This is my entertainment budget; we don't have cable TV." But now we've had cable for years so, oops!

4) I saw The Empire Strikes Back 5 times in the theater when it came out, which I think still stands as the most I've ever seen any one movie in the theater (yeah, pathetic next to Cynthia's 350 for Star Wars!). As I've mentioned before, I spent my 14th birthday seeing it alone after my "boyfriend" of one week (one week ending that day!) stood me up for a Six Flags date. I also had a large collection of The Empire Strikes Back trading cards, but I came across some recently and apparently, the only ones I kept are the ones with Han Solo on them! {Blush} I used to listen to Han & Leia's theme over & over & over on my record player.... (Also, while I don't do a Kermit the Frog impression like Cynthia, my 7-year-old does an amusing Yoda. Here he is last summer at age 6, saying "Read you will" and "A Jedi master we need.")

5) When I was a child, I wrote letters to Judy Blume and Madeleine L'Engle to let them know how much I loved their books. Unfortunately, I never mailed the letter to Madeleine L'Engle and now it's too late. (Though I did get to meet another childhood favorite author, Paula Danziger, while she was still alive.) But Judy Blume wrote back. I felt guilty because my friend and I both wrote to her at the same time, and she sent my friend a brochure with her autograph on it, but she wrote several sentences on my brochure! I have no idea where it is now. I am very, very glad, however, that I never mailed the really embarrassing letter I found that I once wrote to Mork and Mindy....

6) My first car was a navy blue Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera, which I totaled on the way home from work late at night, only 7 weeks after getting it. I had already finished my freshman year of college at this point, but had to wait until I finished my sophomore year before getting another car! (By the way, I just realized I was wearing a shirt decorated with Mickey Mouse comic panels in the photo below of me with my first car.)

7) The job I was on the way home from when I totaled the car was at a movie theater. Like Cynthia, I served a lot of popcorn in my job, but I worked only at the concession stand, not at the ticket booth or as an usher. The concession stand was a different company than the theater! (And paid 15 cents more per hour, ha.) Some other odd things about the job: I never popped any popcorn (it was only popped once a week!), we weren't really supposed to chat with the theater employees (as if), we didn't have cash registers and had to do all the math in our heads (yes, it caused problems), we only had three kinds of drinks (I would dream all night about endlessly telling customers, "No, we don't have __X__, we only have Coke, Sprite, and Diet Coke"), and we didn't get to see free movies! Even theater employees didn't get free movies, unless they were Employee of the Week, though I did see lots of 15-minute portions of movies on my breaks. I also won a black and white TV from that job, and I still love popcorn.

8) I still have my polyester uniform from the movie theater job. I have no idea why, except that, "I thought I might need it for a costume someday." Even weirder... the shirt that was part of my uniform during my second summer in that job is hanging up in my laundry room right now. My husband came across it recently, apparently thought it was a shirt I currently wear, and washed it and hung it up! (Yes, my husband does laundry!! More than I do, in fact.)

9) Seeing the movie Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which Cynthia mentioned, was the wild way I partied down with my friends on the night of my high school graduation. ;-) Hey, it might have even been a midnight showing! (On a semi-related note, I find it pretty weird in retrospect that I went off to college 200 miles from home, at a university of 50,000 students, less than a month after turning 17. As a parent, it would freak me out to let my kid do that!)

10) My dad spent a semester of grad school in Paris when I was 11 years old, and my whole family went. We lived in an apartment in the Latin Quarter, also close to the Luxembourg Gardens as Cynthia's summer dorm was. I didn't have to go to school while we were there, but it was a really cool place to live for a while (we thought we'd be there a year, but ran out of money), and I spent a lovely Christmas Day playing soccer with my then-3-year-old brother at Luxembourg Gardens. I still miss the Kinder Surprise Eggs I regularly bought when we lived there... you can't buy them in the US because it's apparently illegal to sell food (it's chocolate) with toys inside here, as though someone would really eat a plastic capsule. Sigh. I haven't returned to Paris since, though I did visit Lyon in 1993.

11) Unlike Cynthia, I have had very few jobs. My only paid jobs have been: movie concession stand worker, office temp, and technical writer. I was an office temp in Austin, then an office temp in Dallas/Fort Worth, then a technical writer in Dallas/Fort Worth, then a technical writer in Austin. I also spent 6 weeks as an unpaid video production intern (doing very little myself), and have earned a very small bit of money from freelance writing in recent years. I currently write a monthly column for a garden retailing magazine, and my editor there is the same person who referred me to the office temp agency I worked for in Austin, 19 years ago!

12) My wedding cake was fine, but nothing to blog about. ;-) I had to go way out of my way to find a traditional cake topper with a bride & groom statue I liked, and then I actually painted the bride's hair so it wasn't lighter than the groom's! The groom's cake, a chocolate cake with a basket-weave design and chocolate-dipped strawberries on top, was a much bigger hit than the wedding cake. I took a cake decorating class a few years ago, and the best cake I've decorated was probably a castle cake for my oldest son's 6th birthday, but now that shows like Ace of Cakes are raising the bar for everyone (and I know someone who practically outdoes them...), I've pretty much given up decorating my own cakes!

13) Speaking of cakes, I spent my 21st birthday in England with some friends who were there for an University of Texas summer program at Oxford. (I was just visiting.) My friends went to a bakery and bought me a cake. They asked if the bakery could write my name on it, and the perplexed bakery worker responded, "That'll take a week!" Obviously, British bakeries do things differently than US ones. The cake had a hard white icing--not exactly fondant but more like the outside of a Ding Dong, if it was white--and there was a small toy bear on top clutching some toy balloons, and a ribbon wrapped around the outside of the cake (not getting messy, since the icing was hard). One strange thing about turning 21 in England was that I could already legally drink there as soon as I arrived 3 days earlier, so that part was anti-climactic!

14) My main fears are cockroaches (esp. palmetto bugs, eeeeeek) and snakes, and I'm also quite wary of dogs I'm not familiar with. For some reason, I've never been that scared of heights and have even wanted to skydive. But Cynthia is absolutely right to be frightened of children under 3! (Though technically, she should amend that to "children 3 and under." My older kids had "terrible threes," not "terrible twos"! And do not worry about dropping my 1-year-old; you have more to fear from him than he has to fear from you!)

15) The only very famous person I've met outside of the field of children's writing is Sting. My husband won tickets to his 2004 concert, which included a quick meet and greet with Sting. I've mentioned this before, but this time I'm sharing the photo.

3 Things for Groundhog Day

2008-02-02T23:47:00.000-06:00

1) One thing I resolved for 2008 was to finish one of my outstanding writing projects. In the back of my mind, I thought that following the resolution would also mean not starting anything new until I had done so. Or at least, not starting any new book-length projects. So I'm kind of annoyed to have this idea bombarding me lately for a light time travel novel.

I've decided that, although I don't plan to actively work on the idea anytime soon, I do want to start reading books and watching movies on the themes of time travel, or suddenly finding oneself a different age, or even body swaps (mine wouldn't be a body swap story, but they have similar surprising transformations)--including books I've read before and movies I've seen before--to see how they handle the changes. I know that in some of them, like 13 Going on 30, they never seem to explain the mechanism much, and I'd like it to be something like that if I can get away with it! It'd be more like magic than science. One confusing aspect is I wanted two people to go back in time, but one of them to regress in age and the other not to regress, so it seems like I would almost need two mechanisms... Anyway, so that's my homework for the year, while I'm writing other things. If you have a good one to suggest, let me know. Some I was thinking of were Debra Garfinkle's Stuck in the 70s, Freaky Friday, Big, Sue Corbett's 12 Again, etc.

Come to think of it, the topical movie for today, Groundhog Day, is a little like that, too, and that one never does explain how Bill Murray repeats the same day over and over. He just does. I love that movie anyway.

2) My own groundhogs--one from Build-A-Bear Workshop (Morris), and one who was technically due on Groundhog Day last year, though he made his appearance 9 days too early!

3) What do I want to write? I think I need to finish my midgrade novel. I'm at least 2/3 into it already. But I've also been thinking I need to seriously work on one of my picture book ideas. The more picture books I see, the more I'm convinced my favorite one would sell if I could only do it justice. The problem is, it needs much more of a plot arc than it currently has, and I've been stuck about that for years! But I need to brainstorm about that when I have spare minutes, and work on the novel when I have larger chunks of time.

My wacky son

2008-01-10T00:45:00.001-06:00

Technically, I have 3 wacky sons, but the middle one, who turns 7 next week, says some particularly wacky and amusing things. He's been joking with us since before he could really speak, and is quick to pick up on catch phrases, funny voices and accents, or quirky ways of putting things. He'll playfully say stuff like, "Totally rad, Dude!" or "In your dreams, Baby!" and was talking that way even at 3 or 4 years old, and even though he doesn't hear it from us. About half the time, he'll say something hilarious, and then I'll find out he was riffing on something else he'd heard somewhere, but they say that originality is the art of concealing your sources, and he does have a comedian's gift for combining things in a new way to come up with interesting takes on things. (Even in art, he's great at imitation, but can also bring together things he's seen in different places to make something new out of them.)

Yesterday, out of the blue on the way to art class, he said, "I'm writing a book, and I'm dedicating it to..." (dramatic pause) "the robot I've always loved!" A moment later he added: "The book is called How to Dedicate a Book to a Robot." (He's not writing a book, and he hasn't always loved a robot. But he does crack me up!)

2008!

2008-01-01T02:12:00.001-06:00

Happy 2008 to all! For some reason, I feel joyful, buoyant, and magnanimous at the moment, so I thought I'd post before it passed!

We rang in the new year more quietly than normal, just hanging out with the kids, watching the countdowns on TV. The baby was asleep on my husband. The other kids stayed up until just after midnight, and of course we had our customary New Year's hats and serpentine, and the kids blew horns outside at midnight. It was sleepy, but nice.

And I'm making resolutions this year! In 2005, I made only two (to get rid of 1,000 things, which I more than did, and to finish my midgrade novel, which I still haven't!). In 2006, I'm not sure I made even one. In 2007, I decided to go for a theme instead, but never quite chose between "passion" and "family"! With a baby born in January, I figured it would be a year of hunkering down with the family, not doing much writing, and I was right, but I also didn't manage to focus on my family in quite the way I intended. So, this year, I'm back to good old-fashioned resolutions, and I have lots of them!

They're not completely set in stone yet, but a few are:

to finish a writing project that's been stranded for a while
to find places for things in my house that don't have good places
to be more active (very easy to achieve, as inactive as I've been lately!)

Those goals have some related goals that are more specific...like making space and time to write regularly, and maintaining a certain weight, etc., and I'm writing those down, too.

And then I also have a theme for the year, which is to be more purposeful and deliberate--more methodical about getting things done, and calmer, not rushing around in a panic. My motto for the year, to help me with that is: Breathe. Just saying, or even thinking, the word "breathe" in a calm manner, immediately calms me down and helps me focus and relax. So this is the year of focusing, relaxing, and breathing. And enjoying! My secondary motto for the year is: Savor. I want to savor the year, and the moments in that year and the people in my life and the little daily joys. I have NO idea what this year will hold, not even in theory, but I'm ready to embrace it.

So long to 2007

2007-12-29T14:31:00.001-06:00

I've already shared my 2007 Christmas letter summing up the year with most people who would be interested. So for this blog, just a short and non-comprehensive list of a few interesting bits and changes from my 2007:

Favorite discoveries: Spaced; cooking reality shows (Top Chef, The Next Food Network Star, The Next Iron Chef, etc.); Flip Happy Crepes; Scrabulous (online Scrabble)

Favorite new person met: My baby

Scariest experiences: Pre-eclampsia; turning 40; being stranded on a busy highway overpass at night in a small car with 3 kids; interviewing people by phone for the articles I was writing

Saddest experience: Losing our pet bunny after 10 years

Most unexpected experiences: Natural childbirth; writing a magazine column; eating mushrooms on purpose; connecting with so many old friends online

Weirdest experiences: Very quick childbirth; my husband having to travel with almost no notice; seeing my brother acting in a movie

Biggest blessings: My adorable, sweet baby; the generosity of others

Most impressive accomplishment (to my kids): Beating everyone else in the family in Big Brain Academy on the Wii

Things I missed most this year: Sleep; free time; silence

Out with the old: Good-bye to my defunct laptop computer, computer mice, car engine, radiator, alternator, and water-damaged kitchen floor (the last of which was removed yesterday and is being replaced Monday!)

Most ridiculous joys: My hilarious dancing baby; winning the Mountain Dew mini-fridge I entered 90+ times for, months after I thought they'd stopped sending out prizes

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-23T00:46:00.000-06:00

Voice void

2007-11-13T20:06:00.000-06:00

In college, when I took the one acting class UT allowed non-drama majors to take, I had to play Blanche in a duet from A Streetcar Named Desire. I kept practicing and it kept not working for me. For some reason, though, even though it's very southern and Blanche is very southern, having never seen the show before, it didn't occur to me to give her a southern accent. Finally, shortly before we were due to perform it for the teacher, it dawned on me to try a southern accent, and everything fell into place with a satisfying click. The teacher raved about our performance and gave us an A, so I knew I'd found what I needed.

Normally, my writing projects start with a voice, and that's what drives them. I mean literally, they often start with a character talking in my head, telling me what's going on in his or her life, and I just take dictation. I don't necessarily know where the ideas come from, they just appear.

My current NaNoWriMo novel, on the other hand, started with an idea, years ago, in the back of my mind. I let it gestate some, adding characters and ideas and a few plot developments along the way, but 16,000 words in, it still just seems like a random collection of words with a few fairly solid sections sprinkled in. I still don't think it has the right voice. I do think it has the right protagonist, but I haven't quite found her voice yet, the way I hadn't with Blanche. I am more convinced all the time, though, that this book cries out for unusual formatting--e-mails, lists, poems, lyrics, etc.--maybe to the exclusion of regular prose. Maybe the right format, when I find it, will prove to be the right voice. I'm not sure, I'm just wondering if, at this point, what I really need is more words like the ones I've already written, or if I need to pull a NaNo no-no and start tweaking structure first.

In any case, what I have now is nothing like what I want to have when I am done. And yet I see just enough promise there, under the surface, that I feel an intense need to find the true voice and tell the story.

Can't...resist...baby costumes!

2007-11-07T16:00:00.000-06:00

Little scarecrow

In his brother's old giraffe costume

R2D2, to go with his brothers' Obi-Wan and Darth Vader costumes

Baby steps

2007-11-04T20:49:00.001-06:00

No, I don't mean I'm taking baby steps in relation to my writing, I mean real, honest-to-goodness baby steps. My baby took 4 steps in a row earlier, and then 5 steps in a row. I didn't see it, but my husband and 6-year-old reported it. I have seen him take one step before, or more like a half-step, but this was his first sequence of steps. (Not that he'd repeat it for me.) His 9-month checkup is tomorrow (he's 9 months 11 days), and his dr had guessed he'd probably be walking by then, so he probably wanted to oblige her!

(As for my writing, I'm 7318 words into my NaNo novel, but it's a hodgepodge of occasionally incompatible scenes!)

NaNoWriMo 2007

2007-11-01T18:17:00.000-05:00

So I'm doing NaNoWriMo again, for better or for worse, and have just under half of my needed word count for today, even though I haven't written in hours. I expect to have no problem making my quota today. (Though my computer is officially DEAD, and I'm having to claim the family computer, which I normally never touch...and which I can't easily use while holding my baby, eek. I'm writing the novel in a Google document so I can work on it from any computer with Internet access, which will probably include some library computers, etc.).

I updated last year's abandoned NaNo blog here: NaNo Madness 2007. To quote from my latest entry in that blog:

I've never been as open to writing a crappy first draft as I am right now, and it's kind of exciting. I look forward to just playing with words. E.B. White once said, "I dive into a story the way I dive into the sea, prepared to splash about and make merry," and that's how I'm diving into NaNo this year. (Of course, he also said, "Writing is hard work and bad for the health," but I'm going to go with the first quote for now!)

3 unrelated things on my mind

2007-10-25T01:07:00.001-05:00

I have got to get my article finished and turned in ASAP, because I have 3 books waiting for me to read them: Beige by Cecil Castellucci, Schooled by Gordon Korman, and my fresh-off-the-press copy of the book with all the buzz these days, Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why. I need to read the last one in the next few days to figure out whether it has, in fact, rendered my own suicide-related novel redundant, before I consider whether to actually write said novel for NaNoWriMo this year (highly unlikely, anyway--I started off last year planning to write that one and changed my mind and changed projects, and then scrapped the whole endeavor). I really doubt there would be many similarities at all between Jay Asher's book and the one I have in mind, other than the main character feeling partially to blame for the suicide, but I have a feeling his will far surpass what I was thinking of, in any case! (Oh, and I'm not just reading it for my own selfish reasons... I would have wanted to read it anyway.)

In other news, I got my first writing check of the year today--hooray!--for an article about artificial Christmas trees, of all things. (Obviously an assigned article, not something I would have thought of.) I theoretically have another check coming from a sale to another publication, but I'm not sure when to expect that one.

And my baby turned 9 months old today (already?!), and took his first accidental steps yesterday... I'm not sure he's taken any purposeful ones yet, though. He can dance while not holding onto anything, though! Real steps should be any day now. He has always been in a hurry. We thought he said "Dada" meaningfully today (that is, "Dada" meaning "Daddy," not "Dada" meaning a cultural movement embracing meaninglessness...), but later he seemed to say it referring to me as well as to his father, so we're not sure. Maybe he thinks it means "parent" or "strange large person who keeps trying to stop me from eating anything fun like paper, cameras, or cell phones."

Paragraph contest

2007-10-24T18:44:00.001-05:00

Have you seen this?

THE LARGELY INDISPENSABLE FIRST PARAGRAPH CHALLENGE

It amazes me how many first paragraphs there already are that, despite not being poorly written, don't interest me in reading any further... But it probably does hurt to see them all there in a row. They all start sounding the same to me after a while, like they're trying too hard (or not hard enough!), in a way that they might now if I saw them in isolation.

I doubt I'll dare to enter, but it's fun to read.

Crepe Happy

2007-10-05T10:44:00.000-05:00

Recently on the show Throwdown with Bobby Flay, we saw a segment in which chef Bobby Flay was bested at crepe-making by Flip Happy Crepes here in Austin, a funky, trailer-based restaurant that apparently happens to make some of the best crepes in the country. My husband had a meeting downtown yesterday, so I went along with the baby so we could could check out the crepes when he was done. I had read an online review saying the savory crepes were so big, the reviewer and her companion shared one and still didn't have room for dessert. I knew I wanted a dessert crepe, so we decided to split our main course. Bad choice! They weren't really that big, and my husband's choice of crepe (shredded pork with cheddar) was just not what I would have picked (it was good, but tasted more like a burrito to me--I wanted something more French). For dessert, I had the vanilla cream crepe with strawberries and berry sauce... Oh. My. Goodness. That is my idea of a dessert. I love chocolate cake, but 4 times out of 5, I'd pick a fruit tart over anything else for dessert, and this was like a fruit tart with better pastry. I was in heaven. The only problem? After I finished it, I was still hungry. Very hungry. I wanted more crepes! I wished very much I'd tried the roasted chicken crepe or the ham crepe, but they take a long time to prepare and we didn't have time to wait for another.

So...my husband has to go downtown again today, and we're thinking of going back for more crepes!

P.S. Updated 5 hours later to say: we went back. I got roasted chicken with goat cheese, caramelized onions, and mushrooms in garlic sauce. This is extremely remarkable because it is the first time I have eaten a mushroom willingly and one of few times I have eaten onions willingly. I normally say "no mushrooms" and "no onions" on my food, or pick them out. But I wanted the whole experience, and man, it was good. Though it was still a lot like a fancy burrito--I actually picked it up and ate it as one, which you couldn't do with the crepe I had at La Madeleine a few months ago. But since burritos are probably my favorite food, that's not a bad thing! I also had another berry crepe. This time it had blueberries mixed in, and I'm not a huge fan of blueberries, but it was still very good.

Reading

2007-10-05T00:35:00.000-05:00

I haven't been writing, given that the world's most active baby is nearly always with and/or on me, but I've been reading some.

First, I've been reading the short stories in 21 Proms, partly as a quick way to get exposed to the writing of some YA authors I haven't read before, as well as to read new things by writers I already knew. I've been skipping around (randomly, not purposefully) and haven't finished it yet, but so far, my favorites have been the ones by Sarah Mlynowski (written in second person!), E. Lockhart, and John Green. A few others I found very intriguing, including some, like those by Adrienne Maria Vretand and Will Leitch, which read more like adult literary short stories to me than typical YA fiction (especially Leitch's, as it's told from the father's perspective).

Second, I finally read Lauren Barnholdt's book Reality Chick, which I bought ages ago but just came across when organizing my bookshelves. The subject matter isn't weighty (which is fine with me) and the language was a bit in-your-face for me at times, but it kept me reading, and I Iiked the ending.

Third, yesterday I read E. Lockhart's latest novel, Dramarama, about a summer theatre camp. I don't think I liked it as much as some of her other books, especially The Boyfriend List (I missed the footnotes!), but it seemed like a must-read book since I did theatre thoughout junior high and high school. Even though on the outside, I'm very different from the main character Sadye (she's tall and brash; I'm short and quiet), I identified with her singing problems and her feelings of not quite having what it took--while still loving every minute. When her acting teacher lectured her at humiliating length about never being late to rehearsal or otherwise acting unprofessional, I actually read the whole page and a half aloud to my husband, saying, "See, this is what I learned in drama!" because I've mentioned to him a thousand times how, if nothing else, theatre drilled into me to honor my commitments, and it's a lesson a lot of people in this world apparently didn't get growing up. The (initial) ending of the book almost crushed me for a moment, and surprised me. It was more real than I expected! And I so related. The epilogue-type chapter after that, all in dialogue like a few previous sections (a nice touch in a book about plays), didn't seem necessary to me as an adult reader, but I think I would have really wanted that part in there if I was still 16.

I went to the Borders Express store in the mall tonight. Even that tiny bookstore has a large YA section now. I was looking at all the books, and suddenly realized that the kind of small paperback YA novels I always read when I was growing up, the kind I imagined my own name on someday, have been replaced almost entirely by large trade paperbacks. There are also so many hardcover YA books for sale these days, when they seemed rather rare in my own teen years. Basically, there are hardcovers, and then there are paperbacks in approximately the same page size as the hardcovers. The paperbacks are very high quaity these days, and I particularly love the ones with the smooth, non-glossy covers, but it still seems weird that it's just not what I ever pictured. I suddenly wasn't sure my books would fit there. I wondered if I should concentrate more on my midgrades, because the midgrade section looked more comfortably familiar somehow. Not that I'd really change my writing for that reason; it just struck me. Though I did note that if I had a book for sale there, I'd be shelved between the A-List books and Sarah Dessen, and that couldn't be bad for getting people's eyes on my books!

Art and "the arts"

2007-09-22T12:55:00.002-05:00

Questions at the bottom for those who prefer to skip to the end...

My 6-year-old son appears to have a gift for visual art. He loves art, and seems to have good control over his drawing hand, and an ability to copy what he sees pretty well. When we lived in Sarasota, a city known for art, I wanted to sign him up for an art class that was advertised a lot and looked good, but they had a minimum age of 6, and he was 5. By the time he was 6, we had moved back to Texas.

His school here offers art for 1/3 of the year, and he loves that, but honestly, I could tell the school art classes were not going to challenge him to work to the best of his ability and help him learn the techniques he could really benefit from. So I found an outside art class for elementary students, and signed him up. However...when we went to the orientation I wasn't impressed with much that I saw there, and I wanted to try somewhere else first. We went to tour another local art school I'd heard about, and it looked great. There are "classes" in that several students come at once, but the instructon is completely individualized. The room is great and kind of cool-looking (not a tiny childcare classroom like at the other place, but a studio where real art is happening), the grounds have a great atmosphere with chickens, ducks, turkeys, and peacocks wandering around, and best of all, the art on display looked really good. I saw kids not much older than my son making art that looked like someone much older had done it. So we signed him up for a trial class and he loved it, asking how many days until he could come back the next week. I think he is going to get a lot out of it.

I kind of wonder if I should consider taking art myself. In Sarasota, I had plans to take the same art class I wanted to sign him up for. They had a class that taught you to draw a portrait based on a photograph in 5 classes, and I wanted to do that, but chickened out of ever actually going in on my own! (I also couldn't decide who to draw...silly me.) This one would surely be a longer process. I have never really taken an art class. I always assumed real artists had an innate drive to create art, and that if I wasn't driven to do art above all, then I must not be an artist. I was also always stymied by paintbrushes and color choices. However, I've always enjoyed doodling, did take a cartooning class as a child, and particularly enjoy writing in different handwritings and experimenting with different fonts. I think I have a moderate amount of control over my pen. I have wondered if maybe I should take calligraphy. I've avoided that in the past because it looked like too much of the same all the time (basically Zapf Chancery over & over), but of course some people do some really amazing things with calligraphy. I also signed up for a Layout and Design class once that I didn't complete because they expected the students to come into it with good drawing skills.

Meanwhile...my church has recently started helping sponsor an arts organization. The arts it covers are visual art, theatre, music, and dance. I always wonder why writing is not usually considered an art. So many of my concerns as a writer, especially a creative writer, are the same concerns other artists might have, but I notice that arts organizations often limit themsleves to visual and performing arts. I am trying to decide whether to get involved with this organization anyway. It would be a hardship with my baby and family and only one car. But this week, on a night when I can't figure out how I'd get there, they're having theatre games night. I love theatre games! In a way it seems crazy not to go, since I'd love an outlet like that. In another way, I'd be mortified to go, because I think many of the other participants are working actors in local theatre. I haven't done theatre in many years and am not really good at it. I just like it. It also interferes with my kids' activities that night, and probably with my baby's schedule. But I would have moved heaven & earth for such an opportunity last year, when I was in Florida without knowing anyone and feeling desperate for a creative environment.

I pretty much figured I couldn't go, and shouldn't since my main art is writing, but I just found a diary-type book from high school in which I wrote my future goals. 9th grade: "Things I Want to Do in the Future: Be an actress, write, be a wife and mother." 10th grade: "Things I Want to Do in the Future: Be an actress, wife, mother, writer." 11th grade: "What I Want to Be: Actress, writer, work on TV production...? museum worker?" 12th grade: "What I Want to Be: Actress, writer, something involved with Radio/TV/Film." Now, there were a few other things in there--I also wrote that I wanted to go to UT (which I did), live in Santa Fe (no), skydive (no), and ride in a hot air balloon (no), but note that actress came before writer every year back then. I am a wife, a mother, and theoretically a writer, but acting went bye-bye long ago. I don't know if there's any point in pursuing it now just because I said that in the distant past, but there is still a definite draw there for me.

So the questions I have for my patient readers is:

(1) If I might have any talent at visual art, would I already know it by now? Aren't artists generally driven to create art throughout their lives? Is there any point in taking up visual art as an adult? I don't aim to develop strong enough skills to be an illustrator or anything, it would mainly be for fun, but I'm sort of curious whether I could do it.

(2) Why isn't creative writing usually counted as one of "the arts"? I know it sometimes is, as I have read poetry as part of a church "Arts Fest" before, and it is possible to get an MFA in Creative Writing. But it seems like it's only counted rarely. Is it because visual and performing arts are easier to recognize as art or easier to display? Or because there's a very blurry line between, say, expository writing and journalism, some of which is very artful and some of which is purely practical, and art? I think film also gets left out of "the arts" a lot, and it also has some very blurry lines around the edges, but then some people consider it art, also. In fact, my Radio/TV/Film degree from UT-Austin is a Bachelor of Science degree, but at UT-Arlington, Radio and TV were in Liberal Arts, while Film was in the Fine Arts department!

Sweet 16 again

2007-09-14T15:11:00.001-05:00

So a couple of weeks after posting about my Sweet 16 birthday, I'm having a Sweet 16 again--only this time it's my 16th wedding anniversary! Can I have a big party with a band and a free car this time...? Actually, I settled for lunch at Old Spaghetti Warehouse with lots of sourdough bread (the real impetus for the restaurant choice) and a baby in tow. But it was still sweet. Happy Anniversary to my sweetie!

Madeleine L'Engle

2007-09-08T12:54:00.001-05:00

Like most of my other blogging friends, I feel compelled to blog about the loss of Madeleine L'Engle, who died this week in her late 80s. Though unlike most of my other blogging friends, I don't feel I have much eloquent to say.

My 9-year-old son happens to be reading A Wrinkle in Time this week, for the first time. It's strange to think how, when he started the book several days ago, the author was alive, but he'll end it after she's gone.

I read and liked A Wrinkle in Time as a child, and I suspect my budding scientist son will like it, too. But my favorite book of hers--actually the book I usually consider my favorite book ever--was and is A Ring of Endless Light. Which in fact deals with death, and grief. Also with dolphins. Dolphins have been my favorite animal ever since I read that book at age 13. For some reason, I never read the whole series of books about the Austins... I think I may have read one other, but it was almost like that one book was so perfect to me, I felt like reading another would somehow take away from it. Irrational, I'm sure, but I was 13 and in love with a book.

I wrote a long letter to Madeleine L'Engle when I was 13. It was maybe 2 or 3 pages, which I suspect blathered on about how much I liked the book and the dolphins and how much it meant to me. But I also remember it was about my wanting to be a writer. Specifically a young adult writer. I think I asked for advice about my own writing. Sadly, stupidly, I lost the letter before I sent it. By the time I gave it up for lost, I felt I could never recreate it. So I never wrote to her. Years later, my father, who worked in Christian publishing for a while, actually knew her in person slightly from some conferences they attended together. I wondered if I should send her another letter then, but felt again like I'd lost my chance, or like I could never remember what I wanted to say, or at least not with the passion of a 13-year-old with a book fresh in her mind. I considered writing about how she'd inspired me as a child, and about how I still wanted to write, and my curiosity on how to juggle faith and fiction. But I didn't. And so now, it's like the last bell sounding to let me know I waited too long. I'm sad, realizing she might have written back, and I might have had a letter from her now. (I do have one somewhere from Judy Blume.) Maybe it would have even helped me to get started sooner on this writing thing!

But for Madeleine L'Engle herself, I'm not feeling particularly sad, given her age and her well-lived life, and all she left the world while she was here. I know she's in a better place, enjoying that endless light. And for the rest of us, I'm happy for the things she left behind for us and future children to spur our thoughts, inspire us, and expand our minds.

My Smurfy Sweet 16

2007-09-01T16:00:00.001-05:00

I have only seen a few moments here and there of MTV's show My Super Sweet 16, but the ostentatious sixteenth birthday party phenomenon has been creeping into my view, anyway, because of things like incredibly fancy cakes I've seen made for Sweet 16 parties on Ace of Cakes and on some sort of cake decorating championship show in which 5 cake decorators had to face off to win the chance to make some girl's giant Sweet 16 cake, and because of Sweet 16 party decorations I've seen in party supply catalogs that looked more appropriate for a prom, class reunion, or awards show!

So my mind went back to my own "Sweet 16"... Yes, I did have a 16th birthday party, thrown by my mother for me and my friends. Let's see, it involved a cake, some decorations, and a couple of picnic tables in a hot park. The budget might have hit...oh, $50. Actually, probably a little less in 1980s dollars and more in today's. And while the girl on the cake bake-off show said that the purse-themed cake (I believe) was a little too young for her, I actually went with the avant-garde theme of...Smurfs. No, I didn't "really" like Smurfs, like a 4-year-old might. I think I was 11 before I ever heard of a Smurf, though my 8-years-younger brother was smitten with them as a preschooler, so I'd seen my share of them since. I was trying to be humorously ironic. Not sure if it worked, but I think we had fun. We didn't have terribly high expectations. I think my main expectation was cake!

Me with my Smurfette centerpiece--I somehow missed the whole ballgown & tiara type thing and showed up in jeans & a t-shirt:

Excuse the photo quality, I had to go with the grainy, dark 80s-era instamatic or Disc camera, rather than hiring a wedding photographer to do the honors.

What I did not skimp on was the cake. While elaborate fondant decor was unheard of in 1983 and I lacked a four or five-tier cake, this was a Red Oven red velvet cake, which I am certain to this day tasted better than nearly any cake seen on those television shows. (From my experience tasting wedding cakes at bridal shows before our wedding, the fancy places seem to emphasize looks a lot more than taste!)

Sadly, the cake that wasn't served up right away was ultimately destroyed, ending up all over at least one of the guests... I also seem to recall the remaining ice and water in the ice chest being dumped on people's heads. The guests seemed to have fun, anyway.

And check out the elaborate touches--paper tablecloths! Balloons & streamers! Smurf plates & cups! A birthday sign! (Or is that Pin the Tail on the Donkey? Knowing me, it might be. I actually played Pin the Tail on the Donkey at my 40th birthday party with my family this year!)

And while I didn't hire any popular rock bands to play at the party, we did have entertainment:

Who doesn't like piñatas, after all?

Oddly, I think I appreciated this Sweet 16 party more than the majority of those girls on TV seem to appreciate their $50K or $100K bashes. (I didn't throw a single tantrum over getting a Lexus at the wrong time, like the girl I saw a clip of on The Soup. I'm not sure, but I think my gifts were more like...stationery and cassette tapes.) Better yet, my 16th birthday was not the best party I was to have until my wedding. I actually upped the ante with two parties for my 17th birthday--another silly park party with a Hawaiian theme, and a night out with some other friends at a clubby-type restaurant. Not sure I did one for 18, but I had a big party for 20. No Smurfs in sight that time...but I'm sure it was not a bit more elegant!

Like mother, like son

2007-08-26T22:26:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is the 1st day of school here, and my 3rd grade son was told to bring 2 favorite books to class on the first day, to be left at school for free reading time for a week or two. I assumed that since he mostly just wanted to read Star Wars books this summer, that's the sort of thing he'd want to take. Instead, he was insistent that the two books he wanted to take (no substitutes accepted, so we had to spend some time hunting them down) were Reality Leak by Joni Sensel and The City of Ember by Jeanne duPrau. Both of which he read this summer, and both of which I had bought for myself! Yes...! I assume the assignment is partly so the teacher can get an idea of the kids' reading levels and interests, and though I didn't tell him what to take, I am secretly happy he's taking two middle grade novels that I think show really good taste! ;-) (Actually, they're a result of the great company his mom keeps, since I bought both of those books because I was in online groups with the authors.)

August!

2007-08-01T02:38:00.001-05:00

August is here! My birthday month and my oldest son's birthday month! Hooray. As old as I get, I still get a little excited when my birthday rolls around.

Question for writers: do you ever write characters who have your quirks? And if so, is it weird after you've written it, and do you ever regret it? I mean, in some ways all our characters have to reflect parts of us, but I'm talking about writing a character with your quirks magnified and made very prominent, so they become a fairly big part of the story.

I was thinking last week I might give some character's mom some of my own faults, but then I thought it might also be fun to give one some of my nuttier, sillier tendencies. I assumed this would be in a midgrade or YA, since those are what I usually write, but I just got a hint of an idea for a picture book based on that. But do I really want to make fun of myself in a picture book?! That my kids would have and pass down to their kids?! Hmm! Though that reminds me, I already have a finished PB manuscript I meant to submit several months ago & never managed to do. D'oh! I'll have to do that this month...maybe even this week!

About moi

2007-07-28T16:56:00.000-05:00

Not sure if these are the truest representations of me, but none of them is untrue.

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Five things on Friday

2007-07-20T21:50:00.001-05:00

I'm tempted to go to one of the Harry Potter midnight release parties even though I'm not buying the book at this time (still haven't finished books 4, 5, & 6!), just because it's such a cultural phenomenon and the whole release party thing will be over after tonight. But I'm not really going since the rest of the family wasn't interested.
My 5-month-old baby is crawling! More like a combination crawl-wriggle-frog flop, but wow, can he get around. We're not prepared for his mobility!
There's nothing to make a nearly-40-year-old feel old like joining Facebook. I'm the only person from my high school class, and out of 63,000+ people from my university, only 29 are from my graduation year. Still, it's worth it if only for the application that allows me to send my husband whatever song happens to pop into my head.
I'm no cook...I can even mess up Hamburger Helper. But lately I've been obsessively watching Top Chef and The Next Food Network Star, and today we checked out a few books on cooking from the library. I think I have at the least decided to be a less picky eater--to experiment with flavors and textures I would usually avoid.
After we toured a cave last week, which intrigued my nearly-9-year-old son, it occurred to me to suggest that he read Jeanne duPrau's novel The City of Ember, which takes place in a world of near-darkness. He finished it today, after 3 days of reading, and loved it! I was so excited about this because I think it's the first book I bought mainly for myself to read (3 years ago) and enjoyed reading myself, that I was able to share with him. It's so neat to share books with my child! Next I have to read Joni Sensel's Reality Leak, which I also bought for myself recently, but which he got to first and also loved! He's eagerly waiting for me to read it and discuss it with him. He won't agree to read much lately that isn't a Star Wars book...so finding these points of common interest has been heartening.

As of today...

2007-07-03T23:52:00.000-05:00

As of today, we have been without a second vehicle for one full year. But on the bright side, I didn't have yet another July 3 wreck today, despite my approximately 1 in 20 chance of having one (based on the fact that I had 2 of them in 39 years).

Also, it is now exactly 1 month until I turn 40. My original plan, a couple of years ago, was to celebrate by going to the national SCBWI writing conference, which starts that day, but I didn't expect to have a nursing baby on my 40th birthday! Or my current financial limitations, for that matter. So that's right out, as is any kind of fancy trip like a cruise, and now I don't know what to do instead. I had big parties for myself on my 20th birthday and my 30th birthday, but I don't think I know enough people to invite to one now, nor can I afford to throw much of one. Cake, of course, is non-negotiable, but other than that, I'll have to think of something quickly!

And tomorrow it threatens to rain all day on the 4th of July. It's rained a lot on the 4th in recent years, both here and in Florida where we were last year, but we've never actually had it rain out all the festivities and fireworks. This year, the festival we normally go to has already been cancelled due to flooding in the park, and they say the rain chances are 90% for tomorrow, so there may be no fireworks, either! We'll wait and see. Meanwhile, I stocked up on 4th of July type foods (hot dogs, baked beans, potato salad, watermelon, and red, white, & blue popsicles and cupcakes) so we can at least celebrate at home. Happy 4th of July to everyone! (Even nonAmericans--it may only be Independence Day here, but it's still the 4th of July nearly everywhere!)

Look at this baby read!

2007-06-26T16:30:00.000-05:00

My baby is growing up too fast! Here he is sitting up reading a book!

This was on his 5-month birthday, 2 days ago. You may note that the book is open to a page that says, "Baby's sitting. Wobble, wobble." At the time I snapped it, he was very wobbly, but 2 days later he can already sit without immediately falling over! (When put in that position.) Also, when he does fall, he can either catch himself on his own arms or flip into a tummy position before he finishes falling all the way. Strong kid!

I swear he will be crawling any moment. He can already roll all around, move in circles, and scoot backwards. But he also gets up on all 4's and rocks violently--almost hops like a bunny when he's doing it! In comparison, I think my second son crawled at 7.5 months and my first crawled at 8.5 months. Oh yeah, he's also really happy again and sleeping through the night again. I guess he was frustrated about not being mobile enough, but now he is too mobile!

Monday miscellany

2007-06-18T17:17:00.001-05:00

I think fried eggs are inherently funny. I'm not sure why, but toy fried eggs and pictures of fried eggs usually make me smile. Forks also strike me as slightly funny, though not as funny as fried eggs. (And of course sporks are funny, but that's more obvious.)
On Saturday Cartoon Network had a phone-in contest to win a $30 Transformers toy, and my 6-year-old was one of only 100 kids nationwide to win one. The same day, my husband won a $20 "Wii Points" card from the Wendy's contest where they give contest codes on their drink cups. (I think it's good for buying old-style games for the Wii, so when we get a Wii, and someday we will...we can use it.) Not to miss out on the good luck, my brother got offered a full-time job (a Hollywood job!) that day, after being out of steady work for quite a while.
If your restaurant chain sells a drink called a Frosty and for more than 25 years, the only flavor it came in was chocolate, then chocolate should still be the default flavor when someone orders a Frosty from you, even if you've recently started selling vanilla ones, too. Just saying...
Also, if a vending machine is sold out of the drink you want, it should give you back your money instead of making you buy a drink you don't want. Especially if nearly all the other drinks in the machine are also sold out, so you have to get a diet soda, which you don't drink (I wrote down the code from the bottle cap and threw the drink away).
Today we took the older kids to Vacation Bible School at the church where they both started preschool, nearly 7 years ago in the case of my oldest. What a blast from the past! I ran into 3 different people I'd known (from elsewhere!) years ago, and also saw the teachers who taught my son's 2-year-old class, now that he's almost 9. After dropping them off, we had some great breakfast burritos...and speaking of blasts from the past, and soda, I also had an RC Cola in a glass bottle!
12-packs of Dr Pepper (my lifeblood) no longer exist. After 3 stores including Walmart didn't have them, I mentioned it to the convenience store clerk, who told me they were all taken away, & were going to be replaced with 8-packs. Coke will apparently be doing the same. (I'm sure we'll soon be paying as much for them as for 12-packs...and I'll need 3 hands to carry 24 cans.)
My sweet, rarely-crying baby has been replaced with a wildly restless, active, and frustrated one who will probably not calm down or stop moving and kicking until he finally learns to crawl, walk, or run! He's only 4 months old now, so I don't know whether to hope this happens soon or not...but he longs to be on the move.
I heard the song "Hey There, Delilah" by the Plain White T's on the radio yesterday and thought it was sweet and catchy--the kind of song anyone would want written for them, so I bought it from iTunes today without even hearing it again first.
The above made me think that even though Elvis Costello's "Alison" is not the greatest song to have as your namesake song, I have had a song and several poems written for me in real life, and I'm happy about that. (Also, considering that I'm a writer and have written quite a few poems over the years, it's surprising how few poems I've written for other people, though there have been some.)
I think it would be really cool to have a '57 Chevy, a '63 Corvette convertible, or a '65 Mustang convertible. But my other dream car is a minivan! I loved my bright blue van and I really miss it. I also miss having a car with a power moonroof (which I had in my '84 Oldsmobile, once upon a time).
This morning I was annoyed with people for complaining about their (nice) vehicles when I'd be happy just to have 2 vehicles--or even 1 big enough or reliable enough vehicle--for our family of 5. Then I realized I'm not grateful enough for all the things I do have that other people may lack--children, a husband, a house, my eyesight and hearing, mobility, an education, a safe neighborhood, a computer, food, air conditioning, etc., etc. Now I'm feeling very appreciative for all that I do have, and I hope I can keep that perspective in mind!
In a Real Simple magazine section on favorite summer memories, a couple of people mentioned lazy drives, and rides in convertibles. I remember lots of lazy drives with my parents, often with stops for snow cones. I also remember one summer night in my teens, when I went for a ride late at night in my friend John's huge old yellow convertible (one of those 70s boat-sized cars) with him and another friend. We drove out towards nowhere with the top down, with no destination and no place else to be. I'm not sure that the guys were having much fun, but I felt free, like I was flying, without a care in the world. It's just a snapshot in my mind now, but it's still one of my favorite memories.

Yak & tats

2007-06-14T12:01:00.001-05:00

There was a yak in my mailbox! Well, actually, a copy of K. Pluta's new picture book, There's a Yak in My Bed, which I won in an online giveaway from her! Yay! We found it when we checked the mail on the way out of the house a couple of days ago, and my 6-year-old immediately read it out loud to all of us on our drive. Then the 8-year-old wanted to read it to himself, even though he'd already heard the story! I'm guessing he wanted to see the pictures, by Austin's own Christy Stallop, better. Obviously, the book went over well here. It's cute and fun, and given that Blooming Tree is a small press that doesn't normally do picture books, I was impressed with the quality of the physical book as well. So congrats again, K. Pluta, & thanks again for the book!

Meanwhile, last night I started reading Jennifer Lynn Barnes' book Tattoo. My husband was out of town, I had finally gotten the baby to sleep around 9:30 (no small feat!), and I let the other boys stay up to have a movie-watching party (they watched Sky High, one of my favorites, and then a new Pokemon episode) and a "sleepover." They finally fell asleep around 11 pm, in sleeping bags on the living room floor. I wasn't sleepy myself yet, so I decided to read. Well, let me tell you that Tattoo may not be the book to read when you're alone in your room late at night! Heh. I got about halfway through, finally going to sleep at 1 am when the sense of impending doom was really starting to creep me out. Let's just say that Jen did a good job of creating suspense and dread. :-)

I woke up this morning with a baby in my bed (he joined me when he woke in the night), but no evil beings and no yaks, so I'd have to say it's so far so good today.

18 years ago today

2007-06-11T02:03:00.000-05:00

18 years ago today I met my husband at a Jason's Deli (with mutual friends). Here's the oldest pic of us I have on my computer, from about 4 months after that:

Of course we'll go to Jason's Deli today, as we always do on June 11. And we won't have to drive 65 miles to get there this year, like we did last year living in Florida!

Books & bananas!

2007-06-07T23:58:00.000-05:00

OK, this is really strange... in the "8 things about me" meme I just posted two days ago, I admitted, with some embarrassment, that I still like to eat banana baby food. Today, I checked out Olive's Ocean by Kevin Henkes from the library and read the whole thing. In it, the main character, Martha, and her grandmother tell each other something about themselves every day. And on one of the days, the grandmother happens to tell Martha two things...one of which is that she ate a jar of Martha's little sister's banana baby food that morning!! I am pretty sure I've never read any other thing in which an adult admitted to eating baby food, and here it was banana baby food at that. Bizarre.

That was the second full midgrade novel I read today. First I read M.T. Anderson's The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen, the sequel to Whales on Stilts. Parts of it had me laughing with tears running down my face. Though I'm not sure who it's written for. It looks like a book for 10 or 12-year-olds, but to get most of the humor, it seems to require an ironic stance towards children's series books from the past, not to mention a lot of general knowledge. My older son could easily read all the words, but he'd be completely lost. It seems like its best target audience is...well, adults with weird senses of humor who like to read children's books. But I must say, M.T. Anderson is extremely versatile!

As is Kevin Henkes. I loved Olive's Ocean, which was a Newbery Honor Book. I was amazed again (as with his book Protecting Marie) that he can get so fully into the head of a 12-year-old girl. I think his writing is full of true and perfect moments. I was just lamenting to my husband the other night that the little siblings in fiction books often don't ring true to me, but the 2-year-old in this one did. The adults also seemed particularly real to me, especially the father and grandmother. I think I'll have to buy a copy of this one to keep.

Number 9...number 9...

2007-06-07T02:26:00.000-05:00

A 9th "thing about me" I thought of after posting the 8 things meme last night:

Some years ago, I participated in a "Life Vision" workshop at my church where I had to come up with the one word I thought described me best. Just one! I finally decided on analytical. When I later, well, analyzed it a little more (ha ha), I decided my one word should have been imaginative. Though perhaps it should have been indecisive!

The 8 things meme

2007-06-06T19:32:00.000-05:00

This one has gone around, and I didn't do it because I already posted 100 things about me. But I suspect there are at least 108 things about me, so here goes:

I once ran for office unopposed--and lost! However, the same year, I was elected to an office I did not run for (ran for one position and was somehow elected for a different one), and got to perform in a play when I wasn't in the cast or even the official understudy. So I guess it all evened out.
I have never gone on a diet. (Not that I shouldn't have; I just haven't!)
I am good at remembering birthdays, if I've known them. (Happy Birthday, David.)
I have never tried sushi.
I've been reading magazines about writing on & off since I was maybe 10 years old. My grandmother often bought Writer's Digest and I used to read hers. I also bought it in college, & have since subscribed to various writing magazines. My head is crammed full of writing knowledge, but somehow it doesn't always translate to actual writing.
I don't wear glasses or contact lenses.
I have liked banana baby food since I was a baby! I rarely actually buy it, but now I have an excuse again... though the banana baby food we gave our baby the other day was awful, sour instead of sweet, so I won't be buying that kind again.
When my 8-year-old recently made a Mother's Day booklet for me, one page was little ovals with things about me, and here's what he said about me: children's book writer, uses computer a lot, is wonderful, is smart, likes me, is nice, likes refried beans, best mom ever. In another part of the book, he says I am "amazing and awesome," and I am not "dull," "dopey," "unsmart," or "other bad things." He also says I'm "one of a kind" and "not bad at all." :-)

It's that time of year again...

2007-06-02T02:24:00.000-05:00

We had our 4th annual Oscar the Grouch's birthday party on Friday, & put pics here. I suggest using the slideshow option for optimal viewing with the captions.

Meanwhile...where did my baby go?!

Prom Dates from Hell

2007-05-30T15:32:00.001-05:00

With prom season just winding down, I read Prom Dates from Hell by Rosemary Clement-Moore this weekend. It's the fun, fast-paced story of a girl who has to track down something Evil and save her classmates from destruction--and possibly worse, go to the prom. One character says that the heroine, Maggie, lives and dies by wisecracks, and indeed, Maggie's narration is so full of witty comments and one-liners, it could be a stand-up comedy routine. It's funny, literate, and suspenseful, with memorable characters and more than one hint at romance. Maggie, who doesn't want to go to prom at all, ends up there with not one but two guys (pseudo-dates), both of whom are thankfully not from Hell. And while prom nights have a reputation of being wild...at this one all Hell breaks loose. Well, at least some of it.

This is another one I bought as a full-priced hardback, though in this case I do know the author. Not just online, but it turns out I knew her in person many years ago. I will now possibly embarrass her and definitely embarrass myself by sharing a pic of me and her as toga-clad pre-teens, dressed for a Musical Theatre production. She's the one who looks poised & confident; I'm the one who looks like a deer in the headlights!

I'm a little curious whether Prom Dates from Hell was set vaguely at my own high school, except for the natatorium--I'm not sure where Rosemary went to high school, but a few of the details of the school seemed familiar, especially the walkway where the opening action takes place. The college town enviroment rang true to my experience as well.

And since it fits in with the topic, I thought I'd share my own prom pic...though with my date's face blocked out! Note that my dress could have been a wedding dress now, but at the time strapless wedding dresses were pretty much unheard of. (It also turned out that the majority of girls at my prom showed up in white, including two at my table alone wearing the same dress as one another, but it was hard to find other colors that year! I looked for a black dress & couldn't even find one.)

Recent reading

2007-05-29T10:06:00.001-05:00

A week or two ago, I finally read An Abundance of Katherines by John Green. Although the math emphasis in it might have turned me off in the past, my own math & science-obsessed son has made me much more open to all things mathematical, and sympathetic in any case to brainy boys like Colin, the protagonist of this book. Although I did find it highly improbable, mathematically, that anyone could have even met 19 girls named Katherine between the ages of 7 and 18, much less gone out with that many of them, a lot of things in this book resonated with me, and a lot of things in it made me think. In fact, I think my husband would even enjoy it if I could get him to read it--he doesn't read much fiction and YA would be particularly unlikely for him, but I already shared a bunch from this book with him, accurately guessing that he would relate to things like Colin's long-standing desire to have a "Eureka!" moment like Archimedes. Loved the anagrammatic poem in the book dedication, too!

One thing that struck me in the book was the narrative voice. It's third person, not first, and while it's limited third in that it sticks with Colin's perspective instead of jumping into other character's heads, it's also kind of omniscient since it knows more about Colin than he knows himself. It's like--limited omniscient or something. I don't recall seeing that POV used much in recent books, but I rather liked it. I suspect something similar was probably used in some books I read growing up, but in a more invisible way, not as a means to comment on the character. I might experiment with a similar POV for one of my YA manuscripts. It's in first person right now and the voice has never worked for me, but my limited third person voice tends to be about the same as first with the pronouns switched, and that hasn't solved the problem. But a narrator who's slightly more distant from Dan, while still sticking with his POV, might work quite well.

I finished Going Nowhere Faster a few days ago. Still liked it. Though my recent reading has once again thrown me for a loop in regards to my own writing. My YA manuscript mentioned above is mainly about a guy struggling with what to do after high school. He finally decides, against his parents' wishes, not to apply for college (at that time, anyway), and goes in a different direction. It's a huge decision to make since his parents have placed a lot of expectations on him. When I first started writing it, (cough cough) seven years ago, dealing with college at all was a stretch for YA. He's a senior, and that seemed like the upper limit of YA, and there pretty much weren't YA books about people who were already out of high school. But now...I've read two YA books in the last two weeks about guys after high school, drifting around. And they both gave the impression that the college decision is not such a big deal. It's something to consider, but not the high-stakes decision it was for my character. So now my story seems misguided... I mean, it becomes a big deal for him because it's a huge deal to his parents, but my book is supposed to be humor, not some big family rebellion story, and it seems like my ending isn't as counter-intuitive as I'd thought it might be. Ah well.

Boys and girls and books

2007-05-28T13:00:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week, I read Tanya Lee Stone's A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl, which I'd heard a lot about. I admit I was a little uncomfortable with it at first. I assumed it was because of the subject matter (3 girls who get involved with the same jerky guy who's only after one thing), but I realized it was also because I didn't relate to it. I wasn't in a position where I needed to fight off the guys in high school, so I couldn't easily imagine being a high school girl attractive enough to get hit on by one of the most popular guys in school or to imagine I could wield any power over one, nor could I understand why any of the girls were interested in this guy at all, having never been attracted to that sort of jock for a moment of my life, and generally only liking guys I was friends with first. But I still read the whole thing through in about 45 minutes (it was a quick read because it's written in free verse), and had the realization, for the first time ever, that it might be a good thing not to be one of the more attractive girls in school. No, I wouldn't have liked a guy like this, but girls who have guys falling all over them must be faced with a lot of jerks, and must have to spend a lot of time sorting the jerks from the nice guys.

And speaking of boys, and girls, and books, I was suddenly slightly bummed last Saturday to find myself with a family of 3 boys and no girl, when we went to the public library together and it dawned on me that I had no daughters to share my interest in "girl" books or "feeling" books in general. Up to now, their interests in fiction have been pretty unisex. They've liked Magic Tree House, and mysteries like Cam Jansen or Nate the Great, and adventure stories like Narnia, or Time Warp Trio which is pretty boyish but also throws in a few girls (especially in the TV series). I've always been glad they haven't cared if the protagonists in their books were boys or girls. But last week I realized--they don't mind girl characters in adventure books. Or mystery books. But as they're getting older and there are more books for kids their ages that have emotional themes...they have no interest in those. Not with girl characters, not with boy characters. I tried to interest my nearly-9-year-old who has a baby brother in a book about a 9-year-old boy having to adjust to a baby brother while having wacky adventures with pets, and he wouldn't even vaguely consider it. He wanted Star Wars books. And maybe a Pokémon book, and he took a Time Warp Trio book mainly to make me happy (he likes them but was definitely in a Star Wars mindset), and threw in a series mystery, but he mainly only likes series books, and things about science fiction or time travel. Or heavy, hard non-fiction science books. And he only took Encyclopedia Brown under duress, even though I thought he would love it. My younger son likes some of those things, but also non-fiction about snakes or sharks or dinosaurs. In short, nothing at all like I read at their age or imagined sharing with my children.

Maybe I can eventually get them to read something like Running Out of Time (mystery/thriller), The City of Ember (same), or even Ella Enchanted (funny/fantasy), even though they aren't series books, but who will read something like Harriet the Spy or Because of Winn-Dixie with me? No one. A Wrinkle in Time? Sure. A Ring of Endless Light? No. Boo hoo. Maybe I'm wrong... maybe my second or third son will surprise me. So far my second isn't nearly as all-science-all-the-time as my first, and he's also more emotional and social. But he's also a lot more likely to say "That's a girl thing! Yuck!" (Then gain, at a school party this week when a mom gave little plastic maze things for boys or fairy princess wands for boys--he picked the wand!) I can see them reading these books as assigned school reading, and even enjoying them, but for leisure time reading I have a hard time getting them to read even boyish books if they're not exactly what they already had in mind.

Gold stars all around

2007-05-26T15:55:00.001-05:00

I dreamed I got an A+ on a project. It was great to remember what that felt like! In recent years, I've been so worn down by writing rejections (and self-rejection, as I watch other writers soar past me and assume I could never compete) and various personal failures, that I'd forgotten, at least emotionally, that I used to do good work and get rewarded for it. I've focused on the times I slid by and got A's I didn't deserve (like when I wrote a paper the morning it was due and got an A on it), or the times I slacked off on the work completely and got bad grades, but it somehow slipped my mind that those were the exceptions. That most of the time, I did work I could be proud of, and teachers liked it. It was the shortest, simplest dream, but surprisingly it's made me feel more confident just having that reminder!

And a related mom brag: on the last day of school, everyone in my kids' classes got little awards. My kindergartener got the "Best Class Artist" award (he's got definite art talent), and my 2nd grader got the "Awesome Math Student" award (being the only 2nd grader in the school to ace all the 3rd grade math quizzes). Good grades, too--the 2nd grader even got an average of 100 for the whole 9 weeks in social studies!

Musings on parental guidance

2007-05-26T14:41:00.001-05:00

Last night, on the 30th anniversary of Star Wars, we finally let our sons (ages 6 & 8) watch Episode III (Revenge of the Sith), which they'd been bugging us about for a while. We'd held off before because it's so dark & violent, & most reviews said kids shouldn't see it before 10 or 12 years old. But they are soooo familiar with the whole saga now, since they've been playing the two Lego Star Wars video games constantly, and reading Star Wars novels, blah blah blah. They did fine with it. I'm sure it was very different seeing it on just a TV screen, knowing some of the scariest things in advance (we'd warned them), than if they'd seen it on the big screen without being recently immersed in the characters & their worlds so much. As for myself, I didn't watch most of it (had seen it in the theater), but when I was watching, we had the closed captioning on to help the kids follow it, and most of the dialogue and line readings were so wooden, it sounded like an early cast read-through, or even a bad audition. I also found it amusing that the Darth Vader suit Anakin/Vader got at the end not only lowers his voice, but greatly improves his inflection. ;-) (I think if they can go back & insert Jabba the Hutt into the original Star Wars movie later, they should be able to go back & insert a different actor in Hayden Christiansen's place.)

That, plus a discussion I just saw on a writers' board about the appropriateness of certain books for young readers, has made me think about how differently I view the topic of appropriateness as a writer, as a reader, and as a mother! Actually, as a writer I always err on the side of clean & broadly "appropriate" material, because that's what I prefer. I can't imagine myself ever writing an R-rated book, and even as a reader and moviegoer, I'd rather not be bombarded with explicit language, sex, violence, or whatever. Cary Grant & Audrey Hepburn didn't need to spout f-words for their movies to appeal to adults. But because I want to encounter good stories, I put up with that stuff, to a degree, as a reader and a movie watcher. If it's not too in-your-face, I look beyond it. (And I'm afraid that if it's really funny or clever, I may look beyond it even if it is in-your-face... though I would like it even better if it was really funny without all that.) But I only just realized now that I have no idea how to balance my own ability to filter out what I don't like with my maternal tendency to want to protect my children.

I mean... as a YA reader & writer, and as a former child reader myself, I tend to think that while some books may not be exactly beneficial for kids, or praiseworthy in their subject matter, kids are smart enough to read critically and make their own decisions. I don't think they mindlessly accept everything they read as being the norm or the way things should be. And frankly, I assume that they hear things in their lives every day that are worse than a lot of things they may read on the page. I sure did, and no one is filtering or editing what teens really say and experience. But I always think of these things in the abstract--about teenagers in general, or about me as a teen. I had never until today thought to extend it to my own children as teenagers! It hadn't seemed relevant yet. Of course, my kids are only 6, 8, and 4 months old. They still need a lot of parental guidance. They do seem to believe everything they hear for the most part--even that Bounty is the "best" paper towel and we must buy it now! They even believe the TV ads for Floam even though we already bought Floam and they were already horribly disappointed in it! They keep thinking next time it might be different... And naturally I don't want them exposed to things before they are ready.

But looking back on my own childhood & teen years, my parents had no idea what I knew, and no idea what I was reading, either. They looked down on YA fiction in general, but only because they thought it was brain candy & not substantial enough. They suggested other books I could read (which I never took them up on...), but I chose all my own books and no one ever bothered glancing at them, as far as I recall. But even as a fairly young kid, I knew what I liked and what I thought about stuff. My mother would have passed out if she'd known I read Forever at age 11 (had she known what it was about), but even at 11, with Judy Blume being my favorite author, I thought the girl made a stupid choice and I didn't want to emulate it. When I read books with lots of swear words, I often tossed them aside on my own if they started annoying me too much--but I would have been patently offended if my parents had presumed to tell me not to read them! So I wonder how often I underestimate my own children, or if I'm not now (and I haven't had much cause to worry about this stuff yet), how much I will. I can't imagine being quite as uninvolved in my own kids' reading choices as my family was--but it's not like I've been reading all the mystery and fantasy adventure books my 8-year-old brings home, either. I trust him to choose what he likes. I'd love to be able to discuss things like this with them in the future and help them to analyze things critically, but I also have to remember I would never have wanted to discuss some of this stuff with my parents & can't imagine I would ever have told them everything! (I recently read in a magazine that if your 12-year-old daughter tells you she's in love with a boy, you shouldn't scoff that she's too young, but ask what she likes about him. I thought, wow, when I was 12, I never would have told my parents I was in love with a boy!! And I did think I was.)

Strange dreams are made of this

2007-05-23T19:13:00.000-05:00

For my 2nd post of the day... I'm not prone to posting about my dreams, but I had the world's weirdest dreams last night. The weirdest image was of dead mutant dolphins hovering in the air! They were sort of like swordfish & mostly purple... There was something about a comedy horror movie, similar to Shaun of the Dead but eerier. At one point, I was in a hotel lobby and ran into a writer friend, Kay, who was wearing white mime-style make-up on her way to do a school author visit. I was wearing a loooong black t-shirt & black jeans & was horrified to note I was wearing really grungy pink pig socks. I ran to change either my pants or socks, & found myself in a place that was a combination homeless shelter, Goodwill store, and health club for people aged 50 and up. (?!) And all I could find was a pair of yarn shoes that turned into socks I had accidentally grabbed a whole handful of, all attached to each other, but which I couldn't wear unless I "hand-conditioned" the yarn by somehow unraveling and spinning every thread in the yarn with my fingers until it looked right. Yeah.

And then it got weirder. ;-) Because I've almost never dreamed I was anyone other than me. But suddenly, in this dream, I was a teenage boy! This may be because of all the YA fiction I've been reading & trying to write, often with male protagonists, but anyway, I was a teenage boy who was alternately the best friend, step-brother, and newly adopted brother of another guy who was the son and heir of a billionaire who was a combination of Bill Gates and a successful wacky inventor (the father in the book I'm reading is a wacky inventor, though not a successful one). In the dream, the rich guy was my step-dad for most of the dream, but somehow I had no share in his riches. I had this female friend and sidekick, the kind who's always coming up with crazy schemes, and suddenly she started coming on to me. I had thought she mainly hung around me to get closer to my rich friend/brother, and I told her so. She said that had crossed her mind, but she also thought he was a spoiled brat. So we were in one of those tense moments where she was hoping that I (being a teenage guy to her teenage girl) would feel the same, and all I could think were horrible things I felt guilty about thinking, like that her eyes and nose were too big and she wore way too much make-up, and that I could only see her as a friend. (This slightly echoes back to something in one of the books I was reading last night, but still, it was weird.) And then I woke up. So who knows, maybe I can tell Dan's story after all!

(P.S. Shortly before falling asleep for the night, I had murmured something about hoping the protagonist in this book I'm reading didn't end up being like the protagonist of the very strange, dream-oriented movie The Science of Sleep, so maybe I was asking for it. Could explain the sock yarn stuff, anyway, since fabric arts figure prominently in that movie.)

Book therapy

2007-05-23T17:05:00.000-05:00

I've heard that when women get depressed, they may shop. Especially for shoes. I had a very bad day yesterday, and feeling very depressed in the evening, I escaped to go shop for...books! Who needs shoes when there are books?!

I didn't even know what I was going to do or why. I just had to get out of the house and found myself making my way, like a homing pigeon, to Barnes & Noble. It was one of those bad days with the baby where I felt the full weight of what I'd gotten myself into by having a baby at nearly 40 years old, not just an "oh no the baby's crying and I can't catch a break" day, but an "oh no my life was finally supposed to start now but this puts it off 5 more years and there's no way my dreams could entail waiting until I'm 45 to pursue them so they're all defunct" day. I think I instinctively went to where I feel most myself, where the things I care about are. I thought I'd look at magazines, but I couldn't get interested in them. (In a move that would shock & horrify my children, I even chose not to purchase the latest Neopets magazine....) I found myself going to the YA section, where I stood in amazement looking at all the pretty covers and all the enticing-looking books. They have made the YA section much bigger in the past year, and the books mostly looked fantastic! I looked through many of them with longing.

Finally, I treated myself by doing something I have probably not done in 20 years: I bought two full-priced books I'd never even heard of before! One even by an author I'd never heard of before! And a hardback, at that! I will occasionally buy a hardback by an author I know personally, though usually at Amazon prices. I pulled out all the stops this time. I bought a graphic novel, of all things (the first I've read), The Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci, and then Going Nowhere Faster by Sean Beaudoin. Further maximizing my retreat into comfort items, I found myself stopping on the way home for a Coke Slurpee and a Twix. Mmmm.

I read The Plain Janes as soon as I got home, which only took about 20 minutes. I enjoyed it, even if it did seem improbable that a town would react to something like bubbles in the town fountain as an act of terrorism or frightening criminal vandalism...but then, I guess comics are supposed to be a bit over the top (most real-life bad guys don't go to quite the lengths of, say, the Green Goblin). Still, it made me think of Footloose, with the town that banned dancing until the young people revolted, and the 80's song "99 Luftballons," with its idea that the sighting of some balloons by paranoid people could set off a nuclear war. I found the graphic novel format interesting and realized I could tell most of my stories in a lot fewer words. I also particularly liked the way the protagonist's eyes told the story a couple of times where her love interest was involved. There's an ad in the back for another graphic novel I'll definitely keep an eye out for (Good as Lily), about an 18-year-old girl who suddenly finds herself in the presence of versions of herself at 6, 29, and 70 years old. I'm fascinated already.

I'm halfway through Going Nowhere Faster, and loving it so far. I said before that I liked books with footnotes, but this one has something I relate to even more: parentheses. It's loaded with parenthetical remarks, and that's how I think. The character also reminds me a lot of my protagonist Dan, in my mostly unwritten book Can't Beet It, only funnier than Dan in ways that make me hit my head for not making Dan funnier. I'm beginning to think I can't do my story justice at all, when I see how much more other writers are doing with theirs than I'd even thought to do with mine. But no matter, the point is that I'm so glad (so far) I took a chance on this book. It has some things in common with An Abundance of Katherines (which I started to write a post about, which I haven't posted yet), in that the protagonist was a gifted child who has grown up without reaching his potential (something I have particular interest in, as a person who graduated high school at 16 and is still waiting for a book contract at nearly 40!), and it has those parentheses while the Katherines book has footnotes, but it's not too similar otherwise except that I like them both.

I have so much to post about, I'm breaking it into 2 or 3 posts, so that's all for that one.