This weekend I went to Dallas/Fort Worth to hear award-winning YA author Amanda (A.M.) Jenkins speak on rewriting and revising at an SCBWI meeting there. Her talk was fantastic! I took away a ton of useful insights and information, some of which I can start applying right away. I was a bit amazed to hear such a great talk at a free meeting instead of a paid conference! Before the meeting, I had a nice lunch with Kathryn Lay, author of the new middle grade novel Crown Me!, as well as more than 1,000 (!) short stories and articles. I'm always amazed I've been able to meet so many great writers and learn from them!

Hooray, I wrote 2,460 new words on my stalled middle grade novel today--2 new chapters! I have to stop now (and considering that it's late afternoon, it might be good to finally have some lunch!), but I'm so happy to have gotten past my block on this book, and I know what needs to happen next. I also came up with another idea for the book that will explain a little better why the main character's seemingly goofy problem is such a big deal to her. That will involve some rewriting later, but I'm thrilled to have made a small breakthrough!

I just saw in Cynthia Leitich Smith's blog that she's proudly announcing her first published story "featuring in part a romantic relationship in which no one dies." I had to laugh out loud at that. Especially because I've spent much of this afternoon contemplating (and writing part of) a new novel idea featuring in part a romantic relationship in which someone does die. Yikes!

Speaking of which, today I read Sonya Sones' whole free verse novel One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies while standing in front of the library shelf when I was supposed to be hurrying home so my husband could go to the post office! Oops. I didn't mean to read it...I was just going to look at it, and got so engrossed that I kept reading until I was done. Anyway, I thought it was well done and it gave me hope for my own new idea. I don't think mine would be free verse but it would include poetry and possibly be told in a choppy, somewhat verselike style, and I had also been worrying that it wouldn't be possible to start a book with a death but then go on to other things (like romance), not focusing on the death all that much later on, without seeming callous. But Sones does exactly that and it works great. There were also a couple of passages in the book that I strongly related to on a personal level. Actually, at one point the main character is on a plane, dreaming that her boyfriend comes down the aisle and saves her, and my semi-completed YA novel has a scene with my main character on a bus, daydreaming the same thing! I guess it's a common fantasy. I wrote that because I used to daydream that my crush of the moment would suddenly appear to rescue me from whatever boring class I was stuck in!

I was surprised to find Daniel Pinkwater, a regular NPR commentator & author of about 100 (!) books, in a writers' chat room I popped into last night. He writes the kind of absurd, humorous children's books I especially love, and the books he reviews on the radio become bestsellers. Another writer and I chatted with him for more than 3 hours! It was absolutely fascinating, not to mention entertaining--I felt like I'd gone to a private writing conference. He shared lots of stories and advice, and I found it heartening that even after 35 years as a children's writer and plenty of ups and downs, he was still interested enough in writing to want to discuss it in the middle of the night. One statement he made resonated with me enough that I asked if I could quote him on it, which he said I could: "Seeing your name on a book gets old really fast, but trying to make one that sings all the way through can be endlessly interesting." Now that is something I look forward to, and it also reminds me to keep raising the bar on my own expectations for my writing! Be sure to keep an eye out for his next novel, The Artsy Smartsy Club, which he thinks is possibly his best work yet.

In other news, my 6-year-old, Ryan, created his own little vanity press the other night. He set up a "writing stand" in our living room. The rest of us were supposed to come there and write stories with the pens, pencils, & paper he provided. Then he would make a cover, illustrate the stories, & bind them with staples. (Amazingly he decided not to charge for that service, though he charged 5 cents apiece for sharpening pencils, and managed to need 4 of them sharpened for his illustrations.) It was challenging to write a story on demand while he waited, especially one that would be very short and easy to illustrate, but I wrote an extremely low-conflict story about a pig's journey to Jupiter, with too many pages, and he patiently illustrated the whole thing and made a color cover with the title written in a "fancy font". Too funny! (And knowing Ryan, within a few years he may have invented his own printing press to do the job right!)

Also, my brother in Hollywood is a "featured extra" in an upcoming episode of the TV show Las Vegas. He plays a crook who gets chased through a casino, and he creates a diversion by throwing a stack of $100 bills in the air. Only they aren't ordinary $100 bills--they have his picture on them, and they actually made up fake bills with my brother's picture on them! If my brother ever comes up with a list of 10 things he's done that most people haven't, it would put any list of mine to shame.

The day before yesterday, I went to a picture book workshop given by Lisa Wheeler. It was excellent! I got helpful tips and information out of every bit of it. (And if I may be permitted to brag a little, she used my manuscript as a good example twice, and also told me I can rhyme well! That's big praise coming from one of the queens of rhyme! That's not to say that my manuscript doesn't need plenty of work...but her critique gave me helpful advice for revision.)

Yesterday, I spent much of the day preparing, printing, collating, stapling, correcting, reprinting, and restapling entries for the SmartWriters.com W.I.N. competition and the SCBWI Work-in-Progress Grant competition. I got those out in the mail this morning so that is a lot off my plate! Now let's see if I can put them out of my mind until July (for SmartWriters) and September (for SCBWI), when they announce the winners.

Today I had lunch with a writer friend who should by all rights be the Next Big Thing in children's writing. She's supposed to get back to me next month with a critique of my YA novel that needs revision. I also plan to attend the NC/NE Texas SCBWI chapter meeting later this month to hear noted YA author A.M. Jenkins speak on rewriting & revising the YA novel.

My goals for the rest of this week are to do my taxes and to read the books I mentioned in my previous post. Then I plan to choose one of my unfinished writing projects and tackle it head-on. I also have a poem I'm looking for a home for. I'm trying to decide whether to submit it to a magazine, save it to use in a poetry collection someday, or find some other use for it.

Yesterday I woke up from a detailed and complex dream in which I was acting in a play about a teenage brother and sister. I had a line in my head I had to write down. As I continued drifting in & out of sleep, I kept waking up to write more and more. What I was writing was not what I had dreamed about, but was inspired by thoughts that came out of the dream. I ended up with 544 words towards what seems to be a somewhat edgy short story for an older YA audience. Right after I'd sworn to give up writing short stories, and one day after I'd decided maybe I should start writing more for the 10-14 age range than for older teens! Argh. A story like this seems almost completely unmarketable, but I feel compelled to at least finish it & see what I end up with. (I suppose it could be fodder for a novel if I added a lot of subplots, but that wasn't how it struck me, and I already have too many novels on the back burner!)

This week I finally bought the DVD of Where the Wild Things Are and Other Maurice Sendak Stories. Four of the stories have songs sung by Carole King that are positively infectious--we saw One Was Johnny at a library storytime a few years ago & the song has taken up residence in my brain ever since! My 4-year-old, Kyle, is particularly entranced with In the Night Kitchen, so we've been reading the book of that lately, also. It was also one of my favorites as a child and it makes hardly any sense at all--either that helps explain my love for absurd humor, or my love for absurd humor helps explain why I liked the book! One thing I've noticed is that 4 of the 6 stories on the Maurice Sendak video have characters threatening to eat (or at least cook) other characters, and in one case it actually happens. I'm not sure what to infer from that, but I found it interesting! (Now I don't feel so weird for telling my kids I'm going to gobble them up!)

I'm busy this week preparing writing contest entries and reading picture books for my picture book workshop. Once I'm done with all that, I've got two novels set aside to read: Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko, & Crown Me! by Kathryn Lay. I'm eager to get to those!

A lot of writers blogging on LiveJournal have been putting up lists of "10 Things I've Done That Most People Haven't." I've been a bit alarmed reading their lists, because their lives sound much more interesting than mine! In brainstorming about what I might have to put on such a list, I noticed that most of the things coming to mind had to do with forms of transportation. So, without further ado, here are 10 Things I've Ridden On/In That Most People Haven't:

1. A camel


2. An elephant


3. The Judge Roy Scream roller coaster 23 times in a row


4. A train on a boat


5. A bus on a boat


6. The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile (you knew that was coming)


7. A hovercraft


8. A parade float (note: wearing a long-sleeved leotard & long pants outside in Texas in July is less than ideal, even if you do get to play a kazoo)


9. Two ocean liners (the Queen Elizabeth 2 & the France, both at age six)


10. An Oscar nominee's limousine on Oscar night (unbeknownst to the nominee, who was busy attending the ceremony!)

Runner-up was riding in a gondola ride over fireworks. I also rode to school on the back of a motorcycle fairly often at age 6 or 7...not quite up to today's safety standards! I have ridden many other forms of transportation, but I have not yet ridden in a helicopter, blimp, or hot air balloon, and I haven't ridden in a tank, though I've been inside of an old one. I also haven't ridden a Zamboni, but two of my characters do!

I really didn't need to see this new TV promo. It sounds way too much like the novel I've had semi-underway for the past, um, 5 years. Two guys and a girl, lack of ambition, food on sticks in ridiculous uniforms at the food court... I can't decide whether to hope the show fizzles & dies before I finish my book, or whether its fizzling & dying would only foreshadow the eventual fizzling & dying of my own story. I was going to say that at least my story doesn't have any precocious young kids in it, but then I remembered that it does! (Maybe not precocious, but at least young.) Argh.

Of course, I know there is nothing new under the sun (least of all that phrase!). I was at the library reading picture books tonight, and just happened to read not one, but two, stories about parents who eventually learn to love playing in the mud, as their children do (The Piggy in the Puddle by Charlotte Pomerantz and Mrs. Potter's Pig by Phyllis Root). That also happens to be the approximate plot of my rhyming story Holly McPolly McDolly McBean, published in Half-Price Books' Say Good Night to Illiteracy anthology in 2001. Though my story is about grass, not mud, and doesn't have any pigs in it... (Or any other animals, though I actually pictured Holly as a rabbit, since I had a rabbit named Holly!) Still, I had hoped to have this food-on-a-stick novel finished and submitted years ago (even had an invitation to submit it in 2002), so it drives me crazy to see this show coming out now, while my novel is still far from done. As it is, I've been toying with changing the whole tone of the novel before I continue writing.

Earlier today I decided to change the format of my journal archives from weekly to monthly, and to put them in reverse chronological order instead of chronological (not a standard Blogger option). Simple, right? For some reason it took hours to get all the formatting right. I'm starting to think I could use an update of the basic HTML skills I learned in 1995! I created my writing site with Netscape Composer the first time, but ever since I've kept it updated just by editing the HTML, and I don't think I've even learned any new HTML since HTML 1.0. I'm surprised it still works at all anymore! Today I had to tweak Javascript and it would have been nice if I'd had a halfway decent idea of what I was doing. But it oddly seems easier to me to just edit the HTML than to have to learn a web design program.

Lack of focus: I keep thinking of the Rolling Stones song "Shattered," but with the word "Scattered" instead. Describing myself. Scattered, scattered...shadoobie. I feel soooo scattered lately and am having trouble focusing on one writing project. I have bits and pieces of many, many projects floating around in my head, yet haven't sat down lately to work on any of them. (Being sick on & off for a month hasn't helped.) My goal for the rest of the month is to get some contest entries prepared and sent in, but haven't even managed to concentrate on that. (Completely unrelated, but in a similar fashion, I always found myself thinking of the Cure song "Fascination Street" while filling out "pagination sheets" in my tech writing job--note the rhyme. I could no more stop that song from getting into my head than I could stop from yawning when someone mentions it. How about you...are you yawning now?)

I've had so much distress floating around my head this week that I thought about writing a list called 50 Reasons to Give Up on Writing. Over the weekend, I've probably had close to that many different thoughts, some related to the market or writing in general (most recently, reading bad reviews that led me to believe my own would be worse), and some related to me and my quirks, leading me to think, "In that case, I might as well just give up." But then, I can't really give up because I have a few insistent reasons to go on--namely: Lydia, Lainie, Dan, Whitney, Miranda, and friends--characters whose stories I feel compelled to tell, even if no one else cares to hear them. Sounds silly but it's true. I will be really unhappy with myself if I never get all these stories out of my head and onto paper. I have to think they're in my head for a reason!

Today I read a midgrade novel called While You Were Out by J. Irvin Kuns. I hadn't heard of it before; it just caught my eye in the library. I thought it was pretty good. Though I really need to be reading picture books in preparation for the picture book workshop I'm going to in 2 weeks!

This morning I went to an SCBWI meeting to hear author/illustrator Janie Bynum talk about book promotion. It was a bit daunting to hear how much authors have to sell themselves. I don't think I'd be nearly as nervous about actually doing a school visit or book signing as I would about having to get visits lined up in the first place!

I finished a new short story last month, but it's already been rejected and I'm not sure there's anywhere else to send it! I meant to stop spending time on short stories, anyway, but it just spilled out. I guess I should be glad none of my other manuscripts has come back recently. I submitted one manuscript in January that I've since decided wasn't quite ready to submit, so I'm feeling a bit uneasy about that. At least I think it was probably 80 or 90% ready...and if the editor doesn't like what I sent, I don't think she'd like an improved version, either.

Interesting grammar tidbit: While writing the paragraph above, I wondered whether to say "none of my other manuscripts HAS come back" or "none of my other manuscripts HAVE come back." I did a little research online and, although a couple of sites said emphatically that "none" must take the singular "has," I also came across this article about that very issue. According to this, the rule is that there is no rule! A Merriam Webster usage guide apparently even says it depends on what the author thinks it should be! In this case I figured it was safer to go with "has," anyway, since "none has" is more widely accepted among people who are likely to nitpick such things. Sorry to bore those who find grammar tedious--but in my former job as a technical writer & editor, I saw fierce battles waged over grammar and usage issues! Somewhere I have a fun book called Mrs. Thistlebottom's Hobgoblins, which debunks a lot of supposed grammar "rules." I'd also recommend Woe is I and The Deluxe Transitive Vampire as amusing grammar-related reads.

My Wienermobile article just came out in the January-February 2005 issue of the SCBWI Bulletin! Better yet, the Bulletin has been newly redesigned, with full-color cover art by Tomie dePaola on this issue, so it's a really sharp-looking publication to appear in. My 6-year-old son was also thrilled to find his photo in the magazine!

I also got 2 rejections in the past 2 days, and wow, were they quick! They were both from e-mail submissions I made on January 16th. One rejection came on the 17th and one on the 18th! But both were friendly and helpful, and I thanked both editors for their quick responses. At least they didn't leave me hanging for months. (My rejection last week came 8 months after the initial submission.) One of the editors also mentioned that my writing was "spot-on" (unlike the topic), and they both said I am welcome to try them again, so that is heartening.

Finally, I finished drafting a new poem last night. I'm not sure if it's a poem or an attempt at a picture book, but I hope to figure that out as I polish it!

The only resolutions I've made for 2005 are: (1) to get rid of at least 1,000 things, and (2) to finish my novel, Purple Panic. With any luck (or rather, discipline...), I'll knock both of those things out in the first half of the year and move on from there!

Unfortunately, I got a rejection yesterday for a short story. I like the story a lot, but can't think of another place to send it. So, I have to brainstorm about a new market for that one, and meanwhile, I sent a status request about another short story submission yesterday, and submitted a picture book manuscript.

I'm looking forward to a picture book workshop with Lisa Wheeler in March. I know it's going to be a lot of fun, not to mention helpful! I submitted my manuscript The Zoo That Grew for her to critique, since she's known for rhyme and it's a rhyming manuscript. I already know some of the problems with the manuscript, but haven't figured out how to solve them, so I'm hoping her critique will give me some insight. In the meantime, she's assigned us a lot of "homework" of picture books to read in preparation for the workshop, so I need to get going with that!

In other news, the youngest of my 2 sons is turning 4 this week. I would have sworn I had a baby just yesterday...this age is a lot of fun, though! We're celebrating Friday with Spider-Man cupcakes in his preschool class, followed by a Lion King party. He's been counting down to his birthday for a couple of weeks now! (And with the help of his new Spider-Man watch, he's also telling us the time every, oh...half-minute or so!)

I made a sale today! Last week I queried the SCBWI Bulletin to see if they'd be interested in a short article about my "Wienerbookmobile" experience. After getting a go-ahead, I emailed my article to them yesterday, and they said yes! Hooray! (And remember how I once had an article in ByLine about how much of my writing has been inspired by fast food? I had to chuckle to myself thinking of how the Wienermobile is the ultimate fast food...a hot dog going 65 mph!)

I can proudly say that I have now ridden in a large rolling hot dog. It was an absolute blast, we gave away nearly 300 books, and the jingle "Oh I wish I were an Oscar Mayer wiener," which both of my kids had the opportunity to belt out over the loudspeaker, will probably be in my head forever! While they're still online, check out these sausage...I mean, links:

Austin American-Statesman article
Suburban newspaper article (we made the front page of this one!)Short article/transcript from local TV news station

What a day, what a week! And what a day it will be tomorrow. This celebrity lifestyle is so tiring. By celebrity, of course, I mean my moment of local fame as a winner of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile for a day. First off, I found out there was a press release about me on the Austin library's web site today. And this morning the local Fox news channel, KTBC, and the Wienermobile came to my house by 6:15 am so they could tape a segment on my win for their live morning broadcast. I survived it! My kids even got on TV, and my kindergartener had a good excuse as to why he was late for school! But tomorrow, instead of just relaxing until the Wienermobile picks us up at 9:30, I have to drive to the NBC station, KXAN, around 7:00 am or earlier to be there for an early morning interview on their morning news. Then it's off for a full day of riding in a chauffered Wienermobile and distributing books, with more news stations and newspapers slated to attend. (Who knew?!) We have about 300 books for our book giveaways, everything from board books to young adult novels, and I hope it's enough... If it ends up being way more than enough, we'll find someplace good to donate the rest. I have spent much of the week shopping for books, taking price tags off, boxing them up, etc. But now, after 2 nights in a row of about 4 hours sleep, I must get some rest before having to get up early again!

Oh, and speaking of the Wienermobile chauffers, they are actually called "hotdoggers" and are basically goodwill ambassadors for Oscar Mayer, which means they have to be very friendly and personable, and to enjoy making wiener puns such as "Have a bunderful day." Since our hotdogger team was going to be here all weekend, we offered to take them to dinner tonight at The Oasis, an Austin restaurant legendary for its view. We did all meet for dinner there and had nice food and conversation, but one of our kids started feeling sick and the other turned into a maniac by the end of dinner, so I hope our hotdoggers aren't scared to be stuck with us all day tomorrow!

So much to report! Where to start? Hmm...

Writing: I got my copies of The First Line with my story in it, and was very impressed with the whole publication! I felt honored to be included.

Reading: In a strange turn of events for me, I've been reading some fiction written for adults instead of kids. I read The Nanny Diaries last weekend and greatly enjoyed it--laughed out loud a lot, but also cried at the end. (As pure fiction it wouldn't have moved me so much, but I assumed much of it was a fictionalized composite of real experiences, and in that light it made me sad for the children whose eventual therapy will scarcely be able to undo their fear of forming attachments.) Right now I'm reading something completely different--Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, which Salon described as "Harry Potter meets Jane Austen." I'm 317 pages into it and still less than halfway through! It has 782 pages of fairly small type. I'm finding it quite delightful, though, and haven't had trouble staying engaged with it (in fact, I'm anxious to get back to it right now). Oh, and on the subject of fiction for kids, Austin writer Greg Leitich Smith's novel, Ninjas, Piranhas, and Galileo, mentioned earlier in this journal, just won the Teddy Children's Book Award for Long Works from the Writers' League of Texas. Congrats, Greg, and for everyone else, check it out if you haven't read it yet!

Music: Speaking of winning, my husband recently won concert tickets to a Sting/Annie Lennox concert, including passes for a meet & greet with Sting before the show. We went to the concert in Dallas this past Sunday night. I had always thought that if I met someone really famous they would just seem like an ordinary person, but Sting really did seem like a rock star to me! (He was nice, though.) It was the first "big" concert my husband and I had ever been to together, so it was a fun way to celebrate our (gasp) 13th anniversary last week!

Wieners: Speaking even more of winning, Oscar Mayer recently held an "Oh, I Wish" essay contest, in which 50 people nationwide would win a day in the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, based on what they said they would do with it. I said that as an aspiring children's writer, I have a passion for literacy and would like to use it as a bookmobile, to pass out free books to kids. And I won!! On Saturday, October 9th, my family and I will be riding around town in the Wienermobile! I'm nervous about the publicity, but I adore the Wienermobile (that's for you, Jason) so I'll deal with it! As plans currently stand, we'll visit two local libraries to donate new children's books both to the libraries and to kids in the parking lots, though it's still possible we could end up going to other locations. I'm also hoping to get some of my writing/SCBWI friends involved. If you are near the Austin area, stay tuned for more info & turn out to support the causes of wiener vehicles and literacy! ;-)

Good news, bad news, and randomness--> Good: My 3-year-old survived his dental surgery today and seemed back to his normal self by bedtime (can't be too out of sorts if he's jumping on the bed, huh?!), and Once Upon A Time is going to publish another of my articles. Hooray! Bad: I got a rejection today on a manuscript I had high hopes for. (But Good: the editor complimented my writing and said she'd be happy to look at my next manuscript.) Random: I won an iPod! I wanted one really badly, so I'm thrilled.

Another sale! And oddly, it's a short story for adults again, which isn't something I write very often. That makes two this summer! A few months back, I saw a blurb about a literary journal called The First Line. They provide an opening sentence for each issue, and writers must submit stories that all begin with that sentence. That sounded like a fascinating writing exercise (as well as a cool read!), especially because the sentence for this fall's issue was so specific and interesting: "I was born Rosa Carlotta Silvana Grisanti, but in the mid-Eighties I legally changed my name to Eve." I wrote a story beginning with that line, submitted it shortly before the August 1 deadline, and got an acceptance on August 13! Wow. The editor also emailed me today to ask if I'd like to submit my young adult novel for consideration by a new publishing company they are starting. That is very intriguing, of course, and I will probably take him up on it. I am admittedly not sure how I'd feel about being published by a brand new press...but it's certainly nice to be asked!

I survived my son's birthday party and we've gotten through the first week of kindergarten, my other son's first dental appointment (but he needs dental surgery--eek!), and even a call for federal jury duty this week (I wasn't assigned to a jury, but it was a wild case involving multiple bank robberies!). I'm happy to say that my son's castle cake turned out very well, which is good since I was up until 3:30 am the morning of the party, working on the cake!

I have a new manuscript and I'm not even sure what it is--picture book or magazine story--though I'm hoping it could be a picture book. And I have no idea what to do with it. I went to the bookstore last night and spent at least an hour looking through the picture books, but found it all pretty disheartening. I couldn't find many that were similar to my picture book manuscripts at all, and also couldn't find many books by the particular publishers I was interested in, other than some classics and a few other books that were completely different from mine in tone and style. The ones that appealed to me most were mostly from publishers that don't take unsolicited submissions. And I didn't see any books from my local or online writer friends who have published picture books. Yet there are, quite frankly, a great many books on the shelves that I'd have no interest in buying for my own young kids. I did find one that cracked me up, Alison McGhee's Countdown to Kindergarten (maybe I just liked the author's name, LOL!), and got that for my son who's starting kindergarten in 11 days. Most books for soon-to-be-kindergarteners don't apply well to a child who has been in preschool for years, can already read & do math, etc., but this hilarious story of a girl who is panicked because she can't tie her shoes seemed like a good match for him. (He cracked up about the line "shoes are not canoes," and I find the art by Harry Bliss to be hysterical!) Anyway, maybe I should just stick to longer fiction, but I have these stories that come to me, so I'd like to do something with them!

And speaking of longer fiction, I also had a new idea for a novel while lying in bed the other night trying to fall asleep. Unfortunately, I didn't feel like getting up to write down the great opening lines I came up with (I normally keep paper and a light-up pen on my nightstand, but alas, they were not to be found...), and the lines are gone now. I recall the title and the vague idea for the novel, but I think I'd developed it a bit further in my head and now I don't have much to go on. I'll have to brainstorm some more, as I think it could be kind of powerful, but it would be more experimental and difficult than most of the novels I've tried writing! It's not like I need another novel idea when I already have about 8 on the back burner waiting to be written (or completed), but there it is. Maybe I'll save it for National Novel Writing Month this November, assuming I'll be able to participate this year!

Patience certainly helps in the writing business.... I've had a novel out to a publisher for more than 6 months now, a short story out to a magazine for more than 3 months, and a picture book out for just under 3 months (not to mention the story I sent to a magazine a year ago & have given up hearing back about!). I try to keep busy writing other things while I'm waiting, but still can't help but check the calendar occasionally!

I got quite a bit done yesterday. I spent way too long dealing with printer problems, but finally got the invitations and envelopes printed for my son's upcoming 6th birthday party, and got those mailed out. The theme is "Knights, Princesses, and Bouncy Castles!" I designed the invitations on the computer to save money, but ended up spending tons of time on them, and just as much money (with the inkjet greeting card paper and all the ink I must have used for the many failed printing attempts) as I would have spent to buy professionally printed ones! At any rate, I also wrote a bio for the Tall Tales Press anthology and sent that off, and finished polishing a story I'm submitting to a small literary magazine, and submitted that in the evening, along with another bio I had to write for that one. Then later at night, I started making some revisions on a children's story I've never been able to find a market for, but soon decided it was a lost cause--I decided I didn't even like it much! I still may rework the idea, but I'd want to start nearly from scratch. And last of all, I submitted an entry in a contest to win a day in the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile! The Wienermobile has to be one of the coolest vehicles ever. I said I'd like to use it as a bookmobile, to distribute free books to kids.