I was surprised last week when Welcome Home magazine contacted me about publishing my "Mom's Chair" essay, which I'd submitted to them 17 months ago! I had eventually assumed they weren't interested, and recently sold it to a Chocolate for a Woman's Soul anthology. However, the anthology guidelines allow me to sell it elsewhere as long as I don't sell it to a competing anthology, so this should work out. Welcome Home wants it revised with a somewhat different focus, and they need it fairly soon to get it into the issue where it will be most relevant, so I have a lot of work to do! And not much time to do it, with summer keeping me incredibly busy. But it's neat that I may get an unexpected sale! I have some other pieces I need to get circulating again, too.

My silly poem, "Inside Out House," is up on the Guideposts for Kids site! I sold it to them nine months ago, and while it was my sixth acceptance, it was my first sale for actual money instead of just copies or gift certificates. And since I sold that one, I've sold six other pieces for pay (and one more for copies and a gift certificate)! The funny thing is, without knowing they were about to publish the poem this week, I was just polishing up a new poem to submit to them today or Monday! We'll see how that goes.

I've been so busy (and harried!) lately that I haven't been working on my novel after all, but I am working on a new poem. I'm a bit stuck on it right now, but my mind is mulling it over... and mulling over some novel-related stuff, too, even though I haven't been actively working on it. I'm still trying to get my new computer all set up, and in the meantime I've hardly been online at all (especially with e-mail, since I don't have a mail program configured on the new PC yet and I can barely get the other PC to start). At least I've been reading a bunch of children's books, as my kids are enrolled in summer reading clubs and I'm reading them tons of books for that! (My 4.75-year-old is also trying to read 15 books on his own--reading simple picture books and easy readers aloud to me--for one of the clubs, and he's read 5 so far! I'm proud of him!)



My 4-year-old reading to his 2-year-old brother (upside down, even!)

Woo hoo! I finally got my new computer yesterday! My old one has been dying a painful death for a long time. Both computers are laptops, and the screen of the old one is literally hanging on by one thread (or rather, cable)! Not to mention the many other problems it has, including shutting off accidentally several times a day. Having a laptop that can actually stay on when it's moved will be great for my writing. Now if I can just get all my old stuff transferred over to the new one & organized...not too fun, but worth it!

Cool, I sold a poem! When I got back from vacation tonight, I was a bit disheartened to find one of my SASEs in the mailbox, from a submission to Purpose magazine. But instead of finding a rejection inside, as I expected, I found a check! I wrote the original version of the poem, "Supplication," probably ten years ago, though the version that sold is slightly different. I've had several rhyming poems accepted in the past, but this is my first sale of a non-rhyming poem.