My mind spins with sights and smells, colors and characters, images from our whirlwind trip to fair San Francisco. Read More... Read the rest of this post

Yes. The SCBWI has turned forty. I didn't think... (Click here to read more)

I sit at my desk listening to summer raindrops...(Click here to read more)

This post is dedicated to my dear friend Marilyn Donahue. Click here to see the rest.

Rilla: Think I'm going to fly. To Italy. Todayeeeee, yeah! Have me a little Tuscan holidayeeeee. Yeah!! To read the rest of this post click here... Read the rest of this post

Is everyone having trouble with their Google accounts or is it just me. I've been asked to sign in about a hundred times, even though I'm already signed in...grrrr.

Watch Out! You are now entering the desert...(click here to read more)

Abadiania, Brasil. An hour and a half from Brasilia...(Read More)

Brasilia the capital in all (Read More)

'Twas the night before...Click here to read more.

If only I could dance like...that!

Ah! Spain! The sights, the sounds, the food, the wine. In June, we spent three glorious weeks traveling through the country, starting out in Madrid, driving through Andalucia...(Read more, click here.)

WHERE ELSE… …would you find children’s writers who loom larger than life...Click here to read more

I spent the last week in Boyds Mills, Pennsylvania. Where? No, the map doesn't know where it is...but the magic does. The Highlights Whole Novel Workshop for Fantasy, in Boyds Mills, Pennsylvania. (Read the rest of this post here)

Get an editor! Click here to read the rest of the post.

Yesterday was the SCBWI-LA's Writer's Day and the combined creative talent seated in that one room was enough to give little me writer's block...(Read more here.)

Served up by Netflix — Tomb Raider! Yes, I did actually put this movie into my queue…for a reason.(Click here to read the rest of this post.)

Well, February has snuck up on me. It’s that sort of month. (Click here to read more.)

So. I’m on a diet. Invariably, the holiday season has its tradeoffs. A time of reckoning (Click here to read more...)

It has rained here in southern California for five days in a row.The lawn is a pond creeping across the patio and lapping at our back door.(Click here to read the rest of this post)

Sunny and seventy-four, Sunday in early January. The desert calls. (Read more...)

My blog has a NEW HOME!Click Here to visit where rilla and Rilla will hang out from now on. Welcome to the houswarming party!

Note: this is an ongoing series about our trip to Siem Reap, Cambodia in December, 2009. Part I of this account can be found here.Big plans for our first full day in Siem Reap. My trusty guidebook* offered the following advice - Angkor temples generally have four entrances, one facing each cardinal point. The eastern entrance is the main one most of the time as it faces the rising sun,

I gaze out the airplane window at flat green land with irregular rectangles for fields and an enormous lake in the distance where trees stand knee-deep in water. The plane touches down and stops a short distance from a low elegant building with a tiled-roof that looks more like a Buddhist monastery than an airport. The doors open, we step out into warm-moist air and down onto the tarmac at Siem

"The Google Book Search Settlement is a sweeping agreement that shifts the ground on copyright, and has far-reaching implications for the future of books. Whether to opt in or out is a complex, difficult decision. Authors should strive to inform themselves as fully as possible (a tour of the links below should help with that), and should not allow themselves to be swayed by the small amount of