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It’s that time of year again!

After the last zombie has shambled off and your post-Halloween sugar level has evened out, what’s next!

Thanksgiving, you ask? Why no, not quite yet, (let’s not get ahead of ourselves.) You see, well before Turkey Day hits it’ll be time for “Picture Book Idea Month” or PiBoIdMo, starting November 1 until the 30th, hosted by Tara Lazar over at “Writing for Kids (While Raising Them).”

The plan is to come up with an idea for a picture book every day of the month of November. It can be a fully fleshed out plot, a snippet of a concept, maybe it’s simply a title. As long as it’s an idea. Along the way there will be daily inspirational posts from industry folk over at WFKWRT and a whole community of participants on the Facebook discussion group, rooting each other on.

In a perfect world all participants will have 30 picture book ideas at the end of 30 days. But you might simply get to 20 or maybe only 15. But you’ll have 15 more ideas than you might have had otherwise, right?

30 ideas! How fantastic would that be? What you do with them afterwards is up to you, but what a great springboard of creativity! Why should the NaMoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) peeps have all the fun, right?

Anywho, I’m giving it a whirl for the third year in a row and I’m pumped!  Wish me luck and maybe I’ll see some of you out there in PiBoIdMo-land!

If y’all would like to know more about PiBoIdMO come by here and check it out.

P.S. The adorable, official PiBoIdMo art was created by the talented Joyce Wan.

So, here’s a cool thing: Tasha from Truth, Beauty Freedom and Books and a couple of her book blogging cohorts have this project called Book Bloggers International, where they post interviews with book bloggers around the world, as well as general book blogging tips and things. It’s a nifty idea, the interviews are super enjoyable, and the latest featured blogger is me. So, check that out for a bit of rambling about my childhood reading and…nothing that should come as a surprise to anyone, actually.

As for new content here…I’m in a bit of a reading drought at the moment. This is a thing that happens, I know, but it always makes me feel kind of guilty and bereft. Like, reading is so easy; why don’t I just do it. And what else am I going to do, anyway?

I probably should have known this was coming, because I hadn’t wanted to read anything but fanfiction for a few weeks, and that’s a pretty good sign of incipient reading fatigue. Oh well. I’m alternating between trying to power through it and waiting it out, and eventually one of those things will work.

This is the weekend of my favorite book sale. It’s  held by a small library upstate, very few books are over a dollar, and if you buy a $10 tote bag, you can take home as many books as will fit in it. And that, of course, is what I did.

It's hard to tell in the picture, but this is a really big tote bag.

I usually limit myself to as many books as I can carry in my hands, so when my arms started to hurt, I went to check out. But once I’d gotten by books into my bag, the woman at the counter said, “you know, there are more books in the other building.” That was my downfall.

Anyway, here are the things I got, in reverse order as I unpack.

I didn’t by all the Nero Wolfe books–just the cuter, older paperbacks and In the Best Families because it’s In the Best Families. Apparently my cat likes Nero Wolfe too.

Not the Felix Salten one with the deer, but the Marjorie Benton Cooke one with the people. The woman who helped me check out said she heard it was pretty racy, which seems unlikely, but I told her I would be pleased if that turned out to be the case.

I keep meaning to try Mary Stewart. And at this point I had well over $10 worth of books, so these were basically free.

Some miscellaneous paperbacks–One Hundred  and One Dalmatians  because my copy is missing pages, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold because I can’t find my mom’s copy, and a romance by Meredith Duran for no reason at all.

This is the Mary Roberts Rinehart  portion of the haul. All of these books are more battered than all of the other books, but who cares? I own a copy of K
now.

This is the Ethel M. Dell portion of the haul. I…own a copy of The Way of an Eagle now. So, uh, that’s a thing.

The last few miscellaneous things: Rose in Bloom, my favorite Alcott bok I’ve never owned; Trustee from the Toolroom, which I buy whenever I find it so I can give it as a gift; and Brat Farrar, which I own a couple of times over, because this copy is super cute. I assume the girl in the sheet on the cover is Eleanor, but I don’t understand why.

Yesterday I took a day off from work and spent the afternoon at the library. It’s been a while since I did that, but last time I was unemployed I used to go once a week. I don’t remember whether I’ve described this before, but it’s great. I go to the main branch of the New York Public Library — the building with the lions out front and rotating exhibitions inside — and go up to the third floor, where the Rose Main Reading Room is. The Rose Main Reading Room is really two big, long rooms with rows of wooden tables and bookshelves all along the walls. The way they have it set up right now, you go into one of these rooms, consult one of the catalog computers, and fill out little paper slips indicating which books you want. You can hand in three of these slips every fifteen minutes.

When you hand in your slips, you get a number. Then you go to the other room and wait while people go find your book and send it up to the reading room in what’s basically a big dumbwaiter. There’s an LCD screen there showing all of the numbers that have books waiting. When your number comes up, you go up to the desk, show them your library card and get to take your books to a table, where you can read and gaze raptly at the ceiling every once in a while. The ceiling looks like this.

This is how you get access to all of the popular fiction that’s no longer in circulation. You used to be able to get pretty much anything on no notice, but now they store a lot of the books off-site. Look things up in the online catalog before you show up. What you’re looking for is things that say “In-library use only” and specify the item’s location as “Schwarzman Building – Main Reading Room 315″. The ones stored off-site are labeled “Available by request”. They only started moving stuff off-site recently, so I haven’t tried requesting yet.

I meant to start this post with something more along the lines of, “Yesterday I want to the library and read kind of a delightful book by Samuel Hopkins Adams,” but I guess I got a little carried away. Perhaps Adams’ venture into the world of 1920s beauty parlors is a subject for another post.

Yes folks, more tortured puns from a humble April fool.

Quickly eggsecuted and puns intended!

Happy Happy, everyone!!!

As of today, Redeeming Qualities has been around for 6 years. I know I was better at posting regularly when I was a student, or when I was unemployed, but even when I haven’t posted for months at a time, Redeeming Qualities has always been a source of good feelings and I’ve never considered abandoning it. So if you’re reading this — and especially if you read RQ regularly, thanks for being around and for sharing opinions and recommendations and for enjoying ridiculous books with me. Some of you are as important to this blog as the Williamsons, and none of you are less important to it than John Kendrick Bangs.

I’m thankful to be done with my Edgar Wallace kick, which culminated in me rereading several of his books that I had read once already. Hopefully I will soon be posting something about Geoffrey Strong, by Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards, although I might wait untill I’ve finished what seem to be the two other books in the series. Meanwhile, I’ve also just finished rereading Set in Silver (which may have overtaken Secret History Revealed by Lady Peggy O’Malley as my favorite Williamsons) and I’ve just started another of A.E.W. Mason’s Hanaud mysteries (The House of the Arrow, which so far I’m enjoying a lot). Plus I’m rereading The Hobbit for the first time since I was a kid, and finding it less awesome than I remembered, so maybe I should stop.

The House of the Arrow came from a book shopping expedition on Saturday, when I set out with a couple of family members in search of a fairly recent bestseller and a copy of Frankenstein. Neither of the two indie bookstores we tried had Frankenstein, but the second one had the other book. We continued on to one of my favorite used bookstores, but they were in the process of moving, and if they had a copy of Frankenstein, it was inaccessible. But we’d noticed another used bookstore around the corner, one I’d never been to, and it turned out to be kind of amazing.

Not only did we find a copy of Frankenstein, we found two, although the second was abridged and therefore unacceptable, in spite of the excellent 1960s children’s adventure style illustrations, which made Frankenstein’s monster look an awful lot like the Hulk.

For the rest, this store was a monument to paperbacked genre fiction. Romance novels took up the most space — there were signs saying things like, “We’re sorry, Nora Roberts has been moved to the back room,” and when you would go to the back room, you’d see an entire bookcase devoted to her — but there were also bookcases for different categories of thrillers and mysteries. My companions were inclined to be mean about the romance novels, which always makes me kind of angry on principle, but we all found things we wanted. I came away with three post-1923 Mary Roberts Rinehart mysteries, as well as the A.E.W. Mason, so I left pretty happy, but I want to go back soon, with less judgmental people.

After the flurry of sketching in November and December, January saw a sharp decline. Need to get back in the sketching saddle. Hmmmm, sketching saddle, that might be something to sketch, hee hee!

Anywho, this is a detail of the line, from a page, for an e-reader (in the House that Jack built, no, sorry,) that I’m working on.

Hope you’re having a lovely 2013 so far!

The Redeeming Qualities Bookshelf is, for once, relatively up to date, which is nice. I’m so enamored of the tagging system that I’ve been making a game out of it — I look through the tag list, pick out a few, and come up with a story synopsis to match. For bonus points (although I can’t really claim to have any points system worked out at all) I add an author or time period tag and try to fit my description to it.

I’d love it if people would come play this game with me! Give me a short list of tags, or write something to fit one of these:

artists, bigamy, missingjewels, Arabia, spies

socialandclassissues, Massachusetts, hypnotism, gardening, 1880s

friendship, DepartmentStores, amnesia, MargaretWiddemer, nature

pirates, phoneticspelling, sequel, teenagers, travelogue

I'm heading to NYC for work and to see old pals. Tomorrow night I'll be awarding old pal Chris Cerf with a Carle Honor at a swanky party for the Eric Carle Museum. Friday, I'll be at Books of Wonder reading from a sneak peek copies of Elephant and Piggie's soon to be published LET'S GO FOR A DRIVE! in addition to GOLDILOCKS AND THE THREE DINOSAURS. Elephant and

Hi blog-friends! It’s been such a long time. I’m excited to announce a few new points of interest. Check the list below. In addition, I’ll be back to the blog now that the kiddos are back in school. For now, check out the links below and the new reviews listed under the Book Review tab above.

NextGenWriters (a site dedicated to bettering the writer’s craft of authors under 20) includes a three-part September event on branding and social media.

Barn Door hosts a look at my new hometown, Cincinnati, on September 7.

Proof, See the Evidence takes a deeper look at praying for others, even when it’s not asked for.

And the new book cover is in! The second book in the Adventures of Ally and Cory series, The King’s Seal, is here (releases December 2012). What do you think?

The new “Spider Magazine” arrived in the mail today and it had my “Laugh Olympics” joke page in it! Woo hoo!

He’s pretty rough, but thought since it’s been a while,  I’d throw out a kookaburra, just because.

Oh, and if you’ve never heard a kookaburra laugh, listen to this.

Curious as to what an online conference is? Well, go check out the explanation page for NextGenWriter’s Conference. Registration is open and attendance is filling up. Hope to see you there!

NextGenWriter’s Free Online Conference announcement is up and they’ll be taking registrations beginning June 15. Check it out.

So glad to have Nicole O’Dell with us as she shares a special ministry devoted to connecting teens, their parents and God. Here’s what she has to say about “Hot Buttons:”

What are Hot Buttons?

Well, in the broader sense, the phrase Hot Buttons means a lot of different things, anything really, that can get a rise out people. Something that charges them up and receives an intense reaction. For the purposes of Choose NOW Ministries, I’ve defined hot buttons as those tough issues that teenagers face–the things parents are often more afraid of and most hesitant to talk about.

Some examples include:

• Drugs
• Alcohol
• Sex
• Friendships
• Racism
• Internet Activity
• Faith Matters
• Divorce
• Dating
• Bullying
• Occult
• and more

Why press the Hot Buttons?

Why not just leave it alone and let the kids figure it out? We can pray for them and trust it all to work out in the end. In some ways it does work itself out, true. Circumstances happen, pressure hits, relationships change. . .and your teens gets to figure it all out. In the heat of the moment. On their own. Hopefully they’ll make the right choice, but it’s really hard to know what will happen when the prep work isn’t done.

Take an issue like dating–we talk about the boundaries. We set rules for curfew and other things. We even make sure we apprrove of the date and talk about saying no to sexual advances. Right?

And that’s great. It really is. But there’s something missing. Our teens need to know what to do and what not to do, and what we expect of them, but they also need to understand why that’s going to be difficult for them. How does the body respond in ways that make it tough to say no? What will the feelings be like that make it difficult to leave the room or douse the proverbial flames?

You see, if we don’t hit those truth head on before they become an issue, our teens will think it’s a secret, it’s specific to them, and we really don’t know what we’re asking them to say no to. But, if we press those hot buttons in advance, if we have the difficult conversations, then our teens will enter those pressure-filled situations armed with understanding and equipped with the words to say to stay true to their commitments.

With every hot button issue, someone is feeding your tweens and teens information–do you really want that someone to be anyone other than you?

How do I press the Hot Buttons?

Now that you’ve made the decision to be proactive about helping your tweens and teens battle peer pressure, I love to share the principles behind the Hot Buttons book series and the method of communicating with your teens it prescribes.

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