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"Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what one is saying." -- John Updike.

I've got notes (once again) from a new-to-me editor at Scholastic, Ken Geist, on a picture book I've sold about Bobby Kennedy. It's exciting to work with a new editor -- David L. is wonderful novel editor, and now Ken steps in to work on picture books with me, and I am so glad.

So today's work is about looking at these notes and writing a response to them, and then, we hope, talking next week before I head to the D.C. area for my first school visit this fall, combined with some family time. We drive to Charleston on Sunday, to celebrate Jim's birthday with his mom and sister... I am going to write in the car. Watch me do this daring feat of amazing car writing, just watch me.

In the meantime, I have these revisions this morning, a house to clean, a class to teach tomorrow at the Atlanta-Fulton County library, a birthday dinner here on Saturday night, my favorite 4-year-old spending the night on Saturday night, and then we're off to Charleston. And... it's all what I want, in this Year of Exploration. It's all good.

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OMYGOODNESS life is on and on and on this week. Next week is an off week, where I'm writing, so there will be lots of sitting in the pink chair by the (cold) fireplace, and putting words to paper, before we head to Mississippi for the first-ever Mississippi Book Festival. More on that next week. In this week I have visited Scholastic Book Fairs' Southeast Regional Office; I spent some time at re:loom gathering stories; I worked at Georgia State's College of Education doing a video podcast for NCTE's Language Arts, and I hung out with some wonderful folks at the Georgia Center for the Book and DeKalb County Libraries for the event "Books Every Georgian and Every Young Georgian Should Read." Met Congressman Lewis, who has written MARCH, a graphic memoir, made new friends, met old friends... celebrated stories all week long. A few snaps with captions:

Laurel Snyder, writer extraordinaire, and Joe Davich of the Center for the Book.

Meeting John Lewis

Signing books to each other.

At the Square Pub in Decatur, reception for the book event, with Pearl McHaney, Lisa Wise (The Initiative for Affordable Housing and re:loom), and Kelly Bingham, another writer extraordinaire (Z is for Moose)

In which I brave a terrible picture of myself in order to show a beautiful picture of a writing hero of mine, Mary Hood.

Terry McVoy, Laurel Snyder, Moi, at The Square Pub

Selfie of same

catching my breath....

Heading to Georgia State to work with Laura May (NCTE's Language Arts) and Brian Williams, professor and director of the Crim Center for Urban Educational Excellence.

We were so caught up in the camraderie and good work and richness of conversation, we didn't take one photo of ourselves.

Trust me, though... it was an amazing afternoon. You'll be able to watch the podcast in January.

I'm heading from these heady events to Chuck E. Cheese tonight, to celebrate with my favorite four-year-old her first full week in a new school. Pretty heady stuff for a four, and for her grandmother, too. Can't wait. Happy weekend friends, wherever your travels take you. A little bit of out-there goes a long way for me. I'm going to hunker down and stay home and quiet this weekend and all next week, before the next round of traveling begins.

I crashed into bed and slept 10 hours last night. Ha! I'm patted together and good to go. Tea with a friend today, then back to the page.

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{{ I am chronicling 48 days of writing before my July 31 travel. If you are chronicling your summer writing/days and would like to share, please link or comment so we can all cheer one another through. Strength to your sword arm!}}

The Year of Exploration is here.
On Being a Late Bloomer is here.
My speech at Vermont College (moments, memories, meaning) is here.
 ====================
We don't have a picture of us in the sixties. We met when our mutual friend, Jimmy Murphy, who lived down the street from me and drove me to school in his family's Corvair, asked me one morning at pick-up, "Can we go by and get my friend Jim?" and I said sure.

Turns out, Jimmy and Jim worked together (if you could call it that) at Biff Burger in Charleston, South Carolina. My dad had been transferred to Charleston in 1968. He spent two years mostly flying C-141s into and out of Vietnam while my mother held together a family of three kids and a dog and teenager-hood in the late sixties.

As Jim loped out of his house, trombone case under one arm, spiral notebook spilling papers out of the other, I knew my life was about to change. You can't even define it that way -- it's a feeling you understand only later, looking back. I got out of the passenger seat and crawled into the cramped back seat, not because I was a girl and that's what girls did, but because Jim was 6'6" tall and I knew he wouldn't fit in the back.

I don't know where the trombone went. Maybe there wasn't a trombone.

"Hi," was all I managed. "Hi," he said back. He had gigantic lips (good for kissing, it turned out). He smiled with his whole face, hiding nothing, including how amazing he thought I was, this creature who occupied the front seat of his friend Jimmy's car.

And that was the beginning. Things went very fast. I was a good girl. He was a Billy Graham good boy. But we were very good explorers, and we became inseparable, and such good friends, too. He was a good listener. I was a good talker. For the first time in my life, I had someone to really listen to me, to intently listen, looking me straight in the face, paying attention. It was heady stuff!

The music in his life became the music in mine, as I sat at football games in the bleachers in freezing November, watching the sousaphone player at halftime marching in the St. Andrews High School Marching Band. He loved band, he loved the piano (his strength, still today), and he loved rock and roll.

My dad was transferred to the Philippines in 1970, and through a series of events too long to go into here, Jim and I lost touch for a few decades. When we reunited in our late forties, he still looked at me with that grin and those lips and those eyes so intent on my face, listening. I was so far gone before we even got started again. "I can't believe you never got married," I said, "that you never had kids..."

And do you know what he said? "I waited for you." Well. Here I am, me and my decades of living, my four children all grown now, who have been folded into Jim's heart, too, a heart that has room for anything Debbie loves. It's downright inspiring.

I am pouty, where he lets go. I am critical, where he is understanding. I am self-centered, where he is selfless. I could go on. Perhaps I have him on a pedestal. Perhaps he puts me there, too. Maybe that's as it should be.

We are two artists trying to make our way in a world that is not sympathetic to artistic temperaments and making a living. We manage. We like being together and say that's what counts. We both like simple, silly adventures. He makes me laugh. He likes my faces. He likes my snoring. "I can't sleep until I hear you snore." He will go with me to France one day -- a dream I had even when I knew him in high school.

Is it all good? We both find brown sugar cinnamon frosted Pop Tarts hard to resist. There. Something not so good? Nah. It's all good.

Today is our 8th wedding anniversary. We'll spend it getting ready to leave on our trip that begins in tomorrow's wee hours.

This song was number 50 on the Billboard Top 100 for 1969. I'm listening to a lot of late sixties music in preparation for writing Book 3 of the sixties trilogy. I'm looking for anchor songs for scrapbooks, and for story inspiration. This song reminds me so much of that amazingly innocent and yet powerful Charleston time we had together in 1969. Here's to you, Sweet Jim, to the 14 years we've spent together again. I hope we get 14 more.

(the hair! the suits! the dancing while playing guitar! the lip sync! where are the trumpets? hahahahaha. oh, sixties, you are so weird. thank goodness.)

The Spiral Starecase
More Today Than Yesterday

I don't remember what day it was.
I didn't notice what time it was.
All I know is that I fell in love with you.
And if all my dreams come true,
I'll be spending time with you!

Every day's a new day in love with you.
With each day brings a new way of loving you --
Every time I kiss your lips my mind starts to wander...

I love you more today than yesterday
But not as much as tomorrow!

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{{ I am chronicling 48 days of writing before my July 31 travel. If you are chronicling your summer writing/days and would like to share, please link or comment so we can all cheer one another through. Strength to your sword arm!}}

The Year of Exploration is here.
On Being a Late Bloomer is here.
My speech at Vermont College (moments, memories, meaning) is here.

Wesley, my granddog, hoping for scraps.

My friends at Turnrow Books in Greenwood, Mississippi always wrap my books in brown paper. I love that.

I am surrounded by the stories behind the stories as well...

The past three days were full of good writing energy. And, as so often happens when you prime a pump, not only did I work on the two mss that were full drafts, I worked on Rachel and the ms that wasn't (isn't) finished and is made up from whole cloth (let's call it PAPER CHAIN, as I am getting confused on the blog, at this point), AND I worked on an old biography idea that was sketched out and abandoned (let's call it SONNY).

There was also brunch with my youngest girlie -- a treat -- and the first squash of the season in our yard, and the last of the beans, and the sunlight that filtered through the blinds and onto the dusty banjo in the corner, showing me how long it has been since I played it.

This last three days has felt like play -- go figure! And I want more play. I talked with a writer friend over the weekend about this very thing. Next month, I want to take two art classes (I mentioned them here), and I want to dust off my banjo, and I want to finish -- and submit -- some of these stories I've worked on in this 48 days. That's the plan.

We leave for L.A. on Friday. REVOLUTION has won The Golden Kite Award, and we're heading to L.A. to accept it, and to teach a workshop on structuring your novel, and to soak up our peeps who live there... I am beginning to turn my energy and attentions to travel now. Here's a Q&A I did with Lee Wind and the lovely SCBWI folks about REVOLUTION.

My writing energy will be dissapated this week with the travel planning, but I can still work. I've just picked up my library's Emily Jenkins holdings. These are the books of hers I don't have on my shelves, and I want to study her work. I am captured by how she writes about everyday life, how she has a different illustrator for each picture book, and how she now has a picture book to go with the  TOYS GO OUT chapter books trilogy. I'm intrigued. What is she up to? What can I learn from her?
I could ask her, I guess. But I'm much more interested in studying the work on my own. I have learned that there is so much to discover when I immerse myself in the work. Mine and others.

Writing them, reading them, living them: I am surrounded by stories, and the stories behind the stories... we are each a living story, you know that, right? Our job is to sing them, dance them, write them, draw them... to tell our stories and to listen to others tell theirs. As I tell kids in schools all the time: It's hard to hate someone when you know her story.

We are stories surrounded by stories. 

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On Being a Late Bloomer is here.

The Year of Exploration is here.

 It occurred to me yesterday: I am intuitively doing what I did when I was so young and a single mom, uneducated, needy, and wanting a life for my kids, for myself, wanting to understand the world and to find my place in it. I went to school. I got my undergraduate degree from the many libraries I haunted during those years.

I was barely 22, I was broke, I was alone with two small children, but I had a library card. I still have a library card. Now I have two (we made peace). Suddenly, in this year of exploration, I am back to school and in much the same way. Let's call it a graduate degree.

I'm following my intuition, pulling on strings when an idea comes to me or someone mentions something that rings a "year of exploration" bell. I am truly following my nose here, as well as my list of things I want to explore. These notes are the ones I took when listening to Malcolm Gladwell's THE TIPPING POINT from my library system's Overdrive account. I *love* Overdrive.And my library.

I don't know what I'll do with what I learn from THE TIPPING POINT, but that's not the point. I know I will use it. I know it's part of the year of exploration. It will tie in with everything else. I've always been a learner; I rarely have a stretch of time in which to learn in depth, intensely. That"s where I am now.
I finally excavated my office. I've been on the road for the past six months -- I've traveled in six months as much as I usually do in a year. I have bought myself some time off the road. My sabbatical starts June 1. I'll still travel. But that travel landscape is going to look different going forward.

More on that later. For now, I've spent the most lovely, rainy Friday afternoon going through ephemera of the past six months on the road. Letters from students, student writing, receipts, little gifts and remembrances, bills and business stuff... "Oh! There's my parking receipt!"... and photographs to remind me of good work done with new friends.


I got on the road 15 years ago when I became so suddenly single, and I've done a good job of taking care of me and mine, I've done good work on the road -- I've learned so much -- and I've written some good books. Now is the time for stillness and learning to love my new hometown, and writing, and learning, and being. Becoming. Something. I don't know what yet. I am trusting the process.

Have a great weekend, friends. I'm going to be off exploring....

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This is the hashtag I used on Instagram -- #teachinghongkong2015 -- to document in photos my trip to Hong Kong this month. You can find photos of the trip there, and even more on Facebook, here, along with a few thoughts about teaching writing to students who are learning to be fluent in both English and Mandarin Chinese.

 We mainly focused on personal narrative and moments we could add color and flavor and texture to, characters we could create from those moments -- and how to make them come alive on the page -- and then we moved into fiction with them.

We used several mentor texts, including FREEDOM SUMMER, LOVE RUBY LAVENDER, and EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS.

I learned to write by reading like a writer, modeling my writing on what I admired, then making it mine, so that's how I teach. I turn my life into stories. I understand how I do it. I have broken it down to the foundations of how it works, and it's always a stretch and a pleasure to share it with young writers and their teachers.

I am a writer who teaches, and to that end, I will always be a writer first. I have developed my teaching over the past twenty years by teaching in classrooms, from K through college, and I know that what I have to offer is substantial, meaningful, useful, and offers a lasting toolbox partner for teachers and their young writers to use for years to come.

And yet.

I am thinking about who I am today, as Jim and I return home to spring in Atlanta -- we left in a February snowstorm. This ruminating always happens after I am thrust for a sustained time into an unfamiliar environment, where I am constantly thinking on my feet, meeting new people in new cultures, learning new customs and traditions (and food!) and discovering how people make meaning in their lives.

Traveling, especially internationally, invites me to rethink everything. Invites me to make meaning. It reminds me of my young life, when, as a teenager, I became a mother, and a wife to a boy I did not know, and moved to a place I did not understand, with no support, with people and customs I could not comprehend, and with fear and isolation so complete it would take me years to assimilate and integrate and create meaning from it.

So I am thinking.

I want to chronicle some of that thinking here on the blog. I'm going to play with short posts about what I'm discovering, and just see where it leads me. I can feel myself entering a time of change. I'm working on a sort of manifesto for my sixties. God. I grew up in the sixties, and now I *am* sixty. 61. Talk about a late bloomer.

I raised a family first. I was homeless first. I was lost, first. I had to find ways to stabilize my life and my children's lives, first. I had to live some, first. Make sense of some things. Find my way into my life. Do a whole lot of different things with my life and teach myself how to do... pretty much everything. It would take me time to learn how to help myself, so I could help someone else.. I taught myself how to write so I could tell my stories and find home, belonging, safety, meaning, love.

My first book was published the year I turned 48. I went back to school that year and got my credentials to teach -- I'd been teaching informally for years without them. I became suddenly single that year. My heart was broken. I wrote EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS in response to that loss.

By the time I turned fifty, I had lost not only the long-years marriage, but my mother and my father and my siblings and my home of 25 years and my hometown. My youngest of four graduated and left home for college. I moved to Atlanta. The dog died. My editor of 12 years was fired. My publishing house was decimated.

The bitter was tempered by the sweet. I had created a support system by that time, and my friends became my family. They held the space for me, held me up until I could stand on my feet again. I met my husband, Jim. We had a three year long-distance relationship, a three year Atlanta relationship, and then we married. My books did well in the world, even though my life was so chaotic for a time, I couldn't always appreciate it or participate in the book community that celebrated all of it. Much of my life was a blur.

Little by little, though, I came back from a devastating time of loss. My children grew up and began to blossom. I began to create a home, here in Atlanta, a family home, a home for friends, a home for my own heart to rest in once again.

It took me a long, long time to do this. I was scared, and once again lost, even in the midst of the sweetness. But I kept writing. I kept teaching. I kept on trying. I have been emerging from that difficult place, once again forging an identity and discovering who I am. Making meaning. It's a process. Life long.

I am happy to be here. I love my life. I know how lucky I am.

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From bound manuscripts to the National Book Award dinner, from home to far away, from family to friends to strangers to new friends, from schools to conferences, from high to low, from hard work to a few lazy days...

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One week in the life, and what a week. Monday I started out for North Carolina, with REVOLUTION, and Sunday night, last night, I sat in the tutti-fruitti chair at home in Atlanta, with Masterpiece Theater and my phone, watching and texting along with my Mississippi cousin, Carol, a long-standing tradition. Some of the life between those two moments is captured below in phone photos -- I miss my camera! But I did not miss my friends. They were right there, all along, right beside me, as you will see, accompanying me and championing me and coaxing me forward, in person and online, and certainly in my heart. I kept up my travel-marathon training on the road (for a trip I'm taking in Feb/March, which we'll get to). More to say on the other end of this string of photos, including a little about next week in NYC. Thanks for coming along with me!

WHEW. It fills my heart right up. Thanks so much to the fine folks at the Carolina Friends School, Cary Academy, A.B. Combs Elementary School, Quail Ridge Books and Music, McIntyre's Fine Books, the Fearrington House Inn, Scuppernong Books, and the Chatham County Community Library. Y'all were so gracious and generous. Thanks to Charlie Young for accompanying me for a good leg of the tour -- you are the best.

Jandy Nelson: THREE booksellers hand-sold me your book on this tour. I got two photographs. Booksellers loved I'll Give You the Sun. I love you! And your wonderful new book. Busting my buttons over my former student's success!

That's Jennifer E. Smith, David Levithan, and Stephanie Perkins, reading from their new books and signing at my local indie, Little Shop of Stories in Decatur, GA, yesterday. I came home to walk a 5K as part of my travel-marathon training, and to see my editor, David, do his thang at Little Shop. Then Jim and I walked the old Decatur Cemetery, a soothing end to a busy week, and had a little supper at EATS, one of our favorite Atlanta eateries.

This will be a quiet (hahahaha) week of getting ready for the National Book Award events in New York City next week. We leave in six days. I have a fabulous black dress. I bought some bling for my dress. I am returning it. I called the shop and said, "I forgot! I'm going to be wearing a medal!" Because I am. REVOLUTION is a National Book Award Finalist. I am so proud of my book. I love my book. I love my publisher, Scholastic, for publishing the book I wanted to write. I love the NBA judges for recognizing my book. I love the process. I love the books REVOLUTION is keeping company with this season. I love the lofty ideal of writing from the heart the story that is asking to be written. I love having the opportunity to share that story with as wide an audience as possible. Thank you, thank you, thank you... that's what I want to say, over and over again. It has been such a rush, such a trip, such an excitement, such a delight, such a surprise, and such an honor. I am forever grateful. See you all in New York next week.

Love, Debbie

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It wasn't the amount of snow. It was the cold. It was how long it was cold, in Hotlanta. It was so cold this past winter. I just wanted to make soup and popcorn and burrow under old quilts and watch old movies; and look out the kitchen window to see the winter birds forage on all the old seed pods in the garden; take selfies of ourselves now, and compare them to old pictures of us on my dresser

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I'm sifting through an experiment. I got my first smart-phone in late November, and I put down my Nikon D-40 for four months. I've just learned (maybe this is a new blogger thing) that I can work on my laptop and access my phone photos here... very good! Google has done some silly stuff with animated gifs and an end-of-year doo-dad that's sweet, silly, and confusing, as I don't know a couple of

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 Hard to let go of this summer:

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Happy Birthday, darlin'. Thank you, good friends. Love.

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In a year of being home and listening to myself, I have just entered month three. February was for.... lots of things. Some writing, yes. And more staying still, more creating routines. More discovery. It's hard to put into words. I didn't know making the decision to stay home this year was going to bring me feelings this... deep. I don't know when I'll write about writing again. I'm sorry if

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I'm catching my breath between three fabulous days at Brookstone School in Columbus, Georgia (where I was lucky enough to see every student in grades preK through 5, work with a lovely smattering of students in middle school writing workshops, and even an Honors English class for a fascinating hour) , and my trip to the D.C. area on Monday, where I'll work with all fourth graders and teachers at The Potomac School as they create characters with me. I'm looking forward to it.

In the meantime, I'm staring at the wall and gathering some energy back to me. I'm knitting. I'm eating good food. I'm sleeping like the dead. I'm listening to Jim's amazing new music -- he's composing like a fiend on fire right now -- and I'm catching up on all manner of things, including reading.

I've started reading again, really reading, which must mean I'm getting set to start writing in earnest again, day after day, which is true, I am. But I have not read like this in years... it means something. I'm trying to figure out what. Remember when you used to read so much you couldn't put down your book to even come to the table for supper? You brought your book to supper. You had to put it down in order to eat. It was torture. Like that. Reading like that.

You can see what I'm currently reading in the blog sidebar, and you can see my 2011 reading list here. I started this reading and listing only a few months ago. It's changing me, making new inroads in my mind and heart, and it delights me more than I can say.

Quick notes: Loving Pulphead, just started it today and already am hooked. I opened it at random and read the piece on Michael Jackson. Well-written, thoughtful, compassionate, provocative. I buy a book a month from a favorite indie, Turnrow Books in Greenwood, Mississippi (where book 2 of the sixties trilogy takes place) and this is November's selection. Thank you, thank you!

I'm listening to Middlesex on CDs from my library, which is how I read both Kate Atkinson novels. Henrietta Lacks I read on hardcover loan from my library, which is how I started Fire and Rain, but I've now purchased this book for a friend, and am listening to it on CD, also on loan from my library.

Libraries and independent bookstores: great good things in the world. As are books. As are schools. As are a few days off. It's really fall here now, and it's beautiful. I am being spoiled these few days home: Jim makes me a fire every morning. I sit in the pink chair next to the fire, with my quilts and my coffee and a story. Maybe a little knitting. Maybe a little cooking. Maybe a bath later and a little more Middlesex while I soak.

There's business to attend to and I'm doing that as well. There are chores to do and I'm doing them as well, but there's nothing like finding my way back to the pink chair and the book in progress and the reward of the next chapter.

I crave good stories right now. Non-fiction, memoir, essay, fiction, it doesn't matter, as you can see. They feed me.

I crave the sound of stories, the heft of the book in my hand, the turn of the page near the fire, the reading of a passage out loud over supper, the amazement of what happens next, and the constant wonder of how an accomplished writer can gather a gaggle of seemingly unconnected words, add moments and memory into the mix, infuse the mix with meaning, and constru

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Mostly photos today, and a lot of them, all taken on Sunday when Jim and I drove around Atlanta, my new adopted home town -- I'm finally willing to admit it.  Jim has lived here for over 30 years. I have been here seven. We have been married four. I now have grown children living in Atlanta, and a six-month-old grandgirl, too. I am once again grounded. It takes time. I know y'all know that.

But I don't know my city well, and I want to change that. So I rode shotgun on Sunday, my camera at the ready, and documented what I saw on our quest for pumpkins and hometown.

Atlanta is a city of neighborhoods. It's not laid out on a grid like Washington, D.C. or NYC; it is defined by its neighborhoods all kitty-cornered to one another. Here are some of them.

I know it's not as brilliant as New England (where I was just working) or Frederick (where I waited for it all year), but we do have a fall season in Atlanta.

 And we do love Halloween, my favorite holiday. This house is in Virginia Highlands.
(You have to look closely for the hanging skulls. I love the fences. Cabbagetown.)
(More Cabbagetown.)
 This Halloween I want to go back to my fire in the driveway, my chili and hot dogs and cider by the fire, and my ghost on the light pole... if I can find my bucket. If I can find a light post. Or, I can find some new traditions, too. I'm finally ready.
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The lights were low, the cake was chocolate, the musicians were in top form, the singers were like angels, and the love was all around.

I think this is what happens when friends become family. I think these are the gifts of time spent together, years blending each into the next, good times and bad times shared. Gifts of music and birthdays and time to savor one another's company.

 Happy Birthday, old man. We love you.

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I've been busy this morning! All the important things, dontcha know. Breakfast. Baaaaath. Tidying up and packing. And a little reading, too, of course.

 Remember when the bathtub first arrived? It was some of the best money I ever spent. I can sink down deep into that tub and let all cares float away, be immersed in another world for just a little while... or a long while. Soaking meditation. hee.

(In looking for a post about my bathtub, I turned up so many posts wherein I mention soaking in the tub. hmmmm.... !)

The dresser and bed photos are a mystery for you. Where are they taken? In my house, but where? Long-time readers here can probably guess. More next week.

Quick trip to Alexandria, Louisiana -- I'm almost ready to go to the airport. Hello, Rapides Parish Library system! I can't wait to meet my new librarian friends later this afternoon, have some supper tonight, and do good work together tomorrow. I've got my li'l silver camera with me. Let's see if I can remember to take pictures.

You know, I hadn't stepped on a plane in over 20 years, when I began this traveling gig ten years ago (this, from an Air Force kid who had grown up all over the world... I think I wanted to Stay Put and raise a family... which I did). Now I can't count the number of planes I've been on in the past ten years. It's all good.

Hello, world! It's fall. Here I come!

xoxoxo Debbie

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I've been working all week. On what?

1. Administrivia. Confirmation letters, email, phone meetings, W9s, faxing, airfare reimbursement, car rentals, dinner plans, scheduling changes, equipment needs, teacher goals, coordinators' needs and expectations, PowerPoint presentations, workshop flow, questions answered, lessons learned. 
 2.  This book. In researching the sixties, I came across Fire and Rain: The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, CSNY and the Untold Story of 1970. I spent two hours reading it in the bathtub last night. I'm still a prune. And I'm loving this story. I may have to do a whole blog entry on it at some point. It's due back at the library today, and I hate to return it, but I will, and I'll get right back on the hold list.
3.  This manuscript. It's not for the sixties trilogy, but it is. It started out as research, six years ago, and has morphed into a story of its own. I think it's going to end up an opinionated biography in book two, that's what I think. We'll see.

4. This food. Simple and homespun. I know I'm going to miss it, on the road.

Fall travel is about to begin in earnest. I leave Sunday for Alexandria, Louisiana, where, on Monday, I'll work with students in schools served by the Rapides Parish Library system.

Then I'm home again, and then -- boom! -- I'm on the road more than I'm home, until Thanksgiving.

Working writers make their livings in a myriad of different ways. Some have full- or part-time jobs that have nothing to do with writing. Some are supported by spouses, or parents or other benefactors. Some -- a few, really -- make a living entirely from their writing.

Once, my good friend and fellow writer Tana Fletcher told me that there were three guidelines to viable self-employment:

-- have one or two permanent paying gigs.
-- diversify.
-- create passive income. 

She was right. As long as I have remembered these three guidelines

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Where I've drifted this week, deliberately and by chance:

This ten-minute video about the life of street photographer Vivian Maier. I've been following this project for about a year now, right here, and am fascinated by Maier's largely unknown life, and by the amazing shots she captured.

I was captured by E.M. Forster this week. I watched A Passage to India years ago and hated it, tried to read the book instead, hated it, and thought there must be something wrong with me. I was just too young, I think. I needed context. Context is something I work with all the time, with this '60s trilogy -- trying to give young readers context and framework and foundation. It matters.

This week I was led to a quote (you'll see it in the sidebar) from A Room With A View (a movie (lovely montage here) I loved and watched over and over again), which led me to thinking about trying to read Forster again. So I watched Howard's End this week (which made me want to re-watch Educating Rita!), then downloaded the novel from Project Gutenberg. It's great. It's more than great.

The class struggles Forster writes about in 1910 England are the same class struggles I am trying to delineate in book two of the '60s trilogy, which takes place in 1964 Mississippi. Who knew. Kismet. Synchronicity. I'm expecting it now, looking for it everywhere. I know it will come.

Onward. I loved this link from the kitch'n: Nourish Short Films: 54 Bite-Sized Videos about the Story of Your Food. Here's one, from Michael Pollan.

I'm in the midst of making another tiramisu blanket for our family's newest babe (I am now a great-aunt! hooray!). I want to make this next. Remember those chevron blankets from the '70s? I haven't made one in decades. Thanks to this reminder from the purl bee, it's time. I have lots of that blue sky cotton sitting around, waiting to take me back to the '60s.

It's cool this morning. I'm having trouble putting away the stuff of summer, the beach paraphernalia, the memories of a wonderful week away. Instead, my thoughts turn toward firewood and pumpkins. Funny how fall just *arrives* here in Atlanta.  Time for some recipes with pumpkin, especially that pumpkin soup with bacon, which I will savor in front of the season's first crackling fire. Avec Howard's End. With my book two manuscript close by.

Hello, happy autumn.

xoxoxoxo, Debbie

PeeEss: If you are at SIBA this weekend in Charleston, come say hello! I'm there on Sunday, as SIBA has named Countdown its YA book of the year. Thank you, Southern Independent Booksellers! xoxo

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