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Well, it’s that time of year again. Picture Book Idea Month (PiBoIdMo) is almost here. Tara Lazar has another great lineup of guest bloggers and prizes again this year. To make this a more manageable project for me this year, I am only going to blog about my progress on a weekly basis. so here is my promise:

I do solemnly swear
that I will faithfully execute
the PiBoIdMo 30-ideas-in-30-days challenge,
and will, to the best of my ability,
parlay my ideas into
picture book manuscripts
throughout the year.

This has been successful for me the past couple of years, so I hope I’m up to the challenge again this year.

I’m a bit behind with my update, but now that the girls are back to school hopefully things will get back to normal around here. I should be upset I didn’t write a single word last month. I should be bummed that this is the second month in a row that I didn’t meet my 12 x 1 2 goal. Honestly, though, I’m not brokenhearted over it.  Here’s what I did accomplish in August:

• I edited a previously written middle grade book and submitted it for consideration to my publisher.
• I submitted a previously written picture book to an agent. (Got rejected ).
• I’ve juggled two editing projects for clients.
• I’ve managed two book tours for the past couple of months and have two in October and two in November I’m planning.
• I’m working on setting up blog tours for my books: Little Shepherd by Cheryl Malandrinos and A Christmas Kindness by C.C. Gevry.

This all happened in between planning and teaching vacation Bible school, keeping all my blogs regularly updated (six total), my bi-monthly contributions to the Christian Children’s Authors Blog, cheerleading camp, back-to-school shopping, and the normal everyday craziness of our house.  So, while 12 x 12 suffered, I still feel I’ve accomplished a lot. I’m scheduled to work on Flag Day Fiasco—Students discover the school’s flag is missing and must try to find it before their annual Flag Day celebration kicks off—this month. I’m not sure I’ll get to it, but I hope I do. It’s one of my favorite ideas.

Hope you enjoy your weekend.

It’s the last day of April, which means another chance to pat myself on the back for meeting a writing goal. As a 12 x 12 participant, I am writing 12 books over 12 months. I’m pleased to announce that I made great progress this month. In March, I didn’t quite finish Crabby Cathy, so that story was the one I worked on first. Though I had been very discouraged about writing in general through part of the month, after much prayer and some great encouragement, I completed Cathy’s story. I’ll see what my critique group thinks of it.

Next, I moved on to a story that is tentatively titled, The Other Sister’s Story. This is the Cinderella story from one of the stepsister’s perspectives. I’ve seen a book written from the stepmother’s point of view - http://www.amazon.com/Seriously-Cinderella-Annoying-Wicked-Stepmother/dp/1404870482/ – but not one of the sisters. The first challenge was that I didn’t know if the sisters had names in any of the stories other than the Disney movie version. This was truly a departure from my usual message type book. This one is just meant to entertain. It’s something I’ve never done before and that makes me a bit nervous. What was encouraging, however, is how much my girls liked it. They haven’t read the entire story, yet–I typed “The End” last night–but I’m going to share it with them today and see what they think. This is by far my favorite story and I already have an agent in mind to which I would like to submit it.

For May, I am working on another untitled story that is a departure from my regular work. It is the story of an ingenious turkey who comes up with unique and funny ways to avoid being part of Thanksgiving dinner. This one should be a blast.