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Author: Hazel Hutchins & Gail Herbert
Illustrator: Dusan Petricic (on JOMB)
Published: 2008 Annick Press (on JOMB)
ISBN: 1554511208 Chapters.ca Amazon.com

More imagination on JOMB:

Okay, so they're prying my computer from my fingers. We will be out of office until Monday except for 2 projects in progress (you know who you are). Pictures will be forthcoming as we get everything set up next week.

Since March 1st is at hand, I thought I'd run down what we're looking for one more time---

1. Adult and Young Adult literary works (no heavy romance please).

2. Adult suspense/thriller (in the vein of Lee Child, Patterson, Connelly, Cornwell).

3. Teen manga (especially catering to the tween/teen girl demographic).

4. Political or historical non-fiction (can include memoir or narrative).


Chances of getting us to read anything else are slim to none. We are currently holding 5 manuscripts that I promise to start reading this next week.

See you on the other side and stay literate;)

Yep, that's right, my little beasties, we're moving.

Not too far, just to Golden, but I am so thoroughly excited, mainly because our cramped office space (meant for just one really) will be four times the size. And I LOVE Golden. Not quite the mountains, not a big city, but close enough to downtown for baseball.

Now on to the least fun part--packing (yuck).

We will be in and out of office next week to get everything here to there and find more furniture for the new space, but we'll still be answering e-mails and plowing through the submissions. So, yeah, business as usual, just with an added chore.

Have a Freaky Friday, try something new, and stay literate;)

My apologies for disappearing! I’ve been going through a major life change: MOVING. In the space of a few weeks, we sold our home (in Grand Prairie, TX where we had lived for 18 years raising two kids) and moved into the big city (of Dallas, where we’re 10 minutes from my favorite theaters, movies, museums, and restaurants!). Each Friday has brought a new crisis: first no electricity for two days, then no Internet for four days! EEK! Things are headed toward normalcy now and it’s time to get back on track with poetry. I’ve actually been reading a lot of poetry during this time as part of the Cybils award (I’m on the poetry subcommittee; stay tuned for news); it’s the perfect antidote.

As I looked for a poem to fit my current circumstance, I remembered a lovely picture book collection that came out a few years ago: My House is Singing by Betsy Rosenthal, illustrated by Margaret Chodos-Irvine. Each poem captures an aspect of the “places and spaces that make a house a home” against a backdrop of Chodos-Irvine’s colorful, sculptural collages. Using a variety of poetic forms, including rhyming and free verse forms, Rosenthal touches on details that children notice in the laundry room, the smoke detector, the refrigerator, the vacuum cleaner, the kitchen, special cubby-holes, the doorbell, the back door, and more. The following poem example gives the book it’s title and captures some of my own thoughts my first night in my new home:

My House’s Night Song
By Betsy Rosenthal

Listen closely.
Can you hear?

Heater whooshing out
warm air.

Blinds flapping
Floors creaking.

Clocks ticking.
Faucet leaking.

Dishwasher clicking.
Pipes pinging.

Listen closely.
My house is singing.

From: Rosenthal, Betsy. R. 2004. My House is Singing. Illustrated by Margaret Chodos-Irvine. San Diego: Harcourt.

It’s time for me to re-join the Poetry Friday Round Up-- which is hosted this week by Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect.

Picture: My new house

So it's official - we're moving to Texas. My husband accepted a job in Austin and just put in his two weeks this past Monday. It's such a strange feeling. We had a few weeks of anticipation and mild uncertainty and now, suddenly we're in the thick of preparations. We're out of LA in exactly two weeks, so it's going to be quite a whirlwind. I'm really excited to be moving - trying out a new city in a different part of the country, but the moving itself can be such a dreaded experience. We had a pretty horrid experience six years ago when we relocated from NY to LA and I'm not at all eager to repeat it. Fortunately, I have a bit more time to do better research on moving companies and the like this time around, so hopefully it will be a somewhat better situation. We shall see...

I've never been to Austin myself, but every one we've spoken to seems to really like it, so I have high hopes that we will too. The cost of living is very attractive and I hear it's quite green and boasts spectacular thunderstorms. I so miss thunderstorms...

Here's a sketch a did last week:
I've had a thumbnail of this idea waiting around in my sketchbook for years, so I'm glad to finally have a chance to tackle it. I'm not sure where the idea for it came from - instruments as boats just seems like a neat idea to me. I've got a color study finished for it, but I have a feeling I'm not going to get to touch it again for a while, since my current job is now 'moving coordinator.'

So as we're preparing to move, going through our possessions and trying to figure out what we can do without, we managed to gather up a few stacks of books that we were willing to part with - a lot of them duplicates that we both had before we got married. I remembered a small used bookstore right around the corner from us, that I'd walked past many times, but never really ventured into before. So I headed over there, arms full of books. It's one of these places I wish I'd discovered sooner - a really nice store with good selection and the owner's just nice as can be. They even had a copy of Castles by Alan Lee - quite a find! I love the big bookstores, Borders, B&N as much as anybody, but there's something to be said for the charm of the smaller independent bookstore. So, if you happen to be passing through Canoga Park, stop in and see what you can find - address is on their website: www.nextchapterbooks.com.

Also, I mentioned sculptor Vicki Banks' beautiful animal sculptures in a previous post - seems she does indeed have a website: http://www.vulturesculpture.com/

It's time for me to dive back into the madness of moving - many phone calls to make. Anybody know a good pet-friendly hotel in Austin by chance?

Today is my day to post, but alas I am mid-move; running boxes over to our new place, painting, cleaning and all that fun stuff... we are moving into a loft style studio apartment that is basically one giant room in an old converted horse-drawn carriage factory.

I've been going back and forth for days about wall colors and arranging the place, after all it is my work space too. Yesterday I painted one wall this color (it is a nice pea green in case the color doesn't translate):



I can't get enough of looking at that color. It is so satisfying.

Well that is all the creative outlet I've had this week. I'll post pics soon as the studio comes together!

And Katherine, I'll work on the palette pics! (comment from last week)

Which might be why I've been up since 3am this morning. Must. Get. Sleep.

It's kind of exciting. And the best thing is - when I did the walk through this afternoon, I fell in love with the house and the neighborhood all over again.

I can't wait to walk into the place tomorrow when it's MINE, all MINE!!!

Took daughter to Bed Bath Beyond this evening to get some bedding for her new room. We picked up some funky pillows at the Pier 1 across the street.

We move in a week from today, after the bedrooms have been painted and the radon system, dog fence, burglar alarm etc have all been installed.

Tomorrow though, I'll be happy to empty out my car, which is packed to capacity with stuff that I didn't want to put in storage or forgot to pack or have bought in the meantime. I can barely see out the back window for all the curtain rods and vacuum cleaner and the Harry Potter robe that didn't sell in the tag sale but I didn't fancy throwing in the dumpster because it WILL come in handy one day.

Ok. Bed. Sleep. If I can. Because I'm excited. Exhausted. Excited. Exhausted.


Hmmm. Where's that Ambien?

Yesterday we closed on the sale of the Marital McMansion, which ends, finally, the saga of the Never- Ending Divorce. It's been an emotional few days for the kids and me. Although mentally I'd checked out of that house a long time ago, the day before the closing I sat in the window seat of the empty study, where my dog Sandy had taken to basking in the sun, and thought about how hopeful I'd been when we moved into that house; hopeful that our lives would be better, that we'd make a fresh start, that we'd all be happy in that house together.

Heh.

But there were many good memories in that house. My sister and brother-in-law getting married in the living room, not long after 9/11; prompted by that event to "just do it". Summer days spent with family, lounging around the pool. Working with the kids in the vegetable garden - something which unfortunately went by the wayside the last few years. Having my little nephew "help" me re-pot my geraniums. My political "saloons". Writing some of The Novel Formerly Known as "Ketchup on my Cucumbers" in that study - but actually mostly in bed after the kids had gone to sleep, because I was freelancing during the day to make ends meet.

In the course of the huge task of emptying out a 6,000+ sq ft house, I found lots of photos. Photos of us all together as a family. They made me realize again how long this whole process took - because the kids were so young in those pictures. The kids have grown - I just had to buy daughter her first pair of shoes in the Women's Department - Son's been in the men's department shoe-wise since before his Bar Mitzvah (his feet are now 2 1/2 sizes bigger than mine) and I just had to buy him a new blue blazer in the men's dept.

I've grown, too. I also found journals that I'd written during my "Annus Horribilus", 2001, when I was hospitalized - and then released from hospital on September 11. Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire. In one, I'd set out goals for myself:

1. Find "Shalom Bayit" - one way or the other (Shalom Bayit is Hebrew for "peace in the home") Interesting the "one way or the other" comment...I obviously knew, but wasn't admitting to myself, that there was a chance we wouldn't be able to achieve that together.
2. Recover from bulimia.
3. Get a book published.
4. Use the gift that G-d has given me and all the things that I have been through and the experiences I've had to help other people.

You know what the amazing thing is? I've achieved those goals - or at least made a good start on them.
At the moment I don't have a "Bayit" to find peace in...I close on my new house on Thursday. I've recovered from bulimia, although I always have to be mindful and careful when the pressure and stress gets too great. Old coping mechanisms die hard.

Two years after writing that list I got a book contract.

And with The Novel Formerly Known as "Ketchup on my Cucumbers", I'm finally transforming what was probably one of the most painful experiences in my life into what the Super Secret Agent called:"poignant yet funny journey of a teenager winning her battle with bulimia." (She's so much better at coming up with those one line pitches than I am!).

Find that old journal allowed me to do something I've never been very good at - giving myself credit for what I've achieved and how far I've come. I always used to focus on the next mountain that needed climbing, rather than giving myself a chance to rest at the top and enjoy the view.

But enough of the serious introspection.

If you ask me what I'll miss most about the old house besides the window seat in the study, it's the pool.


Mary Poppins and I had some AWESOME pool parties, including one where she had..um...partaken of the liquid refreshments - perhaps, one might say, to excess - and broken her foot whilst diving off the side into the pool.

Which leads me to the newest Never Ending Saga in my life - my feet. Faithful readers might remember that after all the walking in our trip to Disney in April, I'd aggravated the fractured seisamoid (sp?) in my left foot. It's been extremely stubborn about healing. Two weeks ago I had to have a cortisone injection in it, which hurt like the dickens but really helped, although it's still not 100%. Then a few days ago, I started getting pain in my right heel. After visiting my new best friend, Dr. Weiss, of the Podiatry Center of Darien, I learned that I've got Schlepping-itis. For you non-Yiddish speakers, that translates to plantar faciatis (sp?) caused by carrying all this heavy stuff to the dumpster. (I love dumpsters!) This entailed getting a nerve blocking injection in my right ankle, numbing my right foot, which made it feel really weird to walk, not to mention drive. I emerged from Dr Weiss's office with *both* feet taped and instructions to rest (hah!like *that's* going to happen. I still have to move into the new house on the 13th!) and wear better sneakers when I'm moving.

You know what I'm looking forward to the most when I get my final move over? To sit down and put my feet up with a few ice packs on each one, grab my Mac (Yay! I love my Mac!) and start writing something other than checks.

"This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning..."

saraclaradara has been quiet as of late because we've been in the middle of The Big Move. The last two days were exhausting and emotional for all of us as we moved out of the "marital home". I've decided moving out of the old house is infinitely more difficult than moving into the new one. Not that I'd know, because at the moment we are living in a furnished rental apartment pending the closing on both the old and new houses, hence the Winston Churchill quote. We're at the end of the beginning of the move.

I have a few observations about the moving process.

1) Despite my best intentions when we moved into our house eight years ago, we accumulated an enormous volume of STUFF.
2) Despite having got rid of a lot of stuff in a dumpster in 2004 when I thought the divorce would be over quickly, and again in January before we put the house on the market and having a dumpster again now, we still have an enormous volume of STUFF. What's up with that? Does STUFF multiply when I'm not looking?
3) If you put STUFF in a box in your bedroom for a moving sale, your 10 year old daughter will take STUFF out of it when you aren't looking and without asking you if she can have it.
4) If you are going to have a moving sale, do not schlep all the computers and rugs and pictures out to the garage because you think it will make it easier for the nice lady you've engaged to run the sale for you because you just can't cope with the thought and besides you're going to your cousin's son's Bar Mitzvah that day. Because, apparently, the act of schlepping into the garage lowers the value of said STUFF so you will just end up having to schlep it back into the house again, and this will take place AFTER all the able bodied men (such at the Webmeister, who garnered the title of "Moving Mensch" for his help and support over the last two days) have left.
5) That smell in the basement that was lingering around the STUFF your ex-husband was storing there, the one that you thought smelled like a dead mouse IS probably a dead mouse, as you will find when the moving men finally move his stuff out, but unfortunately leave the dead mouse.

I'm sure I'll have more by the time we get to the end of the end on June 13th, when we finally will move into the new house. I'm very excited as I love the street and I've already made friends with one family down the street through their daughter, Justine, who wrote me a fan letter, and I met my very nice new next-door neighbor the other day when I went to water my plants, which Justine's parents are kindly plant sitting for me because they wouldn't survive in storage.

I just can't wait to get it all over with so I can start writing something other than checks again, because that's pretty much all I've been writing in the last three weeks!

Logan's family has just moved. He is on to a new school. His parents think this will be for the best after what happend.

But history has a way of following you.

Zyler and Logan used to be best friends. They weren't the kind of guys who had lots of friends or girlfriends, but they were good that way. Zyler spent time at Logan's house, and every now and again - if Zyler's dad wasn't home - Logan would go over there too.

Then Logan saw what he saw.

Then his family moved.

Ann Dee Ellis has written and poignant and moving story about growing up, families, rumours and friendship. How far would you go for a friend? What would you do if you saw something terrible happening? Would you jump in?

Ellis has a way of writing silence that is simply brilliant. The setting is so clear, and our kids who have read the arc are simply beside themselves with how much they like this is what i did.

Okay, I've got nothing for IF this week. I had a great idea for CARS, but I can't find most of my art supplies and my husband unplugged the scanner to put it in a box! We're surrounded by boxes. So, I won't be blogging much the next few days. Go stop by my website or my store and buy stuff in the meantime. Enjoy looking around and when we settle in, watch out!

Ah, we finally found a new home. We find out today or tomorrow. Cross your fingers. The sale of our house is going smooooth and well, thank DOG. We've had the inspection, the appraisal, the papers and now as I speak, a nice man with a dog named Chiquita is pumping our sewer (a nasty job indeed). There is still packing to do and yet, I am here blogging away instead. Bad, bad Ronni! Alas. Denial is a beautiful place.

Big thanks to Etsy and the idea to have a store to share my work. I've had two nice sales already, so I am a big fan.

I can't write much lately but I have been sketching. I will have to wait until we are settled in to the new place to work on my books. But, like most writers, I am constantly writing in my head! I've been scribbling things down whereever I am like a mad scientist conjuring up potions.:)

I worry about Jessica, who will leave her friends behind, and Emma Lou, who will leave HER dog friends behind.

I am off to worry, pack, and plan.

So I never got around to my Mouse House rants. I've cooled off a bit, so I won't bore you too much with how I think the whole "pin trading" business is one of the biggest parent-fleecing rackets the folks at Disney have ever come up with - and as I'm sure y'all are aware, these guys are expert at emptying parental pockets.

One thing I do still feel the need to rant about is the subservient role of women in the Disney universe. Don't get me started on the whole "Some Day my Prince Will Come" stuff. I remember when my daughter was about 2, sitting and watching "Cinderella" with her snuggled on my lap. There were already issues in my marriage, although I was no where near at the wanting a divorce stage then. I still had hope that things could actually change. But I remember sitting there as the Prince and Cinders drove off in the carriage to "And they lived happily ever after" and thinking, "Yeah, but then he started taking her for granted and she ended up having to do all the work around the Castle," and I wondered why I was letting my daughter watch it.

Three years later, when things were really going downhill, I wrote about 200 pages of a "grown up book." There's one scene where the protagonist gets drunk and takes all the Walt Disney videos that feature the main female character waiting to get "saved" by her Prince and she rips them out of the video cases, then buries the evidence in the outside garbage cans.

I'd forgotten how much I hated about Disney's lack of feminism until I was at Disney World and we visited Minnie Mouse's house.

Attached to Minnie's bulletin board was this "to do" list:



Anyone else feel like barfing?

I mean, seriously. Doesn't Minnie have anything better to do besides calling Mickey every thirty seconds? Her whole freakin' life revolves around Mickey - she's either calling him, making his lunch, or doing Mousercize and eating a low fat nutritious breakfast so she can stay skinny for him.

Grrrrrrrrrrrr. Wanna make a bet Mickey isn't sitting around all day mooning over Minnie, but actual *does* something with his life? *****Rant Over*****

Meanwhile, on the moving front, it's now a mere 29 days until we move out of the marital manse and into a temporary furnished rental, before closing on our new abode about a week later. I've been busy packing boxes. So far have done 2 wardrobe boxes and five linen cartons in my bedroom, plus 18 cartons of books - and that's just from my study. The latter is somewhat unnerving considering that currently there is NOT A SINGLE BOOKSHELF in the new house. Don't they READ?! I mean, I know I have more books than your average bear, but...the mind boggles. Needless to say that projecto numero uno is to build bookshelves wherever there's free wall space. I'm so looking forward to getting the move over with and getting all settled into the new house.

Finally an update to the Never Ending and Somewhat Surreal Saga of saraclaradara's feet. Apparently, due to all the walking at Disney, I managed to aggravate a previously fractured sesamoid in my left foot. No exercise for another week (not good, when you're stressed out about moving and the government is trying to mess with your chocolate)and the usual icing and ibruprofen. To quote the Rolling Stones: "What a DRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAG is is, getting old!"

Still, maybe next time I can get one of those motorize scooter thingies to whiz around on. I could run over Snow White if she starts blathering on about how some day her Prince will come.
Unless it's the Purple Rain kinda Prince. Then I'll ask for tickets to the show.

At long last, our corporate offices have moved from Atlanta, Georgia to Bakersville, North Carolina, near Penland School of Crafts. It's been an exasperating experience to say the least - on TOP of the usual pressures of moving.

First, well, how to put it? We couldn't get everything we owned on the dang truck. If I hadn't been so mad and so completely dog-tired, I would have pulled out the camera to document it for you. But I was, and I didn't. We ended up stacking a bunch of our seasonal stuff and our four metal deck chairs outside under the cover of the metal roof that shields the deck on our old home, and now I'm going to have to return for the stuff when I'm back in Georgia to do a library visit next week.

Here in North Carolina we had a beautiful day for unpacking. We were able to pull the truck right up to the front door and load right into the house too, so we had no up and down the ramp. Check it out:


See that big empty front yard? That's where we're going to build our new house. SOON. And here's Jo on the moving bridge:

So while we were unloading the truck, we accidentally broke a huge round mirror that goes to a bureau in Jo's room. And I mean we SMASHED it. It completely blew up.

Now, if we were superstitious folks, we would say we just bought ourselves seven years of bad luck at our new home. But we're not superstitious folks.

It took all day, and it wore us out . . .

But we finally got everything into the house. Thankfully, the owners had emptied out all the junk that had been sitting in the house. UNfortunately, they just dumped it in the yard:

Thanks. Thanks very much. *I* could have done that. But at least I didn't have to do it while we were moving in, I guess.

So, remember, we're not superstitious folks. So when we were returning the truck to Johnson City, Tennessee, (an hour and a half drive!) and we got a call from our mortgage lender and were told that we would not be able to close the next day, as we had once planned, we didn't chalk it up to a completely unrelated broken mirror.

Nor did we get suspicious when our new electric oven from Lowe's caught on fire and had to be replaced.

Or when a pipe burst under the house and we had no water for a day.

Or when the fuel oil started to leak and we had to turn off the heat the day after that. And when we had it repaired, we learned the tank was almost empty.

Or Wendi's sudden dental emergency, with the nearest dentist on our plan in Johnson City, and the earliest they can see her May 1st.

And we've been here exactly one week.

Then yesterday, perhaps tempting fate, I attempted to have a fire in our fireplace . . .

And it worked just fine.

Seriously, we don't blame all these things on a broken mirror. I blame instead the renters who lived in this place before we did. They abused the heck out of the place, and we're just cleaning up their mess.

I suppose the renters can't be blamed for the oven catching on fire. Or for Wendi's toothache. But there is such a thing as coincidence.

We'd just prefer that the odd coincidences stop now, thank you.

Handy Manny: Latino Role Model or Stereotype? In this show: Happy Birthday to Andrea and Lucy, Tools for thinking about Disney’s “Handy Manny” Special Thanks to : Kevan Miller for the station ID. Music: Happy Birthday by Craymo Podcasts Mentioned: Just One More Book Websites Mentioned: Latin_Know, Vivir Latino Participate in the show. Subscribe and listen in iTunes XML Feed Location : feed://www.bazmakaz.com/clip/?feed=rss2 Let [...]