I would like to think I’ve always tried to be as truthful and as noble as George Washington in the cherry tree parable.

Chances are, while I would have not chopped down a cherry tree – for starters, we didn’t own an axe; and oh, we didn’t have a cherry tree – I’m also no saint. I’ve told my share of white lies. I mean I had to; I’m a pleaser. I hated getting into trouble or even give someone reason to look at me ... well, that way.

So if I’d done something I shouldn’t have, I would have been one of those kids who tried to create a plausible excuse out of the weakest of circumstances.
“Did you eat the last cookie?”
“That was the *last* cookie? Aren’t there more cookies?”
You know, that type of thing.

So it pains me to have lied so egregiously over the past few years. Time and time and time again. In fairness to myself, I suppose I shouldn’t count those times when I spoke the truth as I knew it in the moment. Still, after talking to thousands and thousands of kids and telling them, “No, there will not be a sequel to The Gollywhopper Games,” I need to eat my words.

But they are delicious. The wonderful Greenwillow Books has given me the green light to write a Gollywhopper 2 and a Gollywhopper 3.


It’s daunting to try and write two more books that will live up to the expectations of all those kids I’ve spoken with and those who have sent me so many letters and emails and those who silently rooted for their choice of contestant in the first book. But I am up for the challenge.

I am very, very deep in writing mode. First draft. That means I don’t read much. I don’t want to get too entangled in the lives and emotions of characters who aren’t showing up in my book. I’ve tried before. And I’ve found I can get derailed.

Which leads to the problem I had last month. I had a long weekend getaway planned to a place with lots of downtime. And if you’re a person like me, it’s hard to separate even a mini-vacation from books. What a conundrum! What could I read that wouldn’t derail me? What could I read that might let me regain my focus on hitting the St. Louis runway again?

The answer brought me back to when I was 12, a time before Judy Blume and the YA invasion. I was into mysteries, but with no new Encyclopedia Brown in sight and having left Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys far behind, what could I read? But wait! What was on my mother’s nightstand? The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie? Interesting. And wait again! My mom owned more!

The summer between sixth and seventh grades, I consumed Agatha Christie mysteries, both Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. I didn’t always understand everything. Some of the phrasing and terms were a little confusing, but still, I loved them.

Soon, though, came school and friends and required reading and reading the books my friends read, and Agatha Christie faded into the sunset of my amusement.

Fast forward decades. Last month. I happened to find a Miss Marple paperback hidden away in my basement not long before that weekend. And because my voice is nowhere near Agatha Christie’s, I thought it might work. And it did.

I’d never read They Do It with Mirrors (originally titled Murder with Mirrors), or at least I don’t remember reading it. Even if I had, it would be a different experience as an adult.

I don’t think I need to write a review. We all know that Agatha Christie set many standards in mystery writing. And though the enjoyment factor will vary from book to book, any one will still be a solid read.

What I do want to say is this. We are, at least I am, very struck with all the new titles, wanting to read them, wanting to keep up with the conversations. But that weekend, there was something very wonderful about taking a breath, about stepping back and revisiting what was golden and still, pretty much, holds up. Agatha, you haven’t seen the last of me.

P.S. Read some other great reviews as part of Barrie Summy's wonderfully coordinated club, now in it's 3rd year!

It’s finally time. It’s time I finalize my resolutions. But mine really aren’t textbook resolutions. I learned, long ago, those never work for me. Instead, I assign myself goals and tasks. Past ones that have worked well:
Eat more fruit.
Embrace the icky, tricky, and sticky.

This year, I have four measurable goals and one that promises to be more challenging.

1. Write two novels this year.
2. Revise one additional novel.
3. Ready new speeches or talks at least four weeks previous to presentation.
4. Use handweights at least once a week.
5. Go there. Put your characters in hard situations. Make them wish they only felt crummy. Risk feeling the necessary feelings the characters are experiencing. Prepare to cry and get goosebumps and feel your whole body buzz with excitement. Go there.

They say no good deed goes unpunished. I suppose if you look at this as a pessimist, my punishment meant me spending hours being unproductive with my own work. Um, I’m not a pessimist. But let me start at the beginning.

Pudd’nhead Books here in St. Louis put out a call for help when it came time for them to move across the street. This store was responsible for allowing me to have lunch with the likes of Jennifer Donnelly, David Wiesner, Michael Buckley and Jon Scieszka. Even if they hadn’t, I’m a volunteer sucker. I went in one morning to help box up the children’s section. There I saw about a dozen copies of The Emerald Atlas.

 I was immediately struck by its cover. Surrounding the beautiful, lush landscape that included three kid jumping rocks to cross a raging river was a border of an old-time map. Together, total intrigue.

“Is this any good?” I asked Melissa.

She didn’t hesitate. “Really great.”

And after about an hour of packing many, many covers, I walked out of the store with that one.

As is my style, I let it sit on my bookshelf for a couple months. Then one day, I was running out the door to some appointment or another and I needed to grab some reading material. My hands touched The Emerald Atlas and I got lost for hours in the first adventure in the series.

The first scene is particularly haunting. Kate, the oldest of her gnome-expert brother Michael and her defiant, feisty, pick-a-fight sister Emma, is given a locket by her mother on Christmas. Just as we see her loving her life, people come barging into their house and as the three kids get spirited away by a man in a tweed coat, her mom makes Kate promise that she’ll keep her brother and sister safe. Later, her mother says to her father, “I told Kate we’d all be together again. I was lying.”

The kids, we find quickly, move through a series of orphanages until they land at a last-chance place in Cambridge Falls, a city that no one has heard of and in a building without any orphans except them. As they explore the building, they happen upon a book that allows them to time travel. When they encounter a beautiful witch about to drown a kid in the river, their dangerous, mysterious adventure begins. It's one that could change the course of history for the people of Cambridge Falls and for themselves as well. Book #2, hurry!

As always, this review exists in conjunction with Barrie Summy’s book review club, the first Wednesday of each month. Thanks again, Barrie!

I looked at the drop-down thesaurus attached to my word processing program (WordPerfect for those keeping score) to make sure the word floored was appropriate to the headline here. The synonyms included shocked, stunned, taken aback, cold-cocked, decked, dumped, knocked down and leveled. No, no, eight times, no. But there was another... blown out of the water. Close enough.

About a month or two ago, I was talking to a local bookseller who suggested I really might want to come and hear Patrick Carman speak at the store’s event. His book, Floors, was one she recommended alongside mine. If that’s not an enticement, nothing is. Except maybe really good cookies. Or cake.

I came. I listened. I bought. I read. Then I had to write Patrick Carman to find out when book two (of three planned) would be available. I felt like a kid, impatient for late next year. Yes, this read was that great of a ride.

Ten-year-old Leo Fillmore and his father live among the jumble in the basement of the Whippet Hotel, acting as its caretakers. This is no ordinary hotel. Built by eccentric Merganizer Whippet, each floor -- consisting of only one suite of rooms -- is an experience. The first floor we get to see up close and personal is the Pinball Room. Not only does it have 23 pinball machines lining the bedroom, but the entire floor is a “Pinball Machine, with giant molded pinball bumpers that doubled as couches and chairs, all of them lit up with bright lights and springs. The slanted floor was covered in lights and arrows and circled numbers, just like a real pinball machine. At the far end of the room was a hole as big as a tire, which had a flipper on each side.” Not only does this look like a pinball machine, you need to watch out for the giant balls that come barreling through.

To that, add other ingenious floors, a host of weird hotel guests, an annoying pocket-sized robot, a hotel totally falling apart, a developer who’ll stop at nothing to get the large plot of New York City land on which the small hotel stands, the owner who’s been missing for 100 days  ... and especially the series of boxes, instructions and clues our hero, Leo, receives in order to save the hotel, his dad’s job and their home.

I often have books signed to give away. And I almost did the same in this instance, but something stopped me. I had Patrick Carman sign this one to me. It was the right decisions. This is one for the bookshelves.

As always, my reviews are in conjunction with the lovely Barrie Summy's Book Review Club. Check out others here.

It’s the first Wednesday of the month which means it’s time for Barrie Summy’s Book Review Blow-Out. It’s been a bit since I’ve attended. It’s been a bit since I’ve posted anything. But I hope to be back more regularly to everything.

And yes, I’m stalling because this will be an incomplete book review of what promises to be a fun, fast-paced start to an exciting, creative, illustration-packed series. I’ve known the author, Greg Fishbone, for a number of years as part of a critique group and as founder of the Class of 2k7 (where I was a member until I found my first book wouldn’t be published until ‘08). As I said in the lead-up to my interview with him on the Smack Dab blog (look for the interview tomorrow), Greg has to be one of the most creative, hardest-working people I’ve ever been privileged to meet. So it’s not surprising that he’s taken on the entire galaxy, and a very cool contest, with The Challengers – the first book in The Galaxy Games series.

I agreed to be part of his blog tour which also meant I scored an ARC of the book (yay!) just days before a quick trip to Arizona. I got on the plane, unloaded the book and my iPod and settled in to read. About 3/4 of the way there, I started talking to a newspaper reporter and our conversation lasted into the airport. You know what’s coming ... One baggage pick-up and rental car ride later, I realized The Challengers was again sailing through the air, this time eastbound to Orlando in the seat pocket of 15F. Even though it had barely been an hour since I deplaned, and even though I could tell them exactly where the book was, I was told that IF they found it, I wouldn’t get it back for 2-3 months. I groveled to the wonderful publicity person at Lee & Low who graciously sent me another, but that copy is still somewhere in the postal system and my ordered hardcover hasn’t come in yet either.

(Finally ... Here Comes the Review)
And that’s all a crime because I left our hero, Ty Sato, in a precarious position and I NEED to know what happens ... which is a really strong statement in a book review. And maybe that’s all you need to convince you to take a look. But while I’m here, I’ll set you up with a bit of plot.

Two things happen on Ty’s 11th birthday. 1). His mom forgets an 11 year old will be mortified when a clown shows up at his birthday party. 2). His Japanese cousins have named a star after him. The latter sounds cool enough, but it ends up being more disastrous than #1. The star, TY SATO, is suddenly hurtling toward earth with enough force that it could destroy our planet. And our hero’s name is plastered all over the world in the most negative manner. Lucky for everyone, the world will not come to an end, but Ty is enlisted by M’frozzo from Mrendaria for a galatic challenge that promises to be out of this world. Literally.

GIVEAWAY TIME!
I can’t wait to get my hands on the book again. And I’d hold a contest about which reaches me first – the ARC or my call from Pudd’nhead Books that the hardcover is in – but let’s make it simple. Comment here or at the Smack Dab blog or at my Facebook page or on Twitter (please include @jodyfeldman a

I came home from NYC to find my front yard transformed from this ...


to this ...


After the OMG moment, my first thought: The neighbors must be happy to have the junkyard vanish. My second: What’s that little pyramid? (It's the white spot in the lower left corner above.)


It turns out that this little tent, as I said in my last post, was the most important structure yet built at my house. The floor refinisher told me yesterday, that when they removed the tarp from the front yard, they also uncovered ...


I’m happy to report by the next day, one of the bunnies had gone, one was still in the nest and the third was lounging in the shade of the lean-to. An hour later, they had hopped off, and I’ve since seen them in the brush by the backyard.

A huge thanks to the floor guy for noticing and understanding that the bunny babies (their eyes were still shut when he first saw them) might need some shade in this brutal weather.

Then again, the food is always a major part of my travels. But in and around the eating, there was much stuff to do including ...

My first visit to the U.N.
Here’s where the General Assembly meets.


Then it was time to cross town.
I’d seen people in movies hit golf balls off third floor tees, and apparently they did that at Chelsea Piers.

(This is not me, by the way.)

The visit to Katz’s Deli in the Lower East Side meant a stop at the Tenement Museum where for the first time, “tenement sweat shop” wasn’t just a term to me. It was amazingly sad how many things and people and work stations they could cram into a 325 square foot apartment.


As for the lunch conversation I alluded to in the previous post, it was with one of my editors. We discussed exciting stuff, the details of which I hope I can discuss soon, but only when possibility becomes ultra-high probability. For certain, though, up at Greenwillow, they were getting ready to ship out (to the printers) the paperback version of The Seventh Level, new cover and all. Exciting in its own right. Yes, I’ll share ...


Right after that, I took a cab downtown to hear my agent's verdict on the latest revision of The Deep Downstairs which ,heretofore (didn’t know I could speak legalese), I'll refer to as Hopeful Next Book until I find its proper title because DD’s not it. As always, other things will need to change, but my agent felt it was in good enough shape for the time being. Yay!

The last night there, I got to see the Tony-winning Book of Mormon. With tickets so hard to come by, I didn’t care I was in the last row. Then again, the last rows of Broadway theaters are like a mid-row of others.

Without much sleep, I came home to this ...


... which is, hands down, the most important structure my construction team team has built. I’ll tell you more about it tomorrow.

You know how you’ve known about a deadline for a while? And you go about your business knowing it’s out there? And suddenly it’s not out there, but here? Sort of the same thing happened with my vacation. I needed a few days before the plane was scheduled for departure. But it’s amazing how the world around me coped, nonetheless.

First stop, Rochester, NY. It may not be the vacation-spot-of-choice for the masses, but it was a family thing. Plus another great reason to go there is to hang out for an afternoon with Deena Lipomi (deenaml  and author2author ) and Lisa Tiffin (who just won the Highlights contest!!!). Sometimes cliches are penned for a reason. Suddenly two and a half hours had flown.

And when you drive from there through the Finger Lakes Region, near the Catskills, then through the Poconos, time flies again even though it’s nearly six hours to Midtown Manhattan.

Apologies to my friends in NYC for breezing in without letting you know, but I wouldn’t have had time to see you ... or more precisely, until I was sitting on a couple decent blocks of time, I didn’t know they would exist.

The quick travelogue, Part I.

FOOD
*Delicious homecooked meal at a cousins’ home, finally meeting the utterly adorable Maia, a two year old who’s all over books.
*And I love popping into random NYC diners. This time, Georgio’s and The Red Flame.
*Pick an Italian restaurant, any Italian restaurant. Random again, family-owned Villa Mosconi in The Village. Very different lasagna, at least for me ... layered noodles, meat, cheese as usual, but with half the plate covered in a great red sauce and the other half covered with a wonderfully rich and meaty ragu.
*Lunch at Fig and Olive where the food (though very good) was secondary to the conversation. (More about that later.)
*Pre-theatre dinner at chef Daniel Boulud’s reasonably priced DL Bistro Moderne. I didn’t order this, but did witness the eating of a three-inch-tall burger stuffed with shortribs, foie gras and black truffles.
*Finally made a trip to the Lower East Side to eat this ...


... here ...


... which was two tables away from this ...

And if anyone has better corned beef than Katz’s Deli, let me at it.

*And finally ... Some experiences are a little more co

First, full disclosure. I didn’t choose my review book this month by sheer happenstance. Author Eric Luper and I were both at a conference in Vermont this winter and managed to spend three days never seeing each other. That, plus our passing online acquaintance, had something to do with it, and I’d go into details, but this is already in danger of getting too boring.

Bottom line: while I may know-ish Eric, I would not have chosen to review a book I didn’t like. A lot. And so I present my take of Eric’s first middle grade novel, Jeremy Bender vs. The Cupcake Cadets.

The guts of our story begins when Jeremy and his best friend Slater, in the midst of trying to do a good thing (and of course, benefit from that), manage to severely damage Jeremy’s dad’s prized antique Chris-Craft motorboat. The good news: it’s winter and his dad won’t know a thing if they can earn $470 to professionally fix the boat. The better news: winning the Windjammer Whirl, a model sailboat contest, would earn them $500. All they have to do is dress like girls, pass themselves off as members of the Cupcake Cadets, sell cupcakes, earn badges, and design and sail a winning boat. Their only competition? A bunch of girls. Easy, right?

And thus begins a full-length, hysterical romp through the world and minds of two middle school boys. When I wasn’t smiling, I was laughing. And when I wasn’t laughing, I was fully worrying about these boys and the corners they continued to paint themselves into ... until they made me laugh again.

And if you’re a girl, don’t let the boy name on the cover fool you. You may laugh even harder than your male friends ... just don’t tell the guys.

WIN!

When I first get an idea for a book, a buzz of excitement travels through and hovers around me as I start to visualize the big picture. But when I’m ready to capture them in black and white, the fleeting, vibrant scenes I initially imagined become less-than once they’re on the computer screen. At some point, though, I’ll string together something substantial, verging on the exciting, or at least approaching my initial big-picture brilliance.

That’s pretty much what’s happening at my house right now.


Raise high the chimney, bricklayers!                    Real steps (but they protected them
(with apologies to J.D. Salinger)                            before I got the shot).


Piecing together the hardwood.
First hint of plumbing (outside the roughed-in pipes).


My new favorite room.

Yes, I’ve been very negligent in posting about the progress on my house. Yikes. It’s been almost two months. Then again, my attention necessarily zeroed in on family and finishing the latest draft of The Deep Downstairs, finally with my agent.

Now though, I’m taking two or three weeks to deal with peripheral business, leisurely for a change. And in an attempt to streamline stuff for at least a few days, I’ll refrain from going into greater details on anything and post some pictures.


Yay! We have a crane!

And a second story!

And a second story requires ...

And now that you've seen these, everything looks different since then. More sooner than later. At least that's the plan.

The memories of my mom reading to me start when I was five or six, but I guarantee she held me in her lap and read the words and pointed out details in the pictures when I was more interested in bottles and sleeping. The evidence comes from her love of reading, from copyright dates of some of my first books, and from seeing her read to all six grandkids from the time they were infants.

When I think of my mom reading to us, I remember Curious George, Pantaloon, Happy Birthday to Me, On Beyond Zebra, Yertle the Turtle, and The Big Ball of String. The latter still makes me groan. My brother insisted she read it every night. While I’m sure I rolled my eyes and moved around impatient for her to get to the end so she could read my choice, she never complained.  She read the book with as much enthusiasm as she did the first time.

Starting at about age 11 or 12, I would occasionally crawl into bed next to her on a Saturday afternoon. With a movie playing in the background – we loved Charlie Chan for the mystery, tolerating the political incorrectness – I’d watch her work crossword puzzles, occasionally knowing an answer before she did.

She enjoyed her crosswords until the past couple months when the lung cancer metastasized to her brain, making it harder for her to concentrate and write. She still loved all the mystery-type shows on PBS and the old movies on cable. She even turned one on the night before she passed away last Thursday.

When I started writing for kids, my mom told me she’d always had an idea for a picture book. “You should write it,” I said. She never did, but she told me the story. It was a good one. Maybe someday, I’ll write it for her.

A little experiment today, boys and girls. Let’s observe how productive a writer can be while revising in a room that’s about 55 degrees. As long as we’re at it, let’s throw in several other variables:

*Four workers ripping apart about 2/3 of the roof just past the plastic partition.
*Two carpenters sawing and hammering.
*A classic rock station blaring so all can hear above the prying, hammering and sawing.
*The knowledge there are no bathroom facilities because I simply refuse to use their port-a-potty.
*Oh. And the scene I need to revise today? Crucial. Sets up everything that happens in the book.

And for your visual pleasure ...


Above ...

and below ...

This section of roof is next ...

... but even lower ...

We're all framed in down here.

If I could have gone through a house renovation years ago, maybe the concrete example, right before my eyes, would have awakened my brain as to what needs to happen in revision. That patching and prettying aren’t enough. Real revision requires tearing down and breaking apart and reconfiguring what was already there. Even if most of the bones are sound, some of them probably still need to be reset.

I am happy, right now, to be in the touch-up phase of The Deep Downstairs, but as I revised the first few times, it felt more like this ...

Lady, there's a bathroom in your bedroom.


Goodbye, pink bathroom. Yellow bathroom, you're next.


And underneath all that rubble ... a subfloor. And underneath that subfloor ... look out below!

I have more (next installment ... looking up) ... but the writing calls.

I usually stick to writing stuff on this blog, but who knows how much writing stuff I'll have to talk about for a while. The reason ... for many years, I’ve wanted to add some space to the bedroom/bathroom area of our house. Be careful what you wish for. In the scheme of things, 4-5 months is not that long a time, and my life should settle into a new productive routine. (Someone, please, repeat this ‘til I’m brainwashed.)

So it’s all going to be wonderful. And if you want to come along for the ride, feel free. I plan to chronicle the progress here, even if it’s just for me.

I don’t have pictures of my under-furnished living room to show you, but here’s what it’s like now.


And my bookcase ...

Before


After


(And guess who forgot to take out all the books.)

And now, to get in and out of my temporary office area ...

So wonderful what people can do with tape, plastic and zippers.


And just to stay a bit on topic ...
Monday, I blogged with the brand new wonderful group Smack Dab in the Middle. You can find my entry and here on the 11th of every month. Make sure you read some of the others. They're great!

At the beginning of this school year, I received an email from Florida teacher Maria Smith who, it seems, contacted each author on this year’s Sunshine State Young Readers Award list. The letter started like this ...

As a teacher at a Title 1 school in Pasco County, Florida, I am thrilled to share with you that we have a school full of students awaiting the arrival of our order of SSR books. Last year I teamed up with another teacher to start an SSR Superstar Book Club and we literally created a reading frenzy ...

... We have now been in school for our second week and if I had a dollar for every time I was asked when our book clubs were starting I believe I have already collected my year's salary!

Maria asked if we might send words of encouragement to the students there. She also invited us to join their club and commit to reading all 15 books on the list. I signed on the dotted line. I so enjoyed picking up books I normally wouldn’t, I’ve decided to read the books on every state list, from here on out, that my books are associated with. The next school year so far: Tennessee, Connecticut and Iowa.

Meanwhile, at Maria’s school, my picture hangs on their Superstars wall. Says Maria, “Your star has gotten lots of attention as it piques everyone's curiosity as you are a new face at our school. I love it!” I love it, too.

Me = quiet.
Me = last stages of revision before story gets mauled by my critique group.
Me = back soon with report on one particular challenge and other details.

The say it’s unwise to shift horses in mid-stream. So it’s a good thing my saddle days were limited only to trail rides as a kid. And it’s also a good thing that the only stream of water I intend to face today will come from my showerhead.

My agent has asked me to take one more pass through The Deep Downstairs to address a couple concerns. She would have sent it directly to my publisher if I’d asked her to, but after not-too-much consideration, I decided to at least see if I agreed with her points.

Totally honest here. I’m not sure I do, not enough to stop it from being submitted. Most of me is screaming to let the editors guide me through the next rewrite and continue on with the WIP. But my little voice that’s rarely wrong is saying stuff like, “You’re not under contract with this. And what if The Deep Downstairs just raw enough that they don’t accept it especially in today’s tight market?”

So I’m giving myself two short weeks to make another pass, then I’m sending it on to my critique group for their comments, ones I'll hear at our April retreat. And then ... Ready or not, here it comes?

We’ll see.

At the heart of my books, I’ve realized, lies a commonality. They all have the potential to make readers think, “I wish that could have been me!”

But where was that element in my WIP? Nowhere. Invisible. Non-existent. My partial was utterly heartless.

And yet, last night’s realization is completely exciting. I’d become somewhat disillusioned with my idea, skeptical of my ability to turn this WIP into a worthy story. But from the moment I made that diagnosis, I have new hope. Already I know my MC’s purpose and his payoff. And I’m excited about his prognosis.

Usually I talk about the productivity of my walks and blah, blah, blah. Today? Not so much. The productive part came as a sort of confirmation. I’d always suspected that walking the same route every day acted like a visual white noise, allowing me to think about the story issues du jour.

Today, I took a different path and, well ...
 Despite the fact I lay in bed for more than an hour getting the plot arc together in my mind ... up to a point ... and despite the fact I’d hoped my walk would push me further like it almost always does, it failed me.

Maybe, it was the palm trees in the foreground, the snow-covered mountains in the background and the golf course to my side. Way too much to look at. (Will download photo when I get home.)

The good thing about leaving the (mostly) wonderful weather and beautiful sights of Palm Springs is that my white noise walk is waiting for me. And I’ve had enough sleep and relaxation the past few days that I’m itching for a marathon writing period.

I’ve been quiet. Too quiet.

It’s not because I’m embarrassed about my lack of word-count progress on this WIP. It’s more a function of thoughts and their elusiveness.  Like they’re up there in that cloud and you can’t quite reach them in. Like they’re around the corner in that dream and your legs won’t take you a step farther. Like they’re floating around your head, but they flee when you make a move to stare them straight in the face.

Even though they’re roaming free, I get this idea that if I talk about them, not only will they stop hanging around, they’ll scatter to other realms of the universe. So I’ve been quiet.

The other day, though, one dared to tap me on the shoulder. It demanded I drop a few preconceived givens and open my mind to something a little different. So I did. And some of the thoughts are hovering close enough that I can write this.

1. I wrote 3,356 words this week. Bad news: It wasn’t on my WIP. Good news: it was for a class authors project. Great questions.

2. The Big Melt this week meant the sidewalks cleared which meant I could take my walk which meant I had the opportunity I needed to solve the world’s plotting problems ... or at least my own.

3. So over the next few days, maybe I can write 3,356 words on my WIP. Maybe more?

4. I was totally married to the title of this WIP until I inadvertently came up with something else. Not stressing over that, at least not until the thing’s all written. Hopefully, the story will tell me what this book’s name is.

5. Totally unrelated ...
Thanks to my cousin’s daughter Lindsay (yes, I know, also my cousin) who asked me if I had her grandmother’s brownie recipe (unfortunately I didn’t), I did remember I have a box of my own grandmother’s recipes. As brittle as the newspaper clippings and paper scraps are, I was wondering how old some of them might be. Then I found one written on the back of a letter. From 1941.

I got back from KWE last Sunday, and I’m not exactly saying magic happens there, but I think it puts you in a mind where you can make magic happen. There’s something about going to a snowy place in the middle of winter (another state’s snowy place, I mean) with dozens of other writers and illustrators who are seriously pursuing the same types of things you are. There’s an energy and there’s an unusual lack of guardedness and, especially, there’s permission to get words down in black and white even if those words are simply a path to discovery.

No, I’m not going to get all metaphysical or touchy-feely with you. I’m simply saying that I’m no longer sitting here, wasting time, waiting for that magical story moment to fall from the heavens. I’ve found the confidence to write around my current inability to conjure up the perfect backstory nugget I need to move my WIP forward. And sometimes that’s all I need.

(Current word count ... and this would be on Potential Book #4 ... 18,000ish.)