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Guide to Literary Agents editor Chuck Sambuchino recently posted notes from a conference session he attended with agent Jennifer Laughran of Andrea Brown Literary and author Wendy Lichtman. They offered tips and advice for writing for tweens and teens.

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Good Morning All:

With the warm summer mornings and brutally hot days we've had this last week, it takes my mind back to some of the family road trips we took through the 1990s and early 2000s.

We traveled back and forth between Northwest Arkansas and Southern California many times during the summers when our kids were little. For whatever unfortunate reason, no matter what vehicle we owned at the time, it was inevitable: our air-conditioner would go bonkers as soon as we started off across the long, parched desert roads. I can remember it being so miserable and stuffy in our van that we had wet towels wrapped around our necks. We would soak the towels in the ice chest and get them good and icy cold and wrap them around our shoulders and necks. The kids would literally put them over their entire heads!! It was miserable at the time, but looking back, it made great memories.

On one of our many trips, my daughter, who was about 6 at the time, was coming down with a cold and had a fever on our first day on the road. She was lying down in the back seat and I was sitting next to her. She looked at me, said, "uh-oh, sorry" and launched her breakfast all over both of us. We stopped at a restaurant and cleaned up. She felt better the rest of the day, but honestly, we were foul smelling until we made it to the hotel in Grants, New Mexico.

This trip became so common place for us, that my husband, who was the driver extraordinaire, had the trip down to a science. What should have been a nice, leisurely 3 day 2 night trip, became a whirl-wind one-nighter. Two long days on the road and one night. We always stayed at the same Days Inn in Grants New Mexico.

Through our journeys, we made some awesome discoveries. Not only cool discoveries along the roadside, but discoveries about ourselves and our strength and perseverance.

One of the most beautiful sights that we found on the roadside was this gorgeous and abandoned church in Cuervo, New Mexico:





I had often admired it from Interstate 40, but getting my husband off the beaten path was not easy. The last trip we made, he pulled off of I-40 and onto old Route 66 so that I could get some pictures of my often admired church. We didn't get out of the car, but I managed to snap some nice photos. I have always intended to use this church in a 5" x 7" collage someday.

Our trips were never luxurious or even very pleasant, but looking back, I can see how important they were. It taught my kids patience and appreciation of roadside sights. We endured heat and exhaustion and the stench of a very huge cattle ranch in the Texas panhandle. We have boxes of photos from these trips that are now classified as my personal treasures.

It's doubtful that we'll make that trip across the great American highway again. At least not without air-conditioning. But I wouldn't trade my memories of those long and stuffy days, packed in our van with 3 kids for any amount of money.

Until Tomorrow:
Kim
Garden Painter Art
Kim's Kandid Kamera