Truth in blogging requires that I tell you I’m not on the mountain any more, but I spent a good part of the afternoon here… I had a million things on my to-do list but decided that the weather was too perfect and loaded up the kids to go hiking on Poke-o-Moonshine instead. (When I […]
Monthly Archives: July 2010
THE MERMAID’S MIRROR by L.K. Madigan
I was up until 3am reading last night, and it is all L.K. Madigan’s fault. L.K. Madigan and her darn mermaids… I’ve been reading this gorgeous book for a couple weeks, little by little, because a) I’ve been really busy and b) I was so in love with the California Coastal setting that I wanted […]
Camping in the Adirondacks
So I went camping this week. Which might not seem like a big deal, but it is. Because the last time we camped in the Adirondacks, I woke up at 4 am, floating on the air mattress in what can only be described as a small pond inside our tent. There were words spoken between […]
Friday Five: Things I cut out of my novel this week
I’ve spent my afternoons this week at a great little coffee shop in Boston, doing another revision pass on my upper-MG dystopian novel. Early in the week, I made a plot map showing where things move along nicely and where they slow down, and I decided that cutting some fat would really help the book’s pacing. […]
Thankful Thursday: Cambridge Edition
As we wind down our week in Cambridge, MA, I’m feeling thankful for all the opportunities, expected and unexpected, these six days in the city have brought. Son’s iPhone application programming day camp at MIT. Their days, interestingly enough, sound a lot like our days at my writers’ retreat last week — write quietly for […]
Boating, Biking, Barbecue, and Buttons: An Update from Boston
A tiny apartment in Cambridge, MA is my home base for the next few days – I’m in Boston this week, doing research for a future book and getting some writing done while my kids are in day camp. This weekend, my husband was here, too, so we met up with some friends and took […]
What Happens at a Writers’ Retreat
The first time my friend Marjorie and I cobbled together a group of children’s writers for a short retreat, my husband was fascinated. "Really? What are you going to do all day?" "Write." He looked at me for a few minutes. "That’s it?" "Pretty much. We’ll also take breaks to eat and talk about writing." He […]
PENNY DREADFUL by Laurel Snyder
It’s another hot, sit-on-the-dock, read, swim, and eat-watermelon day, and there is both good news and bad news to report. The bad news is that my ARC of Laurel Snyder’s PENNY DREADFUL got dripped on a little and is the tiniest bit soggy. The good news is that I finished reading, and…wait…that’s bad news, too. […]
Thankful Almost-Thursday – Special Rocks
I think I mentioned that we’re reworking a storage room in our basement into a writing room — a quiet place where I’ll be able to get work done, even when the rest of the house is full and noisy. It’s almost done…and it’s given birth to a related project. There is an empty, dirt-filled area […]
OUT OF MY MIND by Sharon Draper
Yesterday afternoon went something like this: Sit on dock.Read.Get too hot to read.Jump in lake.Dry off for five minutes to avoid dripping on library book.Read.Repeat. Eventually, I finished this book… …and then I sighed and just held onto it for a few minutes. (Don’t worry, library people…I was dry by then.) Sharon Draper’s OUT OF […]