My First ARC!

I have never read an ARC before, but I won one.

Allow that to sink in.

I won an ARC! And not just any ARC, but a copy of THE WHATNOT by Stefan Bachmann! And it came in the mail today! And there were doodles, and chocolates, and I am so excited to read more, and yay!

Oh, and since this is an exclamation-mark post: one of my critique partners got an agent!!! I do not know if I am allowed to brag for her, but this is a super agent, and she is an excellent writer, and I am so excited to read her books when they are published with beautiful haunting covers in a form I can hold in my hands! This makes me happy. As does the chocolate I keep eating while I type (poor, sticky exclamation-mark key...).

So! Here is a picture of my new ARC:

from the best jellysfishy blog because I am too lazy to go find the cord to upload my picture onto the computer, but isn't it pretty? or at least creepy and geary? I love it!

Moral of the post: keep writing! I love all these exciting, exclamation-worthy books!

Whew!

AHHHH my oldest son just finished his first week of kindergarten and my middle son is starting to potty train and my baby is cute and I just read the last chapter of my second book edit and now I'm going to change stuffs on the computer and print out a new copy. Did I mention grading? And students? And I got a new hair cut and color that is really dark brown-red?

I think I will just look at this picture I took at the hot air balloon festival for a while and pretend I am still there. Mmmmm...summer...

Who am I kidding? I love school and being crazy-busy--but that's a secret, so don't tell!

SCHOOL

It starts.

We went to kindergarten testing today. I told my son tests are like a game. "You get points when you answer right," I said, "kind of like the stars you get in Angry Birds. It'll be fun!"

He came out. "It was fun," he told me. "And there were lots of books! Volcano books and earthquake books and space books and crab books..."

Here's to school, and to the hope that he can keep his childlike enthusiasm for the next twelve-plus years!

Five-year-old on Grandpa's shoulders. Between teacher meetings and kindergarten prep and my parents in town and my grandfather's funeral and THREE KIDS ALL THE TIME, I have been a bit of an absentee blogger.  But look! Hot air balloons! With rainbows! Am I forgiven?

Sharing a room

My two oldest (three and five, respectively) are now in the same room.

I do not know if we will ever have normal bedtimes again.

On the plus side, now we get to look at awesome bunk beds and dream about which one we'll get:

Tractor!

or

No more dressers!

 

or

Oh my sleepless NO.

Any brilliant ideas?

Sparklers

In memory of Taleah Louise English, firework enthusiast and bravest of girls. I miss you.

The ability to edit...

A virus on my computer prevented me from changing text in emails or on blog posts for almost six months. This was horrible. I'd reread a sentence, or think of something I wanted to insert, and it would take me almost five minutes to stick my cursor in the right place. Then half the time it wouldn't let me do anything, and I was stuck there just imagining the ways that sentence could be better, had I the ability to actually make it so.

The virus is fixed as of this weekend. But it taught me how wonderful change can be, and how much first drafts should never be my only drafts, and...well, in short, yay for rewriting!

The image is from this post, which neatly defines rewriting (for screenwriters, but it applies to all of us who like to mess with words).

A poem about breastfeeding...

I am still breastfeeding my six-month-old. This poem...I feel this poem in a way that makes me want to yell at some times and cry at others. I am not in the same country, but I feel the exact same way.

(Thank you, Hollie McNish.)