Weekend photos

As promised, here is evidence of what a great weekend I had.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic Friday night at the river’s end bookstore (Oswego, NY) Harry Potter party. It was PACKED. My favorite part of the night was listening to the end of Book 6 being read aloud while bouncing up and down on my toes and compulsively checking the time, begging Midnight to hurry along.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic And it finally came! Here is happy daughter Meredith holding one of our three copies. (I had to pick up one for my dad, who is one of J.K. Rowling’s biggest 80-year-old fans).

Image and video hosting by TinyPic The Nearly-Headless Nick is actually Bill, who owns the store. It was an excellent costume. After we left the store, we met up with BH and friends at a quiet bar. I was the designated driver so I sat under a light and started the book instead of drinking beer.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic Didn’t get much sleep Friday night and read most of Saturday. Finished the book Sunday morning, then headed out to the Ren Faire with another wave of our kids and their friends. Here I am with my husband, the hot pirate, and daughter Jessica.

The rest of the week has been/will be pondering the very strange ideas I am having for my next YA. I’m having fun and am terrified at the same time which is usually a good sign.

If you have TWISTED questions, join us in the ALAN chat tomorrow night at 9pm.

Fingers in ears, eyes squeezed shut

So we saw The Movie last night and I loved it (particularly the most dramatic scene which I think plays out better onscreen than in the text), and I am going to a party Friday night and might stay up reading The Book.

But I want to be surprised so I am hereby boycotting news and blogs until Saturday. Shhh! Don’t tell me. I want to find out for myself!

In other news, I thought I’d point out that I am a real estate genius. (They should give me an infomercial, I swear.) I have lived in two of the recently designated top small towns to live in: #15 – Horsham, PA and #17 – Olney, MD. I hereby predict that Mexico, NY will soon rocket to the top.

Back to work.

Summertime

We have waves of kids coming and going at our house; home from college, breezing through town, happy to crash on a couch, always hungry, full of giggles. It’s awesome. It’s summer.

This makes the writing a little harder to sneak in, but I get in a couple of hours most mornings before anyone wakes up. I am in the earliest stages of finding a new story, so I can’t talk about it yet. Muses are forest creatures. They startle easily and run away if you make too much noise. So shhhhhh…….

We went to the Sterling Renaissance Festival on Sunday, all garbed out and loving life. Will probably go again this weekend. I wish they would hold sleepovers there. I know this is a totally ridiculous idea, but I wish I really could step through a portal into those past worlds. But I am not fond of head lice or tuberculosis or the Black Death, so I want my fantasy world to come with antibiotics and soap. And popcorn; I don’t go much longer than 48 hours without popcorn.

We go to Ren Faires every year, but we have never traveled far afield to do it. We’ve been to the one in Sterling (BH and I went to that one for the first time 27 years ago!), and the one in Pennsylvania, and a long time ago, I went to the one in Maryland. Have you been to any others? Should we plan a vacation around one that is beyond fantastical?

Maybe I like to drift off into pretend versions of the past because the present is so awful and scary.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic Here is my nephew, Ryan. (Wave to Ryan, everyone.) He went to Iraq last week. That is a really hard thing to come to terms with.