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Happy New Year!

Happy Birthday Anne Rice!

And, well, duh. Librarians not only have great jobs, but they are way cooler than most.

But mostly I celebrating the completion of the latest draft of my book. I’m pretty sure it’s not done yet. There could well be another one or two drafts in my future, plus all the headaches joys of copyediting. But this ride on the roller coaster is over.

How am I celebrating?

With a power tool. The house BH and I live in is still under construction. He’s done most of the work himself, and now I am learning how to help. We have something like a million windows (I exaggerate only a little) and their frames all have to be sanded and coated with polyurethane. I get to wear an attractive face mask while I do this. I am living my Rosie the Riveter fantasy.

I think I love my power sander.

Geesh. Girl turns her back around for one second and another month flies by.

We had a blast in PA. Many thanks to all of Mer’s fantastic friends for making her birthday so special. The family had lunch together despite many of us facing wicked traffic jams. Sunday we loved listening to the Millersville Marching Band. And the Morgan State Marching Band was rocking!! If you ever get the chance to see them, go. The weekend flew by, but we snuck in visits to two out of four kids, plus caught up with my former husband and his family, and we watched some football and enjoyed the changing leaves in two states. Not too shabby.

Dane writes: … i am an eighth grade student in … michigan. My class and i are about to start reading your book called Fever and later on in the year we will be reading speak. rite now in this class we are sposed to do a report on something in the book. My partner M and I are doing a report on facts about you. It would be rely cool to hear back from you. mabey you could e mail me back with some information about yourself. pleas write back. hope to hear from you soon

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to point out where you can find info about me for school reports, Dane. On my website you can find a biography about me, a list of my books and their awards, lots of information about FEVER 1793, and even more about SPEAK. That should be enough to get you started.

Almost to the end of the Work in Progress. Still don’t know the outcome of the final confrontation. Can’t wait to see what happens.

We leave before the sun rises tomorrow for a road trip to PA to visit Mer and Stef. I’ll have a finished book and a road trip with my BH. It don’t get no better than that.

Happy birthday today to my little sister Lisa. If you live in Oswego, stop by Rudy’s and say something nice to her. She looks like me, only blonder and skinnier. Happy birthday on Sunday to daughter Meredith. (I can’t believe my baby is 18. How did that happen? Who gave her permission to grow up and become all independant and interesting and fun like that? I want to talk to whoever is in charge of these things!!)

See y’all Monday!

As I write this, the weather radar shows red clouds moving our way, which means lots of wind, thunder, and lightning, which means we’ll lose power so I’ll make this short. I think the speech went very well last night. The audience was marvelous – Syracuse has some righteous librarians and other folks who love books!! Thanks to everyone who organized the event and attended. Special thanks to two people: novembersnow for representing LJ land, and to Ms. Marshall, who was one of my high school English teachers… one of the very few I really liked. (She was the teacher in charge of the school newspaper and literary magazine, that’s how cool she was.)

Channel 10 interviewed me but I can’t bring myself to watch it, so if any of you other Central New Yorkers see the piece, let me know what you think.

We didn’t get out of the library until after 8 pm and I was starving because I was too nervous before the speech to eat anything, so BH and I decided to eat at Armory Square, a cool downtown restaurantish shopping area of Syracuse. We ate at Kitty Hoynes and recommend it highly. The whole area was kicking, especially for a Wednesday night in September. I am really proud of my hometown. Are you looking for a place to move to? Come to Syracuse!

More writing today. I am really happy with the first three-quarters of the book…. today’s scenes are when the main character….. well, I don’t want to give anything away.

Thank you Alyssa M for your inspiring email. Keep writing!

added later I forgot to say “yo” to Rebecca the Librarian who has been living the geography of my life, only in reverse.

Yesterday’s schedule worked out exactly as planned. I was a writing machine – on fire. It was awesome, if I do say so myself.

I get to do a little of that today, but there are a few other things that require my attention. I already went to the gym (I can now run for 14 minutes with just a little bit of moaning and whining). Most of the day will be book writing, but in the mid-afternoon I have to change out of my pajamas and into grown-up clothes and head south into the Big City, Syracuse, NY. If you want to hear me rant about censorship then here are the details:

Where: Curtin Auditorium, Onondaga Public Library, 447 South Salina St., Syracuse, NY
What: reception, book signing, and my speech: “Censorship: Child of Fear and Father of Ignorance”
When: Tonight, 5:30-7:30 (my speech starts around 6)
Why: because it is Banned Books Week

The Onondaga Public Library system has cool events all week long.

Oh, and if you do come tonight and you read about it here on my LJ, please introduce yourself!