Category: LHA

No writing has been accomplished yet today. Sigh. It was a morning of grown-up nonsense: going to the bank, blah, blah, blah. On the bright side, one of our kids dropped in for an unexpected visit – that was awesome.

Now I’m waiting for a newspaper reporter to call for an interview and it’s hard to focus on much. Sometimes I’m my worst enemy when it comes to these things.

I’ve decided the fancy-pants organization board needs some ribbons, and I’ll be driving a fabric store later so that works out nicely. I think I might as well use the rest of the day to set up my files (currently in several boxes) and since I’ll be in organization mode, pull together my quarterly tax payments and figure out the plane reservations for the upcoming October travel.

I want to come up a list of summer things I didn’t do this summer…. things I’ll try to squeeze in before the snow flies. But I am a wee bit brain dead and need help.

So – what summer things did you forget to do?

Ah, the stupid little things that make us smile. My office is slowly coming together. Last night my BH hung the fancy-pants organization board I bought. Thing weighs a ton, but he assures me it will not rip a giant hole in the wall and cause the building to fall down. (He built the house so he should know.)

I have a lot of projects going on right now, and I start travelling again in October, so it is a relief to have the board up. I live in mortal fear of getting a phone call and the person says on the other line “Um, we’re expecting you to give the keynote speech to the Big Teacher Conference in Faraway State, ah, in ten minutes. Any chance you could make it?” Or an editor will call and say I book I had totally forgotten about is six months overdue.

My board will make sure that doesn’t happen.

The other day I stumbled across the fact that Thomas Jefferson kept a couple of organizational aids too (scroll down to the middle of the page).

I could rant for many more paragraphs about all my little organizational gadgets, but then I wouldn’t meet today’s writing goal, and my family would roll their eyes because they are all SICK AND TIRED of me and my crazy calendar lust. So I am creeping back to work now.

Wishing you all an organized and well-annotated day.

Don’t know about where you live, but up here it’s beginning to smell a little like fall, especially first thing in the morning with the fog laying loose on the cornfields. I’ve never gotten over the sense that the New Year really begins after Labor Day, not January. My stomach gets jumpy at the thought of another school year, even though I haven’t had to show up for class in a long, long time.

The trees will start turning soon.

More work on my WIP today. I barely recognize it from the little idea which originally hatched. I keep having dreams in which I am told to act fearlessly in very scary situations. Well, duh, I figured out that one.

Sandie, a cool YA librarian from Philly writes: One of my librarians just asked me if you are working on a sequel to Fever. Can’t wait to watch Speak – are there any posters?

I want to do a FEVER sequel someday, but it’s not on the table yet. Showtime is doing a lot of SPEAK publicity (commercial alert – movie premieres September 5th, 9 pm, on Showtime and Lifetime) but I haven’t seen any posters. They do have a trailer for the movie up.

Sarah writes: I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed Prom, as well as your other YA books. My friends and I are ‘normal kids’ so it’s nice to read about kids who are more like us. I was wondering what Ashley’s charges were in Prom when she got arrested. I couldn’t find an explanation (it’s still an awesome book, though).

Thank you. Nervous, petrified authors like hearing that people liked their latest book when they are trying to write a new one. The jerk vice-principal in Ashley’s school had her arrested for trespassing because she wasn’t supposed to be at the prom. Basically, the judge laughed at the charges and sent everybody home. One of my favorite reviews for the book ran in the Philadelphia Inquirer. In the the reviewer said that PROM was not a happily ever after story, but a “happier than before” story. I liked that a lot.

Question of the day – what do you think of the movie trailer?

Mondays are hard enough. But today is already harder than normal because Stef left. She came up for the weekend (first visit by a PA kid since I moved – yeah!) and we just chilled. Took her to buy cheese curds. We ate curds and loads of veggies and watermelon. So we chilled and vegged. We lived in the vegetable crisper of life.

Yesterday we actually got into a vehicle. Paid a king’s ransom for a tank of gas. Drove 93 miles to Ithaca where Stef’s godmother aka my best friend aka Aunt Beth just moved with her handsome and debonair husband, Paul. To any of you Ithaca College students, she’ll be known as Professor Bleicher, and you can find her in the English department. If you have a chance to take a class with this woman, take it. You will learn more than you thought humanly possible and you’ll laugh the whole time. So yeah, we had a great time in Ithaca.

Did not see any bats all weekend!

Now it is back to work. Another one of our brood is due to arrive tonight. I like this empty nest thing because the nest is so rarely empty!

Oh, and this is just ack.

This is the first morning that I’ve been able to sit and write, so this will be short. (The deadline clock is ticking and making my stomach jump.)

I am officially Moved North. There were several amusing adventures along the way I’ll tell you about in the next week or so. Some not so amusing, too, but we survived, and that’s the best you can hope for when you’re moving. My office is almost finished…. totally stoked about that. I’ll have pictures soon. I’m looking for an old door (barn or house) to make a desk out of. If you live in Central or Northern New York and you have one to sell, write to me at comments @writerlady.com.

What else? I have to get some updates for the website to Theo in time for the SPEAK movie showing on September 5th. SPEAK jumped back on the NY Times bestseller list again last week… probably because parents are forcing their kids to do their summer reading. I feel very guilty about this. Somehow the concept of forced reading doesn’t seem like a practical way to encourage kids to love books. It smacks of forcing children to eat overboiled turnips because it’s good for them. I hope SPEAK (and any other of my books which have strayed onto the lists) go down better than overboiled turnips.

We’re also busy making plans to bring my parents North. That might be a novel all on its own.

But I can’t tell you about that now. I have to write.

(Remind me to tell you about the adventure with the bat. The bat with wings.)