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Happy Cinco de Birthday!

The Forest is decorated with streamers and margaritas today. Yes, it is Cinco de Mayo (and take it from me: San Jose is where you want to be on Cinco de Mayo weekend). But it is also the birthday of Stephanie, my oldest daughter. You can leave birthday greetings on Bookavore, her blog, if you want. AND it is the 50th birthday of my most very Beloved Husband, Scot. All he wants for his birthday are a few more donations to his charity run.

So, yeah. This is Party Central today.

It’s also Catching Up from the Weekend Day. Friday morning I ran along the Guadalupe River Park Trail – it reminded me a lot of the trail that runs through the middle of Austin. After a long shower and lunch, my intrepid hosts, Dr. Mary Warner and Dr. Jonathan Lovell, drove me to Yerba Buena High School. Thanks you very, very much to Ms. Goltzer and her students for making the afternoon so much fun! After we left the school, we went to Hicklebee’s, an amazing independent bookstore run by Valerie Lewis, who ought to be called She Who Knows Everything. I would love to take her out to dinner with Teri Lesesne. The two of them in the same room at the same time might be enough to fix everything that is wrong with our world.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic This should be a Destination Bookstore; the kind you plan an entire vacation around.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic Not only do they have tons of books, artifacts from writers (like The Pants from Ann Brasheres and an early drawing of Clifford the Big Red Dog), and a terrific staff, but they have wall after wall crowded with signatures and drawings from authors and illustrators who have dropped by.

What San Jose, Stevie Wonder, and the Shippensburg Women’s Rugby team have in common

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weekend away

I love my kids, just love them.

We snuck off to PA for the weekend to see Daughters #1 and #3, as well as do some research and speak to some college classes. We ate a lot of good food, hung out with the girls and their friends, and laughed until our sides ached. They were a blast when they were babies and little kids, but I had no idea how much more fun they would be when they grew up. Life is very good.

Thank you to all the students and professors at Millersville University who made my day there so much fun. (if you are looking for a college, gentle reader, you should take a look at M’ville.)

And so…. Davidson…. ::wipes tears from eyes:: … I guess I have to say “Rock chalk!” and summon new-found love for the Jayhawks. Let the Madness continue!!

What is the whole “rock chalk” thing, anyway? Can someone please educate me?

It’s been a while since I updated my resolutions. I’ve had to cut back on running a little because of a very sore hamstring, but it’s healing nicely. Might try to run outside today – I am really sick of the treadmill.

2008 Resolution Tracker
Week 13 – Miles Run: 10, YTD: 258.25
Week 13 – Days Written: 7, YTD: 91

Back to revision!

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Slinkety Link Day

The lung dragon is threatening to attack again, I’m having trouble sleeping, and I have doctors’ appointments today. It snowed again yesterday. Just a little, but it was still snow.

I am officially Miss CrankyPants.

So instead of whining, I will give you fun links.

Stephanie Anderson writes Bookavore, a hell of a good book blog. She works at an independent bookstore and reads faster and more critically than anyone I know. Including me. And yes, she’s my oldest kid. So read her blog and link to it, OK?

Stef and Editorial Anonymous both pointed out an awesome site for writers in need of shirts.

At what age does childhood end?

Georgetown made it. Syracuse didn’t. I suspect that Sarah Dessen is itching to make our bet again and I’m so there. LET THE MADNESS BEGIN!!!

More good news? TWISTED was named as a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age. If I could breathe, I’d be jumping up and down about this.

Last but nor least, today we celebrate my Irish ancestors who hopped the boat to escape the Famine.Thank you, Grandpa Donovan. It turned out well for us, didn’t it?

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Officially crawling into cave

Yesterday was amazing: our Number One Son qualified for the New York State boy’s swimming meet by taking third place in the 100-meter breast in the preliminary heat at yesterday’s Section III championships.

That is a mouthful for an early-morning post. Boiled down to its essence, it translates into: My kid is going to States!!!! Yeah, we are just a wee bit excited about this here.

Good thing we did all of the hooting and hollering yesterday. Today marks the beginning of the period known as Laurie Is Crawling Into Her Cave To Work on Her Book. I won’t be posted much, if any, over the next two weeks. I will be writing, writing, throwing out the pages that don’t work, then writing some more.

This is the part of revision that I love the most. It’s like going crazy studying for finals – very long, intense days (and sometimes nights) spent wrapped in all the story threads. In college, my fuel of choice was late-night doughnuts and very bad coffee. I’ve exchanged the doughnuts for salads and the bad coffee for wonderful coffee, but the game is the same: work to exhaustion, sleep, eat, work some more, exercise, eat, work to exhaustion, start again the next morning. I hit this phase with all of my books. Remember the scary scene in TWISTED with the gun? That came to me during this phase. These intense days and nights bring the characters to life – they truly incarnate for me. This is a Good Thing.

Before I grab my pens and scuttle deep into the cave, let me give a last shout out to the 28 Days Later project. Today’s featured author is one of my favorite guys in the whole world, Walter Dean Myers. I think Walter should get his own month. He was born in August. Let’s rename it as “The Month of Walter.”

Thanks to my friend Jerry from high school, and my fellow author buddy Ellen, I am 88% of the way to my fundraising goal for the Lymphoma & Leukemia Society’s Team in Training Half marathon. I am still offering a free audio version of TWISTED to the nice person who puts me over the top. You can donate here. If you want to cheer on my husband (who has to put up with my craziness for the next two weeks) donate to him – he’s logging just as many training miles as I am, and he keeps the coffee hot for me.

ETA I didn’t watch any news yesterday, so I am just catching the news about the horrible campus shooting at Northern Illinois University. This is the fourth school shooting in America this week. Dear God in heaven, how do we keep all of our kids whole in body and mind?

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Mom’s special birthday delivery

Yep, he made it on time; Kegan Alexander, 7 pounds, 12 ounces (much of that seems to be lung)!

Mom was able to end her 77th birthday visiting her new great-grandson, who was also celebrating a birthday.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic There was much cooing.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic Four generations, from the left: my sister, Lisa, her daughter, April, the new star, Kegan, and Joyce, the mom, grandmom & great-grandmom.

Buried somewhere deep in the forest in another 4-generation photo. In that one, my mom is the infant, accompanied by Peg, her mother, Ethel, her grandmother, and Ida, her great-grandmother. If I am counting on my fingers right, grandmom Ida is Kegan’s great-great-great-great-grandmother (born in 1866, died 1935).

I need to work on two chapters today. I’ll look for the picture during the break between them. My head is spinning from all this family stuff. I need to hang out with my characters to get my bearings back.

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