Giving Thanks
It's been a challenging year with family health issues and worries, seeing a much-admired editor leave publishing, and spending way too much time away from home. But I still have much to be thankful for today.I'm thankful for my new editor, who has proven wonderful to work with: swift to respond, thoughtful in his comments, enthusiastic about our future work together, and who introduced me to Web 2.0 life.I'm thankful that An Unspeakable Crime, the book I completed with that new editor, is ready to be released in 2010, and has already been chosen as a

School Visit Energy
I'm halfway through the autumn (or winter, since it's been snowing around here) school visit season. Halfway through school lunches (which are considerably better than what I remember from my own school days - or perhaps I've just been lucky). Halfway through the muscle-building exercise of lugging presentation materials into schools - or, if I'm very lucky, halfway through the character-building exercise of persuading kindly souls at the schools to lug the presentation materials in for me.But, mostly, I'm halfway through the incredibly energizing experience of facing my readers and sharing my ideas about writing with them. To stand in front of groups as large as a cou

On the Road Again
The school visit season is entering into full swing, and I'm trying to keep momentum going on my new novel, coordinating with teachers and librarians about what I'll be doing at their schools, figuring out how to do laundry efficiently on the road, and, most of all, trying to work out where I'm going.I always ask for directions to the school, and I've gotten quite a collection of interesting responses over the years. One teacher told me to turn at the corner where the gas station used to be. When I asked her what I'd see now, since the gas station was no longer there, she gave me a street name to turn on. Unfortunately, that was the nickname used by people whose great-