Greetings from Honduras and Panama!

While traveling for work, I was able to promote Mumsi Meets a Lion and Rodney Robbins and the Rainy-day Pond in Honduras and Panama. In fact, the event organizer wanted to give away copies of my books as an incentive to turn in a survey. So Mumsi and Rodney have traveled to Central America and are being introduced in at least two Honduran home--perhaps even as I write!

Tomorrow I get to speak on teaching writing, a topic I always enjoy. No doubt the books and freelancing will be part of the discussion. I just hope they don't ask me how faithful I am in my (non-work related) writing!

Celebrity Sighting

While taking an early-morning shuttle to the airport in Atlanta, my husband gave up his seat on our crowded bus to an attractive older woman. She accepted his offer and mentioned to me how kind he was. My husband then proceeded to give her husband one of his gloves to grip the freezing cold pole with. (They were both standing.) At this, the lady was amazed and again commented to me about his kindness. We began conversing, and the short of it is that she was (is) Marjolein Bastin, the well-known Dutch artist! She is known worldwide for her detailed nature paintings. She is perhaps best known for her 30-year association with Hallmark cards. Of course, I had nothing with me for her to sign or sketch on. We talked about her painting and her love of nature before we were dropped off at the airport and went our separate ways. It was a fun way to start our trip.

New Year, New Plan

Happy New Year 2011! It's a fresh new year, and I'm up early making a new yearly plan. Part of my plan will have to do with writing goals--goals for my writing, that is. Aside from a ton of free lance work (including a fairly sizable play) and of course, my part-time job of textbook writing, I haven't done much writing. Soooo, I'm considering making the goal of writing a chapter a week for this year. I have thought about a chapter a day, but I'm afraid that that will just set me up for failure right from the get-go. Even a chapter a week would net me 52 chapters in a year (in case you weren't working the math in your head), and that's way more than a YA novel. I'm thinking that these chapters will be focused on getting a story on paper (that's figurative--it'll probably be on computer) and not on final, massaged drafts.

So that's the plan. Here we go. Hang on. Can't wait to see what happens.

Mumsi Audiobook

I found out today that my publisher posted my book, Mumsi Meets a Lion, as an audiobook. It's available here. This is a recording that I made in a friend's home studio. How cool is that? Look out, iTunes (ha).

This afternoon I visited Hidden Treasure, a school for disabled children. I read Rodney Robbins and the Rainy-day Pond to them. They seemed to enjoy the story and the wonderful illustrations. This was my first opportunity to read this book aloud to a group of children. The jury is still out on which of my books I like to read more.

Language

Here's an excerpt from the piece I wrote for God's World News last week:

To grow up with English teachers in the house is to love wrangling over language. My family made a team sport of arguing minor points of grammar. Each of us had a specialty: Dad monitored pronoun-antecedent use; Mom policed comma rules; Sis investigated mistakes with as—as and so—as. And I, I took the road less traveled by concerning possessives before gerunds. Together we critiqued the punctuation, usage, spelling, and mechanics of much of the Southeast. No “Cantaloupe’s $2” sign went unnoticed; no church bulletin was safe.

 The piece ran on the website this week, and I've already received comments about it both from people I know as well as people I don't know. How rewarding to write and then hear from people who were encouraged by what you had to say.

Whew!

I haven't posted in quite a while--not because I'm not writing but because I am writing . . . a lot. My freelancing is keeping me hopping. I now have a weekly piece on the GWN website.

I've also been asked to write an Easter play for 2012. That project has been very interesting and challenging. I've roughed the initial concept now and written some first drafts of scenes. The play is due to the producer in January, so I feel good about where I am with it right now.

Am I allowed to say that my writing is keeping me from writing? Hmmmm . . .

Mumsi Fan

The other evening I was at a birthday party when a little fellow sidled up to me and said, "I just love your Mumsi book!" Turns out, he was in the K5 Mumsi program last Spring. He played the part of a monkey. I asked him what his favorite part was. He replied, "I really couldn't say. I just love it all." Wow. Then I asked him whether he was at all scared when he first read it and told him that I was just a little scared about what would happen to Mumsi. He assured me that he was not scared because it was such a good story.

Then in the grocery store this week, a mother stopped me to say that her son had been one of the multiple Mumsi's in the program and that he loved the book and the whole experience of learning about Africa while working on the program. It's nice having tiny fans.