{the space between my ears}

One of the best times of the year is when sunbathing requires tights.

Busy! Hello again, just wanted to be in the same room with you for a moment, and wave…

At present, I am WRESTLING with a revision which I’d so, so hoped I would finish before the first of next month… I’m not feeling that happening just now, although, while there’s life, there’s hope. I have three pages of hand-written plotting notes fresh off the press, wherein I change the whodunnit party in my mystery to someone else entirely – which is kind of sad and tragic and much more of a turn-of-the-screw kind of thing, and I have until the 14th to get it to my people for a pre-holiday re-read. I may not make it, but I have to say I’m MUCH HAPPIER with things as they stand now. SO, there’s that.

Meanwhile, I’ve embarked on a memoir project, taking down the life of a nearly-seventy year old Ukrainian man who was born during WWII, and lived in Soviet Russia. He has STORIES, let me just say. AND! Come Sunday will be my very first entry in the re-assembled writing group, now going by the very clever name The Cracked Kettle. I am sort of petrified to write anything, after I nagged everyone about getting back together for so long, but if Maggie and Tessa and Brenna can do it, I must have faith in us…

These days I receive about four books and fifteen notes in my inbox a day, telling me that Christmas is coming — as if I couldn’t tell by the number of Cybils noms piling up on my doorstep. It feels REALLY good to be in the States this year, if only because I can actually get many of the books on the list from the library. Sixty two of them, and only ten more to go from them… the ones with nineteen holds on them I don’t think will work out, though! Of the 205 nominations (the final list wobbled around for a bit there as we shipped some things off to YA Fic, and in turn received some things from them) I have now read 152, I think. I’m enjoying it, even as there’s part of me sort of screeching, “Aaaargh!”

I haven’t taken the Thanksgiving photos from my camera yet, but I’m still gleeful that the first rose from the bushes I whacked back so vigorously in September when we moved in have come back… and we cut our first rose. It smells like peaches and sunshine and it is just a gorgeous peachy-yellow, shading to a deep pink in its center. I have no idea what kind it is, but I am in love with it. I had thought that since some of the roses looked awful, I’d dig them up. Not that one.

I’ve been being interviewed and filling out surveys like crazy lately – a particularly fun and challenging one from the Children’s Book Council – and thanks to all of you bloggers asking for my input on things. ALSO! Before I forget. Thanks to those on the ALA Rainbow Project committee for the vote of confidence in including HAPPY FAMILIES on the 2013 list! That means a lot.

Somewhere there’s a Cybils book and some sunshine calling my name. Gotta jet!