AUGUST 9TH DEBUT: PIPER MORGAN x 2!!

    

     Here's a heads-up: on August 9th - in two days, to be exact - middle-grade author Stephanie Faris (via Simon and Schuster/Aladdin) is going to be releasing the first two books of her Piper Morgan series, PIPER MORGAN JOINS THE CIRCUS and PIPER MORGAN IN CHARGE.  Piper is eight years old, she and her mom do a lot of relocating, and according to the description on Stephanie's website, the series "follows the sassy Piper Morgan and the messes she makes as she tries to help her mom with a series of new jobs."  And from what I can tell, it looks like Mom isn't the only one getting new jobs in different places - Piper seems to always find a way to get in on the action.
     Stephanie is a creative and fun blogger who, despite sticking to a three-times-a-week schedule, somehow always manages to find something interesting to talk about in her posts, so I'm sure Piper and her adventures will be anything but boring.  Please make sure to check out the "sassy" Piper Morgan (if you order from Stephanie's website, you can even get an autographed copy!) , and please stop back here on August 22nd, when I'll be posting my interview with the author!

MY NUCLEAR FAMILY VACATION

    

 

     When starting to plan our summer vacation this year, my husband and I agreed that our actual destination was less important to us than that it be close to Washington, D.C.  My son and his girlfriend live there and although we knew they wouldn't be able to join us for a whole week, we hoped at least they'd be able to come for part of it.  My husband went to grad school in Virginia many moons ago and remembered that there was a big manmade lake called Lake Anna in the middle of the state, so that's where we began our VRBO search for a dog-friendly house to rent.
     Some of the Lake Anna house listings casually mentioned that there was a "cold" side of the lake and a "warm" side, but we didn't give this much thought.  We found and rented a house for the last week in July, paid up, and that was pretty much that.
      When we arrived, the friendly owner showed us around the property, including his little boat dock and the canoe stored in his shed which we were free to use.  That evening, my husband and I took the short walk down the road to what was advertised as a "sandy beach."  What we hadn't been told was that the beach was so miniaturized that perhaps five people could have shared it comfortably.  Overcrowding didn't seem to be a problem, however.  There was no one on the sand, or, as far as the eye could see, anywhere in the lake, even though the air temperature was in the mid-90s.  Boats, yes; swimmers, no.  I waded into the murky water up to my ankles and found that it was approximately the same temperature as the air.  Ah - we must be on the "warm" side!  So much for the prospect of refreshing swims!
     We took day trips over the next few days.  Charlottesville on Monday (about 97 degrees out), Richmond on Tuesday (roughly the same), and an extremely boring afternoon in Fredericksburg on Wednesday (a balmy 95) as we prepared to meet my son's 7 p.m. train.  Really no attempts to use the lake at any point during those days.
     I don't remember at what point I was in the house, idly leafing through local brochures, when I finally learned the delightful reason why the lake had a cold side and a warm side.  BECAUSE THERE IS A NUCLEAR POWER PLANT ON LAKE ANNA, THAT'S WHY!!!  The cold water is pulled up to cool the centrifuges, and the hot water is discharged right back into the lake!  And we didn't even have to visit the friendly nearby Nuclear Information Center to find that out!  Welcome to Vacationland!!

    
     It wasn't until we got home that I googled Lake Anna and learned that, in fact, the lake only exists because of the power plant.  That's the purpose for which it was built - providing water to cool things off.  But once it was built, vacation communities sprang up everywhere along the lakeshore.  We saw one development in the process of being built that advertised lakefront homes "starting in the low 500 thousands."  This was in rural Virginia, mind you, where I would have to assume that similarly-sized non-lakefront homes probably cost less than half of that.
     So here is my question.  Yes, we were idiots for not learning more about Lake Anna before we went there, but it was only for a week.  Who in their right mind chooses to buy a vacation home on a lake whose water is circulated through a nuclear power facility???  Are these people so confident that there could never ever be, say, a highly toxic - okay, deadly - leak into the water?

     Had we done our homework before we left and learned the history of Lake Anna, I can assure you this would have been our reaction:

As opposed to: "Hey, we love it here! Beautiful scenery, and the power plant adds that little frisson of excitement so necessary to our adventuresome spirits!  Let's plunk down our life savings and build our dream house right in this very spot!"
     Oh well.  To each his own, I suppose.  I will say that we had a pleasant land-based vacation week, and we came back rested, healthy and happy.  In fact, you might even say that we're... glowing.

FLOWERS FOR JULIE

     Julie is not a chemically altered mouse or person.  (And if you're too young to get the FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON reference, I have no use for you.)  Julie is my crazy nomad writing friend, and this week she gave me an awesome idea for raising the stakes in the book I've been working on, and I'll be trying to implement said idea this coming week while I'm away on vacation (in Virginia, because God knows it isn't going to be hot enough here in New Jersey!).  So this post is a big fat THANK YOU to Julie, whom I love and slightly fear and follow vicariously as she hopscotches her way around the planet.

DOG DAYS OF SUMMER

     Yes, I know that the real dog days arrive in August, but last weekend my husband and I had our own.  We went - with our dogs - to a B & B in Vermont.  And by the way, here's a link - my guest post from May on my friend Guilie Castillo's wonderful blog, which I don't think I ever remembered to re-post on my own blog - to explain why we once again have two dogs after our irreplaceable Murphy died in February.
     The B & B was The PawHouse Inn in West Rutland, and its hook is that it caters to "dogs and their owners."  To be honest, I'm not recommending the place.  Neither the bed nor the breakfast was anything to write home about.  But the dogs liked taking a road trip

and the inn did have a big fenced-in area for them to play

and they got to go offsite to the Vermont Country Store

and share the humans' bed, which they don't get to do at home.

     So, all in all, despite the rainy weather, it was a nice little getaway.

SOMETIMES A FLOWER CAN GROW IN AN UNEXPECTED PLACE

Let's see if I can copy my whole previous post, plus comments, so you can scroll to the bottom of the comments and see what I mean:

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

IN HONOR OF DEBORAH BRODIE

 Yesterday I was browsing through my new SCBWI newsletter and Deborah Brodie's name caught my eye, as it always does.  But this time, the news was that she passed away at the end of June, after a long struggle with cancer.  She was only 67.
     I first met Deborah about 21 years ago.  My son Nathan was 2, I was working on a long rhyming picture book featuring him, and I was desperate to take a class I'd read about at the New School on writing for children.  I was a single parent, and my dear friend Sonia gave me the best birthday present of all time: an offer to watch Nathan for me each week, for the duration of the class session.
     The instructor was a woman with a jolly voice and twinkling eyes named Deborah Brodie, and the first thing I learned was to ditch my dreams of having "Nathan and the Urch," or just about any rhyming picture book, published.  "Dr. Seuss is dead," Deborah told us crisply.
     I learned a lot more than that from her, but the main thing I learned is that children's book publishing is an industry and that children's book writing is a profession; neither one existed only in some magical realm.  And I also learned of the existence of SCBWI, a haven for people who want to learn to write for children and get their work published.
     When the class ended, I didn't know how to thank Deborah for opening up a new world for me, so I brought her a rose.  A few days later, I got a thank-you note at home from her.
     I followed Deborah over the years.  After over 20 years as an editor with Viking Children's Books,  most of that time as executive editor, she left in 2001 to co-found Roaring Brook Press.  In 2007 she left there to become a freelance editor, writing instructor, and "book doctor."  All along, she did her teaching on the side.
     When I read that "book doctor" announcement in an SCBWI publication, I contacted her and ended up sending her a manuscript for doctoring.  She did a very thorough and enormously helpful job, and after that we occasionally stayed in touch by email.  Yesterday, after reading her death announcement, I went back and saw that, as I'd thought, I still had a saved email from her, sent in late 2009, responding to an email I'd sent her about her new website and saying, "I'm still hoping to see your name in my 'good news' column one of these days!"
     I've been reading Deborah's obituaries.  I don't know whether anyone can count how many new authors she's discovered, how many new careers she's launched, or how many still unpublished writers there are like me that she just kindly and graciously helped to move forward.  I do know that she was a beloved figure to many, both inside and outside the publishing and writing worlds.  I read this today, from her son: when Deborah learned she did not have long to live, she said, "Why me?"  But, unlike other people who ask that question, she went on to ask, "Why have I been so blessed, with such wonderful children, grandchildren, and my life?"
     Today is Yom Kippur, a day of remembrance, and along with other people I have lost in my life, I remember Deborah.  But, of course, she was only human, and although she knew a lot, she wasn't always right.  Dr. Seuss isn't really dead.  And neither is she.

BREXIT AND ME

     I guess I understood the basics of Brexit.  It's just that I, along with the oddsmakers, never thought it would happen.  But when it did happen, I just couldn't understand what would lead anyone to vote for Britain's exit from the European Union.  I couldn't understand it, that is, until I woke up at about 5:00 this morning and realized that the reason I was sleeping so badly was that I had managed once again to infect myself with poison ivy.
     It's become something of a summer tradition for me.  Most of the time I leave whatever landscaping gets down around my house (and it's not much) to my husband.  But one day toward the beginning of each summer, some sort of hormone is released within me and I start ripping things down.  Ivy, dead wood, creepers, vines... you get the picture.  Now, I know from experience that poison ivy - or poison oak, or poison sumac, or some other poisonous plant - lurks somewhere in my yard, and that in order to sensibly protect myself before I start on my ripping frenzy, I should put on a long-sleeved shirt, and long pants, and gardening gloves.  But here's the thing: I don't want to dress sensibly.  It's hot out, and I feel like wearing my T-shirt and shorts, and besides, NOBODY IS THE BOSS OF ME.  So every year, I go out there and do what I am apparently programmed to do: convince myself that I won't go anywhere near the Poison Whatever, and that there is absolutely no risk involved, and that I will be just fine.  And then I wake up one morning and I'm astonished to find that my entire body is a mass of rashes.
     But this time I feel like I learned something.  Not about avoiding poison ivy in the future - don't be silly! - but about what it must have felt like for the British people who voted for Brexit.  It must have felt like: HA.  YOU (E.U.) ARE NOT THE BOSS OF ME.  I can act in ways that are directly contrary to my own interests, and no one can stop me!  Hey look, I can make the British pound reach its lowest value of the past 30 years!  I can drive global markets into turmoil and strike terror into the hearts of investors around the world!  I am so damn powerful!  Whee!!!
     The difference is that when I choose to perversely attack my back yard in shorts and a T-shirt, the only one who ends up suffering is me. 

Hi.

 

      I never meant to abandon my blog for more than a month. I think that's the longest I've ever gone without posting since I first began this blog.  Sometimes things just happen.  After I finished (HUZZAH!) the A to Z Challenge at the end of April, I was working on a guest post for my friend Guilie Castillo's wonderful blog, Life in Dogs, about my family's recent Circle of Life journey: losing our adored older dog in February, adopting a new dog in April. After that was done, it took me most of May to recover from those two intense writing experiences.
     And then the New Jersey SCBWI annual Conference was the fist weekend in June, so it seemed to make sense to wait until it was over so I could blog about my news.  But then when it was over, I didn't have any news.  I had two critiques with agents and neither one of  them asked me to submit anything. It's been years since that happened to me at a conference.  On the one hand, this made me realize how fortunate I've been, but then on the other hand, that realization didn't make me feel any less depressed.  It's never ideal to feel like you're going backward instead of forward in trying to achieve your dreams.
     Yeah, but I'm not giving up, though.  Over the last week I've sort of gotten a second wind.  Okay, maybe nothing as powerful as a wind.  Maybe it's more like a second mild breeze.  Still, I'm back.  And thanks for sticking by me.