Welcome Back to School! Or Not…

First day of school today! The kids actually popped out of bed this morning and got dressed with very little prodding (or begging, or threats). Got the cute back to school pic, fed them real breakfast–chocolate chip pancakes, thank you very much!–and sent Frick off to the school bus. First day in middle school! Good thing he was early, because so was the bus. Frack is loving being...
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Ouch!!

Today was the big go-to-the-Convention-Center-for-some-learnin’ day (aka “Professional Development Day”). These are all-day extravaganzas with breakout sessions and usually a vendor exhibit with all manner of educational items for sale. Not that anyone has any money to buy anything in this lean year, but there you go.So I’m strolling the booths when I get accosted by a...
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Mmm…New Pencil Smell

Teachers go back to school today for pre-planning (which is kind of a redundancy, since “planning” implies something you do ahead of time, but I digress). The first week of school where teachers are back but students aren’t are kind of the back bar of teaching. It’s all the inner workings without all that messy teaching and grading going on. Just the adults, doing their...
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Whither High Concept?

One grace note to my Dream Agent smackdown at National was that she praised me for my ability to create a high concept story. I always thought “high concept” meant something truly groundbreaking and new, which meant that there was no way in Hades I’d ever figure out how to do it.However, Dream Agent explained that an ability to capture the essence of the book in a fresh way...
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Wreck This Journal

One of my main partners in crime, Katherine Garbera, is amazing at finding exactly the right thing. I’ve been whining about writing (is there any other way?), and she emailed me before conference to say that she’d found me a journal. Now Kathy knows that journals and I don’t always get along. I’ve posted on my difficulties with journal keeping before. I haven’t...
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Lovely Rita!!

So I’m on the plane from San Francisco to Atlanta when I realize the blonde woman sitting across the aisle and one row back from me is reading a Silhouette Desire. That, and the fact that she also has a laptop handy, prompt me to ask if she’s been at the RWA Conference. She tells me she has, and that she’s also noticed me reading my manuscript on my laptop. Then she puts out...
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