Tuesday teaser

This is from my middle grade project. I'm changing it from 3rd person to 1st. Feel free to send chocolate. Or candy corn.

"We have a visitor.” Mr. Salmon motioned for someone in the hallway to enter. I squinted trying to make out who it was. Of course, I couldn’t see because it was dark. In fact, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me because the silhouette looked an awful lot like a girl. And not just any girl.

The enemy.

My writing spot

This is where I work from home. At our kitchen table.

I've learned I cannot work on the couch or in bed. Give me ten minutes, then my head starts bobbing.

There's a stack of books to be read in the chair by the window. My current library book (by Kathi Appelt) is on the table beneath the Rubik's cube. I actually solved that cube two weeks ago. I didn't remove single sticker either.

I had some help, from an online video - made by a kid. Alas, with five of my own, it was a temporary triumph. So there it sits, scrambled.

But I have plans for that cube. Oh yes I do, of the writerly type. Did you know the Rubik's cube is 25 years old this year?

I have so many projects going at the moment, it is hard to know where to start.

I'll get there.

One square at a time.

Illustration Friday - Old Fashioned

You don't see very many of these phones anymore.

Pen and marker on watercolor paper.

New Agent Alert

John Rudolph joins Dystel & Goderich after twelve years as an acquiring children’s book editor. He began his career at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers as an Editorial Assistant, then moved to the G. P. Putnam’s Sons imprint of the Penguin Young Readers Group, where he eventually served as Executive Editor on a wide range of young adult, middle-grade, nonfiction and picture book titles. He graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College with a double major in Classics and Music.

Now that he’s on the other side of the desk, John can’t wait to discover fresh new voices and highly original stories in all genres. He is interested in all areas of middle-grade and young adult fiction, and he would love to find the next great picture book author/illustrator. And he is excited to expand into literary and commercial adult men’s fiction, humor, pop-culture, politics, and the arts, especially music.

A lifelong New Yorker, John currently resides in Manhattan with his wife and son.

At my house

is known as "Dirty Harry".

*facepalm*

Living RADICAL

WaterBrook/ Multnomah Books; 1 edition (May 4, 2010)

I'm on page 135/217.

I read on the elliptical a lot, and today, I had to leave the gym early, wrecked with tears. (Oh, the bitter irony of my reading this while using my monthly gym membership.)

I'll admit...

I'm nervous.

Real families that have read this are moving and selling everything they have to give to those who don't. To those who are birthing their babies in dumps. Conceiving their babies in dumps. Feeding their children from dumps.

I'm grieved.

Every hour one thousand kids die from preventable disease and unsafe water. While we attend air conditioned and heated church services, watch football, or go to the movies.

I'm excited.

To see how God is going to move. In my heart. In my home.

I'm probably going to lose readers over this.

And that's okay.

My biggest fear is we (my husband and I) will read this book and not change a single thing. That we'd read The Book (Scripture) and do nothing. We just give and do as we have been, off the top. While others around us, especially children, go hungry and never know true love.

This isn't your typical American church trailer or empowering self-help book. God calls us to one crazy life, not for our sakes, but for His.

Click here to read the first chapter of RADICAL by David Platt.

P.S. I'm going away for some writerly shenanigans. Can't wait to report on my WIP when I get back! *Fingers crossed I'll get much done!*

Little Did I Know

Little did I know giving my daughter a doll house for her birthday would turn up some old ghosts.

I walked through the house tonight collecting toys, socks, and papers as I always do after the kids hit the hay. M's had her dollhouse two days, and here I'd already found the mama and the master bed, upside down, on my hardwood floor a couple rooms over. I picked them up, carried them back to where they belonged. Thinking for a moment where M might want them, I tucked the mama in bed in the upstairs bedroom.

A prickle ran up my spine. The dolls don't forget...

A book I read decades ago, rushed back. Leaving me with a case of the creeps.

Betty Ren Wright, you scared me silly. Again.

I read The Dollhouse Murders in the 80's. It is perhaps the only book I've chucked across the room then burrowed beneath the covers. With my light on. Quaking, but unable to stop reading. Spooked, but somehow loving it. Thankful for amazing storytelling.

However, if M ever wants to read this book, I'll strongly suggest daytime.

Have you thought of a book from your childhood recently? If so, what?

If you read anything this weekend

Please read this.

Ann Voskamp, blogger, author, and photographer extraordinaire (and too many other talents to mention), is in Guatemala with Compassion. I've been reading Ann's blog for a little more than a year, and she takes my breath away which each post. She's been given a gift, to wield words. Her blog is the sole site with music where I even bother to linger. To pause at every line. Every picture. Often holding back tears.

"I tell the translator to tell this mother of nine who welcomed all 8 of us unexpected guests in, the affirmation all women in all places long to hear — that her house is clean."

Please hurry over and gaze at her photos, read her impressions. Of a beautiful people across the globe.

"This is a house with less than a handful of books, within yards of the gang lords."

Let me know your thoughts. I'm overwhelmed by the enormity of need. Real need. And how I can make a difference.

"Faith cannot have a non-response."

Because once I know, I am responsible.

"I am standing in utter abject poverty, in a home of people traumatized by natural disasters, in home of a family living on less than a dollar a day for each person, in a home with no toilet or shower, and my heart's beating with this mother who cares for nothing material, for nothing more than the heart of her child." ~Ann Voskamp

But there is Hope. There is Faith. And there is Love. 1 Corin. 13:13

A Snail's Pace

I'm revising a few picture books. For real people. Funny how a person can't rush ideas or creativity.

Of course, showing up to work is part of it. I don't know about you, but I can think and stew for months then one day while enjoying a warm paraffin pedicure folding my seventh pair of stinky boy gym socks, some crucial element clicks into place.

But it seems to take forever. Or I'm just impatient.

The above photo is boy #4 with his pet for a day, Mr. Ruffles. He came up with the name on his own. Honest.

Perhaps he needs to wear stinky gym socks like his brothers.

Also, Author and illustrator Lindsay Barrett George is giving away 1 free school visit to anywhere in the country. Details here. Be sure to tell your school librarians.

Happy Wednesday!

KG

So, um,

It's my birthday month.

And my little girl's.

Which means I can have cake.

Twice.

And maybe some of this.

Two favorite desserts in one, people! Caramelized brown sugar and ice cream? Get out.

I might be in need of some serious Pilates after all this dessert-ing. Any one have any DVD suggestions?

And speaking of sugar, I'm a quarter of the way through this:

Kid Lit Webinar

The ever so helpful Mary Kole (@Kid_Lit) is teaching an awesome webinar. Get the details here!