I Sidestepped into a Jive in the Middle of a Foxtrot.

Nothing quite beats steady work like a good productive distraction in writing!

A dear writer friend – we also happen to know each other from going to college together in the *cough80s* – came up with a great idea that involves donating a little to a scholarship for her daughter to attend a great program this summer that will lead to her dream. One of the incentives is an anthology of stories by an array of writers she knows.

Check out the fundraiser here: Frankie’s Dream

Most of you know me as a children’s writer these days, but I really started out in poetry and short story, so I was happy to dip back into the writing that I love and that really comes easiest to me, for the sake of sending her kid to a great experience this summer. My understanding is that after the specific fundraiser is over for her daughter, any sales of the anthology will go toward a scholarship fund for this camp program in the future. It’s a great cause and the stories should be fun, too. She knows a LOT of Romance writers, so I imagine many of these stories will be pretty steamy…

When I have more info, I will share, meanwhile, you can get your own copy of it by clicking on the link above and donating. Thanks!

Frankie is a pretty cool kid who has a steadfast dream to be a conservationist since she was little five year old. I know I was dreaming of being a circus horseback rider at that age, or a variety of other dreamy schemes…. This kid is solid! Give her a headstart into the sciences!

Writing and why it hurts so good

Weird to be writing a blog post about the poem that interrupted the story that was waylaid by the next novel idea in this evolving companion series that is pocketed before I get back to the novel I am currently trying to finish.

Can anyone else relate? Without going into too much, chalk it up to my usual mayhem, I was not sparking on anything for months. Now that one or two life things have transitioned a bit, the ideas are popping again, fast and furious.

I was going to write more, but above was notes from this morning, and I can’t recall now what I was going to say otherwise, because, I wrote and posted the poem and now I really need to write the story for my friend’s fundraiser that I started last weekend!!

When that is done, I may write the story for the picture book i’ve been delaying for two years at least, with my artist friend, and then just maybe, I will be able to dip back into the “current manuscript” I am working on.

Oh, I recall now, these shorter things, poetry and short-short story are really where I live writing-wise. This is what comes easy to me. The longer arc of a novel is more like work, even though I really love exploring the depths and layers of the tale, it is so much harder for me to write like that. So, I  need to pull out of the manuscripts now and then and play around where I’m more comfortable, and love writing again, for the sake of the creative spark.

How Love Works

Steel sky stealing some robin’s blue
from the spring morning rain,
I think of where we are. You are at work, I am driving through,
through the day to things and writing, and this is not enough.
We know, we posted two pictures online of a date in rough time.
We laughed at ourselves as we did, too.
We tried to be present, we really did, but your eyeballs were spinning work,
I was exhausted, from trying so hard to hold our life together,
separately, and the pictures told no lies.
Some friends laughed, able to relate, the kids, the work, the bills.
Some family asked, “Why the hell did you post that?”
I am nothing if not honest, even if I don’t divulge everything,
And this, these pics, this moment in us is true,
more that the flower colored cocktails we drank.

These two pictures capture the bigger one, of us drifting and drowning at sea.
This lean slice of hard winter is starting to open into spring of us,
of trying to come up for air.
We are working on it, trying to get out from the undertow,
reaching for the robin’s blue, we aren’t done yet.
We are here, we love.
We kiss on the stairs of our coming and going days,
even now, when it’s hard.

A Lovely Review of Felix the Comet

Lisa Damian and I got to know each other when our kids were babies through another blog Studio Mothers. That blog was a great place for me to re-enter writing seriously after my move to Virginia and having my third child.

She regularly reviews YA books at her blog, Damian Daily. Lisa recently read and reviewed Felix the Comet, having watched the book and my kids grow up between Studio Mothers and my prior blog, Musings in Mayhem, which was more about balancing writing, family, and special needs. Even saying that, I think her review is fair and honest, and I appreciate what stood out in her reading of it. It is a lovely review, go check it out at Damian Daily! Check out some of her other reviews while you are there! She has a couple of books of her own, too.

Please share, too, I really would like to see this little labor of love about dealing with being bullied to be read by as many fourth to sixth graders as possible. It’s fun, too!