Category Archives: publishing

Livin’ the Dream

If you read my blog regularly, then you know that after precisely fifty-four bazillion rewrites, my second middle grade novel, Lula Bell on Geekdom, Freakdom & the Challenges of Bad Hair, FINALLY found a publishing home – yippeeee!

What you probably don’t know is that more than one publishing house offered Lula Bell…a home – and I am so grateful to each and every one of them. That said, multiple offers do slow the process down, as each offer must be carefully considered – there’s a lot more than money to consider – trying to find the right long-term editor is like trying to find the right guy! Luckily, my wonderful literary agent, Emily van Beek, knew exactly how to handle things, and she did – beautifully.

So there wasn’t much for me to do except wait. I am a terrible, terrible waiter. I worry. I doubt. I begin to think things like, All of these editors are going to come to their senses and realize that I would do this work for free, that I have been doing this work for free, just for fun, and then they’re all going to take their offers and go home – and my literary agent, not to mention my family, is going to be sooo disappointed! That’s what I really thought. But there just wasn’t a thing I could do about it. Even so, I had to do something.

So, I scrubbed our kitchen from top to bottom,

(Look, Mom! No crumbs!)

cleaned out the refrig and the oven,


reorganized our gift-wrapping stuff,

(Yes, that is used tissue paper. I am both neat AND cheap!)

reorganized my closet by both color AND season,

(OCD much?)

and made a meatloaf – and I don’t even like meatloaf – still. (Face it: Meatloaf’s not much to look at… or to eat, come to think of it.)
Finally, my daughter said to me, “Gosh, Mama, is this how you celebrate?” That’s right: I’m livin’ the dream, baby! I’m livin’ the dream!
May you find yourself livin’ the dream, too – and may it involve absolutely no cleaning and no meatloaf whatsoever!
I’m actually looking forward to more rewrites now – and we’ll eat out!

There’s No Crying in Writing!

Tom Hanks once famously said, “There’s no crying in baseball!” And he was right. Professional baseball players don’t cry about baseball, because 1.) They’re tough, disciplined, seasoned athletes, and 2.) For those who choose it as their life’s work, baseball is sheer joy. Just as there is no crying in baseball, there is no crying… Continue Reading