Lurking

You may have noticed I've been a bit quiet lately. I've had some family stuff going on the past few weeks, so I haven't been blogging. But I've been lurking on your blogs (that sounds so evil, doesn't it?), and keeping up with what's going on in the rest of the world.

One thing I just have to mention is that Kathy Erskine's book Mockingbird won the National Book Award this week! The Slushbusters have come to know Kathy through our local writing community, and we're very excited for her.

Another thing that's happened is that I've had a resurgence of communication with some of the friends I made at Chautauqua over the summer. I'm not sure what's up with that, but suddenly I've gotten several messages and emails from the gang. I appreciate everyone staying in touch. Right now, while I'm out of my writing groove, it helps to know these guys have my back when I'm ready to jump back in.

I'm on a major reading/audiobook tear right now. We had a Rapunzels meeting yesterday, during which we discussed The Jade Dragon by Carolyn Marsden and Virginia Shin-Mui Loh. The group is younger this year, as some of the older girls have outgrown us, and we've got a lot of new girls. This is where it's challenging choosing books, because the age range of the club is 9-13. Some of the older girls weren't sure they wanted to read a book with such a young character, but they all liked it after they did. If you want an example of how to make a simple problem feel like high stakes, read this one.

My big new excitement in audiobooks is that our library is launching Overdrive, which will allow us to download audiobooks using our library cards. When the "checkout" period expires, the file becomes unusable, but meanwhile, it can be transferred to an MP3 player or burned to CDs. So cool, especially now that I have a car with a docking station for my ipod.

So, like my Chautauqua friends, even when you haven't heard from me in a while, I'm here.