once upon a time
on a laptop far away
there was a blank screen

there was a writer
a whisper; an idea;
a pile of words

which, in some order
that is still a mystery,
become a novel

Okay, the rules:

Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

So…eight?
This is going to be tough.

1. I am Marcia Brady. Well, sort of. There are three boys and three girls in my family and I’m the oldest girl. (However, I have never been pegged in the nose with a football.)

2. Sometimes I write my books while I’m sleeping. That is, I wake up hearing my characters talking in my head and I know that I was dreaming about them.

3. I once shot an M-16. (At a target!)

4. I am still sort of afraid of the dark. I no longer take giant running leaps onto the bed to avoid monsters grabbing my ankles, but I don’t like walking around the house at night without lights on. Did you see the movie Sixth Sense? This is why.

5. My first kiss was in France on a hill overlooking the most idyllic view of the French countryside. We rode up there on the boy’s motocyclette. It’s a better story than it was a kiss.

6. In fourth grade I witnessed my teacher save a classmate from choking on a Twinkie by giving him the Heimlich maneuver. He tried to swallow the whole thing at once on a dare. It put me off Twinkies for life.

7. I love board games!

8. I’d rather be reading would be the perfect bumper sticker for me.

That’s some sort of right of passage, no?

1. Are you a writer or an illustrator? Or both?
Writer, definitely writer.

2. How long have you been blogging? Who inspired you to begin blogging?
I’ve only been blogging consistently for a couple of months, (although I made one post a year ago when I set up my account. It’s since been deleted because it said something dumb, like “Look at me, I have a blog.” I was inspired to blog by all the other great children’s book writers whose blogs I enjoy reading.

3.Where do you blog? What noise is in the background?
Well, I blog at my dining room table, in the comfy chair in my office, in bed, on the couch. Right now the noise in the background is my toddler reading himself Byron Barton’s Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs.

4.What is the primary reason you blog?
Well, I guess it’s to market myself, but that doesn’t sound so nice, huh? How about I blog because I have a lot of random things to say and I think the world might be a better place if I put them in cyberspace?

5.What has been the unexpected delight of blogging?
Getting comments, definitely! People actually read this?

6.What has been the hardest part of blogging?
Blogging.

7. Describe your day in detail from the time you wake up until the time you go to bed.
Are you kidding me? If I did that you’d understand that I really don’t have time to do that.

8. Have you ever had a guest blogger or done a virtual book tour?
No. I think you have to be cooler than I am to do that.

9. Of all the blogs you read, what is your favorite?
Well, I always check Brotherhood 2.0 and John Green’s blog. I also enjoy reading Lisa Yee’s blog, Editorial Anonymous, Fuse #8, Meg Cabot’s blog, Maureen Johnson’s blog and Blogging for Mom

10. Which kidlit blogger would you like to meet in person?
That’d be John Green. For the laughs, and because maybe some of his magic sheds and would get stuck to my clothes.

In writing news, I just received the line-edited manuscript from my editor. Apparently I am rather limited in my ability to convey embarrassment. Several times in my book I describe the main character feeling heat rising into her cheeks. Each time my editor oh-so-gently penciled the words “hot cheeks” in the margin, and I came up with new and varied ways of describing humiliation.

However, now, I can’t stop thinking that hot cheeks sounds like a rather frisky nickname, as in
“How do you like my book, hot cheeks?”

Could I say that to a reviewer, or would that be cheeky? (I know, but I couldn’t resist.)

This was posted on Publisher’s Marketplace yesterday afternoon!

Children’s
Jenny Meyerhoff’s THIRD GRADE BABY, a chapter book about the growing pains of a spunky, clever, resourceful girl whose out-sized personality makes up for her under-sized height, and GIRL IN WAITING, a contemporary YA retelling of the Book of Esther on the high school football field in which a teen cheerleader, caught between first love with a crush-worthy quarterback and familial duty to an Orthodox cousin turned team kicker, sorts out her Jewish identity, to Beverly Reingold at Farrar, Straus, in nice deals, by Michelle Andelman at Andrea Brown Literary Agency (world).michelle@andreabrownlit.com

Now everyone in the publishing world (who read the deals section of PM between yesterday afternoon and right now) knows my great news. Yeah!