A wonderful evening! Photo by Scott Cusick

New Year's Eve, 2006 (almost)

I spent Christmas in Boston with Richard's family. It was wonderful to be chilly, fun to see snow, and lovely to feel so at home. Thank you, everyone!

November 28 05

     I am often going back and forth between projects, and this has happened to me before, but every time it is the oddest feeling...

    I was thinking about Sadima, a character from the YA fantasy, being worried sick over a girl named Grace. Then I remembered that they are in different books.  Perhaps they meet in my subconscious when I am asleep?  I think it is possible.

Anyway.
back to work.

Some trees just *astonish* me. Meet Mr. Baobab. Click  to learn more about Foster Botanical Garden http://www.honolulu.gov/parks/hbg/fbg.htm

November 27th 05

Going through some of the Oahu pictures... This Baobab tree grows in a botanical garden about a hundred feet from a freeway on Oahu. Looking at it took my breath away. Life is very strange.

Thanks to Lynne Wykoff for providing contrast in scale. 
BIG tree.

	From the ridge above the Makapu'u lighthouse.

November 9 2005

      I got home from Oahu last night.  The SCBWI group was full of lovely folks with grand potential and grand resolve.  I expect to hear about novel sales in the next year or two. I had a **wonderful** time and want to send special thanks to Lynne and Sue for their companionship and many kindnesses--and their insight into the place they both love so much...

October 1, 2005

      September has zipped past, full of travel and work. I have been touched by the hurricane damage here in my own country, and by the plight of earthquake victims in India and Pakistan. And parts of the world are still reeling from the damage of the tsunami. I am doing what I can, trying to add what I can to relief efforts everywhere.  At conferences for independent booksellers this year, I added my bit to Tupperware containers full of money to be sent to booksellers hit hard by the flooding in New Orleans and other places.

     "Count your blessings and open your purse."  
                                                         Mary Peery, my mother.

Why is it so hard to part with books?

July 7, 2005   

June 30th

Just home from Chicago and ALA 2005.  Librarians, librarians!  It is astonishing that they pull off the labyrinthine organization of an event that draws twenty thousand or more librarians of diverse interests and specialties, contains many sub-conferences, offers each and all professional support, development, inspiration, hosts a trade show of massive proportion, arranges hundreds of meetings and sessions, many of which are concurrent and in venues all over the city, hosts publishers and authors and fields a synchronized book-cart team...well.  I say let them run everything. The world would be better off and civilization would soar.  And no one would be left behind.

Thanks to all who stopped in at the BiG Guy Books Booth. Thanks--heartfelt, humble thanks--to all who told me your library kids love  THE UNICORN'S SECRET and my historical fiction books.  One librarian told me she has a separate shelf for all of my books--she got tired of helping kids find them and can now simply point. There is no way to express what all your kind words mean to me.  I have never been so inspired to come home and go back to work. I have several new projects in the works and will announce them here when things are definite. It is going to be an exciting year--I am terrified of two of the projects---which is always a good thing.

May 6th, 2005

Just back from IRA in San Antonio, Texas.  The continued dedication and energy of reading specialists, classroom teachers and children's literature academics always gives me hope for the world!  Thanks to everyone who took the time to talk to me about my books and to share ideas about how to make literacy the birthright of every child. Conferences become a meeting place for writer-friends and I want to thank all of mine for being such wonderful people.

	I had a wonderful time! Morocco is a land of wonderful doors.

March 10, 2005

The King's Palace in Rabat.


I am just back from spending a week in Rabat, Morocco at the Rabat American School. It was  interesting!  The school itself is incredible--full of dedicated, creative teachers, small classes, delightful students.  Morocco was beautiful, amazing. Here are a few more pics.

December 1, 2004

I spent a wonderful week in Fort Collins Colorado mid-November.  Rotarians organized and funded my visit--and I was impressed and delighted with their dedication to working for literacy. The schools were terrific, the students alert, interested and lively.  The teachers of Fort Collins are clearly doing their job, even in these difficult times.  Thanks to everyone who made my stay so lovely--I have rarely felt so welcomed anywhere. It really did feel like going home and I look forward to seeing you all again someday someway....

August 9, 2004

I just finished an hours-long discussion of life, belief, politics and personal responsibility with a friend. We agreed on many things, and disagreed on many things. We shouted at times, but kept talking. We got angry at times, and kept talking. We went in circles and came back and kept talking. Nothing was resolved but this: I feel closer to this person, understand him better, and appreciate him even more than I did before.
That just may be the point.

July 25, 2004

I am working on the third book in the upcoming set of Hoofbeats books. Larach is walking barefoot through a medieval Irish forest, cold, tired, and hungry.  Here is the beginning of the story:

           Lara and Castle Athenry

The sound of Dannsair’s terrified whinnying was fading a little. I could see the last of the Baron of Athenry’s long line of riders disappearing uphill into the mist. One of them held my filly’s halter strap, dragging her along, taking her away from me.

Learn about Connemara Ponies: click the photo--

March 30, 2004

      Whaaat?  It's almost April? I have no idea how that happened.  I have been writing, writing, very busy.  Most of my time has been spent on Larach and the Silver Mare, the first title of the next quartet for my Hoofbeats series.  The research has been laborious, but I am slowly feeling at home in medieval Ireland and am well into the first book.  Larach lives in a difficult, confusing time. Old Irish culture is being overshadowed by the coming of the Normans and Larach's father spends much of his time away from his family, fighting the slow-but-sure invasion.  Here is the beginning of the book. 

Larach and the Silver Mare 

I skittered to the side, silent as night-breeze, and hid in the black shadows beneath the old oak beside the gates.  Fallon is my aunt, though she isn’t more than a few years older than I am. She scares me. Her voice is as shrill as iron on stone, hard put. I can tell you true that I have been afraid of Fallon all my life because she has always been mean to me and to my  brothers, when they were little.  I need no better reason.  Unless you care to add this to the count : until I grew big enough to outrun her,  she stole my supper.

(I will post more on the Hoofbeats page as I get farther along in the writing...)

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