Nikki Loftin

Archive for September 30th, 2009

Story in Boy’s Life!

Okay, I know. Two posts in one day? Excessive.

But I had two pieces of good news today! First, I sold another puppet play to another anthology, this time to a holiday-themed book. It will be out in early 2010. Great, right? But then….

I had a short story accepted by Boy’s Life magazine! This is a 1,000-word story called Facing The Panthers, about a fifth-grade soccer team learning to deal with their fear (abject terror, more like!) of the most notorious team in their League. My favorite part? The riff on the Litany Against Fear from Frank Herbert’s Dune.

My brother Ryan is going to love this one. We memorized that Litany as teens, and used to recite it to each other at appropriate moments. I think the last time was when I called him over to my house (in my single days) to help boil my dishes clean. Ah, good times.

Nothing Like a Good Book…

What a day! No details, but it was NO FUN until… I got home, walked right past all the dirty dishes and the enormous mounds of laundry, pulled two of my own gigantic homemade chocolate chip cookies out of the freezer, read an email from a sweet editor letting me know that another one of my puppet plays has been accepted for another anthology (this one’s a holiday one) and then I opened up a new book… Al Capone Does My Shirts, by Gennifer Choldenko.

You know that feeling you get when you start reading a really good book, and you race through chapter one, two, three, and realize you CAN’T STOP it’s THAT good? Well, I have kids to pick up, so I have to stop. But I know what I’m doing tonight. And it ain’t the laundry.

Thanks, Ms. Choldenko! You saved my day.

Ten Years Later…

Ten years ago today, I ended the longest day of my life — 23 grueling hours of unmedicated back labor — with a plea for an epidural (which made both my mother and husband burst into tears of gratitude for ending my own suffering and theirs) and a few hours later, the birth of my son, Cameron.

That was when my life as a mother began.. and my dreams of writing were in large part deferred. My kids were never the kind to sleep quietly while I wrote. They mostly screamed, and made enormous, staining messes, and when they got old enough fought with each other. I call this part of my life The Decade of Maternal Bitterness.

But this morning, as I shipped Son Number One and his little brother off on the bus to school (yes, he wanted to ride the bus on his birthday — he got a new DS -i he wants to show off) I realized I owed the entire past year of writing success to him. Not only have I written and published multiple essays about the “joys” of parenting, almost every character that pops into my head for my middle-grade books is based very closely on him. If you’ve read my work, you know this means I have a child similar to Raymond Mahaney running around loose in my house. Pity me.

My mom used to say, “Someday you’ll look back on this and laugh.” It’s true. Writing about Raymond/Cameron, I do laugh, a lot. Now.

But ten years ago, if you said that to me, I would have smacked you with a dirty diaper. Gotta love perspective.

Happy Birthday, Cameron! And thanks for giving me enough material to make a career.