Not just because I’m a calendar girl, although of course that would be a good reason. (I’m pretty sure I’m August, but I haven’t gotten mine in the mail yet. I’m thinking August will be a month to remember.) It’s a great calendar, chock full of inspirational stuff and handy references… check it out!

I should add, if you’re family, you’re required to get one because it has my kids’ pictures in it. Seriously.

If you’re a writer, go ahead and submit a short essay for next year’s calendar. Who knows, you might be Ms. /Mr. August 2013. (But you’ll never be as amazingly cute as those kids from August 2012, don’t even try.)

Happy New Year, Friends. I’ll see you next week with word on my broken resolutions!

If you’re a lover of personal essays, chock full of humor and (gasp!) recipes, check out the newest Chicken Soup for the Soul: Food and Love edition.

Why not buy a dozen?

Or, if you’re more of a black turtleneck and beret type (and don’t we all have those days? Come on, admit it.), you might be interested in Improbable Worlds: an anthology of Texas and Louisiana Poets.

This cover gives me great joy.

Actually, I had a fainting spell when I saw the names of the other poets in this anthology. I’m still a little overcome by the whole thing.

Now, I don’t have time to mess around. I have a whole lotta words to churn out to meet my next deadline. So, answer me this: if Santa were planning on bringing you a recently-published book (in addition to these lovely anthologies), what book would you ask for?

Did Santa ever bring you a book when you were small? Or was that considered socks-and-underwear-ish?

Write well, Friends!

So, that’s where I’m at. I’m going to stay away from the blog until the end of the week to give myself time and permission to make a fairly major change in my Work-in-Progress, and to polish and send off some Secret Contracted Work.

But I won’t leave you with nothing to do! So, courtesy of YA Highway, here’s the Stick Man game. Do it. It’s really fun!!

And I have a bit of good news I can share. I have an essay coming out in a Chicken Soup for the Soul anthology in November! *confetti*

I’ll be back next weekend, after the amazing Austin Teen Book Festival. Seriously, check out the line-up on this one. Scott Westerfeld, Maureen Johnson, Tera Lynn Childs, and all the local YA literati! Wowza — I’m taking my niece, her friend, my son, and however many other teens I can fit in the minivan.

And we’re all going to go paparazzi on these amazing authors. There will be pictures, promise.

Take care, and write well!

I’m writing up a storm on my Work-in-Progress. It makes me so sad (this one’s a doozy), I have to stop and eat massive doses of chocolate just to get through the day. (More than usual, I mean. Which is saying something, folks.)

Of course, then I go teach Zumba classes to ward off Writer’s Butt. (Yesterday, one of my class members commented on how much we were sweating. I wiped off my forehead and said, “Sweat? This isn’t sweat. It’s the blood of a thousand vanquished M&Ms.” Real life dialogue for the WIN!)

The week started off with sadness, as two of our sweet pet chickens died horribly. Then I got a bit of lovely writer news — a poem accepted into a new anthology put out by Mutabilis Press for poets with ties/connections to Texas and Louisiana. The anthology comes out rather soon, and I’ll post a link here when it does.

And then there was some other Happy News I can’t share until later in the week! Intrigued? You must wait!

I hope you all had Happy News in your week. And no dead pets, because that part really sucked.

Now, I’m off to torture my characters yet again. Huh. Where’d I put those Snickers bars?

Yeah, me too. Recently, actually.

Hop on over to my friend (and excellent writer) Samantha Clark’s blog to read my overshare about Process.

And, for the record, I don’t just write for spite. I also write for my kids, the glory of the written word, the elusive possibility of attaining a literary sort of immortality… and money. Gotta love money.

Have a great week! (And thanks to Samantha for asking me to share!)

Go ahead, laugh at me. I kinda like it.

(So, do you think I should have changed the name of my Eternal Crush in this piece? I mean, it’s on the Internet now, with his Real Name. Will he be embarrassed? Shocked? Will his wife and kids be all “ICK!” ?)

Happy Monday! Now go write something fabulous.

I am pleased as punch to announce my very first guest blog post is up today at echook. (This is the digital chapbook publisher that chose one of my essays for their first release on memoir.) My post is about my favorite short story (but really about my stepfather) and my essay is about poisoning people (but really about my mom).

Speaking of Mom, it’s her birthday today! Happy Birthday, Mom!

It’s also Hannah Moskowitz’s Book Birthday for Invincible Summer. This is not one you’ll want to miss – the reviews have been outstanding, and Hannah is the cutest/smartest/funniest writer-prodigy EVER, so run out and buy yours today!

I’m buying it as my (gulp) first e-book on my new Kindle.

Yep, you read that right. I have joined the Dark Side.

So… what’s new with you? Did anyone else attend TLA and get your picture taken with Famous People? Or better yet, Beautiful and Kind SCBWI People?

Now, I have revisions to attend to! Go and explore the Internet, Writer Friends. Or better yet, go write something wonderful and transformative. Why not?

No, put away the paper bag. I’m fine. No more WIP thinking.

Anyway, I’ve got three short stories in various stages of done-ness, and I’ve even drafted a guest blog post for echook (the online anthology I sold a humorous essay to – coming out very, very soon!) this week. (I’ll post a link to the blog when it’s up.)

I can see two of the three stories finding homes (God willing!) in a kid lit magazine. The other one? My favorite of the three by far. It’s chock full of sick, twisted humor, strange characters – Edward Gorey illustrations pop into my mind as I’m writing. When I told my husband the premise, he hesitated, then ventured, “So, what market are you thinking for that one?”

That’s because my sweet husband knows a secret about me: I’m relentlessly commercial. I love to write things (stories, essays, novels) I think might actually find a home on a shelf or in a reader’s hands someday. So much so that it can be a little bit tricky to make myself write something for which I can see no viable publication path.

But I’m writing it anyway. Just for the heck of it. Just for the fun. I’ve started to put my faith more and more in the Muse (God, the Creative Spark, whatever), and try to follow where the story leads — if I’m having fun with the writing, of course.

I think it might result in some slightly more interesting things in my work. Of course, it might also result in less publishable things… but I don’t think I’ll worry about that, not with these little pieces.

Do you find yourself thinking about the market when you write? Or are you An Artiste? I always wanted to be one of those, I even bought the beret and black turtleneck. It just didn’t take. Oh, well.

Are any of you writing YA/MG short fiction these days? We could swap! Presto: instant audience.

Oh, by the way? For those of you who have read Gingerbread? A sequel idea has formed in my demented noggin. I wrote a very spooky, very horrific page one. And then I stopped. That way lies madness.  Here’s the root story, if you’re interested;)

But “not finishing” isn’t a luxury we novelists have, is it? Not if we want to pursue, you know, actual publication. So, I’m grabbing all those loose threads today, bundling them together as best I can (noticing in the process how I forgot a couple of subplots that I’d intended to weave through this novel UGH!), and crafting some sort of ending. And, given my middle-grade writing gig, it’ll be a happy one, with series potential. LOL (By the way, have I told you all how excited I am to have finally written a middle-grade novel that references the Apocalypse? I was starting to feel like I’d never get my stakes high enough.)

The whole ending process has taken a lot longer than I’d planned, given the illness that’s been sweeping through the house – we’ve had flu for weeks, and colds now. Ick. I hope you’re all staying well, Writer Friends.

Now, back to work. One more chapter, a Lady Gaga song to choreograph for tomorrow’s Zumba class, and a few dozen more cups of hot tea with honey to knock this cold out. And then, as a reward, a read-through of a manuscript one of my dear Writer Friends sent me that is turning out to be very, very good indeed. Magic and mixed-up love, and mind-reading teenagers… I’m pretty much falling in love with this one. Adore that feeling.

News: I got into the AROHO conference for August! *confetti all around* AND I placed a couple of short pieces – one will be out tomorrow in the March issue of Literature4Kids here. Another one will come out in their July issue. Also, I sold an essay to eChook digital publishing. Yay!

Interesting Stuff: Check out Shelli Cornelison’s blog for great recaps of the Austin SCBWI conference. I’ll post more about that later, but I’m still in awe of all the groovy, delightful, utterly cool famous people I spoke with. Arther Levine, Carolyn Coman, Kimberly Willis Holt, Stephen Roxburgh… I could go on all day long. Seriously,Writer Friends – Austin is THE place to be a children’s book writer!

Also: You know how I go on and on about my agent, Suzie? Well, you can ask her your very own questions tonight at writeoncon! Check it out! Now!!

Believe it or not, earlier drafts of this letter were much, much more explicit. I named even more names, and delved deeper into my teen-age angst at my lack of boobs.

I think I have to go eat an embarrassing amount of chocolate now.