Recent Comments

Embarrassing Yourself (And Your Kids)

Happy Monday! It’s Overshare Day on Nikki’s Blog, so settle back in your comfy chairs and get ready to learn things you never wanted to know about me. Don’t worry, I have an actual reason for the information. Not a great reason, but a reason. So here goes.
One of the joys in my sad, pathetic [...]

Christmas Letter

Merry Christmas Eve, Blog Friends!
It’s cold in Texas today and getting colder — beginning to feel (at last) a bit like Christmas. I got a stocking stuffer this week already — an essay of mine will appear in The Ultimate Christian Living anthology, out next March. Yay! (Of course, Santa may have to work a [...]

No More Books About Toy Rabbits

Okay, children’s book writers out there, I’m giving you fair warning: If you’re planning to write about a stuffed toy that learns to love a child, you’re going to need to make it a bear, or an otter, or a hedgehog or something. My husband has declared a permanent moratorium on stuffed bunny books in [...]

A Nice Surprise + Werewolf Abs

A perfect weekend. Yesterday we celebrated Dave’s birthday with a dinner at Eddie V’s and a night in the Hyatt Regency on Lady Bird Lake in Austin — free babysitting courtesy of Aunt Lari. Yay Lari! Yay free babysitting! (Of course, we took a side trip to the Alpha & Omega gallery to see Dave’s [...]

Grounded From Books

I’ll admit: I have a problem. It’s not one of those fashionable ones you can talk about at parties either, or that goes away with diet, exercise, or Botox. I have a book problem.
When I was a little girl, my parents tried just about every punishment in the world (because I was a very naughty [...]

Cinderella in New York

I just got back from NYC, from attending the wonderful Backspace conference, meeting my (darling, smart, funny, ambitious) agent, Suzie Townsend, and painting the town my own particular shade of red. (It’s more a fuchsia, really.) The whole experience was so fairy-tale-ish, I couldn’t believe it was me living my life there. It was like [...]

Writing About Grandma

Last night, my Grandma fell and broke her ribs. Well, only two of them, but that’s enough when you’re 89. This is the Grandma I keep writing picture books and essays about (that’s her with her stapler in this month’s Skirt! essay). We’re beyond close. She taught me to bake cookies, to hang laundry, to [...]

It’s All About Me

Okay, let’s just get this out there: Everything I write is autobiographical. I’m not going to tell the lie I learned in my graduate school writing workshops. I don’t make all this stuff up. Not really.
Well, I mean, of course I make it up. But what I’ve been noticing more and more is the things [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]