Happy summer to you, friends! I’ve been mostly AWOL here, because I’ve been vacationing (yes, living Real Life! In Santa Fe and other lovely places) and finishing a draft of what I hope will be my next novel. Which means I’ve been crying a lot, and revising a lot, and trying to keep all the new and old plot threads straight in my head. Brain fog time!

And then, today, out of the blue, came a happy email! Last year, my book Nightingale’s Nest won the Writer’s League of Texas MG/YA book award. This year, I was overjoyed to be selected as a finalist… and to wish the very warmest of congratulations to Jackie Kelly, who won for her glorious The Curious World of Calpurnia Tate.

It’s a real honor to have my Wish Girl sitting alongside my friend K. A. Holt’s heart book, House Arrest, and Brian Yansky‘s Utopia, Iowa, and Margo Rabb’s Kissing in America… and so many more.

Need some new books for your end-of-summer reading slump? Any of these will knock your socks off!

Thank you again to the Writers’ League of Texas for the recognition, and for supporting Texas authors in so many ways. You rock!