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  Several people have asked me what I’m doing to promote it. Am I having a launch party? A book signing? I wasn’t really planning on it. For one thing, I’m still pretty new to the Seattle area. I’m not

I don’t usually do “book launch parties” when I have new books coming out. The one time I had one, I uh…didn’t even sell books. I just had a party at my house and invited my friends to come over and

The Page 69 Test Guest Post on whether my first two Haunted Library books pass the “page 69 test” (August 30, 2014) Word Spelunking Interview, Review & Giveaway (September 7, 2014) GeoLibrarian Review and Guest Post on establishing an important “rule” in my

The Coralville Public Library’s teen book discussion group is one of 16 Teens’ Top Ten groups in the country. That means they receive galleys from publishers and have a chance to share with the publishers (and the book group facilitators!)

…”A film crew was here.” Film crew? At MY house??? Yup. A producer and camera guy (Greg and Ivaylo) from Open Road Media came from New York to film me last week. The purpose of their visit was to create

Did I really title that last post “highlights of the month?” That’s interesting because the real highlight of the month hadn’t even happened yet. The Edgar Awards banquet was last Thursday, April 28. At one point my husband, two sons,

It’s been quite a month. I’ve only been home two weekdays (six days total, the entire month). I breeze in…do my laundry…pet the dog…hug the family…and breeze back out again. Here are some of the highlights: The Texas Library Association

Apparently I visited the subversive school in the district today. (All the schools I’m visiting this week are part of the same district.) If you read my blog entry yesterday, you know that because a parent challenged James Howe’s The

I had a great school visit today…well-prepared, enthusiastic kids…great staff. There were paw prints all over the school announcing my visit, and a group of fourth graders had put on a little skit last week for the rest of the

Every now and then I’m reminded that I have written other books besides The Buddy Files…and My Mom’s Having a Baby. I don’t want to name the reviewer (and no, I don’t know him…my husband came across the review while

If you can stand one more post about all this… Fox News sent a car for me last week. I asked the nice marketing lady at Albert Whitman whether that was really necessary. It had already been established that I

I’ve always loved libraries. I’m sitting in one right now. My writer friends and I get together a couple times a week to write together in a room in the library. I’m the sort of person who gets a library

I’ve had an exciting couple of days. A babysitter in Texas took three children to the library recently and one of them checked out my My Mom’s Having a Baby. The babysitter was “shocked.” You can read the story and

It started out like any other write-in…other than my dear friend Kellye from Des Moines came. She was supposed to come and stay overnight with me last month when my husband was out of town so we could go out

Well, I’ve been really GOOD about updating my personal journal in recent weeks…but really BAD about updating my blog. A friend said to me, “you call your blog ‘A day in the life of a children’s book author’ and you

I’m a little past the halfway point of the month. My goals were 1) to complete a draft of my YA murder mystery and 2) to lose 5 pounds. I’m on track with my word count (29,421 words!) and I’ve

I met up with a couple of writer friends at the coffee shop yesterday. Not so much for writing, but for chatting. J. and I are in the same place…we’re at the beginning of new projects, but we have opposite

I got ahead on my word count earlier in the week because I wanted to go to Waterloo/Cedar Falls yesterday to see the Painted Pages: Children’s Books Illustrated by Iowa Artists exhibit at Waterloo Center for the Arts (my good

I had a moment of What?-Am-I-CRAZY-Trying-NaNoWriMo-Again this morning. In fact, if I’d heard about PiBoIdMo just a few hours earlier than I did, I may have abandoned the whole NaNoWriMo idea altogether and signed up for PiBoIdMo instead. Even though

So I never thought I’d join a health club…and I did that yesterday (blogged about it, too). Here’s something else I never thought I’d do: sign up for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) again. And guess what I did today?

So this past weekend, my friend kelcrocker and I traveled to Kidlitcon in Minneapolis. I left a day earlier than kelcrocker did so I could visit my dad, and my sister-in-law and my very sweet niece, then met up with

I don’t normally get too excited about book signings, but once in a while I have a really good one. Last Wednesday’s Author Fair at the beginning of the Iowa Library Association Convention was one of those. It was good

I’ve been blogging everywhere except on my own blog. Last Friday I did a guest blog on bullying for one of my publishers. You can read it here. And yesterday I did a guest blog for my friend Darcy Pattison

My typical author visit presentation lasts an hour. I begin with a brief Q&A intro to get the kids’ attention, then I do an interactive 25-minute Powerpoint thing (I have a number of those to choose from, depending on my

My friend sarah_prineas started something with her post on the Shrinking Violets blog. Sarah believes that social sites should be for “friendly conversation and debate, for sharing good news and bad news, for meeting new friends, for posting amusingly captioned

Is there any better time to find out one of your books has been challenged than Banned Books Week? I don’t think so. When I said that to my husband this morning, he wanted to know which book. As though

Look what the UPS man brought me today: 500 packages of book bands! Each package (see picture below) contains two Boxcar Children book bands (the red boxcar on the left), two Buddy Files book bands (the yellow dog in the

I heard something really cool today. I have a friend whose mother has had two strokes. As a result, the mother suffers from aphasia. My friend recently read my first three Buddy Files books out loud to her mother and

Look what my husband gave me for my birthday….a life-sized Buddy! Hey, I think our cat finally met a dog she likes. My dog Mouse, who has never met another dog he didn’t like, isn’t so sure about Buddy. He’s

Like a lot of people, we keep our kitchen garbage under the sink. My dog Mouse isn’t one to get into the garbage, but he prefers that cabinet door be left open. Just so he can get a whiff of

I’ve done A LOT of driving in the last week. I went to a writer’s retreat in Missouri weekend(see last post); my father-in-law is having cancer treatments, so we went to visit him mid-week; and then this past weekend I

STEP ONE: Gather together some of the nicest, most interesting people you know. The Des Moines Contingent: The Fairfield Contingent: The Iowa City Contingent: BTW: It helps if someone in your group has a huge house, a saint of a

I was on KCRG’s morning show today. Yeah, that’s TV. Live TV. I’ve done taped segments on TV before (once when a teenager job-shadowed me and once when I had an author event in my hometown), but I’ve never done

How is it possible that a Laura Ingalls fan could grow up just an hour and a half from Walnut Grove, Minnesota and three hours from De Smet, South Dakota and never get to visit either place as a child?

I went on a writer’s field trip this morning, and when I came back my dog Mouse said, “Whoa! Where have YOU been??? More important, why didn’t you take me with you? You smell AMAZING!” So I said, “Why, thank

Jill Esbaum! I’ll bring you the ARC tomorrow, Jill. Thanks for trying, everyone.

I’m back from Venice. Okay, I didn’t really go to Venice, I went to San Antonio. But I felt like I was in Venice. This is the convention center: This is where I stayed: And this is the Alamo (because

I almost didn’t schedule Mouse and me for R.E.A.D. yesterday because I knew I would’ve just returned from three days in Texas and wasn’t sure it would be good for my dog to go to the library and work as

I am NOT a cocktail party kind of person. I don’t mind SMALL cocktail parties with people I know. But make me dress up and then put me in a LOUD, overcrowded room with a bunch of people I don’t

This is it…the last post in my “Dogs I Have Known” series. Here I am with my real life “buddy,” Mouse: Mouse is AWESOME! Most of the dogs I’ve had were awesome, but Mouse is especially awesome. I think even

Here’s the outside of the building. It’s not what I expected. I was expecting a boring office building (probably because every time I told someone at Albert Whitman how much I was looking forward to seeing the offices, the person

So yeah…I was going to blog about my trip to Chicago while I was there. But that didn’t happen. I ended up spending my evenings reading, chatting with the family etc. You know how it is. I told several people

So, my dog brings in the newspaper every morning. (I know…he’s a very cool dog!) I read it, then put it out with recycling and I don’t think any more about it. Earlier this week I put together a new

Well, it’s finally happened. I have driven an editor out of the business! Okay, maybe I’m not personally responsible for this…but I am losing an editor and I’m kind of bummed about it. In fact, when she told me the

I don’t quite know what to do with myself today, so instead of distracting my writing buddies with needless chatter, I thought, “I know! I can update my blog!” Which I see I haven’t done in more than six weeks?

I had a book signing with my friend Tess Weaver this past weekend. I’ve learned several things about book signings in the years I’ve been doing them: 1. Book signings are a lot more fun (and probably more successful, too)

So just because my dog is Delta certified does not mean he is perfectly trained. Just between you and me…it’s not that hard to pass the therapy dog test! “Good enough for Delta” isn’t necessarily good enough for me. I’ve

As part of the R.E.A.D. program, I’ll have official R.E.A.D. bookmarks with my dog’s picture on them. We actually had to go to a professional photographer (who specializes in animal photography) to have his picture taken for these bookmarks. You

My dog Mouse and I are a registered therapy dog team. We just got registered through Delta Society a couple months ago…and then we completed the requirements to work with Intermountain Therapy Animals Reading Education Assistance Dogs (R.E.A.D.). So far

So, I actually get to comment on the art in my series. To my editor, not just to my friends. Writers don’t normally get any say in the art. And there’s a good reason for this. A writer has the

Things are moving along so quickly with my series that I’m going to be doing my revisions for book two (and probably book three as well) right onto the page proofs or galleys or whatever they are. (I wonder if

Wow! It’s been five weeks since my last blog post. That might be a record. So what have I been doing these last five weeks? Mostly working on The Buddy Files, which is a 3-book chapter book series I have

I have this box in my closet that I haven’t opened in years. I’m not sure why I opened it this weekend…I think it was because an old high school friend of mine sent me a package last week (actually

1. “Go straight at the well” can be perfectly reasonable directions to someone’s house. 2. Helping a cow give birth is A LOT of work. 2a. It’s also a messy job. 2b. Cows give birth standing up. 2c. It takes

We’re here…somewhere in northern Missouri. Yes, I’m the one who drove three of us here and that is the best I can do…somewhere in northern Missouri…about a mile past the pump in the middle of the road. We are eleven

Every year Toastmasters International hosts a “world championship” public speaking competition. This is the cream of the crop…from all over the world. This is a BIG DEAL. One of the finalists this year is from Iowa…that hasn’t happened in more

I have a hard time letting my manuscripts go. It’s amazing I’ve ever published anything because I just want to revise and revise and revise… My editors usually have to tell me to STOP revising and turn the manuscript in.

I still can’t believe I was actually there…but I was! I even wore a skirt. I had to actually go and buy the skirt a couple days before ALA because I didn’t own one. I had a little black dress

Here is my stash from ALA. I think I exercised a little more restraint than I did when I went to IRA a couple months ago…and I exercised A LOT more restraint than my roommate/good friend/chauffeur did (but I can

I lead a teen writer’s workshop every summer at the local library. I love doing it because…well, because I wish I could’ve attended such a thing when I was a teen/preteen. (But then when I told the kids that today

Here we are! sarah_prineas and me (actually, that’s me on the left and Sarah on the right) standing outside Prairie Lights…and our books are in the window (in the top row)! If you write for grown-ups and you do a

My family spent way too much money on me at Mother’s Day. They bought me a Kindle 2! My first thought was they should return it because it cost too much money, but while my head was thinking that, my

As promised, I blogged about IRA at Kidlit_Central today…

I may have gotten a little carried away at IRA…what do you think? My dog (the black blob in the upper right) thinks I definitely got carried away… I had a great time and will blog about the whole IRA

I’m home today. This is noteworthy because I’ve only been home two out of the last eight days. And I’m heading out again tomorrow…for IRA in Minneapolis (and lots of visiting along the way: visiting family…hopefully visiting my brand new

So yesterday at lunch, somebody asked sarah_prineas and me whether we were going to have book launch parties to celebrate our new books. sarah_prineas’s and my reaction: (Can you feel the resounding silence???) I had a “book launch party” in

Here is what I should be doing: 1) finishing my final edits for P is for Police…because they’re supposed to be turned in tomorrow (I’m having some trouble with the word “final.”) 2) working on book 1 of my series…because

I have my critique group friends…and I have my write-in friends. These are not the same people. Not that there couldn’t be some overlap. Well, the critique group is closed (we’ve all known each other for quite a few years

I almost didn’t come to my write-in this morning. I didn’t sleep well last night and it’s just a crappy, crappy day. But I decided the day wasn’t going to look any less crappy at my house, so I came.

The line between my writing life and my personal life is very thin. Because I write fiction, I take what I learn about life and apply it to my writing. I also take what I learn about writing and apply

1. For the second week in a row, I came directly to the coffee shop after dropping High School Kid off at jazz band…which means I arrived at 7:05 a.m. I have staked out our corner. 2. Even though they

How many times can I title a post “long time no blog?” As many times as it makes sense, I guess. So guess what? One of my editors DOES read my blog. (Never say something online that you wouldn’t say

I’ve been trying to decide whether or not to blog about this. I know some of my editors have read my blog in the past…what if an editor at this publishing house reads my post? Then I thought, “what if

So I’ve discovered Facebook. I’ve known of its existence for several years. I think one of the teens in the summer writing class I teach told me about it three summers ago. But I’ve resisted signing up all this time.

My husband’s grandmother passed away this morning. We found out about it through my sister-in-law, who read about it on her cousin’s Facebook page. I’ve been reluctant to set up a Facebook account…but gee, if my sister-in-law didn’t have a

Wow. Have I really not blogged in two and a half weeks? Apparently not…LJ doesn’t lie about things like that. I’ve been outlining like crazy this month. It is important to me that I produce a new manuscript that my

I can’t be too upset with my family for poking holes in my science fiction mystery last week…I’ve spent the last week brainstorming, plotting and outlining and the story I’ve got now is far better than it’s ever been! It’s

My husband really irritated me yesterday. I was trying to talk to my kids about my science fiction mystery when he walked into the room. He wasn’t around the last time I’d talked to my kids about this story, so

I don’t normally exercise in the afternoon…but I had someone coming to clean my fireplace this morning, so I didn’t get around to exercising until afternoon. And when I’m exercising, I don’t normally stop to answer the phone. I figure

How do you describe someone’s voice? I don’t mean a writer’s “voice.” I mean an actual voice…how do you describe the timbre, the pitch, the texture of a person’s VOICE??? My mother had our home movies put on a CD

It’s amazing what you see in a manuscript if you haven’t looked at it in…oh, a year and a half! I finished reading through I am Anna Winkler now. I still like the idea very much, but wow, I’ve got

1. My dog, Mouse, passed basic obedience last night. I pretty much expected him to pass…he passed the practice test two weeks ago (we didn’t have class last week because of the snow…we didn’t have much of anything last week

Today is the third day in a row that Iowa City schools have been closed. It’s like an unplanned spring break because there’s no school on Monday for Martin Luther King Jr. day, either, so that’s 6 days off. Other

I received sketches for my picture book, P is for Police, which I THINK is supposed to be out this fall. The illustrator who did my F is for Fire Fighting is doing this one, too (which I’m really excited

So here I am at the coffee shop…writing with my friends for the second time this week. Because I have no excuse for not finishing my revised series proposal two days ago, I decided I needed to finish that before

My youngest went back to school today…which means it’s time for me to get back into my regular routine. A group of local writers met at the coffee shop this morning to write together…I LOVE when we do this! There

Wow, I’ve really gotten out of the habit of blogging. It was a busy December…lots of things happened, but probably the most interesting thing that happened was “interest” from the publisher I sent my series proposal to. Not a contract

It’s true…I’m DONE with Yes, I Know the Monkey Man. I’ve read through the typeset pages…gone back and forth on a few last minute changes…and I think the manuscript is off to the printer’s now. And guess what? My editor

So I just finished a “school visit by phone.” I’ve done a lot of school visits, but I’ve never done one by phone before, but is something really interesting since I really love my iPhone, and I even get the

…unless you’re playing with your yoga friends! Our yoga class started out meeting in the “all purpose room” at the Coralville Rec. Center…two sessions ago they moved us to the racquetball court. Who knew the Coralville Rec. Center even HAD

I will not request unnecessary changes to Yes, I Know the Monkey Man. Do I need to say that again? Yes, I probably do. I will not request unnecessary changes to Yes, I Know the Monkey Man. I will not