
My Word for 2021: Surf
My word for this year, Surf, started off as a joke on social media, when I was commenting on the challenge of picking a word for a year that seems filled with unpredictability. Once I’d tossed it out there, though, the word kept coming back to me. And the more I thought about it, the […]

Storystorm 2021
I’ve got my notebook and am ready to go! Storystorm 2020 was one of the good things, for me, in a crazy year. I developed two of the ideas I came up with, and the manuscripts are at the top of my getting-ready-to-query pile. They are two of the ideas that felt most out-there when […]

Gratitude in 2020
I don’t keep a gratitude journal or do any other kind of gratitude process. But 2020 has been…a lot, and it feels right to put down some of the things I have felt grateful so many times during the past year. I am grateful that my family is healthy, that we have the capacity and […]

Sometimes Life is Like a Snow Globe
Okay, sometimes life is like being inside a snow globe. It’s an odd metaphor for a summer, but it’s a summer where things have been shaken up, settled briefly, then shaken up again. In July, we “hosted” my husband’s kidney stone about three weeks. (Go get a big glass of water. Right now. I’ll wait.) […]
PB Biographies – Game Changers: The Story of Venus and Serena Williams
I added Lesa Cline-Ransome’s and James E. Ransome’s Game Changers: The Story of Venus and Serena Williams to my first bookstore orders of pb biographies, and I am so glad I did. Picture book biographies of one person require the author to wander through mounds of research, sort out big stories and little stories, delve […]
PB Biographies: Evelyn the Adventurous Entomologist
I’ve been saying for a long time that, someday, I want to write picture book biographies. In a recent Duh! moment, I realized that isn’t going to happen until and unless I get serious about reading and dissecting them. So I’m starting a new series on my blog featuring picture book biographies and my thoughts […]

Adventuring in a Summer of Sameness
Still here, still in a place of luck and gratitude, still on a rollercoaster of anger and grief, still stepping into the chaos, and still pulling back when I need self-care. And still striving to add new things to make daily life feel like it includes change and some kind of forward progress. In June, […]

What Will We Do with May?
It’s May Day. March was chaos. March was crazy. It seemed like I heard a new announcement of some significant change every day. I watched the COVID-19 counts climb and climb. All the Zooming for work and the Zooming with family and friends made me feel like I was literally zooming through every minute of […]