Friday Five: What I’m Doing During My MG Break

So October is my step-away-from-the-MG month. I’m taking four weeks between finishing the first draft and starting to revise. Why? Well, mostly, because everybody (right?) says it’s a good thing to do. And you can probably add to that that I’m a bit nervous about this revision, just because it’s been a while and my head is telling me all sorts of things that could go wrong. Which will totally be cured by waiting a month to start (right?).

What am I doing with that month, though? Oh, several things!

I drafted a new picture book and sent it off to my critique group. It was a new idea mostly because when I looked back at my past PiBoIdMo ideas, nothing shouted “This one! This one!” I’m going to look through again this weekend and actually, you know, think about some of them.
Looking forward to PiBoIdMo 2014 and thinking about how I might want to do it differently. Like maybe I want to write down 30 titles. Because titles are so much easier than ideas. Ha. And buying this awesome 2014 PiBoIdMo notebook from CafePress.
Watching summer turn into fall and thinking about how this will be the first year in many that I’ll be driving to and from work in the dark, thinking about ways to stay alert and productive once I’m home, at least a few nights a week, instead of just heading right for the pajamas and cat snuggles. Tips and suggestions welcome!
Making some trips. Next weekend I’m going to KidLitCon in Sacramento. So excited to meet people who are part of a world I love and to hear more discussion on diversity in books and what bloggers can do about it. Then my husband and I will make a quick run up and back to see my son in his first college concert. His latin jazz combo will be playing here. How gorgeous is that? And the acoustics are amazing.
Reading, reading, reading. Right now I seem to be on a mystery kick–just finished and really enjoyed Annette Dashofy’s second Zoe Chambers novel, Lost Legacy, and moved on with a Yay! Finally! to Deborah Crombie’s newest, To Dwell in Darkness. Then, happy dance, I found two more books by favorite authors at the bookmobile today: Elly Griffiths’ The Outcast Dead (If you haven’t read Griffith’s Ruth Galloway series, start now) and Jill Paton Walsh’s The Late Scholar, a new one in her “Based on the characters of Dorothy L. Sayers” series (and, Sayers’ fans, Walsh’s books are a very, very good continuation of Sayer’s own books). So, you know. I’m set for at least a few days!