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Today’s the day…

The day my daughter starts going to school five days a week.

Did I cry? Oh, you bet I did. I want her to be toddling around my house falling on her diapered butt again–only, you know, without all the diapers. But, I won’t bore you with yet another story of a mommy freaking out over her kid growing up.

No more little school, no more sleeping in to get caught up in between the days…

My family is officially on a schedule. This is nuts for me. My husband works from home, and my daughter and I–well we’ve been marching to our own drum for the past five years. Waking up when we want to, going to bed pretty late… just in general having all sorts of fun.

That isn’t to say having a set schedule doesn’t have its merits. Trust me, I know how important routines and such are… we just haven’t had a need for them. She’s a lot like me, and all about the spontaneity. (I like that word a lot more than chaos. It makes me sound so much cooler, don’t you think?)

But now, well–for the mornings at least, we have somewhere to be every single weekday.

It’s funny, I didn’t realize until this morning just how different all my clocks were. It’s not that any of them were wrong, per se, they’re just all set a couple of minutes apart.

I guess I’ll have to fix that… now, if I can just remember how to set them.

Happy School Beautiful Girl!!

Let me first start by saying that I am about to get all spoilery up in here.

This isn’t something I normally do because I hate to give away plots to books, but I want need to talk about this story.

Seriously, no holds barred–we’re talking right down to the very last page.

Please. If you haven’t read these, just stop whatever it is you’re doing, and go now to your nearest bookstore–pick them up, and I’ll see you again in three days.

Stop reading if you haven’t finished Mockingjay or any of the other books in The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins.

You’ve been warned.

…

…

(more…)

I know how to write, and that’s a good skill to have.

But–I’ve always wished I could draw.

Sure, I can draw a flamingo, and I can write tempera paint a sign with the best of them. But, that’s really the extent of it.

The thing is, I am SO jealous of people have that talent. (For the record, I know they still have to practice, but I don’t think you can LEARN to draw if the base skill isn’t there.)

I have a friend who can draw–I mean REALLY draw. I watch her across the table when she’s doodling, and it’s fascinating to me the way she draws each part of a picture and brings it all together as a whole.

Today her wedding invitations came in the mail.

Yeah–she drew them herself.

Grr. I love/hate her SO much!

If you know me personally, you know that I’m usually pretty good in social situations.

I’m quick with the wit, don’t always smell bad, and remember to flush.

But my husband’s grandmother makes me nervous. She’s old world, as in schooled at a French convent, forks in the right place, English isn’t her first language (French is), and you better know what color wine to serve, kind of frightening. I only see her about once a year, but I think that only makes it worse. I feel like I have nine hours to make a good impression that has to last until our next visit.

We were sitting at the kitchen table, eating hors d’oeuvres (as in, I was trying not to spit out my bacon wrapped dates–the one thing that bacon does not make taste better) when she grabbed my arm and looked right at me.

“It’s very important to me that your daughter learns French. It’s a part of her heritage, and when I’m gone, I want her to have that, so she knows where she’s from.”

Whoa. This woman was serious. Her eyes filled with tears, and I could tell she needed to hear something comforting.

Fast thinker that I am, I knew just the thing to say, “I know some French!”

She smiled at that. Thank goodness.  ”You do? I’d love to hear it.”

And only as the words came out of my mouth, did I realize what I was saying, “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi? Ce soir?”

Translation: Will you sleep with me? Tonight?

My only hope was that I’d somehow messed up the pronunciation and accidentally said something innocent. Her eyes bulged and the room went silent. She knew exactly what I’d just asked her.

Yup, that’s right, I quoted the lyrics from that Lady Marmalade song about hookers soliciting people for sex.

To my 85 year old French grandmother-in-law…

My kid is not a huge fan of the dark, but she also won’t sleep with a big lamp on, and a normal night-light just isn’t enough.

So, we started looking at LED lights, they’re low energy, and don’t put off a whole lot of heat. Since I am the most over protective parent on the planet, this was a huge plus for me.

Enter the awesomeness that is this Etsy Store, LED Lighting and Art.

I had to own one of these vases for the daughter’s room.

Yeah, they’re that awesome. So, the shop sent us one! We have our very own adorably awesome light up vase! Plus, if you go to their facebook page and give them an idea, they’ll TOTALLY do it!

I know! It’s perfect! Is it wrong that I am super jealous of her room and totally wish it was mine?

Lucky Kid.

What’s a Bookanista? Read more about it here.

I’ve been waiting to read Kiersten White’s Paranormalcy since I saw her book deal announced. Now, usually when I build something up in my mind like that, it never lives up to the hype and I am all sorts of disappointed.

Not this time, baby. This book was everything I imagined it would be and more! It was fan-freakin-tastic. I read a lot, so it’s no surprise that I read it all in one day or anything–what IS a surprise is that I never even took a potty break.

Seriously, Paranormalcy was so great that I forgot to pee.

(I’m guessing they won’t be using that as a cover quote any time soon, eh?)

What I loved about it:

Man, more like what didn’t I love–there was a steamy love triangle, paranormal creatures, and even an old hag or two. Now, if you can write about hags, and still make me turn the page–then you’ve done your job.

This book isn’t just great to read, it’s great to look at:

Yeah… that’s pretty much what every book cover on the planet should look like…

Don’t forget to check out the other Bookanistas today!

Myra McEntire – WHITE CAT
Shelli Johannes Wells – PARANORMALCY
Elana Johnson – THE ETERNAL ONES
Christine Fonseca – THE HEALING SPELL
Shannon Messenger – NIGHTSHADE CITY
Carolina Valdez Miller – THE MOCKINGBIRDS
Jamie Harrington – PARANORMALCY
Lisa and Lila Roecker – PARANORMALCY

On Saturday night, I went tot he casino with girlfriends. Now–to be clear, we’re not talking flashy lights on the Vegas strip. Heck, we aren’t even talking old timey steamboats on the river of Shreveport.

When you first arrive, you pull up to a big fancy building. It has sparkling lights and stretches over a mile long.

Looks pretty cool, right? The thing about gambling is… it’s all in your perception.If you drive around to the back–you’ll discover a whole new angle.

Oh my freak. That was all just covering up a giant tent? Seriously, half the casino is housed in a tent, and the other half is made from pre-fab metal–but from the highway, you’d never know that. Heck, if you didn’t drive around back you’d never know it! On the inside, it’s shiny and sparkly, there are color changing fountains with greek statues and lavish crystal dragons hanging from the ceiling.

What lesson does this teach me? I’m not really sure–a slot machine is a slot machine, and I still had a blast…

But, seriously, what’s up with the tent?

For those of you who didn’t know… a few friends and I hosted a little writer’s conference this week.

Three months ago, I got an email asking me if I wanted to help build a free online conference for kidlit writers.

I figured–Why the heck not? It sounds like fun.

Elana Johnson, Casey McCormick, Lisa and Laura Roecker, Shannon Messenger, and I set up our meeting in a virtual chat room… because most of us haven’t met one another in person. We brought on Jen Stayrook later for her awesome technical skills and MAD web design abilities.

Let me say that again–I have never met any of these ladies in real life. We hosted this entire thing via the internet.

There were hundreds thousands of emails exchanged back and forth, several late night chats– and then there was a writer’s conference.

When we emailed the first editors and agents, we didn’t even have a website. But, they trusted us to do something awesome and signed on, adding their name to our product on good faith. To them, I have to say a huge thank you for their trust, support and amazing generosity.

And, to all the people we reached! (All 11,000 of you!)… to the over 360,000 unique page views! To everyone for putting up with the 403, and just being awesome– THANK YOU!

And now, I give you the final #writeoncon video for the 2010 conference:

Here’s what you do:

We are going to modify your local host file. This will not work if you aren’t an admin–so i you’re at work, you probably won’t be able to do it.

Go here: C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\ or %systemroot%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Open Notepad from your start menu. Right click it and choose “run as administrator.”

Don’t delete anything. Just add the following info to the bottom:

72.249.130.36 www.writeoncon.com
72.249.130.36 writeoncon.com

Save it, and you’re good to go.

Here’s a screen shot of what your notepad will probably look like:

I know some of you are still having trouble logging in. I am so sorry for that! Here’s tonight Live Panel. I hope this helps!