Good news! I am the proud owner of a new laptop! =) It's an Apple (of course) MacBook, white, and wonderfully portable. No more sitting at gymnastics, play practice, dentist's office, etc, thinking, "I could be getting something done..." Now I can write! On the down side, it has so many fun programs I spend way too much time playing with them. (Garage Band is really cool. Compose music, transpose, add other tracks... all while you should be working.) And it came with a free iPod and printer (fine print: after mail-in rebate.) =)

As I sat in Elizabeth's violin lesson last week I saw a yellow leaf drift from the trees onto the grass. The first one of the year. In Minnesota I feared this time of year. It meant 9 months of snow and ice and never being warm enough. But I've been gone long enough that I'm beginning to get over the panic of impending arctic winds, and to appreciate than fall lasts longer than a week in some places-- Virginia included. I'm actually looking forward to getting past the 98 degree humidity and being able to wear sweaters again. I have a deep love for sweaters, undoubtedly founded in the same memories that make me panic about approaching winters, and I feel like a person can never have quite enough warm, fuzzy, wool sweaters. But I don't love wearing them enough to decide to return to Minnesota. (Wonderful people there, probably because they have to join forces against the elements.)

I am working on writing 100 stories, and thought you might like to know how it's going. I'm on book 24 at the moment, and have several I'm working on at the same time. Some of them include:
-a 3 board book series (for toddlers) about Noah and his dog Ruff
-3 easy-readers about Jacob, his best friend Harley, and their adventures (including a "magic" cape, a swallowed tooth, and some chickens)
-a novel about a young American girl living in Saudi Arabia
- The Princess, the Pea and the Returned Missionary, a road-show script which our ward produced
-Going Up?, a short, funny novel about a girl who gets stuck on an elevator with the boy she's secretly admired for years
- The Apparent Insanity of Manda Hill, a novel in which the main character dies on the first page
- Raining on the Playground, a poem for several voices
- Rush, a Christmas picture book (it has nothing to do with shopping)
- The Other Side of Jacob's Peak, a novel I'm still working on and don't know how to describe. I hope it turns out well. (It's hard to write this one.)
-Claremont, USA: A Fable, about the education of gifted kids in America. (One of the fastest stories I've ever written.)
-and last, but not least, Skye Girl, a middle-grade novel I'm still working on that takes place at my elementary school, about a girl who writes a blog, loves science, and finally slaps the bully back. (Nothing auto-biographical. Trust me.)

There are others, of course, but I won't bore you with the whole list. I'm mailing like crazy, and proudly collecting rejection slips from editors across the country. I file them away and send the stories out again. If persistence doesn't pay off, at least I'll have enough letters to wall-paper the house. =)

Book recommendation of the day: Everything on a Waffle, by Polly Horvath. Our family read this together years ago and we still laugh out loud about it. It's about a (possibly) orphaned girl living in Coal Harbor, British Columbia, and it won the Newbery Honor-- although I think it should have gotten the Newbery. (A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park won that year (2002), and it was good, too. But I liked Everything on a Waffle better, probably bacause I love to laugh.)