It’s been 10 days since I last posted but I have been writing every single day, mostly on the novel that I think has a long way to go. I’m hoping to finish the first draft in the next two weeks. But I’ve also been revising a picture book for one of my current editors in the hopes that we’re close to making a deal and getting a contract. (Remember? It’s the pb-that-I-feared-to-revise, but that I eventually fell in love with again.) I’m still in love with it and hope I’m closer to what the editor wants. I KNOW it’s improved/deeper/more detailed, so that gives me hope.

I’ve also started notes on a new novel (believe it or not, I think it’s a YA!) that I’ll be working on in a couple of weeks at a retreat. I’ve got some research to do that I’ll need to take with me, so I’m hoping to find time to pull that together before I leave on July 3rd.

This week, I’ve got to decide what I want to have critiqued at that retreat. I think I’m going to send something short, a picture book perhaps, something that would be easy to revise on the side while I work on my new novel.

My picture book, Surfer Chick, which was going to be a Harcourt book, is now headed to Allyn Johnston’s new imprint at S&S. I’m thrilled of course that it will stay with Allyn, as she is a surfer herself and a wise and funny editor to boot. She was my pick from the time I began to write it.

In other news, I hurt my neck yesterday and had to go to the hospital for pain relievers and muscle relaxants. I’m much better today, but a litle loopy. Suffice it to say, I won’t try pulling heavy mattresses off of the top of a bunk bed by myself again.

I am severely plot challenged. It’s happened again. I get to the middle of a book where the going gets tough and suddenly a new voice and a new novel idea pops into my head, with a great beginning.

Beginnings. Sigh. Beginnings come easy to me.

And so the question comes, do I stay with the novel-that-feels-like-it’s-headed-nowhere-fast, or do I skip down the road to the newer-exciting-feels-like-it-has-a-hook novel?

My solution this time is that I’m compromising. I’m sticking with the novel that feels like it’s headed nowhere fast because I must actually finish the first draft of a novel at some point in my life, and it’s the closest one to being done. And then, if I do time every day on the sucky-novel-that-will-never-be-published-but-must-be-finished-to-prove-I-can-finish-something-long,
then I can play for a few minutes a day with the voice and characters of the newer, more exciting novel. Which will be fun, I think.

Right up to the point where I begin to search for a plot for it, anyway.

Okay, do you ever have a friend that gets such good news that you forget it’s HER good news and you start celebrating like it was YOUR good news? I just can’t help it. Tanya Seale, aka thatgirlygirl, just found out that her play, Cafe Deux Parfaits, will be produced at a festival in Texas this summer. It’s a huge deal, people. It’s exciting. It’s gonna rock the casbah. Or the Alamo. Or knock the cowboy hats off of them thar cowboys. It’s GONNA BE AWESOME! Head over to her LJ to read the details and to give her your congrats!

Our little puppy fought a valiant fight but he didn’t make it. We’re heartbroken and we haven’t even told the kids yet. They’ll be home from school soon.

We’re pretty sure our brand new little dog has distemper, which he must have been exposed to before we quickly vaccinated him. He’s gradually worsened and may be at the bottom and about to get better because he has started eating again, or he may be done for, which would certainly break all our hearts. He’s at the vet right now and will stay overnight on an iv. We’ll know in the morning if it looks like he will make it.

Also this week, my son has had back and forth high fevers, which has been exhausting and has confounded the doctor. “It’s a virus”, “no wait, it could be dengue fever”, “no, no, it’s a virus”, “But oh, there’s still a chance it could be dengue fever.” We’re exhausted and so is he. He awoke without a fever today and so he is at school now with the hopes that the high fever won’t return in the afternoon like it has so many days before. We’re only on Day 8 of fever watch but we’re hoping he’s back to his normal chaos today, rather than the sickly chaos of the past week.

So that’s what I’ve been up to. Wiping the forehead of a feverish child and administering liquids to a dog from a syringe. When I wasn’t with one, I was with the other. And when I wasn’t with the other, I was with the one. Fingers crossed for a new day, a new week, with an order of healthy on the side. Happy Monday, everyone.

My mom and stepdad and sister were here for two weeks from the States and I taught my mom to do the mosaics I’ve been learning. First we handpaint the plate glass, then cut it into the desired size and shape, and then use it for mirror frames, boxes and any number of things we decided to use it on. It was fun.

The other thing I’ve been up to? Isn’t he cute?

For those of you who felt even the slightest bit of jealousy that I was able to spend the last few days in beautiful Rio de Janeiro, you should know the universe has a way of correcting itself. 🙂

Our car trip home was punctuated by one child vomiting all over the car, one car air conditioner that decided to stop working, and one flat tire. It was a lovely few days in Rio, with a not so lovely trip home. Honestly though, ANY car trip in Brazil in which you make it all the way home alive is a good trip. So I guess I can’t complain.

When you’re in Rio,
with Copacabana sand between your toes,
staring at Sugarloaf Mountain,
drinking juice through a straw
straight from a fresh coconut,
there is no need for a poetry post
because you’re
absolutely
positively
swimming
in puro Poesia.

Who else is waiting on news? I find when I am waiting I have wild swings between hope and hopelessness, between expectation and self-protection. It’s not easy to maintain a sense of detachment from the possibilities, is it? I am a dreamer and there is a part of me that wants to let my hope fly free, unclipped by the realities of the publishing industry. And then there is the other more practical, realistic part of me that knows there are some things you just can’t control.

For me, though, hope always wins out. It means that in the end I’m sometimes even more disappointed than I would have been if I hadn’t allowed myself to hope, but I think it’s better for my creativity. I don’t think my muse has a realistic bone in her body and she doesn’t like it much when I try to talk sense into her or try to reason with her about the truths of publishing. When I do, she just shuts up for a while. So, that leaves me vulnerable to disappointment. Can there be any other way?

HOPE

Hope refuses to perch
as if she had arrived for only a visit,
like so many flitting wings
on the branches of a bloodwood tree,
weaving instead feathers from her breast
into the fabric of my soul.

Her fussing brings pain,
reminding me of a presence I’ve tried
to ignore, preferring instead

a familiar landscape of barren desert,
averting my eyes from the want within,
to grow as if shielded from sun, protected
from possibilities until they would
weigh my branches with promise.

But hope, feathered hope, is already here,
nestled so sweetly for laying,
and I await with the pain
of expectation.

— Kristy Dempsey (all rights reserved)

My children would like a dog. Really, really, really much. But, it’s so difficult. We travel a lot and we live in an apartment in the middle of a large city. We’d need a small dog, that doesn’t shed and that is easily housebroken. I keep trying to push the conversation to the background, not because I don’t want a dog, but because we need time to figure out what kind and how much and all that. We can’t just go out and buy the first dog we think looks cute.

But alas, the conversation surged back in full force a couple of days ago when we ran across this poem during reading time. And upon being reminded of what it means to love (and be loved by) a dog, I’m not so sure I want the decision delayed any further. Now, I too want a dog really, really, really much.

Chums

He sits and begs; he gives a paw;
He is as you can see,
The finest dog you ever saw,
And he belongs to me.

He follows everywhere I go
And even when I swim.
I laugh because he thinks, you know,
That I belong to him.

—Arthur Guiterman

There’s actually one more verse to this poem but it’s not printed in our edition of Poems to Read to the Very Young selected by Josette Frank. The entire poem can be read here.