3,275 miles to Illinois

And I rode every mile. What a fantastic trip! My husband and I went to see D2 graduate from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with her PhD. Congratulations to D2.

New agent

Welcome to my new agent Eddie Schneider of the JABberwocky Literary Agency. We're already off to a great start.

Petronella Saves Nearly Everyone

Go to bookstore now.
Buy Petronella Saves Nearly Everyone in the series The Entomological Tales of Augustus T. Percival.

I'm so excited about this book. The cover is wonderful and Jen Corace, the illustrator, did a great job of drawing the characters and some bugs and making cute beetles for the chapter headings and page numbers. It looks quite amazing.
Thanks to Kate O'Sullivan of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for all of her hard work and very astute advice.

Last chapter of the next Petronella book

Fantastic feeling! I finished writing the next to last chapter of the second Petronella book and am in the middle of the last chapter. Whew! This one has taken me a while because of family commitments--deaths, sicknesses, and marriage. Those things are all important, of course, but it does feel good to be to the point of sending the manuscript off.

Just got back from San Francisco

Yes, a friend and I presented a panel at the Conference for College Composition and Communication. It went very well and the people who attended were super enthusiastic about our presentation. It was about a DVD we put together after interviewing several people in various careers about how much they write in their jobs and some of the processes they go through to write. As you can see, writing is my life and I love to talk about it or do it. You can see the DVD on http://writeforlife.byu.edu.

It was also fun to sightsee around the old stomping grounds. Both my husband and I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, so we looked up some places we'd been. We also drove up Highway 1 on the coast. Boy did that bring back memories of playing on the beach and eating good seafood.

Nana's Teaching Moment

I had the family over for dinner the other day and GS2, who is 10, said the word, "Crap." Since I am a rhetorician, I wanted him to understand that in some cases, he would not want to say that word. We had the following dialogue at the table:

Nana (me): Just so you know, that word is not right for some situations.
GS2: Why not?
Nana: Some people think it's vulgar and they'd think you were vulgar, too.
S1: What Nana means is that you shouldn't use the word in polite company.
GS1: I don't think he even knows any polite company.
GS2: I know Nana.

Good news from Junior Library Guild

Just got news that my book has been picked as a Junior Library Guild sort-of book of the month for July. My editor says I should be very excited. The Junior Library Guild has been around since the 1920s and chooses what they consider the best books of the year and then sells them to school libraries and municipal libraries all over the USA. Some other authors I know say that my publisher will then need to increase the number of books printed to accommodate the increased number of sales, which is way cool. In accordance with my editor's instructions, I am excited.