A Day in the Life of a Children's Book Author

When I wrote Tank Talbott’s Guide to Girls I had no trouble deciding where to start the book…no trouble deciding how much of Trading Places with Tank Talbott needed to be included or how to weave those sections in. But I have struggled with what to include from Do You Know the Monkey Man in T.J.’s Story pretty much from day 1.

Rule #1: You should always begin a story at the moment where everything changes for the main character. For T.J., everything changed the moment Sam came into her life. That happened about halfway through Do You Know the Monkey Man, so my original plan was to begin there and show that scene from T.J.’s point of view rather than Sam’s…and dramatize scenes that happened off-stage in Do You Know the Monkey Man…and then continue on from there. My editor never liked that idea. And while I have been writing it her way, I never fully committed to her line of thinking until about two months ago (which made for some very slow going on this manuscript). Then I read through a bunch of fan mail I’ve received over the last few years on Do You Know the Monkey Man. When I read those letters and e-mails, I realized my editor was right. Readers don’t want a rehashing of book 1…they want to know WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

I’ve got a draft now that I’m mostly happy with. Ideally I’d like another month on it, but Editor needs to see it next week, so she will see it next week. But in the meantime, I’m still tweaking. And one of the things I’m tweaking is this scene where T.J. is on the bus to visit her mom. Originally I had a big flashback scene there, which basically dramatized the big face-to-face scene from Do You Know the Monkey Man, only this time you see the scene from T.J.’s point of view. But if Rule #1 is “always begin a story at the moment where everything changes for the main character,” isn’t Rule #2: “NO FLASHBACKS!!!”???

So I got rid of the flashback and had somebody sit down on the bus with T.J. so she could tell her story (i.e. I dumped everything the reader needed to know about Do You Know the Monkey Man into this conversation). I thought this was especially wonderful because it gives T.J. a chance to see what someone who isn’t invested in her family situation has to say about it (at this point in the story, T.J. has a hard time seeing the situation from ANYONE'S point of view other than her own). But…the lady who sits down with T.J. only appears that one time. Did that really work??? One of my most trusted readers said no. And well…I didn’t think she was wrong.

So I put the flashback scene back and then gave it to another of my most trusted readers. Big surprise…SHE didn’t like the flashback scene. (I’m still not crazy about it myself.)

So now what??? The nice old lady who sits down on the bus doesn’t work…and the flashback doesn’t work…how do I bring the reader who hasn’t read Do You Know the Monkey Man up to speed on what happened in that book? What does that reader need to know about Do You Know the Monkey Man? And where does that information belong???

Actually, both of my trusted readers had advice on that. Reader #2 offered advice on where in the story I could dole out specific bits and pieces (i.e. “put this here…put that there”) and Reader #1 gave me the WHY behind what Reader #2 did. She said, “Put back story at the point where it will make an emotional impact. Where is that in this story? Where does it matter emotionally what happened before?”

Why didn’t I come up with that on my own? Why are all my friends so much smarter than I am??? Back to my tweaking...

1. I can jog 3.2 miles without taking a break to walk in between. I know because I did it today. And I did it in 31 minutes, which yes, is still slow, but it's faster than I used to do it. I used to do it in 33 minutes.

2. College Student has an AWESOME internship lined up for this summer. Great experience, will look good on his resume and will likely lead to other amazing things for him, great pay...the only problem is the internship is halfway across the country.

3. I am handling #2 better than I expected to be. But...see #2 (great experience et.). And he IS 18...he started college young, so going away to college was never really an option for him. This will be good for him. And probably good for me, too, to get used to what it will be like when he's not here. At least I'll know he's coming back in 12 weeks!

4. I got feedback on Monkey Man 2 from one of my most-trusted readers and I'm still feeling okay about things. Still working HARD this next week, but it'll be okay to send it to my editor.

5. It'll just be Junior High Kid and me tonight...I think we're going to get monster burritos from Chipotle and have a Veronica Mars marathon (he still hasn't seen them all). Unless he gets a better offer between now and then. He's more likely to get a better offer than I am.

Are there more beautiful words in the English language??? I think not. Not if you’re a writer…not if you’re a writer who has struggled to write a book the way I have struggled to write this one.

I pushed hard on it all weekend and got close to the end, but didn’t quite make it. And then for some reason yesterday I let myself get distracted most of the day. After writing close to 30 pages over the weekend, I only managed to write 2 the whole day yesterday. So I decided when I got home from yoga last night (all calm and centered!) I would stay up until I could type T-H-E E-N-D. It worked for sarah_prineas a couple nights ago (and she may not have even needed the yoga to get herself into the state where she could finish)…and it worked for me last night. (sarah_prineas was only up until 9:30…I was up until 11:30.)

I celebrated by: 1) writing this blog entry (I decided no more blogging until I got to the end of this book…); 2) taking College Student out for sushi; and 3) riding my 22-mile bike route (well, actually I could only go 20 miles because the high river water blocked the last two miles…I had to detour around closed trails earlier in my ride, too. And the funny thing is I was actually out riding when the water rose up over the bike trail behind Taco Bell a couple weeks ago. It was the weirdest thing…everything was fine when I went through there the first time. The water was over the bank, but it wasn’t on the trail. It took me 20 minutes to get from there to City Park, make my circle and come back. In that 20 minutes, the water had risen so far over the trail that I didn’t dare go through it. At all. And I will go through SOME water…but once it looks like it would cover half my tire, I don’t go through it…because water is usually deeper than it looks…and you don’t mess around with river water.).

That leaves me with just under two weeks to revise before I have to turn this in to my editor. I have a couple of trusted readers who are nice enough to read a manuscript that I know is not my best work yet (not to mention read it QUICKLY) and offer me advice on what to focus on in these next two weeks, so that will help. At least it’s ALL there now…a full and complete manuscript. There was a time I wasn’t sure this day would ever come.

I don't normally do memes, but whatever. I feel like doing one today.

1. The writing is going WELL!!!! There is a chance I will actually reach the end of T.J.'s Story in a week...which then gives me two more weeks to go through it and polish things up before the new date my editor and I agreed on (and if I don't make THAT date, I'm in big trouble).

2. My husband's friend, the former computer guy who got out of the rat race to open up a Middle Eastern restaurant makes the BEST spicy tomato cilantro soup! It's one of the best soups I've ever had in my entire life. (He makes good falafel, too!) And he made it on yoga night, so I got a batch to go and have been enjoying it all week. It's gone now, though. :(

3. How is it a child who "forgets" to go to ONE orchestra lesson suddenly ends up with a D- in the class (I was not amused with said child!)...but then makes up the ONE lesson and suddenly has a B+? ONE lesson is really worth that much this far into the term???

4. College Student is waiting to hear whether he got an AMAZING internship for this summer. I think we're all on pins and needles waiting to hear, though getting it will mean he won't be living here this summer. He's in a good position...he says he won't be heart-broken if he doesn't get it. He's actually got TWO other jobs that are his is he wants them. So he'll be fine. But this would be such a good opportunity!!!

5. It's mandolin lesson day!!!! I love my mandolin lesson...and with school visits and my writing I haven't had nearly as much time to play as I normally have. But I took time to just play last night...so much time, in fact, that I have sore finger tips again. My teacher will be very happy for me.

Our SCBWI conference was this weekend. There were some really good things that happened and some really bad things that happened.

First the bad (because I prefer to end with the positive): our regional advisor wasn’t around because her husband has been very ill…he passed away last night. My own husband and I both travel separately now and then (I travel for school visits, to visit my dad in the nursing home and to attend the occasional writing (and soon-to-be mandolin) conference…my husband travels for his job), but I don’t think I have ever missed him when we’ve been apart as much as I missed him this weekend. I literally crawled into his lap and cried when I got home. (Poor guy...he thought things had gone really bad with my editor, but no...I was just really glad to see him!) There’s nothing like watching someone you know go through the loss of a spouse to make you appreciate what you have. All weekend I told myself I didn’t care how messy the house was when I got home (my husband has a lot of strengths, but picking up after himself is not one of them); I would just be thankful he’s here and healthy and able to make that mess. But then there wasn’t even a mess to overlook when I got home!

Now a list of the good: driving over to the conference with two very good friends, staying up way too late gabbing with one of them, getting up way too early to walk with the other (remember what I said about being addicted to exercise?), the other speakers, hanging out with other writers, making new friends (in particular with one woman I share an editor with and another woman whose life I could have had…like me, she’d always dreamed of being a writer, but she went to medical school instead and has only just gotten back to her writing in the last couple of years. I almost went to medical school! But when it was time to fully commit, that guy I missed so much this weekend told me I didn’t have to go THEN…he knew my dream was to be a writer. He suggested I take a year to try writing first. He said medical school would still be there in a year or two, and no matter how wonderful of a doctor I became, I’d always wonder if I could have been a writer. Since he had a pretty good job, he thought I should take a year to try writing. So, I did…and after one year I decided this was what I wanted…I got pregnant, stayed home with my kids and WROTE…and I haven’t looked back. But this other woman made the other choice. She went to medical school…and well, I think I made the right choice. I SO enjoyed talking with her (though it made me sad to hear she wasn’t so sure SHE’D made the right choice)…I wish I’d gotten her e-mail address!), offering to do a critique for someone as part of the silent auction and actually having people bid on it (and then having the winner tell me she'd be "honored" to receive a critique from me. Good Lord!)...

But the best thing about the weekend was reconnecting with my editor. Despite what I wrote in the last entry, I was a little nervous about this weekend when I found out this particular editor had been invited. I wasn’t entirely sure where things stood between us (for a variety of reasons, which I won't go into in a public forum like this). But we talked this weekend…and I learned some things I didn’t know before. (I also found out she and I have some weird things in common…) Just hanging out with her reminded me why I liked her so much to begin with. It WASN’T just that she bought my first novel, like I’d been thinking recently. I really did like her a lot as a person right from that very first phone call. We CONNECTED. And she has this knack for just saying something about whatever I'm working on, something that’s so obvious to her that she doesn’t even realize she’s just said something important, something that just makes me RUN with an idea. There are not many people who can do that for me…and no one does it quite the same way she does. I’d forgotten all of that…because there had been some “stuff” between us and because we hadn’t really talked in a long time.

So…while this was probably one of the worst weekends of my regional advisor’s entire life, she gave me quite a gift by inviting this particular editor to our conference and asking us to do a session together on the author-editor relationship. Honestly, if she had told me ahead of time that she wanted to invite one of MY editors to this conference, I might have encouraged her to invite one of my other editors (one I KNEW I had a good relationship with). But I'm so glad she DIDN'T ask my opinion. While I would have enjoyed the face-to-face time with the other editor, I didn’t NEED it the same way I needed it with this editor. As my agent told me this morning, “Face time is so important, especially in the email age where all nuance is lost.” So true! I have a friend who used to make a concentrated effort to take a trip to New York once a year to just have lunch with her agent and all her editors and then take in a Broadway play by herself. I especially latched on to that Broadway play part of that plan when she first told me this, but now I truly understand the point of those trips. Just an hour or two alone, in person, once a year, can make a huge difference in a relationship. Too bad my editors/agent are so spread out! But I'm going to try and connect with each of them in person once every 1-2 years from now on.

Oh! And the friend I stayed up too late with this weekend seems to have connected with my editor, too! It’s very validating when people you like end up liking each other, too.

I haven't been blogging much these days. Not because I haven't had anything to blog about...I've actually had quite a bit to blog about -- lots of school visits, author events, new book possibilities, my kids etc. But when I haven't been actively involved in one of the previous activities, I've been working on my Monkey Man sequel. There just hasn't been time for blogging...and I'm starting to miss it!

I'm just back from a great school visit in Gretna, Nebraska. What was especially nice about this visit (well, aside from the kids...and the librarian...VERY nice school librarian in Gretna, NE!) was I had company on the way over/back. My best friend (who I also have hardly had any time for recently) has a good friend in Gretna, so she rode over with me and spent the two days with her friend. So we had nine hours together in my van (not to mention two meals in Des Moines) to catch up.

Tomorrow I'm doing a reading/discussion of The Truth About Truman School at the Coralville library. I'm hoping I have a voice...my husband and I had lunch with friends of ours last Friday and the other husband, who was sitting across from me, was kind enough to cough in my face about 35 times, thereby sharing his cold with me. If worst comes to worst, the librarian would probably do the reading part for me so I have voice enough for the discussion. I'm looking forward to discussing cyberbullying with local fifth and sixth graders.

And then this weekend is the big Iowa SCBWI conference. I'm supposed to pick up my editor (and two of our other speakers) at the airport, so I should probably clean out my van (not until tomorrow, though...I drive the children's theater carpool tonight and one of my passengers tends to make a bit of a mess of her dinner in my van).

I've already warned said editor that the book is not going to be done. I warned her last week so she'd have a full 9 days to get used to the idea before saw each other...fortunately, she's a very nice person (I've met her twice before) and seems to be over it already. Though she did cheerfully suggest we could work out a new deadline during our presentation on the author-editor relationship. Ha ha. What a funny editor I have! So...I wonder how much chocolate and how many bottles of wine I should bring to this conference? How many pieces of chocolate/bottles of wine will it take to bribe her into pushing that new deadline out as far as I'd like? Seriously, though...it should be a fun weekend! And I've already been promised Chinese food!

I suppose I'd better see how much work I can get done between now and then...which means, this will probably be the last blog entry I'll write for a while...

Wow. If you actually TELL your friends you're doing a reading, some of them will come to your reading! Who'd have thought?

I don't normally tell my friends when I'm doing a reading because I don't want anyone to feel obligated to come. Or worse, obligated to buy a book. But my critique group gets on me for that, so...this time I told people.

I did a reading at the Museum of Natural History, of all places, this past Sunday (as part of the Celebrate Iowa Authors thing). I did it with my friend Tess Weaver, which was nice because if no one came at least we'd be alone together. But I told people and she told people, and clearly we both have very intelligent and resourceful friends because they actually FOUND US up there. They had to wind through a bunch of exhibits and find a door to go upstairs and then wind through some more exhibits. It wasn't easy!

Anyway, we actually had people there, which was nice. I wouldn't call it a crowd, but it was a respectable turn-out. And we didn't even know everyone there.

It was my first reading of The Truth About Truman School and it went well except for the fact I found an error on page 8. There is a sentence that doesn't have a period. ACK!!!!

I'm jogging again! I think I can legitimately say that because I've been doing it three weeks now and it takes three weeks for something to become a habit.

I tried to jog a year ago, but I was about 15 pounds heavier then than I am now. I couldn't haul myself around the .8 mile track at the park once, so I gave up. (I used to haul myself around four times...without stopping!)

I haven't been to the park yet this year...I started my jogging routine by walking my "winter route" (a 4-mile walk along the sidewalks...they don't plow the bike path around here during the winter) and then jogged two or three songs along the way. Two or three songs became four or five. Then the snow went away and I moved to the bike path (which has HILLS). I started walking one song, jogging one, walking one, jogging one for the full hour (actually when I'm jogging, I do that 4-mile route in 45-50 min., depending on how much walking vs. jogging I do)...now it's more like walk one, jog one, walk one, jog three, walk one, jog three, walk one, jog two, walk one, jog one, walk one and I'm home. I think I'm ready to see if I can do four times around the track now.

It's good to switch your exercise routine now and then (much better to jog outside than ride the stationary bike inside!)...I LOVE that endorphin rush. Yes, I am addicted to exercise. Really, I am...I took a test at the Seattle science museum last summer. I am not addicted to alcohol, drugs or even chocolate (this one surprised me a little!), but I am addicted to exercise.

Looking forward to getting back on the bike! (I need to get the bike in for a tune-up, a drive train clean and a new chain first...I put more than 2000 miles on the bike last year, which explains what happened to the 15 pounds.) I'm thinking maybe this summer I'll alternate biking/jogging every other day...

My husband has been out of town all week...not because he's a "guitar hero." That's not the reason for the subject of this post. (In fact, he's the only one in the family who does not play a musical instrument.) No, he was just traveling for work.

Yesterday was the only day all week the kids and I were actually all HOME in the evening. So, what did we do? We played Guitar Hero on College Student's X-box. Oh, if my husband could have seen us!

You have to understand, I am not a "gamer." Besides whatever came with the computer, the only computer games I own are Scrabble and Lexicon (which is a word game some friends of ours designed). College Student showed me a game called Portal a few months ago, which is apparently The Best Game Ever Made (it's got a pretty catchy little theme song, too)...I could barely work the controls. This gaming thing is not me.

And Guitar Hero is not my kids. Well...I could've seen Junior High Kid playing it before last night. He does actually play a bass guitar, after all. But not College Student. Both these kids have mocked the guitar hero game for as long as I can remember (i.e. "that's not a REAL computer game!") And yet, College Student ended up playing a similar game with friends of his a couple weeks ago and he liked it enough that he decided he had to own Guitar Hero.

So yeah...we were all getting into Guitar Hero last night.

It was fun, but I don't think anyone is actually learning to play the guitar from this game. College Student was glad I said that. He and I have many conversations on violence and computer games. He contends computer games do NOT make kids more violent...not by themselves. I don't know...he makes some pretty compelling arguments, but I still think computer games, TV, all forms of media are at least desensitizing people to violence. But College Student says that playing a game like Halo, for example, doesn't simulate what it's like to shoot a real person any more than Guitar Hero simulates what it's like to play a real guitar.

Is he right? I don't know. I've never shot anyone...and neither has he. (In fact, when I did that Citizen's Police Academy class, we had a night where we got to hold a gun and we used the actual simulator the police use to train. Their simulator is VERY realistic. What you're seeing on the screen is life-sized. I squirmed a little as I watched my classmates get up and deal with situations involving traffic stops that went bad...but then the simulations changed to school shootings! I couldn't do it! Even though it wasn't real...it was just a simulation, I couldn't get up there and take my turn. Just watching those simulations got my adrenaline pumping...a couple of them even brought tears to my eyes. Right there in class. So no, I didn't want to get up there and hold a gun and go through the simulation. The school shooting simulations especially were just too REAL for me! But...I'm not a gamer.)

It does make me think about how kids have played through the years. My kids did not have toy guns to play with. They didn't even have squirt guns until someone gave Junior High Kid one at a birthday party when he turned six. But my brother had toy guns. And my parents both had very realistic looking toy guns when they were kids. Did anyone worry back then that allowing their kids to run around with toy guns and "shoot" at each other would make them more violent? Which is worse...shooting a 2-dimensional figure in a computer game by holding down a button or holding a toy gun in your hand and "shooting" it at your friend down the street?

I got a great e-mail from a kid last night. He wrote, "Please come to my school. I want to surprise my friend for his birthday." I wish I could...

A local woman and her four young children were killed early this morning. By their husband and father. (And he was found dead later on...he crashed their van and...died.) I'm a little bit freaked out about this and I probably have no right to be because I haven't even met this woman. But I was going to meet her. Next week. I have e-mails on my computer from her (she seemed so NICE...I can't believe I'm never going to meet her). I was going to join her book group. Well, I think I'll still probably join the book group, but I don't think I'll go next week. (Maybe in light of this, they won't even meet next week...I don't know.) I just don't feel right going when this will be my first meeting...the rest of the group is going to need to talk about what happened and well...I never knew her, so I'd feel a little voyeuristic being there.

This husband/father was in the midst of some pretty major legal problems right now, too, and had a trial coming up next month. But I'm not going to go into any of that because all I really know about it is what I've heard in the media, and this family has had enough pain.

You like to think these things don't happen in your community...or to people you know...but the truth is these things can happen anywhere. To anyone. Everyone has a breaking point...

I'm really sad to think that the only way he saw out of his problems was to take his wife and children with him...

Okay…part 2.

I have to say the ride inside a police car is actually quite comfortable. Nice seats...smooth ride. After the winter we’ve had there are a lot of potholes in town, but it feels a lot better to go over them in a police car than it does in my own car. It freaked me out a little to discover a rifle right behind my head in the one vehicle…I just didn’t expect to see it there.

Besides all the regular stuff you’d expect to see in a police car, there’s also a little screen in the dashboard that records the scene in front of the car. So if you’re ever stopped by a police officer, don’t try and claim the officer was really unreasonable and started beating on you or whatever because chances are the whole incident was recorded and they can go back and see exactly what happened. There’s also a computer in the car…the monitor sits on an arm right over the passenger seat (officers don’t have partners…at least not here in Coralville. Everyone goes alone…though there’s always a backup that comes around to make sure everything is okay when an officer stops someone).

The second officer who took me out was J. (I never caught his last name). I have to say both these officers were absolutely wonderful to me. It amazes me that they were willing to have people like me tag along with them on their job. If having me there was a pain in the butt (which, gosh, I can’t imagine it wouldn’t be!), neither of these guys ever let on…they were both so friendly and so willing to answer all my questions. (Besides all the general what’s-going-on-now questions I asked all night long, I had an opportunity to ask J. a couple questions about a situation in my Monkey Man sequel...)

Officer J. was assigned a different section of Coralville than Officer B. was (apparently they get to choose which section they’re going to cover each night), so I got to see different “hot spots.” (I talked about the “seedy” part of town the other day and a couple people said, “Coralville HAS seedy parts of town???” Well, that’s maybe a slight exaggeration…though there are blocks here and there that I wouldn’t want to walk around by myself at night…”hot spot” is probably a better term.) We cruised through an apartment complex that is known for having problems (in fact, they’d had a search warrant to search an apartment there earlier in the day), but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

The first incident I saw with Officer J. was another traffic stop. Another guy with a light out. Only this guy was in a little more trouble than the three guys Officer B. had stopped because this guy was also driving without insurance, which, if you’re interested, will cost you $380 in Iowa! (I also learned that driving without your seatbelt on will cost you $80 if you’re ticketed for it. I don’t remember all the other violations…Officer J. let me page through his book of citations/fines.) And then that guy drove away! (Still without insurance!) Officer J. told me he could’ve impounded the car, but he chose not to. He said they’ll let the guy get home tonight, but if he’s out driving around again tomorrow and gets stopped again, he could end up with another $380 ticket!

From there we answered a call at Old Country Buffet. An alarm was going off. I had to stay in the car for this one since they didn’t know for sure what was going on. 99% of these calls are false alarms, but you never know. There was a white van with Minnesota plates parked outside Old Country Buffet, so Officer J. ran the plates. The police aren't allowed to actually go inside a place of business when the alarm is going off anymore (after a well-publicized incident in Iowa City a few years ago where an unarmed guy was accidentally shot and killed)…not unless the owner invites them in. But they found out it was a cleaning guy who set off the alarm…everything was fine.

Next (hmm…it’s been a couple days now, so it’s possible I’m getting the order of some of these incidents mixed up) we got a call to go serve as back up for a “citizen encounter” in the Hu Hot parking lot. Which meant another officer was talking to someone over there…he hadn't actually pulled the guy over; he was talking to him...and something was going on over there. Nobody told me to stay in the car, so…I got out and followed Officer J.! Another officer was talking to a guy who looked an awful lot like my little brother (I knew it wasn’t my brother…my brother lives 5 hours away, but it freaked me out a little bit anyway). The guy who looked like my brother wasn’t especially argumentative or anything, but whatever he’d done, I could tell by the look on his face that he knew he was in trouble. He said, “Am I going to jail?” and the officer who'd been talking to him said yes. I couldn’t even look at the guy while he got handcuffed; I felt so embarrassed for him. (I can only imagine what it must FEEL like to get arrested!) He was escorted to the back of Officer J.’s car and we gave his girlfriend a ride to her car, which was in the Younker’s parking lot. I never did quite get how or why this guy was stopped (since it was a “citizen encounter"), but the problem was he was driving with a revoked license (and it was revoked as part of a DWI). That’s why he was arrested. And the girlfriend didn’t know…she said she never would’ve let him drive if she’d known. He would’ve saved himself a lot of trouble if he had let her drive.

We cruised the bar parking lots next. Officer J. wasn’t looking to catch a drunk coming out of the bar and getting in his car…he was mainly checking to see how many people were out drinking that night (thus how many people will be out driving later on)…and checking to make sure there aren’t any fights going on in the parking lot.

After that we heard over the radio there had been an incident in Cedar Rapids…some guy had gone into a Casey’s up there and displayed a weapon. He was believed to be heading south on 380, so we spent the next fifteen minutes sitting on a bridge on I-80…waiting to see if he came by. (Have you ever sat on a bridge on I-80 for a while? The bridge SHAKES every time a vehicle goes by…I thought about that bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis and hoped ours was in better shape…). We were looking for a green Taurus and we had a partial license plate (not that you could really see license plates on vehicles that whipped by at 75+ miles an hour). I was impressed that Officer J. could recognize make and color of the vehicles that went by…I sure couldn’t! If the guy did happen to come by, officers were not supposed to charge the guy with anything (I asked why not and Officer J. had no idea), and were to proceed with caution. I don’t know what would’ve happened if the guy had come by…would I have gotten to stay in the car or would I have been booted out right there on I-80? Fortunately, I didn’t have to find out…he never came by. In fact, there were at least three other officers in position ahead of us and they didn’t see him, either. Funny…if I’d been out driving around and seen a police car sitting on the bridge, I would’ve assumed he was sitting there trying to catch speeders…that’s what I always think when I see a police car sitting at the side of the road. I wonder how often they’re really doing something else???

While we sat there J. told me how “stop sticks” work. I’d kind of wondered about that…how do the police put out a stick out to puncture tires in one vehicle without getting an innocent person's tires at the same time? Apparently the officers know the bad guy is coming…they know which vehicle is his. And these stop sticks are attached to ropes, so when the vehicle approaches, the officer throws the stick out in front of it, then pulls it back before another vehicle comes by.

After this came the “drunken steak thief” incident. Officer J. decided the guy from Cedar Rapids wasn’t headed our way, so he pulled out and went down to the next exit to head back to Coralville. Before we got all the way back, the dispatcher called us to a theft at Hy-Vee. Officer J. actually seemed a little excited about this…he always works the night shift, so doesn’t handle many thefts. The dispatcher said some guy tried to walk out of Hy-Vee with some steaks…and he was believed to be intoxicated.

The guy wasn’t going anywhere, so Officer J. drove the posted speed to Hy-Vee. (Another officer went, too.) Oh. My. God. This guy (I'll call him "Jack") wasn’t just “intoxicated”…he was HAMMERED. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anybody that drunk before. His eyes were watery, red and droopy…his mouth sort of hung open and he had this blank look on his face. He was so unsteady he could hardly sit in the chair (they had him sitting right there at the entrance of the store rather than in a back room). The Hy-Vee manager explained that this guy had been holding a package of steak inside his coat and then he went up to a cashier and asked where the hair dye was. The cashier could see the steak, so he called the manager, who then called the police. They also found hair dye and deodorant in the guy’s pocket. The guy admitted to taking the steak and the hair dye (don't know why he needed hair dye...his hair was dark!), but he claimed the brand new deodorant was his. (I looked at him while the manager was saying all this...Was he ashamed? Did he feel bad? Did he think the Hy-Vee manager was just a jerk out to get him? Was he simply hungry? Did he not have enough to eat? Was that why he did it? Not likely...he was a pretty heavy-set guy. He didn't seem particularly ashamed, either...he just had this yeah-I-tried-to-steal-steak look on his face.)

One of the first things out of Jack’s mouth was, “my old lady’s coming in about ten minutes. She’s a lawyer.” (Maybe she's the one who needed the hair dye?) He must’ve repeated this about 25 times in the half an hour we were there…I don’t know if he really had an “old lady” and if he did whether she was really a lawyer, but she never showed up. (The officers told me later that “everybody says they’re married to a lawyer.”)

Officer J. asked Jack how much he’d had to drink. Jack said, “Not very much. Just a couple of beers.” (Later on he admitted to having had some vodka.) Officer J. asked Jack when he’d had those beers; Jack said, “Just before you got here.” (What? Were you sitting there with Hy-Vee manager having a cold one while you waited for the police???) But he refused the breathalyzer test…he said, “It don’t matter; I’m not driving.” Well…yeah, it did kind of matter…because even if he wasn’t driving, he was still publicly intoxicated. (Too bad he refused…I was really curious what his blood alcohol level was!) I tell you, people who drink a lot look a lot older than they really are...I would've guessed Jack was about 10 years older than me, but he was actually a year younger (I THINK) than me.

He kept saying that it didn’t matter what they did to him because he was going to be out in twelve hours anyway. Oh yeah. Jack knew how things worked (well, he thought he did anyway)…he’d just gotten out of jail pretty recently (he wasn’t real clear on just HOW recently he’d gotten out). One of the officers asked him what he’d done. He said, “I shot somebody.” The way he said it, so matter-of-factly, like it wasn’t a big deal, I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. The other officer asked him where he’d shot this guy and he said “on the ped mall.” (It turned out he had indeed shot someone on the ped mall a few years ago.)

The Hy-Vee manager did a “ban and bar” right then and there, which means basically the guy can’t ever set foot in another Hy-Vee again. The manager filled out the paperwork and Jack was supposed to sign it, but he couldn’t because he was handcuffed. So the manager read it to him and asked if he understood. It took him a while, but he eventually said he understood. I kind of doubted he did…I wonder if he remembers anything that happened that night?

I also got to see J. give Jack the Miranda Warning. (They don’t “read” it…they just say it.) Again, even though Jack said he understood those rights, I don’t know if he really did. He was pretty drunk. (I had to keep turning away because I wanted to laugh…and I knew I shouldn’t laugh because nothing that was going on was really very funny. It was SAD. But the things he said and the way he said them just cracked me up.)

Poor Jack also had a hard time keeping his pants up. And he couldn’t pull them back up himself because he was handcuffed. It didn’t occur to him to ask who I was until we were heading back to the police car. J. told him I worked with him. (Ha! I liked that!) Then his pants fell all the way down (like around-his-ankles down) and he said, “Sorry, Girl” to me. (This was another one of those times I almost burst out laughing.)

We took him back to the police station and they put him in a room with two desks that had handcuffs and ankle cuffs attached to them. They left him there while they went to run his record. Apparently if he’s been in trouble for these same things before, it’ll be worse for him. And I’m guessing he had been…J. had an awful lot to read through on this guy. So they had to do all this paperwork here at the station before taking him to the jail.

While they were doing the paperwork, my cell phone rang. It was uh…two o’clock in the morning. (I’d told my husband I’d be home around midnight, so he was getting worried.) I had no idea it was that late! I kind of wanted to see this whole thing through with Jack…I wanted to go along and see what happens when they take someone to jail, but I had someplace to be Saturday morning, so I decided I’d better head home.

That was my night! If I hadn’t had someplace to be Saturday morning, I think I would’ve kept going all night long…at least until J. actually kicked me out of his car and told me to go home. It was a really interesting night….really interesting to put myself in somebody else’s shoes for a while. And I’m really grateful to the Coralville Police Station for giving me this opportunity.

I had the most interesting night last night. As part of this Citizen’s Police Academy class I’ve been taking, I got to do a ride along with a police officer. (A lot of people in my class don’t take advantage of that opportunity, but it seems to me that’s where you really find out what police work is all about.) My ride along was last night.

I specifically requested a ride along with the K-9 officer (Officer B.). Before we went out on the street, Officer B. was kind enough to take me downstairs and give me a brief demonstration of how Ivan (the dog) does his thing. This dog LIVES to find the ball! That’s what he thinks he’s doing when he’s given the command to search; he thinks he’s looking for the ball. Officer B. actually fakes a throw, then gives the command (in Czech) to search…and Ivan goes at it. He doesn’t just find drugs; he can find things (like money) that have touched drugs. Officer B. showed me a pair of cotton balls that had been in with some marijuana for a while. He put the cotton balls in an empty jar and hid the jar…the dog found it!

I also got to see what 28 grams of cocaine, methamphetamine, ecstacy and marijuana looks like and smells like.

After that, we went out on the street. It was about eight o’clock at night…the Friday before spring break in a small college town. I figured we’d spend the next four hours cruising up and down the strip, stopping an occasional speeder, maybe catching an OWI, but for the most part Officer B. would just tell me interesting stories all night because we couldn’t possibly be all that busy. This was Coralville, after all…not much happens in Coralville.

Boy did I underestimate what police officers do!

As we were walking out to the car, Officer B. was stopped by three or four officers from Muscatine. They were involved in a homicide trial there…and the trial was going on NOW. They were after some witness whom they had reason to believe was in Coralville. They had an address and wanted to go bring him in, but they needed Coralville officers to go with them. (Apparently they’d gone after this guy before and he’d jumped out a two-story window and escaped.) So that was the first thing…we went to the address the other officers had for this guy. Along the way Officer B. informed me that if something really bad went down anytime tonight (i.e. if there was a big shoot-out of something), I would be dropped off wherever we were; he would not take me into a situation like that. I was also told that if at any time I ever felt uncomfortable with what was happening to let him know and he’d take me back to the station. I said I was fine and we continued on to kind of a seedy part of Coralville. I was told to wait in the car (with the dog…)…so I watched as one guy went to the front of the building, another guy went around back, and four guys went inside. This whole thing was pretty anticlimactic because the guy didn’t live there after all.

So then we started driving around. I learned where all the “hot spots” are in Coralville. We cruised through a motel parking lot that tends to have some problems. Officer B. checked plates. Plates that were from Johnson County were “suspicious” because why would a local person be staying in a motel? (I thought of my friend D. whose family stayed at a local hotel for two nights just last week because her kitchen is being redone and the spray they used was toxic…though they certainly didn’t stay at THAT motel!) I also learned that sometimes people who have something to hide will take the front plate off their vehicle and back into a parking stall in a motel like this...which is kind of stupid because when Officer B. sees a vehicle like that, he automatically checks it. It's not that hard to get out of the vehicle and walk around to the other side to get the plate.

There wasn't much going on at the motel right then (though a call came in from that same motel a little while later...another officer took it), we got back on the strip. But we didn't get very far because Officer B. spotted a car driving around this car dealership up ahead. The dealership was closed, so that was suspicious. And there’s been some vandalism in there recently, so he wanted to check it out. But the car left right away as soon as we pulled in.

Then we got a call for a “sexual harassment charge.” I was allowed to go up to the house and listen as Officer B. talked to the people this time. A neighbor directed us to the right house…the person who called the police claimed she’d bought beer for this guy down the street earlier that morning and he told her to…hmm, this is a family blog, so I better not come right out and say what he wanted her to do to him. This guy supposedly also called and harassed the lady who'd called the police...she said she still had his number on her caller ID. So Officer B. explained that he could go down and tell that guy to leave her alone, but he really couldn’t do anything else unless the other guy actually posed more of a threat. So we went down to the other house to talk to the guy. (Some lady who lived halfway between the two obviously knew what was going on...she'd directed us to the lady's house first and then she directed us to the guy.) The guy said yes, that lady had bought him some beer that morning, but he swore he did not tell her to [fill in the blank]. Nor did he call her tonight. Officer B. told him to “do him a favor” and just not talk to the woman anymore tonight. He said okay and we were on our way.

As we rolled slowly down the street (Officer B. was logging this visit) we heard a loud POP! I said, “Uh…was that a gun shot?” He said, “I don’t know.” (Hey, if he didn’t know, who did???) An older lady came out of her house a few houses up, so we pulled over and Officer B. asked her if she’d just heard a noise. She said yes. He asked her what it sounded like. She said, “it sounded like a gun shot.” (And I’m wondering if I’m about to get dumped out of the car…and thinking I don’t really want to be dumped out HERE…) But we cruised up and down the next couple of blocks and didn’t see anything.

So then there was a traffic stop…some guy was driving without his headlights on. I learned that if you’re driving around town at night and you have a light out, YOU WILL BE STOPPED! (In fact, based on my experience last night, it seems to me you’re more likely to be stopped for having a light out than you are to be stopped for speeding…unless you’re REALLY speeding…in fact, neither of the officers I rode with (I ended up riding with two different officers last night) had the radar on much at all. Apparently, they do a “visual check” of speed first…Officer B. can tell how fast you’re going just by looking at you. If he thinks you’re going too fast, THEN he’ll turn on the radar. And THEN he’ll stop you. But no one was stopped for speeding while I was out last night.)

After that traffic stop, we went after another guy without lights (BTW, they don’t give tickets for not having your lights on…they take your license and registration back to their vehicle and run your plates and your license through the computer. If everything comes out okay, they send you on your way). As we were driving along First Avenue Officer B. actually seemed surprised that these two cars in front of us wouldn’t get out of the way. They were driving side by side and we couldn’t get by. I was surprised HE was surprised…after all, we were in a POLICE CAR! We didn't have lights/sirens on, so I wouldn't have expected either of those vehicles to move. They're not going to go faster than 25 mph when a police car is behind them.

So anyway, we followed the vehicle we were actually after onto the freeway, but by then the driver realized he didn't have lights on and turned them on. So we turned around at the next exit and headed back to town. On the way back, we saw a vehicle on the other side of the freeway that looked like it was sitting perpendicular to traffic. Not good. Nothing had come through the radio yet about an accident, so it had obviously just happened. (In fact, we found out that when the woman who had been involved in the accident called 911, the dispatcher asked the woman if she could see a police car...she knew we were in the area.) So Officer B. turned on the lights and sirens and we got to go through a couple of red lights so we could quickly get to the accident scene. I get a little freaked out about car accidents, so I didn’t get out of the car for this one. I could see that everyone was okay, though, so that was good. Officer B. wanted to get everyone off the freeway, so he asked them to drive to the next exit and go down to the church on Foster Road (which is actually in Iowa City) and he’d write everything up there. What happened was the woman was headed down the on-ramp first and she slowed down for some reason, so the guy behind her had two choices: rear end her or go around her and hope he’d make it. Unfortunately, he ended up over-correcting and the two vehicles collided head-on. It’s not the responsibility of the police to determine fault (that’s up to the insurance companies)…all they do is determine whether a citation will be issued. Officer B. couldn’t say right then whether one would be issued or not (he’d have to think about it), but he thought one would probably be issued to the guy for failure to maintain control. Even though the woman’s car was drivable, Officer B. suggested she might want to have it towed anyway because her airbag hadn't deployed. She'd just been in a head-on collision, so there was a possibility the airbag would randomly deploy on her way home (she was driving all the way back to Quad Cities that night).

The next incident was the really exciting one. We stopped yet another vehicle because their headlights weren’t on. I sat in the car and watched as Officer B. S-L-O-W-L-Y pulled a rifle out of the backseat and set it on the top of the car. Then he S-L-O-W-L-Y pulled a hand gun out. Oh. My. God. There were three people in that vehicle in front of us…and there was only police officer. What if those three people in that car up there all got out at the same time and tried to get their guns? Before Officer B. brought them back to the police car before that happened. He set them on the hood of HIS car and got in with me (leaving the guns still sitting on the hood). I said, “A-a-are those real?” He said, “No. They’re Airsoft guns.” And then he said, “This is an example of really bad police work.”

Excuse me???

He said he should have noticed those guns sitting on the back seat right away…and if he had noticed, things would have gone down very differently. He said that if he had noticed them, he would’ve pulled his gun and pointed it at those kids (yes, they were just kids! College Student’s age…or maybe younger.). He would’ve called for backup and held the gun on those kids until backup arrived (which likely wouldn’t have been long). He would have done nothing until backup arrived…but if one of those kids had reached for one of those guns while he was standing there, he would’ve shot the kid!

I was stunned. All I could think about was my College Student, who doesn’t actually own an Airsoft gun, but he has gotten together with some friends (out in the country) to play Airsoft. That could’ve been my quiet, well-mannered college student in that car! (In fact, when I heard they were Airsoft guns, I sat up a little straighter and tried to see those kids to see if I knew them. I didn’t.)

I said, “But they’re not real. And those kids would probably tell you they’re not real right away.” He said it wouldn’t matter…in Chicago they’ve had problems with “bad guys” painting the tips of real guns orange (I didn’t know that Airsoft guns have orange tips…) and then shooting police officers! Even the police can't tell an Airsoft gun from a real gun unless they actually hold it (Officer B. said these guns were too light to be real...but College Student tells me there are Airsoft guns that are much heavier...almost as heavy as real guns). So…if the police see a gun in your car, even if it has an orange tip, they're going to assume it’s a real gun to start with. And they're going to proceed accordingly.

But like I said, Officer B. didn’t see the guns right away. He asked the kids what they’d been doing and they said they’d been out playing Airsoft…and THAT’S when he saw the guns. (Yeah, he took the time to explain all this to me while those poor kids sweated it out in the vehicle in front of us…not knowing what was going to happen to them.) So he ran the plates and the driver’s license…everything came out fine, so he returned the driver’s license and the guns. He had the kids move the guns to the trunk and then sent them on their way. He also had to alert the sergeant to what had happened since “guns” had been involved.

I also got a lesson in racial profiling. We pulled up behind a car in a left turn lane. Officer B. said, “I think I recognize that vehicle in front of us. I think I’ve stopped it before.” So while we were sitting there, he ran the plates. Then we followed that car for a while. He said to me, “So what race is the driver of that vehicle in front of me?” I just stared at him. First of all, it was dark…I had no idea what race he was. (I couldn’t even tell for sure if the driver was a he or a she from behind, much less what race he or she was!) Second, what difference did it make??? He got a little closer to the vehicle (as close as he really dared) and said, “now can you tell what race he is?” I said “No, it’s too dark.” That was his point! We hear so much about police stopping someone based on race, but the reality it at night, you really can’t tell what race the driver of a vehicle is. (BTW, the plates came out clean)

It was about 10:30 now and Officer B. was assigned to watch over some art work at an art show for the rest of the night. He’d told me this ahead of time…but he also told me that I was perfectly welcome to ride with somebody else when he had to go do that if I wanted to. Originally, I was planning to just call it a night when he was done, but the evening had been so interesting that I decided to go another couple hours with another guy. I’ll write about that in a second post. (I will tell you right now, though, that I got to see two arrests with the second guy…and neither of them were for DWI or PAULA!)

So...this was all in just two and a half hours out on the street...and I never did get to hear any stories...

I finally got to go see my dad this week. I had plans to go several times over the last month and then changed my mind because of the weather. (It's been a really bad winter!) But I finally got there this week...and I brought my laptop so we could start working on his memoirs. I turned the computer on and said, "Okay, Dad. Start talking." And he did.

He'd get tired from time to time...and he'd stop because he "felt fuzzy." But in that one afternoon I got ten single-spaced pages down. We didn't cover a whole lot...we covered several "storms of the century" he'd lived through and the time he served in the public health service. That was it. Those were the things he wanted to tell me about first.

Most of what he talked about I'd heard before...but I didn't know he'd been at Kennedy's inauguration (that was when he was in the public health service in Washington, D.C. -- I always thought it was incredibly unfair that my parents left Washington, D.C. four years before I was born...I could have grown up THERE, which would've been way more exciting than the small farm town where I did grow up). He and my mom and my grandparents sat in the second row, right in front of the podium Kennedy spoke from. (And one of those "storms of the century" occurred the day before the inauguration.) I also learned that my dad packed the medical bags for the emergency doctors who were stationed at each of the inaugural balls that night. Who knew?

I really enjoyed copying down what he said. And not just because he's my dad...I think I would enjoy doing this for anyone. EVERYONE has stories. And I know there are a variety of organizations out there that help people record their stories.

So...I wonder how much of my dad's story I'm going to be able to get down before he is no longer with us? I really, really wish I'd started this years ago!

I am so thankful for my writing friends! I have one friend in particular...I've only met her in person twice, but we've known each other online for about eighteen years. We go back to the days of FIDO net (anybody remember that?). She's the one I turn to when I just need to talk it out. She's got a real gift for asking me just the right questions about my WIP and then spitting back what I just said in a different form so I can see how my story does (or does not) fit together. She'll brainstorm with me, too.

We've been e-mailing back and forth about my Monkey Man sequel for the last three days. Yesterday I took all those e-mails and put them in one long document (like that outline I made last weekend) so I could see the entire progression of our conversation. TWENTY PAGES SINGLE SPACED!!! That's how long the document is. (Not many people will write single-spaced pages of conversation with you about YOUR book. I hope she knows how much I appreciate that!)

Anyway...I started the week feeling like I was sort of on auto-pilot. I was doing the book the way my editor wanted me to do it, without really understanding WHY she wanted it this way, and without even believing it was the right way to do it.

But things have changed. I haven't actually changed the story all that much (just a few minor tweaks here and there...and, well...I also changed the beginning again...), but I have changed how I look at it. I see how it fits together now. And I'm liking this version.

I also talked to my editor this week. Now that I see how this book fits together, I also see how much more I have to do on it. And I just don't know that I can do it by the end of March. So I was wondering whether the world would come to an end if we pushed this book back a season. Apparently the world WILL come to an end if we push it back because they're also releasing a paperback version of Do You Know the Monkey Man at the same time, so that would mean pushing back TWO books, not just one. But my editor was very nice...she told me to just keep working and not worry about the deadline. (It also helped to hear that SHE'S missed deadlines...both as an editor AND an author...I'm so tightly wound sometimes that just the IDEA I might miss a deadline has stressed me out to the point that it's been difficult to work...which, of course, makes it more likely that I WILL miss the deadline.) She said that at this point, she'd rather have a late first draft than push the book back. She also says that she finds that authors who are making big changes actually write faster and better, as the missing puzzle pieces are in place. We'll see if that's true...

So, I'm trying not to worry about the deadline and just keep making progress on the book. Back to it...

I'm not blogging as much these days...I'm not doing much of anything these days except 1) shoveling snow and 2) working on my Monkey Man sequel...which, more often than not, involves me staring at my monitor rather than me typing actual words. This is truly the hardest book I've ever written. And no, I don't say that about every book I write. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever said that before.

The book is due "in March." So I e-mailed my editor last week and asked whether "in March" meant the BEGINNING of March or the END of March...I also told her that if it was the beginning of March, we were going to have a problem; and if it was the end of March we might still have a problem. (The story is coming, but it's coming very, very slowly.) Fortunately, she said the end of March would be fine...so I feel like I bought myself an extra couple of weeks. But I'm still not sure I'll be done the end of March, either. I hope so...school visits start up again in April and I'd sure like to be done by then. Plus I've got a couple other projects to work on once I finish this one...

Yesterday I sat in the Java House and looked over what I'd already done...I was a little freaked out to discover I have almost 33,000 words! I can't have 33,000 words on this book because I'm only about halfway through it! This CAN'T be a 66,000-word book! The first one was only 44,000 words, which is probably about what my editor is expecting this time around, too. (Actually, she may be hoping for less because she probably realizes I tend to ADD words in the revision process (sometimes LOTS of words!); I almost never subtract words...)

I need focus. I need structure. Obviously some of these scenes have to go...but which ones? I have no idea. So I made a bulleted list of all my scenes (black for the scenes I'd already written, red for the ones I have yet to write), which served two purposes: 1) I felt like I was actually DOING SOMETHING because my fingers were moving and words were appearing on my screen, and 2) When I got home, I printed out my list of scenes and taped all the pages together (proof that I actually did something at the coffee shop!), and now I can lay it all out on the floor and see the flow of my story. It's not the same if my list of scenes is on separate sheets of paper that I have to turn or flip...it really helps to lay it all out on the floor in one long sheet so I can start at the top and work my way down scene by scene. It's much easier to see which scenes aren't advancing my story when I'm looking at them in bullet-list form rather than rereading paragraphs I slaved over.

Like I said, it's coming, but it's coming S-L-O-W-L-Y. It's not just a matter of figuring out what happens next...or figuring out how T.J. changes scene by scene...what's hard about this book is the EMOTION. Figuring out where T.J. is emotionally scene-by-scene...and getting that emotion RIGHT, that's the real challenge of this book.

A week ago I got a message on my answering machine from the Iowa SCBWI Regional Advisor. She said she'd called the Peachtree office to see if they had an editor (preferably one who did novels) who might be willing to come to our conference, but she couldn't remember who my editor was...she said I didn't need to call her back; she was mainly just giving me a heads up in case I heard anything from Peachtree.

I certainly didn't expect to hear anything from Peachtree...I wasn't the one who'd called the office. I didn't expect the invitation to get to MY editor since my editor doesn't actually work in the office. And I certainly didn't think the R.A. was talking about THIS conference (the one in APRIL!); I figured she was planning ahead for the next one, whenever that was going to be.

Wrong. Wrong. And wrong again.

The R.A. was indeed talking about this next conference...the one in April. The invitation DID make it to my editor...she's coming! AND...she and I are going to do a session on the author-editor relationship together! Which is exciting in a terrifying sort of way (or would that be terrifying in an exciting sort of way?) I suggested to my editor that we just sort of skip the whole get-up-in-front-of-the-audience thing and go share a bottle of wine instead (I know, I know...I'm a BAD toastmaster for even thinking such a thing, much less actually suggesting it). At least I've met her before (twice, as a matter of fact), so I don't have to stress about the whole what's-she-going-to-be-like-in-person thing...I only have to stress about the actual presentation (why is it I have no problem at all with a school visit...but getting up in front grown-ups still scares me? Must have something to do with my mental age...) Seriously though, I'm sure it'll be fun. Author-editor combo presentations always used to be my favorite presentations to listen to...now I actually get to do one.

But if I don't have this Monkey Man sequel done by then, things are going to be VERY uncomfortable for one of us that weekend.

So...that picture book that I had to cut 400 words out of last fall? It made it through the acquisitions committee...Pelican Press is offering me a contract on it. That'll be my second book with them...and we're all hoping that the illustrator who did my first book with them is available and interested in doing this one. That way the two books will have a similar look/feel. (Honestly, I think the reason the first one is doing so well has more to do with the ILLUSTRATOR than me...I sure hope she says yes!)

Some Lego enthusiasts (including my son) are into building "Vignettes." A Vignette is a "scene" built with Lego pieces on an 8-stud by 8-stud base (which is VERY small). There are newsgroups and blogs on this...and several places to post your creations online.

My son decided to create a couple of vignettes of scenes from my books.

Here are two from Trading Places with Tank Talbott...


(One of the swimming scenes)


(One of the dance scenes)

The one he did for The Truth About Truman School was actually a little more work than those other two. And I'm not sure if it counts as a "true vignette" or not since it's built on an 8-stud by 32-stud base...but I like it!



(This is the tree house scene.)

I have all of these sitting on my desk right now...

I really should be WRITING instead of blogging (especially because I haven't actually done my 5 pages yet today...and Junior High Kid has a four-day weekend...and I really need to get back up to northwestern Iowa to visit my dad again...and I really need to get my website for Truth About Truman School up and running...so I'm not seeing huge chunks of writing time in the near future)...but the nice U.P.S. man came to my door with a big box late yesterday afternoon.

I thought he was bringing me author copies of this:


I THINK it's okay to publicly admit I wrote that...I mean, if you did much research on Gertrude Chandler Warner, you'd discover she's been dead more than 20 years. Clearly SOMEBODY else is writing these books. (Several somebodies, actually.)

I had a lot of fun writing this book because it involves geocaching! I started to say this was my favorite of all my Boxcar books, but I really liked the Corn Maze one, too...and the yo-yo one...and the game store one...so maybe I don't really have a favorite?

And yes, the U.P.S. man DID bring me copies of The Box that Watch Found, but he also brought me copies of this:



I couldn't believe it! The official pub. date isn't until early April.

The first thing I did was grabbed a copy to take down to my dear friend down the street. And of course she wasn't home, so I had to leave it in her mailbox. But she still got it last night. No offense to any family member who may be reading this, but I have to say it's more fun dedicating a book to a friend than a family member...you get a little more of a reaction out of the friend! (Probably because the family members expect to get a book dedicated to them now and then, so it's old hat. But friends don't expect it.)

Now I really have to get serious about getting this website up!