Cottage Days

My, my, I've been negligent. Which is one of the reasons I'd hesitated to start a blog in the first place. I'm always hectic, and even though my head is usually buzzing with a million things, I don't always know what to post.

So I'll just report on life as it stands. I'm on summer vacation in the hills of northern Dutchess county New York! I'm a professor, so don't hate me, but I'm off until late August.

But I'm trying to write, write, write. Before that I'd been query, query, query-ing. And got an impressive batch of responses, most of which are still out for review. But the best part was that two agents wanted to TALK and suggested that I do a major revision and were willing to give me some feedback. I'm not going to comment on either agents, just that no promises were made. But for me, the fact that two agents bothered to fit time to talk into their crazed schedules and discuss my book was AMAZING.

And the ideas were awesome.

So that's what I am doing this summer. Not revising. Rewriting. My new WIP is on hold and the picture book I won a grant to illustrate and write is percolating, too.

About the picture book: I'm very excited, but terrified, too. I wish some kind soul would step in, siphon the visual ideas out of my brain and put nice childlike words to them so I can start drawing. I love picture books. I love the idea of illustrating them. Writing one scares the heck out of me.

Any ideas, crowd?