Even though I haven't worn a Vroman's Bookstore apron in more than seven years, I still think of myself as an indie bookseller.  I can't help but make recommendations to fellow bookstore browsers (Jo Knowles, at least one copy of Pearl sold at Bear Pond Books recently as a result), I tend to re-alphabetize shelves as I shop, and I still read Shelf ( Read more... )

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I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big successes.  I am for those tiny, invisible loving human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which, if given time, will rend the hardest monuments of human ( Read more... )

Most of you already know this, but I can't help announce it anyway.  My next novel, Hound Dog True, will be out in September.  
Want to see the cover?  Yeah, you know you do.

I want to show it to you, too.  But Livejournal seems cranky today.  You can click here and see it -- and clicking will take you to my much-less-cranky wordpress blog, too. ( ( Read more... )

On Sunday, I gave a workshop at the New England SCBWI conference and promised the folks who attended that my power point presentation would be available on my blog.  I can't seem to post it here on livejournal, but here's a link to a spot where you can access it:

Sentence Powerpoint

The workshop was fabulous, by the way -- because of the ( Read more... )

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January 17, 2011
I have a teapot that was my grandmother’s. It isn’t fancy, but it was hers and I remember using it to drink tea with her. I love it and used to use it, but now that I don’t have a safe space away from kids, I’m always afraid it will be bumped and broken. I didn’t want it to be just a decoration.


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January 11, 2011
This week, the Vermont College of Fine Arts is in residency here in Montpelier - which means that every evening there are readings by faculty which are free and open to the public. If you click on this link, you’ll go to a schedule of those readings - which include, by the way, one by newly-minted Newbery honoree Rita Williams- ( Read more... )

January 7, 2011
In my last post, I mentioned using David Allen’s Getting Things Done as a way to gain control over the crazy number of tasks and projects that were cycling through my brain. The idea is that when you capture all those things - on paper or in a calendar or a PDA or whatever - and you create a system for reviewing them and taking the ( Read more... )

The call for applications just went out for Vermont Artists Week at the Vermont Studio Center. I went last year and it was an incredibly energizing, invigorating, and productive time for me. If you live in Vermont, I encourage you to click here and check it out.