A Crooked Kind of Perfect

I finished this middle grade novel by Linda Urban today and just loved it. It's such an interesting, unusual story of a girl who wants to be a classical pianist, but winds up with an organ instead, thanks to her eccentric, agoraphobic father. Every word felt true to me... it made me both laugh and cry, my favorite kind of book.

Lay vs. laid

I have a very concise and simple explanation of this on my website now. But I happened to notice this at the bottom of an AP news article today:

(This version CORRECTS to `lay' from 'laid' in graf 2. )
It shows what a common mistake is it to use "laid" when someone actually means "lay."

Wee Ones story

Here's the link to my story in this month's issue: http://www.weeonesmag.com/weeones/feature3.html

The check's in the mail!

I opened the mailbox today and received a nice surprise-- a check from Wee Ones magazine for a story that's being published in their May edition. The story is called "What's in a Name," and I wrote it more than two years ago. I'll post the link to it when the new edition is up.

What a great week!

I haven't had this productive of a week in a long time, at least when it comes to my writing. How wonderful to be relatively free of outside commitments for a change! I did interviews for a "Gallant Kids" feature for Highlights and wrote the article today, I wrote another Highlights non-fiction article based on an interview I did a year ago, and I finished tweaking a humorous picture book on the same topic. A great week... yay!

Copyediting for Stories for Children magazine,

For the next couple of months, I'm helping Stories for Children online magazine with copyediting, until they find someone who can do the job longterm. It was a lot of fun proofreading the different stories and articles this morning. There are so many talented children's writers! And SFC is an excellent online magazine for children, as well as a great market for writers. Here's a link to their site: www.storiesforchildren.tripod.com.
One error I noticed in two separate stories, misusing the word "laid" for "lay." I'll try to clear up the confusion in my website's "Writing Tip of the Month." The site is www.secondsetofeyes.com.

"My Beautiful Mommy"

This is a link to a self-published book that Newsweek is giving a lot of attention to: My Beautiful Mommy. It's written by a plastic surgeon for kids whose moms who are getting boob jobs and tummy tucks. My own tummy is feeling pretty nauseated right now ... As Editorial Anonymous says, the book makes you feel like sparkly pink spiders are crawling on your skin.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/132536