I recently met my new Delacorte/Random House publicist. She’s coming on board just as the promotional planning for BIG MOUTH is kicking in, and I was excited to propose some ideas to her. Because those ideas were only in their abstract infancy, I knew I had to be articulate and clear if she was to know what the heck I was talking about. I needed her input to develop them further. Because Random House is in New York and I’m in San Diego, I’d arranged to meet her over the phone in a conference call with my previous publicist. I’d also arranged for Grandma S. to babysit the boys during the call. I had all my bases covered. This work/motherhood juggle, it’s a piece of cake. Or so I thought. Read More…
I’ve changed in so many ways since my triplets were born, but few have been so basic and life altering as the change in how I now look at the world. Today I was flipping through a book and spotted a photo I’d seen countless times before. Dorothea Lange’s famous picture of a mother and her two children, migrants from Deadwood, South Dakota, victims of the American Dust Bowl. The image had always given me pause, but today was different. Read More…
I wrote my second novel, BIG MOUTH, in five months, during my triplets’ naps. The boys were just 12 – 17 months old in that period, and the darlings obliged my budding writing career by sticking to two naps a day, lasting a minimum of 1.5 hours each. Then the selfish little critters dropped their second nap and my writing output went in the dumper. Read More…
Being a writer hurts. In my efforts to finish Teen Novel #3, my “momoir,” my website revamp, my promo materials, and get my freelance editing caught up while raising my triplets as a work-at-home mom, I’ve given up sleep. And that’s barely an exaggeration. Take last night, for example: I got just four hours of shut-eye, on the generous side. This morning my body hurts. Really, physically hurts. I think I may have a head cold, too, but that’s beside the point—which is that I’m suffering from sustained sleep deprivation. Again. Read More…
I love words. The sound of them, the way they make my mouth twist and my tongue roll, the way I can simply change the stress on a word to give it the exact opposite meaning. Few things are more tantalizing to me than stringing together a new combination of words to create a thought that’s never been uttered before, at least not in quite that way, and which would never have been uttered had I not existed. It makes me heady just to mull that power. Words are like a drug—I’m totally addicted.
And now my 2.5-year-old triplets are hooked, too. Yes! Read More…
Hot diggity dog! A friend of mine just reported the third Wal-Mart sighting of HONK IFYOU HATE ME. Amazing. It’s still so incredibly strange to know that a book with my name on the cover sits on venerable bookstore shelves, but in Wal-Mart, too? Gosh. From my decade as an editor at Harcourt, I know that this retail-opolis doesn’t pick up many YA titles, so getting placement there when your book isn’t a Harry Potter or a Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is mind-blowing. Not that I’ve actually seen Honk there. My Wal-Mart doesn’t stock it. And believe me, I’ve looked.
Since the first reported Wal-Mart sighting of Honk If You Hate Me one week after the book’s release, I’ve checked my Wal-Mart every few days. You’d think I was stalking Sasquatch. Read More…
Always leave a table cleaner than you found it . . .
a daily constitutional is the cornerstone of a healthy lifestyle . . .
a little dirt under the nails is a good thing . . .
take care of your toys, and they’ll take care of you . . .
and even on the busiest days, there’s always time for a good book.
