Deborah Halverson's Blog

Does anyone else think five-years-old is too young to elope? I do. My firstborn son does not, and neither does his new “wife,” a five-year-old girl who happens to be a triplet herself. Now, I do appreciate that he chose for a mate someone who can relate to his own life experience. That’s a very mature move. But it’s not so mature to keep the relationship secret from both sets of parents until after vows are exchanged. That’s not right, and I’m not afraid to say so.

We parents only found out about the marriage when my son casually mentioned it to me as I strapped him into his car seat after a quick visit to The Amazing Trips’ house. He told me he’d married one of the Amazing girls when I and her parents were in another room Read More…

Dear Misters Gee, Collins, and De Lorean—

I have one word for you. Well, actually, I have many words for you, being that I’m a writer and not really capable of stopping at just one word, but I do understand how to start with a single world, and the single word I’m starting with now is a good’un: Thanks. Read More…

I’ve got a mystery niggling at me, and I fear I have no hope of solving it. It all began with butterflies.

Last Friday I told my triplet boys we’d be going to the San Diego Wild Animal Park’s famous annual butterfly exhibit and then offered each boy a piece of gum to chew for the 50-minute drive there. Well, you would have thought it was December 25th. My sons grabbed the gum, leaped into the van, and strapped themselves in. “Huwway up, Mommy!” chew, chew, chew, chew, chew, chew, chew…

Sometimes five-year-olds are so easy.

Then again, sometimes they’re not. Exhibit #1,002: the bubblegum smooshed in my son’s neck hairs when we arrived at the Wild Animal Park. Read More…

Twenty years ago, when my husband and I were first dating, that tall, charming new boyfriend of mine led me down an alley, extracted a wad of chewed-up gum from his mouth, then stuck the gum to the brick wall in the shape of a heart with the letters “D” and “M” on either side. I remember standing back to admire his creative expression of love and thinking, Yes, he’s The One.

The One to go to jail for vandalizing the side of a building!

Bubblegum Alley is a tourist landmark in downtown San Luis Obispo, California, where my husband attended college years ago and where he took our sons last week as the endpoint for their boys-only “Father-Sons Spring Break Road Trip.” For our three five-year-olds, their legalized vandalizing in Bubblegum Alley came in second only to Read More…

To celebrate the one-month anniversary of Dear-Editor.com, I’m giving away a free Substantive Edit of one Young Adult or Middle Grade fiction manuscript.  To enter more than once, spread the word! Deadline: April 14, 2010. Enter & rules at www.Dear-Editor.com.

Interviews are such fun to do! This time, SellingBooks.com let me ponder-out-loud my passion for writing, the welcome challenges of editing, the joy of Dear-Editor.com, and why half of females aged 18 – 25 want to be run over by a truck. Check it out here!

I have crawled under 4 beds and 3 tables, looked behind 6 bookcases and opened 12 cabinets, extracted 3 dust bunnies from my hair and pulled 2 couches, 2 dressers, and 2 nightstands away from the wall. Still, just 39 library books found. 1 remains M.I.A.

After 2 solid minutes interrogating my 5-year-old trio, zero new clues.

Why does that last library book ALWAYS hide?

Want to know a sure way to ruin Easter? Undercook the Easter eggs.

Yeah. So now you know how our morning egg hunt went.

To save the day, we coaxed our three crying egg hunters out to the van, loaded them up, then drove them to the local lake. There, they tried out their new insect-catching nets. Talk about a mood change! We all had a wonderful time, and the boys really got the hang of swooping insects from mid-air and then flicking their wrists to flip the nets over, trapping the little fliers. We now have an insect house full of Damsel Flies, and little boys who are smiling now instead of sulking. Saved by the nets! Read More…

I had the pleasure of being interviewed for the new writing blog Writers’ Waiting Room. The focus of interview was the creation of Dear-Editor.com, my writers’ advice website. The interview, conducted by the contagiously optimistic Tami Casias, was posted on March 13, and it was fun to do. Writers’ Waiting Room was launched on the premise that all writers are waiting for something—the next idea, an agent, a publishing contract or the type of quiet that happens when the kids go to bed. I can certainly relate to that! Tami interviews authors to get their take on living a writer’s life—and of course, to find out what lurks on their waiting lists.