AllieCat and P.R. stuff

I finally finished my author questionnair for FLUX. It's a relief to send that off this morning. Much change and update since Jake Riley came out.

Sharron McElmeel has wonderful reference books on kids' and teens' books. Worth checking out:
(Plus, she does P.R. for authors, so when Chasing AllieCat comes out, she'll help me out!)
She's also a delightful human being!

www.mcelmeel.com

www.mcbookwords.com

Faith Healer at the Guthrie

Saw Faith Healer at the Guthrie last week. Not the most entertaining play I've ever seen, but one of the most thought-provoking. It's haunted me ever since.

I expected it to be a play about hypocrisy and religious fervor gone awry. Instead, it was the story of a trio of dysfunctional people striving to survive, baffled by the occasional inexplicable mysticism that sometimes descended on their "Faith Healer" meetings, and struggling to love each other without losing their own lives. Each of the three main characters--the Faith Healer, Frank Hardy, his wife Grace, and his manager Teddy--gives a monologue that relates his or her own version of the same story, giving us pieces of the whole that come together only at the end as we understand their shared tragedy. Joe Dowling himself plays Frank Hardy in an impressive, heart-rending performance of this script by Irish playwright Brian Friel.

It's SADIE!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B16IsQcCAc0&feature=related

Youtube videos that match the girls in Chasing AllieCat! This looks like Sadie, if her hair were brown...

A Room of One's Own

A link (Thank you, Russell) to Laurie Halse Anderson's youtube from her blog.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxNkZzKmJl4&feature=player_embedded

I have a built-in room of my own, a whole little farm. This was a good kick in the butt to use it to WRITE.

Veteran's Day: (Why isn't it Veterans' Day? It's for all the veterans, right? But that's not how it's written. It's not Mothers' Day, either, but Mother's Day is for each of our individual mothers. Is it for each indivicual veteran? That doesn't make any sense on any level because being a veteral isn't about anything individual; it's about losing indivudality to ascribe to the group mentality and ditch the humanity we usually have to adhere to in order to be a good soldier, right?) How's that for a long sentence?

But seriously, isn't that what basic training is all about? Get rid of the "me" for the "we"? Find a common enemy and ditch everything you've been taught about humane decency so killing can be done for the "common good"? I'm reading Chris Hedges' War is the Force that Gives us Meaning and it's affirming too many things I've been thinking for a long, long time.
This doesn't have anything to do with the immense respect and appreciation I have for each and every veteran and each and every enlisted man or woman. It's a comment on the whole idea of war.

How could anyone ever declare war unless that person felt an absolute "rightness" and that the enemy was absolutely evil so that innocents deserved to die to eradicate the evil?

Freya and I were skunks...

Freya and I were skunks for Halloween. Not the bad-smelling kind, I hope. I also read for storytime at the Blue Earth County Library Halloween morning as a witch. So I had two costumes, I guess. It made me want to write a Halloween book. Badly.