Sorry to be absent here but I am WRITING WRITING WRITING




In my back yard now......

signing books.....what it means to me.

Every writer I know (and that is LOTS)  loves to sign books for people who love their work. Every time I write my name on the paper, I add little messages and things that just appear out of nowhere because I
can feel the connection that the books create between strangers.

So THANK YOU!!!!

Thanks to everyone who ever asked me to sign a book. You have made me very happy!!!

water, wind, writing and staying alive.

This is a beach off the coast of Morocco. I was there to talk to students about writing.  Sifting through pictures that would make sense with today's topic I grabbed this one because just looking at it reminded me of the sound of the water that day. It wasn't rolling onto the beach, it was attacking it, pounding the sand, roaring.  And that kind of fury is stabbing at me this morning. Most of the people I am writing about in Limori are beyond fear. All but one. And that  is the one I will follow home today once the writing is done. We need to talk.

The long road home

This is the National Book Award reading night 2002, the night I read a three page sample of
my book SKIN HUNGER to this bookish crowd (Along with everyone else who was up for the awards.))

I was one of five finalists in a category we would call YA now. I didn't win the big prize,
Sherman Alexie did. That made sense to me then and it does now. I love his work.
 I spent the evening meeting people I admired, some of them people I had
wanted to BE when I was still in school.

Three years later, I finished the second book in the trilogy.  And then, there were two !!!!




Skin Hunger
Sacred Scars


And now I am working on the third book. It is taking a long time.

I speak to the characters often. I listen when they tell me why they want to die. Then they tell me why they want to live. I can't imagine how strange their lives have been, how long they have lived and all they have seen and felt.

But they will tell me that, too...someday soon.

Click below to see the five finalists: I can't tell you how I felt standing beside them.
http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2007.html#.U5CrIfldVNz


if you copy the link, then click it into a browser, you will see the amazing writers I was with....

The wind and heat in Southern California have been terrible for days. Many homes lost, many people hurt and it isn't over yet...

We thought we had our usual 6 months to prepare. We were wrong.  Raking heat-smashed weeds this morning while the wind was still and the air wasn't isn't thick with smoke I noticed this..the smaller plants know where to hide. And that will guide my work this morning. Sadima grew up on a farm. She already knew this, and I just needed to be reminded. Back to Limori now....

This is the trunk of a tree that I love.  It came to me when it was a child. It is now 20' tall.  It's blooms are bright and look like butterflies when they fall.  And yes, it is getting a bit part in the day's work today. Doesn't it seem like something that Somiss would want?   Yes. It does. If he is alive. I can't find him yet, but I will. 

Books for young readers:  

Both of these are series.  Both are built on dreams I had in gradeschool. I am putting them up here because I got five fan mails this morning from young readers just discovering these books. ((happy dance))  

SPRING!!  The trees are dancing!!

and the sky.....

I am just getting home from a fabulous writer fest ((scbwi Chicago)) and will be in deep writing mode for a long time....the smaller project is starting to amaze me and the BIG project continues to eat me alive.

This tree would be a poet if it were human. An angry, amazing poet. Since it isn't I have promised it a bit part.....probably in the big book. Or maybe in Russet when I get back to it. Russet is still hiding. A heedless angry tree like this one could save him.

It's springtime here. Which looks a lot like summer and fall . All of my dangerous plants are waking up.....

This one has made several bit-parts in my books. It is about seven feet tall now and fifteen wide. I think it will be perfect for the small story this morning. The little seed pods drop off in full summer, but the spikes just get bigger and bigger...  it is the kind of plant that the Makers are now using in their experiments.

I love graveyards the same way I love sunsets. They both remind me that nothing lasts forever.
This shot was taken in Boston ....but it is now part of Sadima's story.

Ferns...and cycads are waking up now. I always wonder what they are thinking.

The best thing about ferns and cycads is that they look like Aliens.....  and that is all I have to say today.
 (I should be writing.)
( I mean NOW.)

This wall is in Morocco. I stood in front of it for a long time, amazed at the layers, thinking about the history of all the people who had lived inside the building over time. I asked people walking by if they knew how old the building was. No one knew. Most of the them laughed.  Today, Sadima is standing before this wall.  She is scared and waiting.  And so am I.

If you are not a writer and have never done a full book revision, I just wanted you to know that it feels like this......and now I will go back to work. THANKS to everyone waiting for book #3

Image from a collection in Colorado, my home state, a blend of brilliant brains and mixed nuts. 

Add caption

My great grand parents. Once in a while I think about them and realize that if either of them had not survived the Civil War....I would never have been born. 

My great grandmother was Cherokee/African. My Irish grandfather fell in love with her. So he fought for the North, lived two years in a  starvation prison in the south....then came home stick-skinny and sad ..... and found her waiting. 

OK it's fake. But it should't be!!!!!

Revision: the painful art of starting over.....

Join me in the scary place writers call  revision.........something I will be teaching writers in a few months. 

Revision is like walking through cactus.... 

in the dark...barefoot and trying to read a map that you no longer trust.......

Or like trying to capture the moon on a windy night with a shaky camera.....knowing that it will never work.

NEVER EVER....

Or like deciding to lean out a window and  take a picture of a beautiful old building even though you know it will never fit anywhere  in the work you are trying to improve and shorten and  see anew....but you do it because you tell yourself that the building will be part of the thing that you will write AFTER the thing you are revising now is finished..and taking pics is WAY easier than actually revising or even thinking about revising....

Or you could try hiding. 

It doesn't work, but you can TRY....
((and I need to get to work on my own revision now))

WIND IN THE TREES : A progress report.

Wind in the trees: My perfect writing weather.....

I am close to sending my agent the first 80 or so pages of The Maker's Cage. I think it is one of the best things I have ever written. It's one of the oddest....

Then I will be back in Limori almost full-time.  And by "almost" I mean I will continue what I am doing now. ..I will only be leaving Limori  when I can't see or hear any of the Limori characters that day..... 

Wind in the trees ::  I can always see their faces.

...but when those days come...
Russett will be the new secondary project.
(I said that very quietly. I don't want to scare him away...

...I would hate to have him think I might betray him. I won't. I have seen the places  he escaped and the scars on his hands.

missing the target, a writer's best friend

I will go to work in a few minutes...this whole post is a warm-up.

I love bad pictures (like all of these)  because I can't always remember where I took them or why or even  what the image IS.

This one might have been a back-bend sky shot taken somewhere at a writer's conference EARLY in the morning when I was running to get to the room before the attendees started to arrive because....I just like to have a little time to try to convince myself that I am qualified to teach writing.

This one is in the Florida
Everglades, I was with a friend after all the teaching and writer talk was done for the day. The funny part is I was trying to get picture of the white bird before it flew away

...trying so hard that I didn't use the zoom lens and ended up with two skies instead.

This one is in Morocco  and I am not sure how I screwed up and blurred the shot but I was looking out over the city from the high ridge that is casting the sunrise shadow before I visited classrooms, then spoke to young teachers.

And  last........... no clue where or what this is, but it's how I imagined the crowds below the Limori cliffs last night. Angry and scared.

and........

This is our dog's answer to thermal precision. She is very picky about her temperature ranges and spends a lot of her time listening to me clicking keys and talking aloud to people no one else can see.... yet.

The Unicorn's Secret and me.

I wrote these books years ago because I wanted to share the amazing dreams I had in 3rd and 4th grade. For almost two years I would get into bed each night, close my eyes and become the girl named Heart. Her adventures, her long journey home, was my journey, too. Every night I was Heart. Every morning I went to sleep in the dream, then immediately woke up in my own bed, with my mother telling me it was time to get ready for school

...I talked about the books on FB the other day and was amazed at how many people still love them, people of all ages who had shared them with their parents, children and grand children. Amazon carries them and any bookstore can get them. Simon & Schuster is the publisher. May all your dreams be amazing!

THE MAKER'S CAGE

This is the first page of the small project:  The BIG project is making good progress now, too.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 I miss my brother.
Levin taught me to read. He taught me everything our father didn’t want us to learn: How to climb the chimney shafts, how to use numbers, how to  and write and where to hide the books. We made a narrow side-shaft that led from Levin’s room up into the library ceiling so we could talk about the girls he hoped would pass their heritage tests and the boys I hoped my father wouldn’t choose for me.
We found a way to get outside the walls.
We sat in the moonlight and stared at the stars as often as we could, and we didn’t die. Then our father sent me here—to the dirty Walled City at the end of the world.  My mother said he wanted to protect me from something I was too young to understand, but I think he lied to her.
 I know he lied to me.
I am not a hearth guest here.
I am a prisoner trapped in a smelly little room.
I haven’t seen the sky since the old woman locked me in.


(next snippet below image)

Tangles....I am always surrounded by tangles 

(about thirty pages later:)   

Then I  heard a man laugh.

I whirled around to run, but I wasn’t quick enough.

The driver clamped his hand around my wrist and pulled me out
into the roadway. He was carrying a sack of blueberries in his free hand. 

"Heritage food,” he whispered, then leaned closer until I could feel his breath on my cheek. "First, Second, and Third Dome people can smell blueberries as far away as most people can smell smoke," he said. "Did you know that?”

I stared at him without speaking and he laughed again.






About 20 more pages into the book: The Makers Cage




I suddenly stopped whispering. 
.....not because I wanted to, but because my lips had closed. 
I tried to open them  and I couldn't. 
But I could hear my father walking away