It’s a rainy Monday afternoon… which is a good afternoon for several things.

Trips to the library…

(where D’s eyes are the same color as the carpet)

…to borrow some hilarious Elephant and Piggie books…

If you have not yet had the pleasure of reading aloud from the Elephant and Piggie books, please do so immediately. Tell Mo I sent you. (No, Mo doesn’t know me, but it just sounds cool to say “Tell Mo I sent you”.)

After coming home from the library, it is fun to cuddle in bed with lots of blankets and your new Elephant and Piggie books. Also, it is fun to pretend that you’re taking a nap.

and then perhaps actually take a nap.

(While I love Mo Willems’s work, I also borrowed some gothic fiction and Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman… cuz grownups can’t live on Mo alone.)

In other news, I took Z to Odyssey Dance Company’s Shut Up and Dance last weekend. (D reminded me that we don’t say ‘shut up’… so we called it “Be Quiet, Please, and Dance”.)

It was a hip hop rendition of Romeo and Juliet (and featured a friend of my little bro’s, who played a wonderfully creepy Paris). Z’s only real knowledge of the story of Romeo and Juliet is the movie Gnomeo and Juliet, which we saw just a few weeks ago. She kept turning to me during the show and saying things like, “Ooooh, I get it. In the movie they fought on lawnmowers, and in this they fight by dancing…” Yes sweetie, that’s the basic idea. Lots of fighting, dancing, and dying. She was a little shocked to learn that it didn’t have a happy ending. They actually died. Well, not actually died… the dancers all returned the following night to do it again. I met my bro’s friend in the lobby and gave him a hug and told him that I was delightfully surprised to see him. “Did you like it?” he asked. I responded by saying “Yeah, but your dance with Juliet (which was little more than a sexual assault with pirouettes and choreographed throws) was actually kinda creepy.” Not sure if that was the right thing to say, but I was actually try to pay the boy a compliment. If I were flexible enough to dance, I’d stick my foot in my mouth.

And lastly, I’m working on a short story that is trying to morph itself into a novella.

Instead of shrinking, it’s growing and lengthening. It’s about a teenage girl (with a secret power of sorts that I don’t want to divulge yet) whose father is an over-protective demon. He demands that the girl bring home all of her suitors on the third date, to give them a once over. If they don’t pass daddy’s high standards for his daughter… well… he devours them on the spot.

Tracks I’m listening to as this plots grows and thickens:
Lux Aeterna, Clint Mansell
Teardrop, Massive Attack

Jon’s been crafting my actual “author site”, which will be located at www.suzannegale.com
I’ll post the entire short story there once it’s complete.

The day after Christmas, I left to spend three days alone in Vegas, writing like a crazy person. There was a lot of room service (I’ll be honest, there was cheesecake at 1am). But yesterday was the deadline — the end of the road. Pond of Pretties had to be postmarked no later than the 31st to be submitted to the Delacorte Press contest…

And everything that could have gone wrong, book wise, yesterday… did go wrong. I lost 50 pages of rewrites somewhere… gone. Still gone, still lost… still driving me nuts trying to figure out where they could be. My printer jammed, about a bazillion times. I called it all kinds of mean names that made my kids’ ears smoke. I accused it of having no legal father… which I’m sure is true of every printer ever made, but still — not nice of me to point out. When a second printer was called into action, and I had to drive several miles away to get to it, I realized that the gas light in my car has been on for about 86 days (that may be a slight exaggeration), and feared I’d run out of gas on the way to the post office. Keep in mind: New Year’s Eve, about 15 minutes before the post office closed.

Gah!

But the writing gods were smiling down, friends…

signed, sealed, delivered. well, not actually delivered yet… but I did splurge for the delivery confirmation.

Wish me luck, guys.

#1 on my 40 Before 40 List… check!

The Friend Magazine, November issue. “Toys for Tim”, page 4.

(The story is based on a really sweet, thoughtful thing that Jachin did several years back… and the neighbor kids think that the cartoon rendering of Jachin is hilarious.)

Actual picture of Jachin selling toys: