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I’m heading back to see my family in Georgia this weekend. For a long Easter weekend, really, since I leave tomorrow and won’t come back until Monday. It sounds so simple, but to be honest – going home can be complicated. I want to see everyone who is important to me, but with only a few days, it’s not easy to spread my time around in a way that makes everybody else happy. First, there’s my mother. She pretty much wants me to be with her the whole time. I think she’s beginning to understand more and more that I’m…

Okay, so we don’t really have a pet squirrel. There just happens to be a squirrel in our backyard most days. And in our front yard. And on our roof. And in our trees. He seems to be a friendly little thing. I don’t feed him or anything, but most afternoons when I open the back door to let Snickerdoodle (our pomeranian) outside to go potty, the squirrel is there, hanging out and watching. G had a theory that since Snickerdoodle has a bushy tail, maybe the squirrel thinks she is also a squirrel and not a dog. Hmmm…. maybe…

Last night, when G and I went to bed around 12:30, there was still about four and a half hours left on a tornado watch. G went right to sleep, but I stayed up reading for a bit, listening worriedly at the cracks of thunder and lightning and the pouring rain outside our window. Around 1:30, I finally fell asleep. The weather didn’t seem too bad. Just the occasional windy sound that rattled the neighbors’ wind chimes or the little bit of lightning that sometimes lit up the sky. Throughout the next few hours, I slept very light. With every…

No Golden Heart “call” for me yesterday. I’m not surprised, but I’m disappointed. And I’m definitely not alone. There are over 1000 other people feeling the same way today, and I know that some of them, maybe even most of them, are talented writers. The votes just didn’t come in their favor this year. And that’s part of the thing about writing and wanting to get published – disappointment is just part of it. It comes with the territory, so to speak. Some writers collect rejection slips by the hundreds before finally selling a manuscript. For some writers, it took…

My first thought when I woke up today: OMG. It’s Golden Heart Day! Today is the day that RWA Board members make those coveted calls to let the finalists in the 2010 Golden Heart Writing Competition. I’m following the news on two different websites. The Ruby Slippered Sisterhood, a blog written collaboratively by previous year’s finalists, as well as Judi Fennell’s site, where she is hosting her annual *SQUEEEE* party announcing the finalists in each category. So far, it looks like four names have gone up, and I already feel certain that my name will not be going on the…

Set in a fantasy world, Kristin Cashore’s Graceling is definitely a fast and entertaining read. In this world, some children are born with special abilities called “Graces”. Parents know their child has a Grace if their eyes settle as two different colors. Katsa, the heroine of the story, has one green eye and one blue eye. She is Graced with killing, a valuable Grace for the King of the Middluns, her Uncle Randa, and he uses her as his thug, sending her out to punish those that owe him money or have wronged him in some way. But everything changes…