Long Time No Blog

Hobbs was GREAT! Warm, wonderful, dedicated librarians, teachers, parents - and kids! Yay to all the great people I met and the fantastic writing the students did during The Creative Diary workshop! They wrote their darling hearts out while lunch was cooking in the background in the cafeteria kitchens and their stomachs were rumbling. A big thanks as well to the Powells who graciously hosted my husband and I in their home and then wrote about my visit on the teacher's listserve - which netted me a couple more school invites from other parts of the state. Fabulous.

Came home to a frenetic homelife and a funeral and a friend moving away and a story to revise for Cricket Magazine ("Rattlesnake Rain") as well as trying to get my head back into Secret Rites . . .

What's the secret to my time travel dilemma? Meditation, a good night's sleep, and sticking my derriere in the desk chair!

Time Travel the Hard Way

Ergh - this is the hardest thing to do - STOP in the middle of drafting the second half of my delicious new historical novel, Secret Rites of the Goddess, and drive 300 miles to do a school visit. Three hundred miles for a school visit is hard enough! And not very usual actually, but my hubby is getting home from his business trip in Dallas tonight and going with me down to Hobbs. I'm visiting two schools and doing a talk and signing at the local community arts center. They're excited - I've got butterflies. No matter how many times I do a workshop or presentation I get nervous days in advance. Why??? I'm cursed.
So I'm leaving at 5 a.m. tomorrow morning. Will be back this weekend.
Going in and out of 1800 BC is tough time travel. My head is spinning.

A Taste of Bulgaria

Здравейте! как си? България е най-доброто място на света!

Translation: Hello, how are you? Bulgaria is the best place in the world!

I just wrote to my son serving in Bulgaria (our weekly email) and he sent me this phrase using the Cyrillic alphabet. So I had to try pasting it here and see if it worked. Looks like it does! Awesome. He's definitely on my mind all the time. And in my prayers.

We plan to fly to Sofia, Bulgaria (the capital) when his two years are finished next September and pick him up, travel around the country, see the cities where he served, meet the friends he made. So I better start learning some phrases myself . . . so I can at least say hello when I meet people.

I have a pack of homemade alphabet flash cards on my nightstand. My son and I learned it a year ago together before he left. We'd put up a few letters every week in the kitchen, and test each other, but I've forgotten many of them so I'm beginning to review them again.

Now I need to learn how to say "goodybe" . . . until next time.