If you are younger than 40, please, please read this so you'll know how far we've come. We still have a long way to go, but there is hope ringing in my heart. Can't remember the last time I felt this way.

Do you have any plans for Saturday? No? Let me make some for you.

In the morning, head to downtown Syracuse and jog or walk in Paige's Butterfly Run. It is held in the memory of Paige Yeomans Arnold who died of leukemia when she was in first grade. I am friends with her amazing parents, Ellen and Chris, who have turned their tragedy into hope for other children with cancer by raising a small fortune for research with this run, now in its 12th year.

After you run, enjoy the food and music at the Taste of Syracuse, a downtown celebration that will feature the food of local restaurants and bands that will make you dance.

Then head west to the gorgeous village of Skaneateles to hear me speak at Creekside Books at 1pm. I'll be bringing folks up to date on my Vet Volunteers series, talking about Independent Dames and might drop a few hints about next year's YA novel. As always, I am happy to write notes to English teachers begging for extra credit for any students who come out to hear me talk. See an author, raise your GPA!

But the biggest celebration today is with my Beloved Husband, for this is the day we wed. Happy Anniversary, baby, got you on my mind....

The Forest is decorated with streamers and margaritas today. Yes, it is Cinco de Mayo (and take it from me: San Jose is where you want to be on Cinco de Mayo weekend). But it is also the birthday of Stephanie, my oldest daughter. You can leave birthday greetings on Bookavore, her blog, if you want. AND it is the 50th birthday of my most very Beloved Husband, Scot. All he wants for his birthday are a few more donations to his charity run.

So, yeah. This is Party Central today.

It's also Catching Up from the Weekend Day. Friday morning I ran along the Guadalupe River Park Trail - it reminded me a lot of the trail that runs through the middle of Austin. After a long shower and lunch, my intrepid hosts, Dr. Mary Warner and Dr. Jonathan Lovell, drove me to Yerba Buena High School. Thanks you very, very much to Ms. Goltzer and her students for making the afternoon so much fun! After we left the school, we went to Hicklebee's, an amazing independent bookstore run by Valerie Lewis, who ought to be called She Who Knows Everything. I would love to take her out to dinner with Teri Lesesne. The two of them in the same room at the same time might be enough to fix everything that is wrong with our world.

This should be a Destination Bookstore; the kind you plan an entire vacation around.

Not only do they have tons of books, artifacts from writers (like The Pants from Ann Brasheres and an early drawing of Clifford the Big Red Dog), and a terrific staff, but they have wall after wall crowded with signatures and drawings from authors and illustrators who have dropped by.

( What San Jose, Stevie Wonder, and the Shippensburg Women's Rugby team have in common )

I love my kids, just love them.

We snuck off to PA for the weekend to see Daughters #1 and #3, as well as do some research and speak to some college classes. We ate a lot of good food, hung out with the girls and their friends, and laughed until our sides ached. They were a blast when they were babies and little kids, but I had no idea how much more fun they would be when they grew up. Life is very good.

Thank you to all the students and professors at Millersville University who made my day there so much fun. (if you are looking for a college, gentle reader, you should take a look at M'ville.)

And so.... Davidson.... ::wipes tears from eyes:: ... I guess I have to say "Rock chalk!" and summon new-found love for the Jayhawks. Let the Madness continue!!

What is the whole "rock chalk" thing, anyway? Can someone please educate me?

It's been a while since I updated my resolutions. I've had to cut back on running a little because of a very sore hamstring, but it's healing nicely. Might try to run outside today - I am really sick of the treadmill.


2008 Resolution Tracker
Week 13 - Miles Run: 10, YTD: 258.25
Week 13 - Days Written: 7, YTD: 91

Back to revision!

The lung dragon is threatening to attack again, I'm having trouble sleeping, and I have doctors' appointments today. It snowed again yesterday. Just a little, but it was still snow.

I am officially Miss CrankyPants.

So instead of whining, I will give you fun links.

Stephanie Anderson writes Bookavore, a hell of a good book blog. She works at an independent bookstore and reads faster and more critically than anyone I know. Including me. And yes, she's my oldest kid. So read her blog and link to it, OK?

Stef and Editorial Anonymous both pointed out an awesome site for writers in need of shirts.

At what age does childhood end?

Georgetown made it. Syracuse didn't. I suspect that Sarah Dessen is itching to make our bet again and I'm so there. LET THE MADNESS BEGIN!!!

More good news? TWISTED was named as a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age. If I could breathe, I'd be jumping up and down about this.

Last but nor least, today we celebrate my Irish ancestors who hopped the boat to escape the Famine.Thank you, Grandpa Donovan. It turned out well for us, didn't it?

Yesterday was amazing: our Number One Son qualified for the New York State boy's swimming meet by taking third place in the 100-meter breast in the preliminary heat at yesterday's Section III championships.

That is a mouthful for an early-morning post. Boiled down to its essence, it translates into: My kid is going to States!!!! Yeah, we are just a wee bit excited about this here.

Good thing we did all of the hooting and hollering yesterday. Today marks the beginning of the period known as Laurie Is Crawling Into Her Cave To Work on Her Book. I won't be posted much, if any, over the next two weeks. I will be writing, writing, throwing out the pages that don't work, then writing some more.

This is the part of revision that I love the most. It's like going crazy studying for finals - very long, intense days (and sometimes nights) spent wrapped in all the story threads. In college, my fuel of choice was late-night doughnuts and very bad coffee. I've exchanged the doughnuts for salads and the bad coffee for wonderful coffee, but the game is the same: work to exhaustion, sleep, eat, work some more, exercise, eat, work to exhaustion, start again the next morning. I hit this phase with all of my books. Remember the scary scene in TWISTED with the gun? That came to me during this phase. These intense days and nights bring the characters to life - they truly incarnate for me. This is a Good Thing.

Before I grab my pens and scuttle deep into the cave, let me give a last shout out to the 28 Days Later project. Today's featured author is one of my favorite guys in the whole world, Walter Dean Myers. I think Walter should get his own month. He was born in August. Let's rename it as "The Month of Walter."

Thanks to my friend Jerry from high school, and my fellow author buddy Ellen, I am 88% of the way to my fundraising goal for the Lymphoma & Leukemia Society's Team in Training Half marathon. I am still offering a free audio version of TWISTED to the nice person who puts me over the top. You can donate here. If you want to cheer on my husband (who has to put up with my craziness for the next two weeks) donate to him - he's logging just as many training miles as I am, and he keeps the coffee hot for me.

ETA I didn't watch any news yesterday, so I am just catching the news about the horrible campus shooting at Northern Illinois University. This is the fourth school shooting in America this week. Dear God in heaven, how do we keep all of our kids whole in body and mind?

Yep, he made it on time; Kegan Alexander, 7 pounds, 12 ounces (much of that seems to be lung)!

Mom was able to end her 77th birthday visiting her new great-grandson, who was also celebrating a birthday.

There was much cooing.

Four generations, from the left: my sister, Lisa, her daughter, April, the new star, Kegan, and Joyce, the mom, grandmom & great-grandmom.

Buried somewhere deep in the forest in another 4-generation photo. In that one, my mom is the infant, accompanied by Peg, her mother, Ethel, her grandmother, and Ida, her great-grandmother. If I am counting on my fingers right, grandmom Ida is Kegan's great-great-great-great-grandmother (born in 1866, died 1935).

I need to work on two chapters today. I'll look for the picture during the break between them. My head is spinning from all this family stuff. I need to hang out with my characters to get my bearings back.

I have kept my New Year's resolutions for seven days! Go me!

2008 Week 1>> Days When I Wrote for At Least an Hour: 7. YTD: 7.
2008 Week 1 >> Miles Run: 20. YTD: 20.

Finishing out the miles yesterday on the treadmill was ugly, ugly, ugly, but I did it.

Today I will try to write a million bazillion chapters while staring at the phone because my niece is in the hospital right now getting ready to have her first child. If he is born before midnight, he will share his birthday with his great-grandmother, (aka my mom) Joyce Mason Holcomb Halse, who is 77 years old today.

It has always amused me that Mom was born the same day as Elvis. Even funnier: it's David Bowie's birthday. I think the joke should start "So Elvis, David Bowie and Mom walk into a bar..." Definitely the birthday of cultural icons.

Here is my gorgeous mother about to inhale a tray of frosted brownies at her party Sunday. One of the advantages to making it to 77 is that you get eat whatever you want. Happy Birthday, Mom.

Isn't this an awesome day??????

Santa is already getting busy with it.

It's snowing again.

We have sugar plums and rice pudding for the nisse in our future. And we have to watch Elf (which BH hates) so we can scream out all the best lines.

After last minute hurrying and scurrying, we'll head out to the back meadow tonight to watch the full moon rise. This is known as the Cold Moon or the Long Night's Moon. And then I will put on my kerchief and Papa will put on his cap, and we will both settle down to a long winter's nap.

The folks here in the Forest send our best wishes to everyone and lots of Light in the darkness.

Christmas #1 is over.

I had to work more than I wanted, but we squeezed in lots of laughs and good food, late nights and much cuddling by the fire. The College Tribe has now moved on to other branches in the Family Forest and the house is very, very quiet.

But we took lots of pictures!

( Family photos & evidence of actual cooking! )

Group One of our College Horde arrived safely last night. Group Two should be here by lunch. Our plan is to feed them a pound of sugar each, then hand over all the Yuletide decorations and let them deck the halls.

We are expecting 25 people for the family Christmas dinner (a little early this year because of various schedules) on Sunday. We are also expecting a blizzard on Sunday, with several feet of snow and 50 mph winds from the Arctic. I foresee half a ton of extra food lingering in our fridge for weeks.

Remember the mass of yarn I was untangling at NCTE? Project finished!

I made fingerless gloves because it gets a little chilly in my loft.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHARYN NOVEMBER!!!! Go tell her thank you for being such a great editor and helping her authors produce fabulous books!

I would like to say for the record that I am not a workaholic. Even though I am posting this on Thanksgiving morning, I am not crazy. We celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday so that various offspring could climb over to other branches on the family tree today. BH and I and the kids were going to get up early to run in a Turkey Trot 5K, but it is sleeting and snowing and the fire is warm. We'll run later, when it isn't life-threatening.

So I am bloated on pie and mashed potatoes made with an alarming amount of butter and the only thing I am capable of is blogging.

A couple observations about Manhattan:
1. Some of the new signs indicating the bike path through Central Park have a helmet painted on the head of the stick figure. They made me giggle.

2. Every third person in Manhattan now owns a dog that is the size of a loaf of bread.

3. There are halal food vendors on the street. (God, I love this country.)

4. Pigeons make a great sound with that first swoooosh of their wings.

5. I had one celebrity sighting: Camille Paglia on 58th Street. At least, I am pretty sure it was Camille Paglia. When I was running in Central Park, I saw a woman who was Gilda Radner's doppelganger. Obviously, it wasn't Gilda, unless she has taken to haunting Central Park.

A number of other authors and teachers blogged about the festivities: Jen Robinson, Susane Colasanti, She Who Knows Most Everything Teri Lesesne (who has posted Powerpoint presentations with terrific book recommendations), Jo Knowles, David Lubar, Linda Sue Park, Cecil Castellucci, and Sara Ryan. (Did I miss anyone?)

Highlights of the trip for me:
1. Meeting hundreds of friendly, kind, generous teachers who took the time to tell me about their experiences sharing my books with their students. And seeing the many teachers and professors who have become my friends. I am so very thankful for all of them.

2. Listening to the performances of the incredibly talented poets from Urban Word NYC.

3. Learning to identify Garret Freymann-Weyr, Ann Angel, and Jo Knowles. I am really bummed that I didn't get a chance to have coffee or wine or pastries with them. Maybe we should get together and have coffee and wine and pastries. I apologize for messing up their names in my earlier post.

4. Getting up to the podium to speak and not being wretchedly anxious for the first time ever.

5. Signing 90 quizzes about SPEAK for a new teacher named Dena from Long Island.

6. Savoring the outstanding coffee in my hotel.

7. Seeing the first sketches for the CHAINS cover.

( The last few road photos )

I have a confession to make.

Our family is Mixed.

Yep. Half of us (two out of four kids, my first husband and his wife) support the Dark Side.**

The rest of us (the other two kids, BH, & me) choose to live in The Light.

Two additional family members- my ex's stepson Alex (who considers himself to be my nephew once or twice removed) and Steve (who is practically a son-in-law) - have been making bold steps out of the Darkness and into the Light of Macdom, the Light of Computers That Don't Crash (hardly ever), the Light of Goodness.

Got that? (Yes, it is a complex family. We are thinking of having trading cards made up so we can keep us straight.)

Daughter Number Three, aka Meredith, aka adastraperasper is the Goddess of the Good. She's a Mac tech at her college, and helps me out whenever I get confused. (Which is rare, because Macs rock.) All of this is to explain why Mer and Steve lined up in the King of Prussia mall last night to buy a family version (five licenses) for the new version of the Mac OS X operating system called Leopard.

Veeeery long line waiting for the launch.

Line continued in the store.

Happy Steve, almost 100% converted, at the after-party.

Leopard joins the family!

edited to add Meredith's comments
"so yes, we did get tshirts! yay! a family license ends up, after tax, $210.

I did run into one, slightly major issue. I used file vault on os 10.4 (Tiger) to protect my files. It was a way of scrambling all of the files on my drive so the without passwords and such they could not crack my drive. I began using it to get in the habit for when I will be a teacher and dealing with confidential information. Anyway, I did not turn off file vault before I installed 10.5(Leopard), which meant that when Leopard was fully installed it was trying to read encrypted files created in a past OS. Well, this didn't work so well. After some googling, I found out that many people were having this same issue. Luckily, I know a good bit about macs and how to find errors and fix them. So I started to poke around and eventually got to a point that I didn't know what else to do. I was running into permissions errors everywhere. So I called up the wonderful people in Apple Care, and even though I had to be on the phone with them for awhile they eventually helped me. I ended up just backing up my most important files and deleting everything and installing a fresh OS. It is something that I had been wanting to do for awhile, because over the course of three years you end up with lots of little stuff that needs to be deleting. So the only downside to this is I am going to have to reinstall all of my applications, but in the end I have Leopard on my computer so it is totally worth it!!!"

** Despite their allegiance to Windows, we forgive the aforementioned relatives for their trespasses and honor their choices. All families need breathing room for diversity and tolerance.

We leave you with this classic Apple commercial from 1984. All hail the revolution. Enjoy.

My father-in-law is responding to the meds and is awake and aware. Grandmother Death seems to have given him a pass this week.

I am at the end of the revision of my historical - huzzah - and am looking forward to getting back to the new WIP.

Our problems with Time Warner Cable - messed up cable, internet and phone - continue to drive us crazy and make their technicians curse and kick the ground. This has been going on for a month now. I am about to cancel all of the services, permanently, and see this as the Universe's way of giving me more time to write and read.

A couple of people have asked me what I think about J.K. Rowling's announcement that Dumbledore was gay. I think she misses writing, that's what I think. I suspect that now the pressure is off to finish the series, and the hoopla over the last book's publication has died down, she finds herself thinking about her characters a lot. And I wouldn't be surprised if she's writing about them, but she doesn't want to tell anybody until she'd finished.

What do you think?

It really was a loverly day yesterday, even after it turned a little sad in the evening. Thank you so much to all of youse guys for the birthday wishes. It was fun reading through them. BH gave me the best birthday present ever: he made us a bed (we've been doing the grad student sleep-on-mattress-and-boxspring-on-the-floor since we were married) - and he made it for free, using old doors and wood he had laying around. He even made matching night tables. It is gorgeous. If I wasn't already married to him, I'd be dragging him to the justice of the peace right now.

This birthday was better than most; I finally have a sense of who I am, I am surrounded by people I love, and I have the chance to do good work. Except for when I become a stupidhead and whine about the trivial stuff, life is amazing.

Life is also balanced by death. When we got in with the sushi last night, we had a phone call from the nursing home which sent us right back to the car. My 86-year-old father-in-law was in the ER. He made it through the night, and given that he is as tough as nails, he might well come through this crisis, too, but it's looking like he's going to be in the hospital for a while. This might sound weird, but it was really nice to have the chance to hold his hand and talk quietly to him for the hours until they admitted him. So even though you don't want to be in an emergency room on your birthday, it was all good.

Sara Ryan sent along a link to an article about one of the reasons why teenagers have such a hard time getting through the day. It reminded her of Kate in CATALYST.

And Sharyn November gave me the heads-up on a fabulous shirts-off combo of social protest and performance art. When we were doing some school shopping with Number One Son in September, we both remarked on how A&F was beating males up with unattainable body images to make them feel bad and buy more. It's nice to see somebody fight back.

that my daughter Meredith, aka adastraperasper, was born.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MEREDITH!!!

Yet another reason why October is the best month.

The subject line comes from an awesome PR campaign by the public libraries of Wyoming. It is the perfect kick-off for this week because......

HAPPY BANNED BOOKS WEEK!!! Celebrate that most treasured of our freedoms - the freedom to think and read what you want - by reading a banned book. Choose one of mine. Or one of Chris Crutcher's or one that made the Top Ten List last year.

Do you think we have come so far in America we don't have to worry about banned books? Then read this gay-bashing, librarian loathing, freedom crushing article.

Speaking of Crutcher..... we have an Amazing Author Alert: Chris Crutcher is coming to Syracuse. THIS WEEK! Come out on Wednesday night to hear Crutcher talk about "Turning Real Life into Fiction" at the Onondaga County Public Library. BH and I will be there. If you see us, please say hello. Chris is one of the most important YA writers of our generation and a great speaker - this is a terrific opportunity. He will also be signing books and reading from his newest book, Deadline, at the Dewitt Barnes & Noble on Tuesday night at 7:30pm (thanks for the heads-up, ShelfLife.)

Many thanks to all the conference-goers who came out to the SCBWI Fall Philly on Saturday. Special thanks to kellyrfineman for driving me to and fro (w/ great tunes playing) and former regional RA Laurie Krause Kiernan for passing on five boxes of unloved canning jars that I will now attempt to fill with applesauce. I really appreciated all of the kind things and the stories that people told me over the course of the day. Allow me to reiterate what I said in my speech - turn off the Internet and go work on your book now. Then go for a walk or a run!

Had a great time with two of our daughters, their beloveds, and various friends at the PA Renaissance Festival on Sunday. We got to hear the Tartan Terrors again. I think I might have to become a groupie. Photos of all the festivities as soon as we get our Internet and server problems solved. At the rate it's going, it may be a month or so.

I have SO MUCH WRITING to do it isn't even funny, but it doesn't matter because it is October and October is the best month.

Yep, I did it. Wrote Chapter One of my new WIP yesterday. Now if I could just have about two hundred days in a row like that, I'll be in good shape. (No, it won't have two hundred chapters, but I need lots of time for revision.)

It's almost 7am which is when I get to work, but before I dive into Chapter Two, I thought I'd leave you with a Five Ways to Procrastinate on Friday:

1. My father, Rev. Frank Halse, was in the newspaper yesterday. I'm bummed that the photo isn't online, too. He is rather distinguished. Go, Dad!

2. In other family news, daughter Meredith recommends Our Voice 2008; a site for people under the age of 30 who want their voices and concerns heard int he next election. Please, please, please take a look at this. Our country needs you to be involved in the next election.

3. Want to combine your passion for knitting and respect for the work of Neil Gaiman? Check out this sweater.

4. The censors and defilers of our Constitution have been at it again. Read about the latest challenges to Ellen Wittlinger's Sandpiper, J. L. Powers' The Confessional, and Stephen Chbosky's Perks of Being a Wallflower on the AS IF! blog.

5. You can join us in Mexico, NY tomorrow morning and help support our library, which is a vital part of our community. The Mexico 5K Cider Run is a 3.1 mile run through the streets of the village. The people are very kind and the money goes to a great cause. Plenty of people run slowly or walk, so don't worry if you move at less than blazing speed. Hope to see you there.

As promised, here is evidence of what a great weekend I had.

Friday night at the river's end bookstore (Oswego, NY) Harry Potter party. It was PACKED. My favorite part of the night was listening to the end of Book 6 being read aloud while bouncing up and down on my toes and compulsively checking the time, begging Midnight to hurry along.

And it finally came! Here is happy daughter Meredith holding one of our three copies. (I had to pick up one for my dad, who is one of J.K. Rowling's biggest 80-year-old fans).

The Nearly-Headless Nick is actually Bill, who owns the store. It was an excellent costume. After we left the store, we met up with BH and friends at a quiet bar. I was the designated driver so I sat under a light and started the book instead of drinking beer.

Didn't get much sleep Friday night and read most of Saturday. Finished the book Sunday morning, then headed out to the Ren Faire with another wave of our kids and their friends. Here I am with my husband, the hot pirate, and daughter Jessica.

The rest of the week has been/will be pondering the very strange ideas I am having for my next YA. I'm having fun and am terrified at the same time which is usually a good sign.

If you have TWISTED questions, join us in the ALAN chat tomorrow night at 9pm.