I just scrolled through all my posts here, more than ten years of life and writing updates. And now a whole “school-year” has gone by since I last wrote. How did that happen?

It’s been a full year with a mix of personal and writing news. Lloyd (my stepson) and Anastacia got married in Texas and we traveled there last November to celebrate that, a wonderful family time.

I’ve been working on several projects simultaneously, and two of them are “ready to talk about.”

*a new picture book with Rick Lieder called HELLO, I’M HERE! about a baby Sandhill Crane coming into the world, learning to take those precarious first steps, and exploring the world. This will be published by Candlewick in Spring, 2019.

*a novel in poems and prose (alternating voices) that will be perfect for beginning readers: BLUE DAISY, about two friends who feel remorse after painting a blue flower on a stray dog, and learn more about their community as they try to make things right. To be illustrated by Rob Shepperson and published by Margaret Ferguson Books, Holiday House, Spring, 2020.

And now it’s May again, with lilacs and bluebirds, and this year, a pair of Baltimore Orioles. As we turn to summer and look for the return of the monarch butterflies, I am hard at work on a new YA novel, and thinking about new possibilities for picture books!