Festival Fun

My blogging has been sketchy at best, and I apologize. But I've done two literature festivals, one young author conference, three school visits and three articles since I last posted and, to be honest, I was (am) a little tired.

Now that I'm catching up a little, I want to say how much I LOVED being in Kentucky and Missouri for those to WONDERFUL festivals.

In Kentucky, I joined Chris Crutcher, Gary B. Schmidt and E.B. Lewis as speakers, and what a THRILL that was. It's always fun to hang out with Chris, obviously. But signing next to Gary and having dinner across from E.B. -- it doesn't get any better than that. It was just a joy. Thanks, Stephanie, for inviting me.

In Missouri, I joined about 30 other writers and illustrators at the Univesity of Central Missouri, as bus loads of kids buzzed the hallways in search of our presentation rooms. What a rush it was to not only meet with the kids each day, but to hang out with so many people in the industry after hours at the hotel and other social settings our host Naomi and her volunteers made possible. It's a yearly event, so I hope I did well enough to be invited back.

The school visits I did were, as always, WONDERFUL. I love school visits. And the Young Authors Conference yesterday was so much fun. All of those kids -- nearly 500 of them -- dug in deep and wrote their little hearts out for me. And it was fantastic.

Now I'm home and I don't have another event until April 6 (Holmes Elementary, I'm coming). So I get to do a little more writing for a while. But I wanted to say thanks to all the people who have been so kind to me the past few weeks. I am so grateful, you may never know.