I gave an author talk in Jordan's class today.  We played a game where I had the kids all try to write the first line of the same book.  I then mixed up their sentences with the original, and they had to vote on which one they thought was the real first sentence.  (If you read my last blog, you'll see a trend in the games I play.)  I also showed the students pictures from my scrapbook that inspired some of my stories.  Then I got to read some of my stories, too. 

Fouth grade is fun.  They get my jokes.  I love seeing their smiles and hearing them laugh, knowing it's because of the words I wrote.  

NAKED BABY ON THE RUN is usally a class favorite.  Jordan's favorite is now SPY BABY--I caught him spying on his sisters the day after I read it to him.  And I loved the reaction I got from just the title THE SIBLING S.W.A.T. TEAM.  I hope that someday I have illustrations to go with these manuscripts.

The local ACFW chapter I started--IDAhope Writers--had the last meeting of our first year this week.  It was our best meeting yet.  I'm so blessed to be a part of such a neat group.  Let me share the reasons why.

1. Adam Graham announced that he had part of his political blog published in Mike Huckabee's book, Do The Right Thing.  His name is even listed in the bibliography.  This book is ranked as a best seller on Amazon.  How cool is that?

2. We had a visitor, Vlad, who moved here from Russia.  He had three books printed in Russia and is hoping to translate them to English and sell them here.  They have international settings, and one was even a bestseller.  The cool part?  The people who made Pirates of the Caribbean were talking to him about making a movie out of one of his books.

3. There is also a guy in our group who writes a hunting/fishing column for a variety of newspapers in the Northwest.  He suggested that I write a column for young moms, and he'll have one of his friends translate it into Spanish.  He believes there is a big need for it in our area, and he wants to help me pitch it to his editor.  This isn't a dream of mine the way writing fiction is, but it's an open door.  And not only was I a young mom, but I started a MOPS for teenagers here in Boise.  I'll have to get to work on some sample columns this weekend.

4. My Vice President and Treasurer gave me flowers.  I gave them cute little Christmas ornaments that read: Always Have Hope.

5. We played a game where we divided up into two teams.  Each team had to pick five books and write new first lines for each of them.  Then the teams took turns reading both the original line and the rewritten line.  The other team had to pick which line they thought was the real one.  The game ended in a tie, but we decided that everybody in our group can write better first lines than the authors of the books we used.

6. We had a tie breaker to our game and the winning team each got $5 off registration for our conference in January.

7. It looks like I'll be president for another year, which is a really good thing because I need to make up for all the clueless mistakes I made this year.  Anyway, we've decided that we will have ten meetings next year--one a month from Feb.-Nov.  Every other month we will have a guest speaker, and in between speakers we will meet for a critique group.

I'm really looking forward to another year of IDAhope. 

I've been having a fairy tale month.  No, I didn't move into a castle.  I've just been reading a lot of Cinderella stories.  

It started when I bought the book CHICKENRELLA for Lauren.  She loves it.  Not only because there is a princess involved, but because for quite some time we've been calling Lauren our chicken.  (This started when she was three years old and would "bock" like a chicken after being introduced to anybody new.)  Next, my older daughter begged me to order DOGERELLA from the Scholastic book forms.  Now, finally tonight, we watched the movie A CINDERELLA STORY with Hillary Duff.  It was cheesy, but cute--like most Cinderella stories are.

Of course, being a writer means I'm writing my own version of the classic.  When I get ink for my printer, I'll be submitting NINJARELLA to a New York editor I met at a conference.  She was a little too educated and urban for me to feel comfortable around, but I'm hoping the women's lib twist to my tomboy fairy tale will appeal to her.

I've got another idea, as well.  In fact, I just penned the rough draft, but I need your help.  This version is a fairy tale allegory.  Which title works better--SINNER ELLA or SINNERELLA?  I want readers to get the connection with Cinderella, but also have an idea that the ending is going to be "happily FOREVER after."  Thanks for your feedback! 

This is me and another Angela--there were three of us at the party.  I got a Tinkerbell costume 1/2 off at the Disney Store.  Angela was a Greek Goddess.  The party was at her house.  They have this huge garage (two stories high and big enough for over six cars) because her husband owns a body shop and collects cars.  So they set up a basketball hoop and a bounce house in the garage for the kids and the adults got to play poker.

I've never played poker for money before. It was fun.  And I think it bothered some of the guys by how well I did.  I'd lay down my cards and say, "I only have two tens," and the dealer would be like, "You have a straight."  Tee-hee.  Out of sixteen players, I made it to the final four.

If you want to see more pics of my kids in thier costumes, check out my brother-in-law's blog.  You can also find pictures of him dressed up like "Reformed Hitler" and some other funny/disturbing stuff.      

This year we set a family record for attending Halloween events.  The first one we went to was two weeks before Halloween.  My husband was working late on a Friday night so I checked out the events calendar for Boise and found a church harvest party.  We hadn't bought costumes yet, so Caitlin wore her old kitty costume.  The following week we went to Boo at the Zoo.  By that time I'd bought Jordan and Lauren new costumes, but Caitlin still didn't know what she wanted to be so she wore the Pocahontas costume from last year.  Finally, on Halloween, Caitlin decided she wanted to be a Japanese princess.

That night we attended Trunk or Treat and were planning on hitting a few more churches in the area just for fun, but Jordan decided to slam his fingers in the van door.  He stopped crying when we suggested going home to ice it because he didn't want to miss his opportunity for more candy, but we had another party to attend, so we left anyway.  On top of that, when Catilin went to climb back into the van she hit her head on the roof of the car, which jabbed the chopsticks she was wearing in her bun down into her back.  The next day she still had a splinter in her skull.

I'll blog more about MY party later.  For now, I just want to record the number of parties we attended.  Can you say sugar high?