I'll get this thing going, I swear! For now I'll say I am overjoyed to announce my first book, AT NEED, will publish in 2014 by Random House Children's thanks to my amazing agent, Melissa Sarver of Elizabeth Kaplan Literary, and my fabulous editor, Suzy Capozzi.I love this book, I have loved it since the story first formed in spiral notebooks over the consecutive summers of 1982/83. I was ten, then eleven years old. I spent those summers with my grandparents mourning first the death of my 19 year old cousin who lived next door to my grandparents, then the following year mourned from a distance the death of a fifth grade classmate back home. That second summer, we returned home where my mother announced, "Your father bought a graveyard today. Keep your mouths shut about it or we'll get in trouble." Good times! The notebook journal became a play in grad school where I earned an MFA in playwriting, then became a novel five years later. I'll blog here about this book's ascent to publication, writing and reading, and hopefully I can meet fellow writers who love to read and write about the same. Because who doesn't love to read and write about reading and writing? Come on! At this very beginning of my experience with publishing I have learned the following things: 1. A good agent is worth EVERYTHING. 2. Editors desperately want to find books they love, books readers will love, but that will speak to the fact that publishing is, still, a business. 3. Publishing, as an industry, is so. slow. oh. my. lord. 4. A thick skin and compartmentalized ego are kind of essential. 5. Self doubt is natural but will sink you and your book if it takes over and makes you second guess too much - without #4, a writer will not survive. Write a good book and shut the hell up already!

If it were only that easy - yeah. So that's where I'm at now, hope you all will share your part in the making of these books we love. For now I am off to write!