where i've been mash-up

Can you guess where this is? Stay tuned...

I've had my head deep into book two of the sixties trilogy this summer, and summer is almost over. Here's where I was and what I was doing this summer when I wasn't writing Sunny's story:

With Karen Huff, conference-organizer extraordinaire, collapsed after the Shenandoah University children's literature conference, June 2010.

 With Jane Resh Thomas at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, July 2010.

Scholastic Book Fairs Principals and Advisory Board Meeting, Orlando, July 2010

More Scholastic Book Fairs: Hanging with (left to right) Marsha Thauwald, Principal and Educational Consultant; Deborah Kaiser, Author Event Specialist; Robin Hoffman, Senior Manager of National Sales and Business Development; moi; and back row, Alan Boyko, President, Scholastic Book Fairs. We cut a rug!

Mad Men Season 4 premier dinner a la 1964. Perhaps you'll remember last year's ridiculously difficult (but scrumptious) premier dinner? This year we went homely, with a drink and a dinner I remember from my childhood: frozen lemonade and pigs in blankets, meat loaf, mashed potatoes, French-cut green beans, iceberg wedge salad (with Thousand Island dressing), banana pudding for dessert.

I haven't seen this many packaged products in my house in years (including Easy Cheese! Oy!). Mom's meatloaf was just as wonderful as I remember it, the green beans just as awful, and the lettuce wedge... well... I didn't eat that.:>

Dimitri Thomas, Deborah Hopkinson, and Jim, Portland, Oregon.

Jane Kurtz, Portland, Oregon

 On the train from Portland to Seattle.

Seattle jazz

The tuba player has expanded his repertoire to include drums, uke, bass guitar, acoustic guitar, and Freedom Summer!

The Olympic Mountains. Now you know where the first photo was taken.

 Thanks for the love, y'all. Thanks for your friendship. Thanks for making time for me and mine.

I leave tomorrow for Mississippi. More on that, and on where I am with the novel, next.