What’s Periwinkle Blue

Here we are in the last days of August. The sky above my rickety fire escape is periwinkle blue and completely cloudless, and the wail of sirens is fading away down in the street until there’s that strange kind of silence you find sometimes in Manhattan, punctuated by the buzz of air-conditioners as if we’re all holding a collective breath, waiting for something. Then someone outside starts pounding a hard object against another hard object and we’re back again to the noise. I have a new piece of machinery—a new laptop—and it’s lightning-fast and silver-colored and I named it for a moon of Jupiter, for my fascination with space and my love for Alice Munro. People who haven’t seen me for a while have asked what’s new with me, and though weeks have passed, I’ve got nothing. Nothing new. I stopped writing—I know I should have used a notebook while the laptop was on the fritz, but I didn’t—and now I’m finding my way back in. I have a whole bag of emotions about this and what’s next for me as an author, but I won’t dump out the bag here and now to show you, because I’m still shoving my head in every once in a while to figure it out.

Now About KidLitCon

I do have an exciting thing to tell you. If you’re a book blogger and are headed to KidLitCon in New York City this year—September 28 and 29! (and the Saturday conference is entirely FREE)—you’ll see me there. I’m thrilled to say that in my blogger capacity I’ll be doing a presentation with Kelly Jensen of STACKED Books on “Getting Series-ous: How Blog Series Can Engage, Inspire, and Grow Your Audience,” and wow, what a presentation partner I have! I was honored when Kelly asked if I wanted to propose a presentation on blog series with her, because I admire her so much and I’m such an avid reader of STACKED. Here, go see what Kelly says about our upcoming presentation!

Will you be at KidLitCon this year? You can still register… and did you hear me say it’s FREE?