or actually just enjoying the last month of school with DD. I'll be back in June!
If you're in the WF area, check out our May speaker: Best selling author Geralyn Dawson. We meet at the public library at 10:30 this Saturday.
Also, next month is our conference featuring best selling author Gena Showalter, Jill Monroe, Linda Goodnight and Jordan Dane. It's the first weekend of the month and you have to pre-register: check us out at www.redriverromancewriters.com

DD and her boyfriend of 15 months broke up this weekend. My heart breaks because her heart breaks and all I can do is give her a hug. It's a first break up and it's not pleasant but she's learning.
Today her Mema told her to understand it's the beginning of a long road of these moments and to learn from them.
I'd forgotten how utterly devastating young love can be.

We did watch Gilmore Girls and I tried to get her to do some ice cream therapy, but she reminded me again that she  hates ice cream.

The news is filled with stories about military ANALYSTS who reported opinion instead of facts.
Hel-lo people. Welcome to the world of news as we know it because audiences no longer want to read or isten to facts. They want some talking head to tell them what to think.
My students are reading 1984 right now. This is all making for great discussion.

I won't be entering Golden Heart again.
My scores: 8.6, 8.5, 9, 6 and 5.5.
Grrrrrrr.
At least with local contests I get feedback with crappy scores.

I'll be in Austin all weekend for one of my favorite conferences: Interscholastic League Press Conference.  The paper was nominated for a Star award this year. The nomination doesn't mean we'll get one, but it's nice to be recognized. :-) It's been the hardest year of my life, and it seemed like a "sign" of sorts.
And I'm announcing editors for the paper tomorrow.
For the first time in several years, the decision has been difficult.

the Biggest Loser?!?!?!
So much I can't even begin to explain.
Our local station has a rehab auction scheduled for today, on the FINALE of the show. I don't know if people called freaking out or if their manager figured out they screwed up, but they're televising the auction tomorrow instead. :-)

DD earned a ticket to the state meet in May! She's an alternate, but alternates get to go, and sometimes they end up competing. I'm so proud! This year we're taking four kids down. Hopefully we don't end up on the lake in a massive storm. Been there, done that, don't want to go back.

RRRW Writers' Conference!

Red River Romance Writers presents the Fall in Love at the Falls mini-conference featuring USA Today and New York Times best-selling author Gena Showalter, Jill Monroe, Linda Goodnight and Jordan Dane June 7 from 8:30-5:00.

Registration includes breakfast and lunch June 7 plus conference. Rooms at conference site available.

Booksigning June 6 from 7-8:30 featuring conference speakers plus Red River Romance Writers’ published authors, and published authors who register for the conference.

Where: The Holiday Inn, Wichita Falls, TX, rooms start at $70 a night. The Holiday Inn 100 Central Freeway, Wichita Falls, TX  76306
(940) 761-6000, ask for the Red River Romance Writers conference rate

Cost:   
$25 RRRW members regular registration
$40 non-member regular registration
$50 late registration
Regular registration runs until April 30.
Late registration runs from then until May 15.  But if you're an author who would like to sign your books you must be registered by April 25th so our bookseller will have time to get your books.

Since we're leaving today for Regionals DD and I decided to workout this morning instead of just skipping it.
Things I'd forgotten about early mornings:
It's dark. And not just a little dark, but REALLY dark because there are no house lights on.
It's cold.
It smells clean. I think it's clean. We couldn't quite figure out the description this morning, but we said clean at the same time before we trudged into the Y.
AND
When you do an early morning workout, you feel amazing for about three hours until something smacks you upside the head and says what the heck were you thinking, but your mind doesn't quite form coherent thoughts so it sounds more like "Wh he u think.?!"
I wanna go back to bed.
And the creeky OMG my body hurts, cardio sucks, pains in my knees and back, yeah, I can handle them a little better at 8 p.m. before bed than I can now when I have an entire day to get through.
On the bright side, I can breathe easier.
:-)

It's official. I'm old.
We just finished Absence of Malice and one of my students said, "Who's the old guy with scary eyes?"
He didn't know Paul Newman. Not even from the salad dressing. And he thought his eyes were scary.
Ugh.

I joined Audible and I'm listening to one book a month during workouts. We'll see how that goes. :-)
AND
Dear Mother Nature, PLEASE don't let there be a tornado today. I'm going to work out and I just downloaded Natural Born Charmer and I've been waiting FOREVER to read the book, so I really need you to just forget about all that purple stuff on the radar twelve miles from here. See SEP is one of my all time favorite authors eva' and I NEED to hear this book. PLUS I NEED to work out. Because I'm in terrible shape and I have weigh in today and I ate a piece of cheesecake for DD's birthday yesterday and I'm not positive, but I think it had five bajillion trillion points. So, yeah, no tornadoes. THANKS!

DD was born at 1:30 in the afternoon. That night, we had tornadoes. In fact that entire week we were under tornado warnings every night. Funny. She's always been deathly afraid of storms.
I'm not going to be sad. Somehow I'm going to force my brain to see this as an exciting time for her.

I didn't finish the last book I started.
I LOVE category romance, especially during the school year when time is so limited.
When I pick up a book, I know what I'm getting. Each line promises a certain something to their readers, and their readers expect that certain something. When we don't get it, it's frustrating. The book was Nocturne. Every Nocturne I've read has blown me away. I've LOVED the line. And then I started reading this book and it was like Nocturne light AND a little ridiculous.
Nocturne always requires a willing suspension of disbelief. But when I'm constantly saying "oh come on, are you kidding me?!?!" to myself, I have to stop reading.
:-(
Bummer.
I picked up Rogue at Wal-Mart this week. YAY! I can't wait to read this book! Rachel Vincent builds an incredible world in her werecat series.  AND I read The Giver this week. OMG, if you haven't read this book, you MUST. I'm going to read 1984 and Brave New World next and then develop a cool lesson.

I've entered a contest and I have four more picked out. I didn't final in GH this year, and I don't think I'll enter again. Instead, I'll take the  expense and put it toward chapter contests. I usually like the feedback I get, even when it's not nice. :-)

Lessons: I put together a multi-media project today that I LOVED and my students responded to also. We've been studying press ethics and my kids pretty much agreed the press was a bunch of dirty skunks AND  the way they intrude on  privacy is never okay and the way they make us feel bad is totally uncool and all news media should just disappear. I kept saying those kinds of statements and my kids kept agreeing with me. NO ONE argued with me, no one questioned me. Twelve weeks into the semester and they haven't learned to question authority. Ugh.
SOOOOO.
I showed some powerful photos w/ full captions, and I asked the question: Crossing the line OR Doing their jobs. You decide. And I didn't say a word.
VERY Interesting discussion.
Hopefully they get it now.

I'm going to have them watch this this week. And then we're going to talk again.

My brain worked.
And then we had yearbook deadline and our tech support specialist who is great and wonderful this year (yes, I did say tech support person and great and wonderful in the same sentence) restarted the server at 6 pm because he thought everyone had gone home AND that yearbook was done.
Fortunately, we survived, but man, it put us behind.

So when I took DD's prescription to the pharmacy after school today, the last thing in the world I expected was the giant penis pen the receptionist was using. It was yellow, and I couldn't figure out what the medicine was, but I don't think the girl had a clue.
Ugh.
DD didn't like my hysterical laughter. She said I needed to "grow up."
I guess teaching high school keeps you young forever.

The Rider journalism team reclaimed district champion status yesterday at the district meet. Three of my kids placed high enough to definitely compete at Regions. Two came in fourth so they're first alternates. DD was one of those who placed so we have at least one more meet together. YAY!

When the phone rang that summer I was minding my own business, working away on a 20 page paper over Moby Dick and the hero's journey, or something like that. I get all those papers mixed up in my mind after all these years. Anyway, I was writing...in the zone and I almost didn't answer the call, but the ID showed Goddess of our school Kathy Merder on the line, and, well, I didn't have a choice.
Kathy's one of those women who knows exactly how to get you to do what she wants. She scares the living daylights out of you. When she says jump. You jump. Once she made our meanest, toughest, biggest coach cry. And she wasn't even trying.
Anyway, so Goddess Kathy was calling.
And I answered.
And she said, "the yearbook teacher from last year is in the hospital having surgery because of the stress of deadlines. Say you'll take the job." And I said...well, I better not write that down,
See I'm a newspaper girl. Always have been. Always will be.
Way back when I was 15 and my J-teacher Mrs. Gillespie instilled the importance of news in my soul, I found my calling.
Yearbook was my idea of hell.
All those cheerleaders and preppy boys in pink shirts looking like the cast of Saved by the Bell. No thanks.
BUT
This was Kathy. And a couple years before she was the book adviser and I was the paper adviser and we shared a room, and I pretty much decided, once I got over my TERROR of her, she was beyond amazing. Plus I got to know a few of those cheerleaders, and funny thing was, they weren't really as bad as I thought.
But still. The book was, in my opinion, staffed by a group of beautiful honors conformists who wanted to have fun, eat lunch, and work on Who Wants to be the Most Popular, and thanks but no thanks. Me and my paper kids with their funky hairstyles and crazy clothes were out there changing the world.
And I was working on my Master's.
AND hel-lo, the past year's adviser was having surgery because of the stress. I'd seen her earlier, and she she'd SHAVED ALL HER HAIR OFF!. So I'd be crazy to take the job.
I think Kathy had notes because she knew I'd say no. So she threw in the whole, but we've got this great kid from Kansas. You know her. Rebecca. She's going to be editor, and she really wants to make it a journalistic book. You could help her.
I knew Rebecca. And I knew then I was stuck. Yearbook was mine. At least for a year.
That first year I learned a few lessons.
Lessons like those kids I saw as conformists who thought only of making the grade and popularity were actually pretty amazing.
And just like all my other students, they worried about love, suffered heartbreak, laughed at Beavis and Butthead, watched The Real World, listened to music, sought acceptance and self-worth. The loved Hope Floats and City of Angels. They came from broken homes. They knew about prejudice. They knew about death and depression and pregnancy scares.
They were just kids. Like all the other kids. And they were mine.
One year in, I was hooked.
I bet Kathy had this planned a decade ago when she called. I think next Monday I'll go tell her thank you.

She sat on the last row, the one closest to the windows. A Latina tough girl in a sea of white. The glittering diamond in her nose completely out of place in 1996.
C's  hair was gorgeous. Long. Brown. Highlighted to perfection. Her dark red lipstick didn't look so dark against her skin. Black eyeliner outlined her hazel eyes with a special I Dream of Genie tilt at the outside corners. I Dream of Genie is what I called it. She just laughed.
Her binder was covered in art. Art she drew or art she found in the envelopes delivered daily to her house. On each of her fingers,just above where they joined her hand block letters spelled out a name on one side, initials I didn't understand on the other.
The first time she walked in my room, she nodded and sat down in that seat by the windows, claiming it in (again) a way I didn't understand.

The second week of school C dropped a paper on my desk. "Miss," she said, "What d' you think about this?"
A sheet of poetry. The universal language of angst ridden teens. The question one that struck terror in my English teacher's heart.
I turned my eyes to the page and studied the intricate penciled drawings adorning the top and margins of the page, trying to school my face into the pleasant "this is fantastic" smile that encourages children to continue their love affair with words, even though their simplistic couplets about be mine and wine or fine or line cause the hidden William Carlos WIlliams in me to cringe.
AND
Her poetry WASN'T universal. The pain, the pure heartbreak on the page connected with me in a way no student's had before. It was a sucker punch to the gut. A stark reminder of dark days and broken relationships and dreams lost and so, so much more.
"C," I said as I stared in awe first at the paper and then at the girl. "This is..." and I searched for a word before finally settling on the completely inadequate, "AMAZING!"

Thus began the poetry moments. Times when the tough girl let her guard down and opened her world to me. The poetry, the art, the intricate leather key chains she collected.
And then one day...
The new art on her binder was colored this time. C&E in calligraphy the FORUM mothers of her schoolmates would pay ridiculous money for.
C&E.
E. The inspiration for the words on the page.
E. The kid I figured was across town at the other school.
E. The artist responsible for the new art on the binder.

E., I learned that day, the MAN  NOW IN PRISON.

By the end of the year C changed. The diamond still sparkled, the eyeliner still tilted, the clothes still hugged a little too tight or a little too low, BUT
C sat front and center. And she laughed. And she talked. And she wrote, and wrote, and wrote.

The year after C graduated, we saw each other at Wal-Mart in the ice cream aisle on a summer day. She was working and going to junior college and yes, still writing the poetry.

I didn't ask about E.

I hope C MADE IT. I hope she left this town where girls like her are thrown away and found a place to put those words of hers to work.
Because with her poetry that sang, C spoke to me. And she awoke the writer in my soul that somehow during the years of school and term papers and tests and then teaching had hidden, waiting for me to remember.

I'm already a Gena Showalter fan. I buy all her books. BUT if I weren't, I would be now. Check this out:
http://www.lordsoftheunderworld.net/

I'm not ready to start yet, but the gem of a new idea started yesterday.
I love this time.
This "anything could happen" moment.
I see a fuzzy idea of my heroine in a location but I don't know a lot more. I know she has a teenage daughter and that she's a single mom. And that's it.
It's my first non-suspense in two years.
AND I'm sooooo excited.

Now to wrap up Darkness, the psychic/killer/stalker book. :-)