1. The June/July issue of The 4:00 Book Hook will be coming out next Friday, and I think it's looking good. We've got a piece from our wonderful LJ friend jbknowles, a really interesting interview with first-time author Michelle Cuevas, and all about picture book animals from Toni Buzzeo; and we've got the best giveaways we've ever had, with three chances to win! Wait until you see, and be sure to enter. If you aren't a subscriber, please email us at thebookhook@gmail.com

2. I woke up at 5 a.m. and was unable to get back to sleep. I passed the time writing a new picture book in my head, all about dinosaurs, which is a new topic for me. It was funnier when I was half-asleep than it was when I typed it out a little bit ago, but that can and will be rectified.

3. VAMPIRINA BALLERINA got its (her?) first review yesterday, a very happy-making one from School Library Journal. Eep. An excerpt is posted on my website. GO HERE TO CHECK IT OUT. Thank you, SLJ!

ETA: I received an advance copy of the book today. It. Has. Glitter.

4. I have until next Friday to complete this draft of my work-in-progress, a middle-grade novel. Yes, this is the novel I was going to finish by Labor Day last year. I do hate that I write slowly, but it seems to be my process, so I just need to persevere. It will not be close to done, but Agent Linda wants to see it, and I feel ready for her input. So write on, AM. You've got eight days.

5. Happy for fellow swim team parent John Milliken Thompson, whose novel THE RESERVOIR has made the Summer 2012 IndieNext list (yes, I know people who write for adults, too.). While wrangling swimmers poolside, we used to talk about our writing dreams. Now we're seeing some results. It's kinda nice. :)

Jo Knowles's lovely SEE YOU AT HARRY'S comes out tomorrow, which through one of those thought-chains we all have, made me calculate that VAMPIRINA BALLERINA comes out three months from today. And I haven't shared the cover here, so I will rectify that immediately.

Presenting . . . [imagine trumpet fanfare] VAMPIRINA!

I am working on getting my homemade pizza as good as I possibly can, given the parameters with which I am faced. I have been working on this for about two months and have learned a lot.

1) Heat the pizza stone for about an hour before you bake the pizza.
2) Use bread flour, preferably King Arthur. Pamela Anderson's recipe from THE PERFECT RECIPE works well in the bread machine (one of my parameters is that the dough has to be made in the bread machine. I am not going to knead dough every week.)
3) Don Pepino makes a fabulous canned pizza sauce (another one of my parameters is that I am not going to make pizza sauce. Don't tell me how easy it is to make it and freeze it. I don't care.)
4) Turkey pepperoni is actually pretty good.
5) Pizza peels are not necessary, but they are helpful.

I just had three small slices of leftover pizza from last night and it made me very happy. Now I am going to work on making my novel as good as I possibly can. That is harder.

1. My agent sent me a very thoughtful email about a manuscript, an email that I really appreciate, even though I wasn't thrilled with the fact that said manuscript isn't working yet. She said I should make a voodoo doll in her image and stick pins in it. I might do that.

2. Last week, I said there was news on the horizon. Guess what? I am a week closer to being able to tell you!

3. I bought two dresses today. They were so cute and such a good price that I snatched them up without trying them on at the store (of course I can return them if they don't fit). Now I am afraid to try them on. I'm afraid they're too good to be true.

4. My oldest is home for spring break. We had lunch with our youth minister today at a local Mexican restaurant. I had Enchiladas Popeye. Ohhhh, it was good: spinach and cheese and salsa verde and rice and beans. NOM NOM NOM.

5. Because my oldest is home for spring break, I didn't go to NESCBWI this year. It seemed silly to go to Massachusetts when she is here from Massachusetts. Are there just a ton of writers in New England, or did I just hook into them somehow? Those NESCBWI peeps are among my favorite writer peeps. I know I've only been once, but everybody made me feel so much at home--it was as comfortable as my own Mid-Atlantic Region. I hope to go another year because it really is a fab conference. I hope some of you will post pix . . .

And that's it for this week.

Wow, I've been AWOL, haven't I? I started a lengthy post the other day, but got bored with it, and if I was bored with it, I know you would have been. But I can manage a five.

1) Monday, I did an inservice at a local preschool, talking about current picture books. The teachers there are wonderful with activities, but were in something of a rut, teaching mostly classic books. Even though they order monthly from Scholastic Book Club flyers, they weren't always sure which books would best suit their students. I brought in about 50 new books, both my own and from the library, and book-talked and read them with the staff. Many were well-received, but some I remember in particular which got much love were lurban's MOUSE WAS MAD, cynthialord's HOT ROD HAMSTER, and Joyce Sidman's SWIRL BY SWIRL. Oh, and tamarak's books, all of them. I meant to read only the first couple of pages of MOSTLY MONSTERLY but they made me finish it. I think the inservice was well-received -- I would enjoy doing more of those.

2) Wednesday was our monthly meeting of my local writers' group. I love seeing the different perspectives we each bring to a piece of writing. I love shop talk. And I love being fed.

3) The novel is progressing. Someday it will be ready for someone (see #2) to read it. Someday.

4) Saw THE HUNGER GAMES movie with my husband and three younger children. It was the 16 year old's fourth time since it came out. Youngest read the first book before the movie and is now on CATCHING FIRE, with MOCKINGJAY waiting in her backpack. It's weird when the Baby gets to a milestone--in this case, reading young adult books--because you know this time, there's no one waiting in the wings.

5) Speaking of waiting in the wings, there is news on the horizon. But the key word is WAITING, which you must do, but not for long. It will probably not be a surprise, anyway.

Well, that may have been just as boring as that boring post from earlier in the week, but if nothing else it was much shorter. Have a good weekend, LJ friends.

amieroserotruck aka Amie Rosero Truck (Yes, I know it's Amie Rose Rotruck but I didn't know that until about 5 years ago, maybe, 2 years after we were LJ friends, and I'm in a silly mood this evening) tagged me in this game:

The games says to:
Open your most recent novel or work-in-progress.
Turn to page 7 or page 77.
Count 7 lines down.
Copy (or read aloud in a vlog post) the next 7 sentences…in their entirety.
No cheating or editing!!!
Then tag 7 more authors!

I am not super-excited about sharing 7 rather ordinary lines that are really place-fillers, but I follow the rules.

Alice pokes her nose into the screen. "I know what you mean. I'm not stupid."
"Good. Because you are still irritating. Go play with your imaginary friend," Peyton says.
"What imaginary friend?"

Now to tag people. Hmmmm, it's hard to know who to tag since people don't check in as often as they used to. How about YOU? Yes, you--tamarak,liz_scanlon,kristydempsey,cassandra_w,tamilewisbrown,marypearson,sbennettwealer!

There were several nice moments this past week related to the Virginia Festival of the Book. 1) I did three presentations at a local elementary school; for the first time, I used Keynote (the Apple equivalent of PowerPoint) and I loved the way it made it so easy to share images with the audience. Also, the kids surprised me with a very well-sung and adorable rendition of Judy Freedman's "Hi Ho Librario." 2) Sweet Reads, a literacy event held at another local school, involved all twenty of the children's authors visiting the area for the Festival. As these events tend to go, it was a chance to see old friends and meet some new ones. 3) And Saturday, I was part of a well-attended picture book panel featuring me, Mary Quattlebaum, Stacy Nyikos, and Meg Wiviott. We discussed how changing technologies and social media are affecting publishing and writing of picture books. I've moderated many panels but this is only the third time I've been a panelist. Hopefully, I held my own. It felt pretty good.

I didn't remember to bring my camera to ANY of the events this weekend, which was unforgivable! But yesterday, something came in the mail that I can share with you. I was completely tickled to receive this thank-you card from some of the students at Agnor-Hurt School. All of it is adorable, of course, but my favorite bit is right in the center towards the bottom of this page. See the rectangle? That's my book cover, with my name: AMRE PAST.

Kindergartners rock.

This week is the annual Virginia Festival of the Book. Charlottesville is a book-lovin' university town and this first week of spring brings authors galore to hang out with us.

My schedule is just right: 1) a school visit Saturday morning at the school where my two oldest kids went to kindergarten 2) Sweet Reads, a fantastic event put on by Fran Cannon Slayton where 20+ children's authors and illustrators get together for a private dinner and then a dessert reception and book signing open to the public and 3) a picture book panel on Saturday with Stacy Nyikos, Meg Wiviott, Mary Quattlebaum, and me.

Here's a link to my VABook author page; from there you can click around to the schedule by day, by author, by venue, and so forth:

http://www.vabook.org/site12/participants/details.php?partID=305

From my first grade report card: "Anne Marie works slowly and is easily distracted by other activities going on in the room . . . she has not learned to use her time wisely and continues to work slowly . . . Anne Marie continues to do superior work in all areas except writing. All written work is a difficult and unpleasant task for her."

I was obviously not a prodigy.

Five things that made me smile this week:

1. Knowing that kmessner Kate Messner is giving a TED talk this week. I have only met Kate once, and otherwise just know her from various online hangouts, but we have some good mutual friends who tell me about her, and I admire her a lot. A TED talk! That rocks.

2. My tea ball. I bought some PG Tips loose tea that turned out to be too fine for my smallest-holed tea infuser, so I bought a fine-meshed tea ball online and hoped it would work. It did. PG Tips may not be the most esoteric of teas but it does the job for me.

3. A friend who has been sad for a long time wrote me an email that started out "Good News!" It wasn't the news that made me smile, though I'm happy about it; it was the joy in her tone. It was the exclamation points! It was the SMILIE!

4. Losing my mean-but-beautiful orange cat did not make me smile, but the outpouring of sympathy from friends here and on Facebook did.

5. My second oldest daughter is on a service trip to the Dominican Republic working in an orphanage. If that isn't enough to make me smile, well, how about this: She was planting BANANAS!! BANANAS! Go bananas!