Thankful for Katherine Paterson

 Good morning. Happy Monday. Cyber Monday, if you're into online shopping, which I'm mostly not. I don't really in any way do the Black Friday thing either--I'm not sure if that's because I disdain modern commercialism or am just too privileged to need to spend the day after Thanksgiving shopping in order to afford the gifts I want to give. (Both?) Either way, I spent the day after Thanksgiving picking out a Christmas tree on a little North Carolina farm, then watching the USA play England to an unexpected tie in the World Cup. In terms of the pool standings the tie doesn't mean much, but it was really great to see the team play well. I'm invested in Team USA Soccer now that my son works for them. 

His Thanksgiving dinner sponsored by the US Embassy in Qatar turned out to have 600 guests and very long lines for food, but he did get turkey. I asked if the team ate there too, and he sounded shocked--apparently it's not the done thing to stuff yourself senseless the day before a big World Cup game.

I'm thankful for my lovely children, of course--always am, every day--but this year I was especially thankful for the technology that let me see my son in real time while I spoke to him on Thanksgiving, even though he was--checks Google Maps--7,202 miles away.

I'm also thankful for this Wednesday, November 30th, because I get to be with Katherine Paterson again. I'm appearing with her and fellow author Stephanie S. Tolan at 7:30 pm at Central Presbyterian Church (it's the one next to King, not the one across from St. Anne's.) Stephani is the winner of a 2003 Newbery Honor for her hilarious book, Surviving the Applewhites. (I just went onto Amazon to check the date of the award, and was informed that I bought the book in hardcover on March 23, 2003. Go me.) I've never met Stephanie but I admire her work, and she and Katherine are in town because their new play, Good King Wenceslas, is debuting at the Paramount by the King University theatre department, Thursday at 11 am and Friday at 7:30. I presume the public is invited. I know I'll be there, as well as to Katherine's 9:45 presentation on Thursday at the King University Memorial Chapel, and the 4:00 pm Thursday meet-and-greet at the Kegley room in the Bristol Public Library. 

Phew. Thursday is going to be a big day, and I for one am going to relish every moment.

I adore Katherine Paterson. I always have. I've said in public, several times, that her book The Great Gilly Hopkins (Newbery Honor, 1979) had a huge influence on me as a writer. It's funny, and spicy, and honest in a way that until then hadn't been done. Along with Beverly Cleary, Katherine Paterson changed the course of children's literature. Her work laid the foundation for the wonderful explosion of creative stories being written today. 

Also, she's funny, and kind, and I love her. She graduated from King University here in Bristol, back awhile ago, so she still returns here often. She's hale for 90 years old, but she is 90 years old. I cherish every moment I get to spend with her. I hope you'll come be with us. You'll cherish her, too.

Hello Again

 I've been wanting to get back to the blog for awhile now. In some way it's connected in my mind with moving on from the pandemic--I think because during the pandemic there was a lot I didn't want to talk about. My family were all safe, and things were tough, but not nearly as tough as they were for a lot of people. I don't think we'll ever get a straightforward ending to this thing, but I'm travelling again, and my kids are back to mostly normal lives. My Facebook memory today was from three years ago, NCTE, the very last book conference I attended (after a couple-year span when I went to a TON of conferences); in two weeks, I'm going to my first live school event since then. I'm pretty excited.

Meanwhile I just joined Hive Social, a group like Twitter but without Elon Musk. I enjoy Twitter because I get to interact with a lot of my fellow kidlit writers there, but I hate Elon Musk, and today I realized that "I hate Elon Musk" was sufficient reason to join a different community. I am friends with 3 people on Hive so far, all of them writers, so if you're there please friend me so I can find you. 

Yesterday in the World Cup, the United States tied Wales 1-1. Not a great showing, not an awful one. I watched hoping to get a glimpse of my son, who's a strategy manager for the US Soccer Federation--business strategy, not game strategy--and who is in Qatar to help run things for our team. We love a lot of sports in this country but soccer is the global game--just before the opening kick yesterday two men came to install my new dryer. They were speaking Spanish to each other. I showed them the photo my son had just texted, of himself and his fellow employees at field level, and the two men grinned and told me their team, Ecuador, had beat Qatar the day before. 

In other news: I have a book coming out in three weeks: She Persisted: Rosalind Franklin, about one of the co-discoverers of DNA. I'm working on the book that will come out in spring 2024. It's coming well but doesn't have a title yet--it did have one, but that's been scratched. It's about history and ghosts and I quite like it.

My horse threw a shoe on the opening day of deer season, colossally bad timing given that my redneck farrier takes the whole first week of deer season off. The horse--her name is Rosalind Franklin, after the scientist, I got her right after I signed the book deal--one thing that happened during the pandemic is that my horse Sarah sliced her leg open in the pasture and did survive, which was by no means certain, but isn't really rideable anymore--anyhow, Rosie, the horse (the real Rosalind Franklin HATED being called Rosie, but the mare rather likes it) is very attached to me and was very, very angry that I was gone most of November. When I came back we had one ride in which she was righteous and dramatic and wanted to run hard and jump big things, and I, who'd been mostly sitting on boats for two weeks, did not, and then she threw the shoe and now she's blaming me for it. 

I was in Peru. Peru is worth a lot of blog posts. I'll get to that. Meanwhile, good to see you all again.