The key to the universe -- book covers!

My kindergarten son recently wanted money to purchase a book that was being sold at school. The book seemed a bit ambitious for him. It is Stephen Hawking's children's book, George's Secret Key to the Universe.

But I figured the purchase would support the school and my son does like space, so I sent him off with his money.

He came home absolutely elated about the book. He told me that when he first heard about the book at a school assembly, he thought it was just going to be "an ordinary book." He said he thought it would be short and like the other books, mostly illustrated children's stories, that we read him at night. "But as soon as I held in my hands," he said, "I saw that it was totally awesome."

My husband noted that "apparently, you can judge a book by its cover." And I vowed to always be VERY nice to the people designing my covers!

Finding inspiration in adversity

I recently spent the better part of a week in the Intensive Care Waiting Room of a Little Rock hospital.

My dad was having lung surgery and the rest of the family and I quickly got to know the rituals of the ICU. We learned how they handled visiting hours, we learned the time time each night when the staff handed blankets for family members who didn't want to leave the hospital. We got to know the awful fear you'd see in a family's eyes if a doctor suddenly appeared and wanted to talk to them.

My dad is doing great and is home again.

That's the best news. But I also have some lesser, unexpected good news to report from the experience. I made great progress on my novel. Suddenly surrounded by a new setting, I was inspired to recreate that world on paper. (Or at least on a computer screen.)

I realized that several scenes of my current work could take place in an ICU. And when I placed them there, they came alive!

I don't know where this new direction will take me, exactly. But it was a good reminder that creativity can't blossom if it's not fed by new experiences. We should all write what we know -- that's the cliched instruction. But I think maybe we should really write what we're learning -- and we need to constantly learn new things!

Great comment on parenting/writing/life

I saw a great comment on parenting the other day. It can be applied to writing and life in general.

"Parenting is like wrestling a gorilla. You don't stop when you get tired. You stop when the gorilla gets tired!"

Reading again

I've had a couple of rough years for reading.

I had a yucky pregnancy, in which reading made me sort of, well, sick. And then I had a baby, which meant that I had to start trading precious sleep time in order to read. Like a lot of new parents, I found that I wasn't staying up late with a book as often as I used to.

But recently, I've started doing better. The baby's older. Sometimes he'll play quietly at my feet and let me read a few pages. We had an easy beach vacation and I was able to get some reading in there too.

During the reading drought, I hated long books. It would take me forever to get through 450 pages. By the time, I finished a book I couldn't remember how it started! But now that I'm reading more quickly, I love getting lost in a 700 page world like Wideacre, the current Philippa Gregory book I'm reading.

And I loved The DaVinci Code. Now I know what all the fuss was about!

This just in....

I'm going to be having a book signing on April 28th at a Hastings book store in Russellville, Ark.

I'm thrilled about this because:

1) my parents can see me sign books in their home town. (Not that I sign books in any particularly interesting way, but hey it's what I'm doing these days.)

2) it's an excuse to go see my parents.

And 3) I wasn't able to do this after my first book came out because I was uncomfortably pregnant. I had a bit of a difficult recovery after a c-section and so I wasn't traveling afterward for awhile either. This trip is a reminder that after feeling pretty bad for a long time, I'm feeling good again. (And I've got a cute little guy to show for all my trouble.)

Naming Addison

I spend a lot of time naming and, often enough, renaming my characters. Why do I do this?

Because I'm delaying productive work? No! (At least, not entirely!)

In my first novel, Princess Izzy and the E Street Shuffle, every major character in the book changes their name at some point in their life. It illustrated their desperate efforts to control their public image. Their name was their first line of defense in that regard.

Addison McGhee, the name character in Cover Girl Confidential, also has a name change. She was born Ada Sinmac Ghee but a busy bureaucrat heard it wrong and made her Irish when she immigrated to the US as a child.

The fact that Addison is -- or at least was -- a boy's name only adds to her problems.

When I picked the name Addison, I had never heard it used for girl. My neighbor was a male Addison and I thought of it being one of those old-fashioned names that was bound to make a comeback. I figured it was a natural to be picked up by girls eventually because it is so similar to Madison. Still, I thought I was definitely ahead of the curve.

Not so much. There's a female Addison in my son's preschool class and when I met a young male Addison this week, his mother quietly confided that she was worried that she had accidentally given him a girl's name.

Well, I hope not.

I'm not being judgmental. As a former girl, I know the appeal of boyish names. If I were naming myself, I would surely give myself something feminine that lends itself to a boyish nickname. Amelia, nicknamed Mel, perhaps.

But as the mother of boys, it does bug me when every off-the-beaten track boys name gets snatched up from girls -- Ashley, Lesley, Kelly, Madison, Sydney. I've recently met female Finns and Aidens. The list seems endless! Come on, leave the boys something!

The importance of manicures to writing

The other day a reporter asked me how becoming published had changed my life.

I sort of drew a blank. I'm not JK Rowling, after all. My life hasn't changed all that much. The baby still wants a new diaper. The mortgage company still wants the next payment.

But today, as I was getting my nails done for the second time in four weeks, I realized that the biggest change may be this: I get manicures more often.

Spending money and time to have someone else groom your hands always seemed a bit luxurious to me. I ocassionally got a manicure. I liked getting manicures. But I saved them for special occasions -- like weddings and job interviews.

Now? Well, authors have to have good nails! Someone might ask me to sign a book! My hands have to look good! It's practically a business expense.

(Note to IRS: No, I do not mean this literally. I do not claim manicures on my taxes. I promise. Nothing to see here. Move along.)

If you want to see my nails in person, you can check them out at 4 p.m. on March 31st at Carmichael's Bookstore here in Louisville. (The Frankfort Avenue location.)