Notes From the Bedside Table

Sunrise was at 6:40, Sunset will be at 7:32.

It's my 100th blog entry! Huzzah! Lots of books read, few written about. I wish I were better about keeping a list of what I've read. I have three stacks of books next to my desk, books I've read but maybe I'm not ready to review or they were okay and I have to remember what they were...most of them are fantasy and I don't want to admit to how much fantasy I really read....some just won't be out until much later...mostly I read faster than I write so they just mount up. The cat's not happy about it since I am using her scratching post as the annex.

Just got back from a long walk in the neighborhood, up Jackson past the Red Apple grocery, along the ridge over the lake (I love watching the traffic over the bridge), winding home back and forth through Bradner Gardens, around the pea patches, over the I-90 lid.

Had to stop and watch the dogs and their parents from a viewpoint above Blue Dog Park, the local leash-free park. What a hoot! All the dogs, no matter whose dog they were, surrounded the mom or dad holding the ball or stick over their head, scattering like pinballs before the item even left the hand. Such joy in their movement; dogs leaping over each other and rolling for yards when they get tangled up; barking and barking and barking; intense gazes at the humans while patiently waiting for the throw.

There's something about Suzanne Selfors and my walks around the neighborhood. When I read Coffeehouse Angel, I was walking around Seward Park. Walking around Jackson and Massachusetts, Bradner Gardens and Blue Dog Park, I was reading Mad Love, her new book about a 16 year-old girl, the daughter of The Queen of Romance.

Alice's mom has been hospitalized with a mental illness, leaving Alice alone at home, hiding the fact that Mom can't sign her own books or finish the book she got a $100,000 advance for. That means that someone is going to have to pay back the advance, or it will come out of the royalties they have been living on.

That's where I left off when I turned back into my driveway. In this book there's a mysterious man with a manuscript that smells like clam juice, a really cute boy with a skate board and a regular route past her house, an unstable home life, and the back of the book says there's also Errol, a boy who claims to be Cupid. I'm taking the book with me when I go out later for pizza at Flying Squirrel, just in case I'm first to arrive and have a few minutes to read, or if I get caught at a light or a traffic jam. It's pretty good so far! (There is no jacket art available, yet, that is a photo of Suzanne.) (Wow! Mad Love won't be available until January, 2011. Published by Walker Books, ages 12 and up.)