Still writing books, still blogging in my head...

I know, I know. It doesn't count if you can't read it onscreen. Kind of like that proverbial tree falling in the forest. But then again, I have no followers (sigh) so maybe it's okay that I only blog regularly in my brain?

In case anyone cares, here comes another supersized blog to make up for...umm...the lack of November postings.

1. I'm still looking for Oliver-Henry! Some people have hinted that they think I should give up, because he has been gone for almost four months. But I keep watching all the classified ads for the area in which he got lost, and people are STILL posting ads like this: "Found cat needs a home. A cat has been living under my deck since May but I can't keep it because I already have a cat and they don't get along. I would like to find a home for it now that the weather is getting colder." Oliver-Henry was a barn cat before I started spoiling him, and he has good survival instincts. And, as the great Dr. Seuss said in McElligot's Pool: "if such a thing could be it certainly would be." And that's why I think that I'm not such a fool, as I sit and I surf on my internet tool(bar).

2. Meanwhile, I continue to dream about him, every night. I had a really weird thing happen last week, though, where in the middle of the dream, I stopped and said to myself: "Wait a minute. Every night I dream that I found him, and every morning I wake up and it's not true. So am I actually dreaming this?" Sadly (or interestingly?) My dreaming self convinced my dreaming self that I actually WAS awake. But I wasn't. Does that make any sense????


3. Professionally, I am working on revisions of book number four, Maybe Never, Maybe Now. It's the sequel to Painting Caitlyn. It took me a long time to get started on it, because I am not, in general, a lover of sequels. (Confession: although I adored the originals, I couldn't finish Love, Stargirl, and I haven't made it past New Moon). I know that it unusual, but I grew up on Judy Blume and Lois Lowry's stand-alone novels, and sometimes revisiting a character I loved is a little bit like running into the guys I adored in high school now that we're forty: many of them are pudgy and wrinkly and not nearly as interesting as they used to seem, which taints the original memories a little bit.

Anyway, I felt very protective of "Caitlyn," and thus found it really difficult to begin writing about her again. I am THRILLED to say, however, that once I invited her back, she had a lot to share, and I think I managed to stay true to her in every way. My editor seems to agree, as I have (happily) not been asked to do any major re-writing - it's mostly just shortening sentences here and there. (Which, as you can see fromt he above, tends to be an issue for me!).

So here's the other cool thing about it: Maybe Never, Maybe Now will be out in the fall, along with Definitely Not Camelot, which is the sequel to Posing as Ashley. Ashley narrates DNC, and Caitlyn narrates MNMN, and each book has it's own plot, and can stand alone without the other - but the two books take place during the same time period, with the characters in different locations, each telling about what's happened to them. It's kind of like a she said/she said thing, with the stories intersecting here and there as the girls communicate with each other via telephone and email. More to follow on this as I am allowed to share.

4. I saw the movie Amelia a little while ago, and I have to say I was disappointed in the way they portrayed the main character. I get that they wanted to show Amelia Earhart's independence and rebellion against societal expectations by showing her refusal to either be loyal or demand loyalty in her marriage, but it really just ended up making her husband look like a long-suffering good guy. The truth is, HE was married when they got together, and they totally avoided mentioning that. Apparently, women who sleep around are still newsworthy, but boys will be boys. Sheesh.

5. Moonlight, Lace and Mayhem has revamped their blog. The guest blog I did for them in August on Nine Ways Writing YA Mirrors my Adolescence can now be found here. (And yes, it was a HUGE thrill to be in the virtual company of authors like Susan Beth Pfeffer, who I read when I actually was an adolescent, along with Jay Asher and Sara Zarr, who are, like, the A to Z of great YA right now!!!!

Hooray - with apologies to the Berenstein Bears

Hooray! Hooray! I'm on my way! I finished the draft of book four today!

And now, on to report cards...

A Tale of Two Islands

You wouldn't know it to look in the archives, but I actually blog every day. In my mind. In fact, I'm almost always "blogging" as I'm walking the dog, or trying to get to sleep - but clearly, if I don't actually get the ideas out of my head (brilliant or dull as they might be) and post them here, they don't really count.



Sometimes, I need time to think and arrange before I type (my first book, Painting Caitlyn, actually rolled around inside my head for YEARS before I finally started pulling it together as text), but usually, it's just distraction and procrastination that keep me from doing it. And so, an entry about the distractions that occurred between August and October.



1. Obviously, Oliver Henry
I am still looking for my cat (see preceeding post). All of the free surfing time I can find goes to perusing Craig's List, Kijiji, and random Google searches for "Found Cats" in Kitchener, Ontario.



2. Actual (not imaginary) deadlines


(Drumroll, please) Book three, Definitely Not Camelot is finished. It even has a cover, but I'm not sure whether or not I'm allowed to share that yet, so we'll save it for a future post. Book four, Maybe Never, Maybe Now is "in process" (ie. I'm stalling on it right now by catching up on blogging!!!) and will be finished very, very soon.




Okay - so enough of the numbered lists of excuses. Here's the coolest thing that's happened lately: I turned FORTY!!! Woo hoo! Now, I know it's unusual to cheer about turning forty, because it makes me sound really, really, old. I do. And I worry - just a tiny bit - that the number itself could be a "turn-off" to my YA audience. But here's the thing: my maternal grandmother died from cancer at 45. She had just one biological child (my dad), and he died from cancer at 46. I am his only biological child, and I've already had cancer (thyroid, when I was 28 - yet another subject for another day). I could worry about what genetic horrors may be lying in wait for me over the next few years, but instead, I'm celebrating that I've made it this far. And that the journey, for the most part, has been positive. In the middle of August, I invited several friends to join me for a weekend at my cottage on Thorah Island, in celebration of "The Twenty-Fourth Anniversary of Our Sixteenth Birthdays", but before arriving, I asked each of them to email me with one thing they know now (in their forties) that they wish they'd known then (in their teens). Some of them have been my friends since high school. One was my first roomate in university. And one of them is now a co-worker. Here is some of our collective wisdom:

• Theresa wishes she'd known how short "forever" is.
• Karen wishes she'd known that forty isn't really that old
• Colleen says that great legs will eventually sag, too.
• And Andrea said "You only live once. Take more chances."
• Me, I just wish I'd understood that even though my breasts were small, they went beautifully with my flat stomach.
  

This is a picture I took just before we got in the boat to go to Thorah Island for my girls' retreat:

And this is the view from the dock that weekend:

Anyway, we ate chips and sat in the sun and swam in the lake and walked around the island and got caught up on each other's lives, and it made me feel happy and young and mature all at the same time. (oh yeah - and in the spirit of taking more chances, I drove the boat. Exhilarating!)

And then, at the end of September, when I had my REAL birthday, I finally got to fulfil a dream of mine and go to Pelee Island. I've wanted to go there for years, because of the monarch butterfly migration that happens there around the weekend of my birthday. Unfortunately, the butterflies didn't know I was coming, and departed early this year. Despite the definite lack of butterflies, I had an amazing time. My husband had booked us in at the best B&B on the island and we hiked and toured the winery and walked on the beach and had dinner with two other couples who were also staying there. The only sucky part was when I threw up (repeatedly) in the back of his plane on the way home. But then, the first time I did that, I was twenty, and we weren't even dating yet. So in a way, that made me feel kind of young, too.

This is the view of our B&B as we arrived at Pelee Island.

This is the view from the B&B:

And THIS (another drumroll, please!) is what FORTY looks like, without make-up, early in the morning at the end of the party:

(I wish I'd known, at sixteen, that I didn't need make-up to be beautiful) HOORAY!!!!!

Guest Blog Appearance!

Hey guys - switch over to http://www.moonlightlacemayhem.blogspot.com/ where I am the guest author blogger today!

The Hunt for Oliver Henry

Hi All - I got off track on my book deadline (yikes!) last week because I have been DESPERATELY searching for Oliver-Henry, my new little kitty friend who snuck out on my mom while she was kitty-sitting. He is deaf, and my mom lives two hours away, both of which make finding him quite a bit trickier, but I have taken (I think) some very creative steps towards "getting the word out", and I remain hopeful that he WILL return. He is quite a special little guy: started life as a barn cat, got stepped on by a cow (major injuries, no veterinary care, but he pulled through), started sneaking into the farmhouse because hey, it's safer in there! Started getting tossed out of the farmhouse - by the tail - into the pine tree. Continued sneaking in, continued getting tossed. Was "saved" by the farmer's daughter-in-law (my friend Colleen!) and delivered to me in May.Here's the thing: my husband has never really bonded with any of our cats. He tried with Sacha, but she'd decided years before I met him that she really didn't like anyone except me. He sort of tried with Sam, but Sam was already 16 when he moved in, and he woke us up A LOT at night, which made it kind of hard for them to get along. But Oliver-Henry (O'Henry) played it differently, and climbed right up onto my husband's lap every chance he got. He also quickly learned to hang around on my desk while I write. Unfortunately, as a former barn cat, he needed neutering, and I was advised to wait until six weeks after he'd had his final set of vaccinations...so now he's at large in Kitchener-Waterloo with testicles, and that may mean that he's a long, long way from where he started out. It also means that in a few weeks time, there may be many more chocolate brown/black kitties in Kitchener-Waterloo looking for homes. And that sucks. Because I have been brutally reminded this past few wees that animal shelters and rescue groups are full, full, full. In KW, they stay at the Humane Society for only 72 hours before going out for adoption. I walked through one day (but mostly my mom's been doing it for me) and there were so, so many cats who were in the middle of that 72 hour period - all lovely, all needing their people to come and get them out. But their people weren't there, and if my heart hadn't already been broken and heavy from the loss of O'Henry, it would have broken there. So even though I know I said it already in Posing as Ashley, please hear me out again, and get your pets spayed or neutered (I really was going to - really - he had an appointment booked). Even if you happen to find homes for all the kittens, that's a bunch of homes that are no longer available to the thousands of adult cats who already need homes. And just in case you're thinking kittens are more fun, here's Ten Reasons to Adopt an Older Cat.And if you happen to be in the Kitchener/Waterloo/Cambridge area, keep an eye out for O'Henry.Meanwhile, as I said, I am behind on my deadlines, and feeling unprofessional about it. But sometimes it's more important to be unprofessional than uncaring.

Anagrams

Originally posted at LiveJournal May. 2nd, 2009 at 5:42 PM

I’ve been playing with Anagram generators online recently. They’re all over the internet: all you have to do is type “anagram finder” into the search engine of your choice (but I like http://www.wordsmith.org/anagram/ for lots of choice and custome options, or http://www.anagramgenius.com/server.html for a quick blurb) and voila! you can rearrange the letters of anything you want into cool little sayings.

There are lots of famous examples of amazingly coincidental anagrams, like “Dormitory”, which can be rearranged into “Dirty room” or “George Bush”, which anagrams to “He bugs Gore,” but sometimes, it’s more fun to research things that are personal to you, and to your life.

For example:

My name, Kimberly Peters, can be anagrammed to: “Berserk, yet limp” – and some days, when I’m so overwhelmed with things I have to do that I’m paralyzed into inaction, that’s a pretty good description!

And my second book, “Posing as Ashley”, anagrams to: “A sylph agonises”, which, if you’ve read it, is also kind of fitting.But it never would have occurred to me that "Principle Gibson" would have all the same letters as "So brain clipping".

Try it, then send me your results!

Body Image Week

Originally posted on LiveJournal Apr. 26th, 2009 at 10:21 AM

It’s Body Image Week over at My Favorite Author, and back in my world, where I’m the Health teacher for grades 7 and 8, it’s the beginning of our “Growth and Development” unit. Yup – that’s “Puberty and Reproduction” or, as the students like to call it, “Sex Ed”.

Many teachers dread this unit, and while some leave it until the very last few days of the school year and then rush through in the most clinical way possible, or others “run out of time” and don’t cover it at all, I think it’s the most important information our students receive. And they know it! There is nothing else I teach – Visual Arts and Physical Education included -- that garners me such an engaged, attentive audience.

Why do I think it’s so important? Because everyone goes through puberty. You can live your whole life perfectly well without ever learning another language. There are people in the world who have never picked up a basketball, or a paintbrush or even – yes - a book. So while languages and physical education, and visual arts enhance our lives, they aren’t universal experiences like growth and development. Even if you live completely isolated in the most remote jungle in the world, you’re going to grow pubic hair and breasts and you’re going to have questions about it and you’re going to feel differently about yourself and other people after that happens.

The reality for the students I teach is that they don’t live in isolation. So even before their bodies start to change, they are bombarded every day with make-over programs telling them to surgically enhance their breasts. Spammers tell them their penises can be enlarged.

Infomercials recommend getting “ripped”. The porn they download shows adult bodies waxed and plucked as smooth as a pre-pubescent child. And even if they manage to avoid all of the expectations of the rest of the world, sometimes all it takes is one little “joke”, made by a sibling about the size of their hips, to send them off on a lifetime of body-image angst.

So I doubt that they believe me, their Health teacher, as I read to them from textbooks and curriculum documents that say pubic hair can be thick or sparse or heart shaped or diamond shaped, because a lot of them are probably already thinking they just want it off, and even if they don’t think that already, some of them will have partners who ask them to remove it, because that’s what they've seen and that's what they expect. And I don’t know if I can actually influence my students in any way when I explain to them that “size doesn’t matter”, because penises and breasts can do their jobs regardless of how big or small they are.

But I try. Because I hope that someday they will be emotionally strong enough to recognize that real human beings can be lumpy and hairy and natural and physically “flawed” and still be completely wonderful and loveable.