After a fun trip to South

3/4/10 -- After a fun trip to South Carolina (family reunion) and Alabama (school visit at South Shades Crest Elementary in Hoover), I'm back in Oregon until March 19, when I travel to Israel to speak at the International School in Tel Aviv. Should be a great adventure, with some extra time in the country to go to Jerusalem, the Dead Sea and Masada, and the West Bank. I'm even more excited than usual, because this trip lines up with Debbie's Spring Break, so she gets to go with me!

In the meantime, I've received the copyedited manuscript of STORM MOUNTAIN for my review. This is when we (the editor, copyeditor, and I) get down to fixing the last little details in the story -- spelling, punctuation, capitalization, all that writing mechanics stuff which I'm not very good at. Check out the list of goofs. As you can see, I have a particular problem with compound words. Maybe my Southern upbringing has something to do with that. We Carolina-Kentucky folks tend to have slow-moving tongues that blend syllables together.