Tuesday is the new Monday

So, after all the dust had settled from my breakneck last second edits, and the trip to the Post Office was over with, and I lay down on my tiny living room floor to just breathe...

...the mail came.

With another big, fat envelope from Secret Agent Man.

I rolled over and got up and headed toward the mail, and was body checked by a large Being that pushed me back toward the couch and said, "Tuesday. NOT today."

That, and new jersey sheets on my bed, sounded just too sweetly reasonable. I am sizing up said envelope even now, knowing that work awaits. But! Thought I'd point out a few roses I had a chance to stop and smell this past weekend:

Via Jen Robinson's Book Page, a great article on adult readers of YA books by blogger Daphne, and a quick link to the book Escape Adulthood, which seems to have been written for those of us who feel guilty for moving into the YA section of our local libraries. (Yes, Librarians, I know part of your job is to protect the kids, and more super power to you, but I promise, I just want a book! Stop staring at me!!)

Trying to explain to others why you're a writer and how they can become one? Don't, suggests Laura Zigman in this amusing Washington Post Bookworld article on the Writing Life.

Via Oz and Ends, is it a story of persistence or of connections? Madeleine L'Engle was published through a friend of her mother's, after many rejections and after giving up entirely on her first novel for children. The fact that she was already a published author with an agent is rarely mentioned. It's sometimes difficult for writers to attend conferences and hear about these instant success stories when they've been schlepping around a novel for ages, trying to get someone interested. It's hard not to become discouraged -- and frankly, jealous as heck -- over someone else's success and connections. The truth is, if it's merely a matter of luck, it can happen to anyone... all you have to have is an excellent manuscript in hand...

To that end, the story of the man who was paralyzed for thirty years and wrote a seafaring novel purely based on memory and imagination deserves a big huzzah! for his persistence. If he can do it...

Publishers' Weekly reminds us that the new Artemis Fowl goes on sale this week. And the L.A. Times carried the obnoxious AP story of a Minnesota start-up called Freeload Press, Inc., which carries the full text of many college business courses and offers them to students to download and print for free -- provided they don't mind ADS coming with their TEXTBOOKS. Textbook prices, which have risen at twice the rate of inflation, have always been overpriced, but ads? First movie previews, then B.A.R.T. trains and now textbooks. Is nowhere immune from commercials!?

Finally, I am speechless about Steve Irwin. Someone mentioned it casually to me yesterday, and I never let on that I didn't already know... so much for my weekend of not connecting to the media. I don't know why, but I really liked that big lunk, and so did so many little kids I know. No matter how much of a nutcase he may have seemed to have been, he knew his stuff, and I thought he would live forever somehow. Crikey.