End of Summer Update

As you may have noticed, the summer has FLOWN by. Look over at the fridge calendar. Yep, we’re already at the end. Kids are buying new book bags and lunchboxes; teachers are in their classrooms attaching paper leaves to bulletin boards and mapping out September day plans; new shoes have been purchased and plastic flip-flops have been stowed away; big yellow buses are being tuned up; and swimming pool crowds whittled down. Summer is waning and autumn is waiting. Change is in the air.

And so it is here on my blog. I’ve decided to change the format. My blog will still contain Sarah-ramblings on occasion, but for the most part, here is where you’ll find the current events: what I’m up to in coming weeks; readings & signings; travels and book releases. These will be shorter postings, bulletins on my journeys. I’ll try to include more posts on what I’m reading, what I’m not, what’s on my nightstand, where I’m at in my writing process, etc. Again, with brevity in mind. You can read my longer essays at the online magazines I frequent and I’ll be sure to post those links here, too.  I do this so that you, my lovely readers, have a more streamlined connection to the news.

So what’s the news today? Well, I’m so glad you asked!

August/September

I’m headed to New York City at the end of the week and will be visiting my brilliant editor and publishing house (Crown/Random House). I’m very excited to see the team at Crown now that my second novel will be published under the Crown imprint. But what’s a little business without a little pleasure: I have tickets to Mary Poppins on Broadway and consider the show a sing-along. God help my theater neighbors. Following NYC, I’ll be driving down to Washington, D.C./Northern Virginia for a visit home with my family. Then it’s back to El Paso for a grueling, self-imposed writer hermitage. I’m working to revise my second novel for my editor. At 2.5 X the length of The Time It Snowed In Puerto Rico, it is quite the endeavor. While the work has my eyeballs burning, I love this new crop of characters so much that I’d go blind with pleasure to get them on the page just right. I can’t wait for all of you to read their story!

October

October 7-10: I’ll be in Norfolk, Virginia, presenting at the 33^rd Annual Literary Festival at Old Dominion University. The festival begins October 4 and this year’s theme is “Hard Times in America.” Here’s the prologue:

This year’s Literary Festival ponders the issue of how poverty affects the lives of many in our land.  For us, this theme implies more than economics.  Hard Times are inevitably entwined with racism, crime, despair, an inequitable legal system, inadequate medical care, and inequalities in education, but they sometimes provide examples of heroism, innovation and achievement.   The writers and performers at this year’s festival are not here to solve the problem of poverty in America but rather to offer stories that will ask us to think honestly about our own experiences, to reach beyond self in order to enter another person’s conflicts, to see with another person’s eyes the problems that confront us all.

October 25-29: El Paso High School Teen Literacy Club

October 30: The Great Southwest Book Fair at Main Library, downtown El Paso

That’s as far into the fall as I’ll go for now. I promise to give you information on each of these events the closer we are to them. If you are in the area for any, I’d love to meet you and sign your copy of The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico! I’ll be in touch again soon.

Yours truly, Sarah

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