As you can tell, I've been on quite a long blogging hiatus. Typically I'd be pretty regretful that it's been about three months since my last post, but I'm not. In September I enrolled in a local college creative writing course that called for an original short story per week. And since I crave deadlines I had quite an exciting and productive time with it. I learned a lot about the writing process and I even walked out of the class with several short stories, including two I consider rough draft chapters of a new middle grade manuscript WIP. Yay me!!

Now that the class is over, I've started dabbling in painting. Most picture book writers think in pictures, or at least I do, so I am excited to be jumping in with both feet. It's been a dream of mine for a long time now. One thing that most people don't know about me is that before I chose to pursue my Marketing degree, I started out as an Art major. I did mostly 2D and graphic design stuff before switching my major, so drawing and painting animals and people are pretty new to me. I'm having a really fun time playing around with watercolors. Who knows, maybe some day I'll be good enough to illustrate my own books.

Here's my first try at painting, using two of Pat Schories' characters from her book Biscuit Wants to Play.


As for blogging, I haven't forgotten about all those workshop and conference updates I promised. More SCBWI Summer Conference recaps to come very soon.