Bob S.

Time for ear candy!!! Here are the songs I’ve been listening to over and over this year.

1. “Let the Light In” by Bob Schneider (a faboo live version is here)
2. “Rumor Has It” by Adele
3. “Down by the Water” by The Decemberists
4. “Moneygrabber” by Fitz and the Tantrums
5. “One More Goodbye” by the Randy Rogers Band
6. “Toes” by Zac Brown Band (flashbacks to Cruisin’ with Carol in January)
7. “It Didn’t Make a Sound” by the Courtyard Hounds
8. “Austin” by Pat Green
9. “El Cerrito Place” by Charlie Robison (alternate: “Beautiful Day” for Caitlyn)
10. “Blue Is My Heart” by Holly Williams

And of course I keep listening to “Midnight Train to Georgia” for karaoke purposes — one of these days…

But first, a quick first: In August, I switched jobs. I’m now the Special Events Manager for Planned Parenthood of the Texas Capital Region in Austin. What’s so firsty about that, you might ask? Well, this is the first job in my adult life that isn’t focused on writing or editing! So far, so good — my first big event was our annual Choice for Generations Dinner with author Anna Quindlen in November. In this crazy year as far as funding goes (the State of Texas cut $474,000 in federal funding for us), the event ended up being the most successful ever, largely because of the amazing fundraising team and event chairs.

Another HUGE first for me is that I have a literary agent for my super-secret humor book project. That’s all I want to say about it for now, other than I’m so excited about the possibilities!

Oh, and I did I mention that those rascally Cavalieristas Consuelo and Violet now have their own blog and Facebook page? Check it out! (On Facebook, search for “Cavalieristas” — they’d LOVE to get a few more wags, er, likes!

Favorites will start up this weekend!

If you’ve been dreaming about writing a book, now’s your chance. Not only do we have some fabulous agents (Joe Veltre, Rebecca Oliver, Susan Schulman, Laura Rennert, and more!) and editors, but we also have industry expert Jane Friedman serving as our keynote speaker — and she’ll even do some on-the-spot query letter critiques as well as presenting “Is the Book Dead? WHO CARES!”  We’ll have the latest info on where publishing is going and why it’s a great time to be an author.

New this year is the First and Last Pitch sessions, in which panels of agents will give fast feedback to anonymous pitches.(For a preview of the schedule, click here.)

We have a lot of great information posted on the WLT’s Scribe blog (such as a Q&A with Penguin editor Beena Kamlani), and we’ll be Tweeting all about it at #WLTCon.

But don’t miss out on the fun. Sign up today and make that commitment to taking your writing career to the next level! Use the code BLITZ when you checkout to get your discount; offer expires at 11:59 p.m. CST on Sunday, June 5.

Faye Kesey, the widow of Oregon author Ken Kesey, married another well-known writer, Larry McMurtry, in McMurtry’s hometown of Archer City, Texas, on April 29, the day of the royal wedding. Faye Kesey is 76. McMurtry, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Lonesome Dove” and many other novels, is 74.

Read the full story here.

With all of the poo-filled plastic bags going into my trash can then straight to the landfill, I’ve been wondering if there’s a more environmentally correct way to deal with these elimination issues. But with conventional composting wisdom warning against dog and cat contributions to compost heaps, I wasn’t sure what to do.

I ran this quadary by my good friend Renee Studebaker, who “cultivates” the superb Renee’s Roots gardening (and more) blog. Renee has a fabulous organic garden and is something of a composting queen. She suggested digging a poo hole and then adding dog/cat waste and layering it with dirt and leaves like a regular compost pile. Just let it sit, on its own, away from the other compost pile, and it will eventually become its own compost, she said.

Renee’s suggestion made perfect sense to me. So I asked her if she’d take me on as her comPOOst experiment. We’ll do the hole in my yard and see what decomposes!

So stay tuned for more scoop on the poop!

• Virginia Woolf spent seven years on her first novel, The Voyage Out: “By 1912, she had written five drafts of the novel, including two different versions that she worked on simultaneously. Between December 1912 and March 1913, she rewrote the entire novel one more time, almost from scratch, typing 600 pages in two months.” Courtesy of Garrison Keillor’s wonderful Writer’s Almanac.
• Agatha Christie helped her husband excavate the Nimrud ivories in Iraq — and even cleaned them with her face cream!
• And finally, let’s finish it off with this masterpiece from The Onion:

Wrap bread  (I like Flatout Flatbread)
Mustard (I use sweet/hot mustard)
Hummus (today’s choice is a red pepper hummus)
1 to 2 T. chopped pepperoncini
1/4 c. sweet/hot pickles
1 to 2 T. grated carrots
Handful of washed arugula leaves

Spread a thin layer of sweet/hot mustard on the wrap, followed by a thin layer of hummus. If the layer is too thick, the hummus will squeeze out when you roll the wrap. Then add a sprinkling of chopped pepperoncini, a few spicy/sweet pickles, grated carrot, and arugula. Roll it up and cut it in half, and there you have it.

Options: You can create whatever type of hummus, mustard, and veggie combos you like. I sometimes add sliced avocado, chopped sundried tomatoes, chopped olives or an olive tapenade, grated cheese, other types of greens, cucumbers, a sprinkling of red wine or balsamic vinegar, etc. But my foundation is always the hummus and the  hot/sweet combo of those pickles and mustard!

If you’re entertaining, you could cut these into pinwheels for appetizers. Easy peasy!

It’s official! There’s yet another writer in the family, my niece Cait Gordon, who just launched her fabulous Alleyway C blog. I’m so proud of her, I just can’t stand it!

“Official” cruise photo with Carol aboard the Carnival Glory

Flower girls!

Carol goes for the guac in Cozumel!

The view from my beach chair in Isla Roatan

The view from my beach chair in Cozumel

The view from my beach chair in Costa Maya

The Snooks pretends to have written a book (come on, who would she be foolin’), so she poofed into that book slot for the week, I guess. And the producer tried to claim that the show was booked in advance (but I guarantee everyone who can Google “American Library Association” would be able to find the date of the NEXT awards announcement pretty darn soon).

I was delighted that a fellow Kansan, Clare Vanderpool (below right) of Wichita, won the Newbery for Moon Over Manifest (Delacorte). And Erin Stead of Ann Arbor won the Caldecott Medal honoring outstanding illustration for A Sick Day for Amos McGee (Roaring Brook), which was written by her husband, Philip Stead.

I just don’t understand the Today show. First off, Snooki does NOT need any publicity — I mean, isn’t her 15 minutes LOOOONG over?! Second, isn’t Today the No. 1 morning show? Why on earth would they be worried about viewers switching to GMA or whatever that CBS show is these days.

Author Eric A. Kimmel had a thoughtful post about the brouhaha, pointing out that even within the publishing industry itself, the awards don’t necessarily ensure long-term success or even a next book contract.(Thanks to Roxie Munro for linking to that one on Facebook!).

This is just one more sign of the cult of celebrity driving the book world these days. Why should two really good books that can reach probably the most critical audience — our children — be booted in favor of Snooki?!

Author Jodi Picoult summed it up best on Twitter: “Valid questions: Who rushes out to buy the Snooki book? Why does Snooki think she can write a book? You don’t see me acting on Jersey Shore.”

Exactly.