Neither up nor down!

I took this photo a few days ago when I was out running errands. My town has several boat launches, and sometimes I'll just stop at one to breathe the salt air and center myself. It was a beautiful day and the only other person at the boat launch was this lady with her dog. It's easy to get caught up in all details of life and miss how wonderful it is to just "be" for a few minutes.

I have a lot going on right now, including two trips this month: Ohio next week and Virginia the week after. So I've been prepping for those events between doing book-related things.

If all my books stay on schedule, I'll have four new books out in 2014 (a picture book, an early reader, a chapter book, and a middle-grade novel), which means that at least one of those books has something for me to do at all times.  It's like a revolving door!  I send one back and within a day or so, another one returns to me. It's a fun type of busy, though.

And since some of those books are series books, I'll have at least two books in 2015.  Maybe three, as I have a fourth novel heading to acquisitions soon. The school channels at my publisher have signed on already for that novel, so that's a big check mark in its favor. Still, it's never a sure thing in publishing, and I definitely still get rejections.  I got two no's on picture books lately.

Publishing is a very up and down business. It reminds me of that song from summer camp, The Grand Old Duke of York:

Oh, The grand old Duke of York,
He had ten thousand men;
He marched them up to the top of the hill,
And he marched them down again.

And when they were up, they were up,
And when they were down, they were down,
And when they were only half-way up,
They were neither up nor down.

So I've got some projects "up," some projects "down," and my novel in process is currently "halfway up," neither up nor down!"