Hello blog. It’s been a while. First things slowed down (in the middle of the series about my incarcerated teen poets because Livejournal had the attack on their servers and then, well, life intervened, as it has a way of doing. And even though people say you don’t need to say to write a post about being gone I feel compelled to say a few things. Three, I think.

Number one, a couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of going to Las Vegas to speak at their SCBWI conference. I had a wonderful time talking about creating characters and met some enthusiastic writers. But if that wasn’t enough of an event, the day after the conference I had the pleasure of finally meeting the half-sister I never knew I had.

My lovely niece capture the very first hug.

What do you think, can you see a resemblence?

We spent a wonderful day together talking about similarities and differences and telling family stories. And as I posted on Facebook (forgive me for those of you reading this/seeing pics a second time) there will always be a hole in my heart from not knowing my dad but getting to my sister and some of the rest of the family goes a long way toward filling that up again.

Second, I’ve been spending a lot of my time and energy on learning how to eat in new ways and man, that takes more time than I realized. It’s taken most of my focus just to get into these new habits but now I’m feeling like yes, they are habits. I’m maintaining the healthy course I want to be on and I don’t feel at all deprived. I’ve lost 38 pounds so far and plan on keeping with the program until I am as healthy as I can be and then staying on the program to keep myself that way. And by “program” I don’t mean something like Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig or some diet with a catchy name. I count calories and track it every day. I’ve cut out sugar and flour except for rare occassions. And that’s about it. It really is that simple.

And third, I’ve been able to focus on my writing again. At last. In the past year I’ve let go of a ton of emotional baggage that has been weighing me down for years. And then there’s the whole getting healthy thing. Not eating the right foods was rotting my brain and affecting my ability to focus. So I’m back to work, hard and fast, on my YA verse novel, coincidentally enough, about a very interesting pair of sisters. I’m sure you’ll get to know them a bit better as the character letters start going back and forth again.

I’m a lucky gal. Life is good and I’m smart enough to know it. You know those songs where they say, “I feel like I could fly…” Well it’s like that.

Yeah, just like that.

So hello blog, I’ve missed you.