My bio on 4RV Publishing

http://www.4rvpublishingllc.com/Crystalee_Calderwood.html

Thanks to Sarah for letting me use her awesome picture. :-) Although it's a little old, I haven't had anything professional-looking done since I was in high school.

Me, me, me all over the internet!

My name now appears on the 4RV publishing website here: http://www.4rvpublishingllc.com/4RV-Authors.html

And look for my own bio page up within a couple of days!

Website Makeover

My website is getting a facelift. I fell in love with this template and decide to redo the entire thing! It's not completed yet, but you can take a sneak peek at http://crystaleecalderwood.bravehost.com/index.html

Killing your darlings

They say writers must kill their darlings. I feel like I've already killed Angeline a thousand times. . . So one more time, for the sake of publishing a really, really good book, couldn't hurt, right?

I've written a brand new picture book in the same kind of style as Angeline. It's called Mango Dance, and it's based on an experience I had in Trinidad.

Oh, and that thesis is really running from me again! But it can't hide forever. Oh, no. I will catch up with it again!

A Non-scientific equation

No computer+95 degree weather which prevents me from walking to the library=no work done on thesis. I did, however, start writing a new picture book. That's mildly exciting news. Maybe I'll go to writer's group next week and workshop it.

Considering...

Writing some articles about how to format and submit writing for publication. I don't consider myself an expert, but there are a whole heck of a lot of people out there who haven't been lucky enough to be taught how to do these things properly.

Writer's Group

So, I went to my children's writers group full of people from the class I had with Kathy Ayres, which meets every Monday night. . .

I workshopped "Samual Modico III, Sleuth of the Sixth Grade, and the Mystery in the Nurse's Office."

So, considering that I finished it yesterday, I'd say it came out pretty decent. I know it still needs a lot of work, though. Writing it served two purposes to me: 1) to educate children about diabetes, and 2) as a form of therapy and research to deal with Mark's diabetes issues. I'm afriaid that I accomplished #2 more successfully than #1, though.

It was kind of hard for me to write-- all of the research in the world doesn't really prepare you like real-life experience does, and even though I've certainly had some of that, I don't know that I've had enough of the right kind, if that makes any sense.

At any rate, I'm proud of myself for having written anything at all this week. It wasn't my thesis, but it was something important and it was fun to write. I'll be revising it in the near future; I really feel like if I did it now, I would go on overload. It's already taken over my life for an entire weekend. Maybe I'll put the second draft up on the SCBWI critique boards.

Website

Sometimes, having a website doesn't seem worth it. I tried to make my children's writing website better, and in the process I've completely messed it up.