Harry Potter & Sawyer Wade

Two teenagers with a lot in common....



Everyone knows the first one. Good old Harry. I will be in line for Deathly Hallows, and I will start it tomorrow. I should re-read or re-listen to book 6, because I've entered those memory-sucking 40s. But I won't, because I'm too excited. Isn't it a great day and age when the entire world is united over the release of a book? As a former reading teacher, the very idea makes me want to stand up and holler! :-)



The second teenager is a new burgeoning author in Columbia, MO. Sawyer Wade is a fantasy writer who is 14 years old and has already written 2 novels and well underway into his 3rd. You heard me right...he wrote his first fantasy book as a 12 year old! He's innovative and a wizard at what he does.



Sawyer and I are doing some marketing training, and he is a quick study. If only every writer had such passion and started as young. I was thrilled to publish before 40!



So teenagers are my focal point today, and tomorrow it will be all about Harry...



And I'm sure I won't be the only one!

Frenetic Pace...

A week out of the country rejuvenated me for the bump and grind of life back in the states.

I learn more about Americans every time I leave the states, the most important of which is that we're WAY TOO BUSY!!

Why do we go at such a frenetic pace when we know it's taxing our brains, our bodies, our families? I don't think there's an answer...no se, as they say in Puerto Vallarta. Life is sure simpler on the beach, away from phones, e-mail, and the daily pressures we put on ourselves.

I'm a hypocrite though, because as soon as I got home, I let the 572 e-mails overwhelm me, along with the packed two weeks I was facing: Literacy Academy all day Monday through Wednesday and also in Rolla on Friday, meetings all day Thursday, and then out of town in Rolla the following week before driving straight through to the Florida panhandle. *Whew* All the while, I need to be prepping for classes I teach at MU in the fall. Have I missed a deadline for the textbook? Did I answer that e-mail about the updates for the online class? Wasn't I supposed to write a short synopsis for my upcoming book (Playing the Line) for Vox Magazine?

AHHHHHHHH!

My next task...lobby for a bill for a 25th hour in a day or put a rush on that whole cloning thing...

What am I thinking?

I've had a crazy busy week, and I constantly wonder why I'm so busy...during the summer! Sunday I met with a new young writer named Henry Stratmann III. He writes flash fiction, which is a new wave in short short stories. We decided that this could be a wonderful segue for teachers -- a resource book for units like inferring, predicting, connecting, etc. to use with his flash fiction.

It begs the question...what am I thinking? Something new? Do I have a clone I don't know about?

But the teacher in me knew what I was thinking -- Henry's teenaged enthusiasm, the educational opportunity it presented, and broadening my marketability...it's a win-win situation for both of us. And since deciding to do it, education guru Cris Tovani has agreed to write the foreword!! Wow!

So we're planninng a teacher resource book using flash fiction from Henry's Eye Has Not Seen and the upcoming Flash Fiction Fever.

And since I don't know what I'm thinking, if any of you have tips on cloning, I'm all ears...