A New Cover for Bound on Earth!

. . . thanks to the Lovely and Talented Julia Higgins Warren

And here's the entire cover, so you can see the back (which I love):

I think it looks fabulous. I never loved the layout and font of my original cover and this looks so much better. Not only that, but we were able to include the Whitney award seal and some of the more recent reviews. Although BoE has never sold a ton of copies, it's still selling some every month, is read in some Mormon Lit courses, and continues to get reviewed in places. It got a kind of hilarious mention in the Boston Globe. (I say hilarious because the reviewer called BoE a "national breakout," which it most certainly wasn't, but hey, I'll take a mention in the Boston Globe! And if they're going to get something wrong, I'll take exaggeration. She also somehow lumped the yellow journalism that is John Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven in with the Mormon authors, so obviously she didn't do her homework). A review of BoE is coming out in the most recent issue of BYU Studies as well, written by someone who actually read the novel, which makes me happy. So I'm glad that anybody who buys it now gets the new cover, even if that number is small. Thank you so much Julia!

Also, it's now available as an ebook for the low, low price of $3.99.  You don't have to have a Kindle in order to read Amazon's ebooks; you can download their Kindle app for free on your computer or on your phone. Although I don't really like reading books on my computer or on my phone . . . but still. It's an option.

Dispensation is also available as an ebook, for the even lower low price of $2.99, a real steal considering how many stories are in the volume. Bang for your buck!  I was excited to hear that Dispensation received an award at the most recent AML conference, as well. (The first AML conference I've missed in like six years? It was strange not to be a part of it. Sigh.)

Anyway, that's the latest from the writerly side of my life. I'm almost done with the first draft of a new short story and I'm enjoying the new writing group I've joined with some LDS women in my area. They're great, and it'll give me deadlines, which I always, always need. As soon as my short story is finished, I'm getting back on track with my novel, no matter how much it scares me. I am!

And there will be a nice, big post detailing the birthdays of two of the wonderful men in my life, Jonas and his father, coming very very soon.

Adding A Teenager And Losing our Lunch Over Spring Break

Here in Minnesota people take their spring breaks very seriously, and I can see why: by the second week of March most of us are so stir crazy that we risk going all Charlotte Perkins Gilman on the interior decor.  This year we didn't have the funds to go somewhere warm, but at least we got to go somewhere. (Duluth, to be exact, housed in a super duper crowded hotel/water park, to be more exact.) And we got to celebrate Elise's 13th birthday to boot!

So first, Elise's birthday. Hard to believe that this girl:

Is now this girl:

I find this expression particularly teenagerish, don't you?

She's really growing into a great kid, though. A responsible babysitter, conscientious student, talented performer, enthusiastic cook, burgeoning guitarist, and excellent daughter, sister, and friend.  (Not to mention an expert sleeper-inner, light keeper-onner, and laundry-on-the-floor thrower. ) Where would we be without our Lou?

As to our Duluth adventure, it started off with a bang as Jonas found himself doubled over and vomiting into the vomit bowl the morning before we left. He rallied and did okay the rest of the day (hurrah!), but then relapsed some at night. Never fun to throw up in a hotel. Nope. Joe is a really good sick person though; discreet, uncomplaining, relatively fast on the rebound. So he was able to enjoy a good amount of the fun.

 Here the kids are at the Duluth Aquarium, Lake Superior in the background.

And here they are again, in the only other group shot I was able to snap because Ethan (if you haven't heard) is also a teenager. A more expert teenager than his 13-year-old sister. And he doesn't like getting rounded up with his younger siblings, made to stand in front of a moose, and smile obligingly for his camera-wielding mother. Especially when a busload full of what appeared to be at-risk teenagers had just at that moment poured through the doors of the Duluth Aquarium, a gaggle of bored/suspicious adolescents replete with piercings and slightly offensive t-shirts. These kids probably haven't been made to stand in front of a moose with their younger siblings since they were like, nine, so I can see why Ethan was a little embarrassed. I therefore let the poor kid off the hook. 

(It's weird, though, being embarrassing all of a sudden, I must say. Especially because I'm actually wicked cool, so it's particularly confusing for me . . .)

 I was able to get one candid shot that included Ethan (he didn't even notice!). This is all the men-folk at the big boat/dam thingie (I considered saying big dam boat thingie, then decided it would be misconstrued.) It's a cool replica of all the great lakes. Wyatt loved it. Do you remember this, Mom and Dad, from when we visited this aquarium ten years ago?

And speaking of visiting ten years ago, I have this picture (um, somewhere, and it's not digital) of Ethan and Elise, ages two and three and a half, at this very steering wheel. I really should go find it and scan it, but I don't have it in me. Sigh. You'll have to take me at my word. But here's the modern version:

And just for fun, a few more aquarium pics:

Later that day we returned to the hotel for a little more water park fun. It's a smallish water park (not as big as some of the mega-parks at Wisconsin Dells, for example), and it was super crowded during peak times. But the second day we decided do go between 12-4, after yesterday's guests had gone home and before the new guests could check in. It was MUCH more doable, and the kids had fun.

I could tell that Ethan wasn't feeling so swift at the water park. To be honest, I was chalking it up to teen angst until I felt his forehead. Fever! Of course. He got sicker and sicker as the afternoon progressed.

Both Jonas and Ethan trying to regain a little strength

It was obvious that Ethan *really* wasn't feeling good when he decided not to go out to dinner with us to celebrate Elise's birthday that night. There was steak on the menu! Ribs! I felt bad that he was too sick to come enjoy it and instead opted to stay back and sleep. 

But the rest of us had fun at Grandma's restaurant:

Don't you think Jonas looks a little like the famous Youtube Dramatic Squirrel in that last photo?

 

And no birthday is complete without putting whipped cream on your nose and posing for a picture:

 

So despite sickness and crowds of pale, tattooed Midwestern flesh (one guy had a tattoo of a bbq grill on his shoulder with hotdogs roasting on the coils), we had a good time, mostly because we were able to head out on the road together and not worry about work, school, laundry, email, and on and on. I always love a trip, even a less-than-perfect one.

Oh, and one final note. A guy I know named Tony (or T, or T-Bone, or Tone, or the Tonester, or Anthony, or Ross, or Roscoe P Coltraine) is now, officially, a Dr. of the PhD variety. He defended his dissertation yesterday and passed without revisions and with lots of positive feedback. I'm so proud of you, my brother!

The Upside of Travel: A Guest Post

Yes, it is true! The guest post has arrived. I figure once every five years I can talk Forrest into it. And now, without further ado, my adoring (yes! he adores me! he pines for me every day he's away!) husband:

So here is the thing about travel for work.  I actually kind of like it.  I don’t like every little thing about it (like missing my family), and I could pretty easily make a long list of hardships that I am forced to endure while traveling, but that would be disingenuous. For me, and maybe for anyone else who has had moments in their past when they felt trapped by their jobs or other circumstances, the act of heading off to new destinations can be a cathartic experience.

I might have spent one too many eight hour shifts chained to a piece of printing equipment as an 18-year-old temp worker.  Or before that, on any number of summer days, stuck somewhere by myself without means or mobility.  Whatever the ultimate source of that weight is it’s still a tangible part of my soul.  Not in a bad way; it’s not pushing me where I don’t want to go. But the memory of what it feels like to be without options is something I can tap when I need to as a balance.  When I look out a plane window at whatever part of the world I’m traveling over, or when I look out a hotel window at whatever part of the world the sun is rising over on a particular day, I can quickly calibrate around the path I’ve taken.  Locked in place or free as the wind.  I'm grateful for the chance to feel free.

Before this gets too poetic I should remind everyone that I don’t always travel to the most glamorous of places.  Last week I was in a meat packing plant in Petersburg, Virginia.  This week I’ll be in Fort Worth, TX trying to make a better box, and next week I’ll be in Watsonville, CA trying to talk some sense into some berry growers.  The thrill of most of these trips for me comes from the minutiae. 

I landed in Baltimore at 8:00 pm last Monday and drove for 3 hours to get to Richmond.  I listened to some great radio stations coming out of DC, I had an entire 5 Guys place to myself when I stopped along the way for dinner at 9:30, and I talked to Angie on the phone 3 or 4 times along the way to get updates on various topics.  It looks a lot like normal life except someone is paying me to do it somewhere else. 

Once in a while the out of the way places I tend to travel to get more "out of the way" than usual, but my traveling rules for fun still stay the same. Rule # 1 is that food is a comfort.  To misquote Homer Simpson, “Mmmmm, donuts. At least my love for you will never die.”  I’m always up for a donut and, like good Mexican food, the more run down the place looks, the better the donut.  On more than one occasion I have pulled up in front of bakery without being too sure that the building was occupied and open for business, only to be pleasantly surprised by the quality of their wares.  On my recent trip to Luneburg, Germany I was able to find multiple bakeries (“back-a-rye” phonetically in German) and enjoy more that one walnut streusel.  The picture below was the oldest of the bakeries in the city as you can tell by the elaborate and leaning brick work.  It was built like 500 years ago and the woman walking her bicycle in front worked there for most of that time.

We might as well talk about Luneburg while we are on the subject.  The food isn’t anything to get too worked up about, although the breakfast at our hotel was an incredible buffet.  Seven different bowls with seven different types of yogurt each morning?  Enough said.  The façade to our hotel is pictured below. The entire building behind it has been replaced after a fire gutted the old building. I think it was a firehouse first and a warehouse at the time of the fire.  Now it’s a very nice hotel behind a very old façade.  

Luneburg is in Northern Germany and is one of the only cities in the entire region that escaped unscathed from the activities surrounding WW II.  And by activities I mean bombings.  There are three “old” churches in Luneburg and two are pictured below.   

The youngest of the three was completed in the 15^th century.  The youngest!! To be honest I really have a hard time comprehending that.  Most of the city, in fact, is hundreds of years old and is still beautiful and functional. What do you have to say for yourself Kearns, Utah?!

I got home from Germany on Friday night and left Sunday morning for Mexico. The flight to Germany was longer but much more comfortable.  Individual video on demand at each seat; I watched 3 movies on the way there (instead of sleeping) and 4 movies on the way home.  The flight to Mexico wasn’t so cushy.  Mostly work and reading, no movies.  I’ve got a reading goal for 2011, and with all the early travel I am way ahead of schedule.

Food in Mexico was also on the unique side.  When was the last time you had octopus, squid, and raw fish for lunch?  When was the last time it was lunch at two different restaurants with two different groups of people on two consecutive days?  The picture below says it all.  Zoom in on it, I dare you. 

The individual suction cups from the squid and octopus positively glisten.  Surprisingly, the food was very good.  This fish was part of a ceviche: seafood, sometimes raw, in a citrus/acid sauce to ensure food safety.  Goes well with Coke Zero. Oddly enough they didn’t have Diet Coke in either Germany or Mexico, only Coke Lite, but they did have Coke Zero in both locations.

Here is a picture of me after eating the squid on the first day.  The picture of health! It’s hard to look unhappy standing in 80 degree sunshine at the tail end of a Minnesota winter.

Now, Mexico isn’t always the safest spot on the globe, but we weren’t in the bad parts of Mexico. We weren’t in the tourist parts of Mexico either; we were in the farmlands of Mexico. I was never worried for my safety, but that was partially because everywhere you turned there were blue trucks full of Federales displaying their Wyatt-like love of big guns.  The picture below was snapped as we drove through a random road block.  I could have taken 20 of these pictures a day.  

You’ll notice that the blue of the uniform matches the blue from the truck.  These guys were committed to fashion.  Much like the woman pictured below reporting out the local weather on the evening news.  I happened to pass the news on my way to the English speaking channels and I couldn’t resist snapping a photo.  I guess when the weather is dry and warm for nine months of the year you have to take other approaches in order to get ratings.

I’m not sure what the word limit is for blog posts but I’m probably getting close so I’ll wrap this up.  Angie bought me a book for Christmas called The Lost City of Z about a legendary lost city in South America and a British explorer named Fawcett who died looking for it. (Grandpa Hiatt might remember reading about this in the papers back in 1930.) By the time you finish the book you come to the conclusion that this Fawcett guy must not have liked being home.  The Amazon wasn’t a fun place back in the day, and this guy just couldn’t stand to be away from it for very long.  Crazy right? 

Well I’m not crazy, at least not in that way.  The best vacations are ones where you are excited to go and just excited to come home, and that is what these short bursts of travel are to me.  I’m very fortunate to live in a digital age where I can take Angie with me wherever I go.  My Blackberry works internationally and our only real challenge is time zones.  I could wake up in Germany at 5 am and call her before she went to bed.  And then right at 2:30 in my afternoon she would sit down in her office as the two older kids got ready for school and email me about her night. I could snap a picture in Mexico and email it to her from my phone while riding in the back seat of the car to my next appointment.  I can even send her emails while I’m in the air through Delta’s wi-fi service. 

It’s fun to be off on an adventure; it’s fun to stay connected and to share it all in real time; and it’s fun to come home.  Now I need to go pack.  That 7 a.m. flight to Dallas in the morning is going to come awfully early, and good donuts don't find themselves.  

The Promised Miscellania Post

So I've been waiting for Forrest to do a guest post (yes! you heard it here first!) on his two trips to Germany and Mexico, but the guy's been a little busy. So whilst we wait, why don't I hit my mental randomizer and see what pops up.

bee-boop-bee-boop--BIIING! (that's the sound a randomizer makes, obviously):

1. The cat is sitting on my lap while I type this. She's stayed away from me for years, but lately she's been much more affectionate. I think it's because she knows I want to kill her. Why, you ask? Not only does she wake me up at 4:30 a.m. to be let out, and not only does she throw up on carpets and bedspreads and doormats and in the exact spot under the kitchen table that I can't see but can step in . . . but now she's doing this to the bottom step in my entryway:

I know, right? Stupid cat.

And yeah, I had to shoo her off my lap so I could go take a picture of her treachery.

2.  I have been hypnotized by J Lo's beauty this season of American Idol. I'm beginning to wonder if sparkles exude from her pores instead of sweat. (I wonder: what person would I be if I'd grown up answering to the name Angie Sparkles? Think on that.)

I'm kind of liking this Simon-less season of AI. Steven Tyler is wacky, but in a cool-older-uncle-who's-learned-some-hard-lessons kind of way, and the aforementioned J Lo is gorgeous and smart and breaks down in convulsions of sobs when she has to send home mildly talented fiances of wheelchair-bound car accident victims. (Follow that?) Randy is, of course, a waste. But the talent this year is head and shoulders above last year's train wreck. Yay!

3.  Super Target, I bow before you. I am happy (nay, thrilled) to announce that the brand new Super Target a mere seven minutes from my front door has finally opened. I can not adequately describe my pleasure. I can only say that I no longer have to drive 15 minutes to go to our kinda grimy, bag your own groceries, looks like a warehouse but not priced like a warehouse shlump-fest of a supermarket and instead get to go here:

In the words of Charlie Sheen: Super Target? WINNING!

Cub Foods? Built by trolls.

4. The only thing to mar my inaugural trip to Super Target happened when I wandered past the Easter candy aisle. I wasn't really looking for Chicks and Rabbits* so I could buy a bag and put it in my secret candy spot. Oh, no. Just checking to see if they were in, you know? Just for the sake of information gathering. A reconnaissance mission, you might call it. But to my everlasting horror, here is what I found:

Excuse me, but really? JELLY Chicks and Rabbits? Who is responsible for this travesty? Do we not have enough jellied items over the Easter holidays? Do these Brach's people not realize that Chicks and Rabbits in their pure, undefiled, original marshmallow-fied state are one of the best WORST foods ever created?

Don't tell me if the original Chicks and Rabbits are still available in Utah. This winter has been long enough. Don't want to hear it. La la la la la.

5. And speaking of Minnesota, can you believe I moved from Jason Chaffetz's congressional district to Official Tea Party Spokesmodel Michelle Bachman's?  Oh, the irony. We watched her on Meet the Press this Sunday and I swear, you could have asked the woman, "So, where do you live?" and she would have answered, "105 Billion Hidden Obamacare Lane." Drives. Me. Crazy.

6. And to wrap things up, a picture of one of my progeny. Another shot of Ethan standing by the fake-tree-you-stand-in-front-of-when-I-want-to-take-your-picture.  This time the picture was taken at 6:00 in the morning before he headed out the door for another speech meet. He's done a great job, taking a 2nd place in storytelling, a 1st place (!!!!), and last week, 9th place out of 40-something competitors. I talked to his coach a few days ago and she said that he's doing great, so talented (especially at such a young age) and is quite adept at making friends with girls from other schools. Sigh.

Handsome kid though, even at 6:00 a.m.

Oh, and I have to share this!

7. Mindy and Peter, sister-and-brother-in-laws-extraordinaire and parents of three beautiful daughters, just found out that they're having a boy this summer! Happy day. So fun. Now the Hallstrom side can have four boy cousins and four girl cousins, a pleasingly symmetrical outcome. Can't wait to see what a Mindy and Peter boy child looks like. I'm sure he'll be adorable.

Now hopefully I can get Forrest to do his guest post sometime in the next month or two. Encourage him in the comments if you'd like.

*I linked to the blog post from two years ago because it mentions my love of Chicks and Rabbits. I didn't read it until after this post had already been published, but now that I have it's a good reminder to me that although I feel a little adrift and even, frankly, bored lately, at least I'm not reliving that particular week of March 2009. That was a toughie.

Elise's Middle School Stage Debut!

This weekend Elise performed in her middle school's production of "The Mix,"a "salute to Broadway" show that included songs and short scenes from a number of well-known musicals like West Side Story, Wicked, Annie Get Your Gun, Grease, and The Lion King. The students did a great job and I was impressed with all the hard work and energy that all those 6th to 8th grade kids put into pulling off the show.

I was particularly proud of Elise (of course!). Not only did she have the courage to tackle a solo in "Annie Get Your Gun" -- not every kid had a solo, and she did great -- but she even overcame a small snafu on opening night with aplomb. Elise's number, "Anything You Can Do" from Annie Get Your Gun, came right after the big opening number, so Elise and her gang had to make a super-quick costume change involving a plaid shirt. The director had mentioned that the kids might want to button the two bottom buttons of the shirt and then pull it over their heads, but Elise's shirt was pretty tight and it got stuck! So as all the kids for her scene walked out, Elise was still backstage wrestling with her shirt, which would put even a seasoned pro into panic mode.  I admit I was a little nervous for her too as I sat in the audience thinking, "Where's Elise!?!?"  But then she walked in with a smile on her face and picked up with a line that made total sense for the scene; although she missed saying a few lines, nobody in the audience was one bit the wiser. It seemed like it was all meant to be that way.  And even though she was a little out of breath, she found her footing in her song pretty quickly and did a great job.  I was so proud!

Here's a video of Elise's solo performance. The other snafu was mom-related (or technology-related): the minute I started videoing the "memory card full" message started flashing (arrghh!) so I missed the first few lines and the opening of Elise's solo as I switched from the video camera to my cell phone camera. The video and audio quality isn't the greatest, either, since it was filmed on my phone. But I captured enough to at least give you a taste:



I thought I'd let you see one of the big group numbers, too. This is "One Short Day" from Wicked. Elise is the tall one. :-)



And here are some photos taken during "parent photo night"-- a couple of nights before the actual performance, Moms and Dads could come and take all the pictures they wanted while the kids held poses and ran through some of the numbers. A great idea! That way the parents can sit back and enjoy the actual show instead of worrying about taking pictures, and the performers aren't distracted by photography flashes:

Officer Krupke

"Please Officer Krupke!"

Perfecting the look of adolescent angst

Elise as Annie and her Frank Butler

They can shoot a sparrow, with a bow and arrow

The battle of the sexes.

One short day . . . in the emmmerallld city!

The mothers of River City

Elise and the other brainiacs, jocks, and skaters encouraging the students at East High to "Stick to the Status Quo"

And the final group shot!

It was so much fun to see Elise perform and I look forward to lots of musicals in our future. Great job, hon!

Blog Backlog, Chunk #1: The Nerd Herd

So, yes, I know I left the disturbing post up for a little too long (and yes, I also realize that both my hair in the photo and the shirtless hand dancer qualified as disturbing). Lots has been going on at our house and I haven't seemed to find the time to update ye olde blog. So I'm going to break things up into chunks over the next few days.

Chunk 1: The Nerd Herd/Battle of the Books (Jonas)
Chunk 2: Forrest's trips to both Germany and Mexico. Sheesh, that was a long time for me to do the single mom thing. But as least Forrest took some good pictures. And brought home chocolate.
Chunk 3: Elise's musical (first performance tonight--break a leg honey!)
Chunk 4: Miscellania, paraphernalia, juveinila

The Nerd Herd!

So Jonas has been on a "Battle of the Books" team for the past few months. They've read all twelve of the Maud Hart Lovelace nominated novels for 2010 and met every other Wednesday to discuss them, and last night they competed.

Walking into the cafeteria, ready to do battle

Jonas's team competed against 8 other 4th grade teams. They were asked 50 questions related to the twelve books, ranging from "What was the name of so-and-so's uncle" to "why didn't so-and-so want to go to school in the morning?", then they had thirty seconds to whisper possible answers amongst themselves and have the scribe write the answer on a white board.

You'll notice the nice woman sitting holding the green(ish) card in her lap. She's the coach of another team. Coaches went to sit with other teams to serve as a judge. If they got the answer right, the judge would hold up a green card. Wrong? Red. Not sure (e.g. if the wording the boys wrote down didn't exactly match the wording in the official answer)? Yellow. Our judge held up a lot of yellow cards, which necessitated a head judge coming to the table and making the final call. Nine times out of ten the head judge called it in our favor. So while our table judge was a bit of a stickler, it did make things more exciting.

The Nerd Herd was leading up until question 30. In fact, at one point we were up by four and seemed untouchable! But then we had a few missed questions and a couple of close calls (the boys knew the answer but didn't write it down completely) and suddenly, an all girl team to our right surged and before we knew it, the lead had slipped out of our hands!

We ended the night two questions behind the eventual winners, who get to have a pizza party at school (luckies!). But the boys were good sports and had a lot of fun and are going to have their OWN pizza party.

All the kids who read each of the 12 books (not a requirement) got a special ribbon.

I think the best part of this whole thing for Jonas was meeting a group of really nice kids. Two of them live quite close to our house, so hopefully once it warms up they'll be going outside to play sometime soon. (Hooray for going outside to play!).

On other good Jonas news, we just had parent teacher conferences last week, and not only did his teacher say, "Jonas is the type of kid that I would love to get to know as a grown up. He's such a nice person, and he just gets it!", but his grades are excellent and his test scores have improved quite markedly since the beginning of the year. He went from the 86-88th percentile in reading and math on his standardized tests (they tested him when we first moved for placement purposes) to 96-98th percentile when he took the tests last month with the rest of his class. I think the accelerated curriculum (to which we did NOT have access in the ALPs-dominated Jordan School district, much to my dismay) has done him a lot of good. I really like his elementary school and his teacher in particular.

Good job, my super-reader Jonas. Right now he's reading The Little House books. Oh, my mother heart smiled at that! Elise didn't really like them so I didn't think any of my kids would, but after reading a ton of fantasy--which he still claims is his favorite genre--he's decided to read some historical fiction. He read a few WWII books (Number the Stars and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas) and then thought he'd give Little House a whirl.

Anyway, thanks for being such a great kid, Joe. Love you.