Good gracious. Here it is two weeks into 2013 and, I swear, we were all in a snit about Y2K just yesterday. How time flies when we're all so busy trying to make a living, get dinner on the table, and find something decent to watch on TV!

My old year ended badly when a precious friend unexpectedly died. I'll feel her loss for a long time to come, but she would want me to move past my sadness and celebrate all that's good in life, so I'm going to try and focus on that.

There’s a lot to celebrate! First off, I finally finished the rewrite of a novel I've been working on for two solid years. Secondly, after a long, exhausting stretch of self-representation, I've signed with Hartline literary agent Diana Flegal, the warmest, bubbliest person I've encountered in a long time. We met this summer, clicked immediately, and I'm looking forward to her guidance as we take my career into the fiction arena. What a transition to go from poetry to prose! Index cards have become my new essential writing tool as I try to keep track of hair color, eye color, middle names, favorite games, and repetitive words—ten chapters out!

Speaking of games, that's my third—and biggest—piece of news. En route to fiction, I took time out for a nonfiction project that sort of fell into my lap: my newest book, THE ART OF STONE SKIPPING AND OTHER FUN OLD-TIME GAMES comes out February 1st from Imagine Publishing, an imprint of Charlesbridge Publishing. The first review is a good one, so I'm crossing my fingers and holding my breath. Of course, if it never sells a single copy, writing it was a great experience; I had an editorial dream team (thank you, Charlie Nurnberg and Kate Ritchey!), the graphic artists totally captured the spirit of the text (thank you, Todd Dakins and Melissa Gerber!), the research was fascinating (who knew there's a World Egg Throwing Federation?!), and my sales reps are awesome.

We Girls Raised in the South (better known as GRITS) are taught from our earliest days that it's bad manners to draw attention to oneself, but in today's publishing world, there's about a 6-week window that determines if a new book will flop or fly, so I'm asking—in my most ladylike way, of course—for your help in making the most of that window. STONE SKIPPING is a collection of instructions and variations on every kind of game you can think of—from scavenger hunts and shadow puppets to jacks and Johnny on the Pony—plus all sorts of fun history and trivia in between. It’s a wonderful resource for schools, libraries, youth groups, Scout groups, teachers, activity directors, and families. Check it out at http://www.imaginebks.com/children/ArtofStoneSkipping.html,  at your favorite local bookstore, or at any of many online booksellers. If you think it sounds worthwhile, would you please spread the word to anyone you think might enjoy owning it or selling it? THE ART OF STONE SKIPPING AND OTHER FUN OLD-TIME GAMES is available in paperback ($14.95) and as an e-book ($9.99). Watch for it February 1st, pre-order it now, and if you're interested in doing a review, let me know and I'll get a copy in your hands.

I hope your year is off to a good start, too. Stay tuned; I have a feeling more great things are just around the pike!

P.S. If there’s a great bookstore, toy store, or gift shop in your town, ask them to contact me about a signing event!

At War with My Inner GRITS

Here lately, I am feeling overwhelmed. Given that I have worked 12+ hour days for most of the month of June, I suspect what I'm actually feeling is exhaustion, but that's a whole other issue. Granted, I am my own worst enemy: when asked about heading up a school event, writing a play for the children's sermon, or hosting a dinner party for six, I do know the word "no," I just have a hard time using it. I am, after all a Girl Raised in the South--which means I have a permanent responsibility to my mother and all who came before her to serve God, family, friends, and country with a smile on my face and a spatula in my hand.

The Good Southern Girl Code says nothing about a pen, much less a keyboard, so I have no one but myself to blame for overloading the straw on that proverbial camel's back with my literary aspirations. I mean, it's not like someone's holding a gun to my head, saying, "You'd better get that next book finished, girl!" (Well, my sister's pretty insistent, but that's just because she wants to go on tour with me again.) So I am the only person I can blame for those feelings of guilt, inadequacy, incompetence, and failure that attack when I collapse on my pillow at 1 AM and acknowledge that another day has gone by without me even opening the file for my novel, much less contributing to it.

Meanwhile, as I lay there beating myself up for not writing, I'm also apologizing to my Inner GRITS for the hot breakfast I failed to cook (my children are perfectly happy with cold cereal, but The Code demands homemade waffles with fresh fruit compote--or at least eggs and toast), the get well cards I failed to send my ailing friends and relations, the foot massage I failed to give my husband, the load of towels I failed to fold, the dire condition of my cuticles, and the feeble pat I offered my dog while ignoring the ball he held hopefully in his mouth. By the time I fall asleep, I am mired in a pool of shame deep enough to fry magnolia blossoms.

Such is the burden of being a Girl Raised in the South. We are kind to strangers, but we are brutal on ourselves. My generation of women is trying to hold up standards our great-grandmothers set and that's just dandy--except they did it without full-time jobs and with a maid and a gardener! True, they didn't have air conditioning, microwaves, or clothes dryers--things I consider pretty much essential at this point--but I suspect I would give up my microwave for a COOK in a heartbeat. My poor family has eaten so much pizza this month, they should have enough lycopene in their bodies to guarantee immortality.

You can say "So lower your standards!" to an overworked, overwhelmed Southern girl, but we interpret that as, "Sugar, you are obviously nothing but white trash and are not worthy of having inherited your Great-Aunt Fannie's crystal lemonade set," so those standards must remain firmly in place even if our sanity slips while trying to meet them. In my own household of all men--all of whom were born in the South but only one of whom seems to celebrate that fact--absolutely NO ONE but me understands why it is tacky to put the mayonnaise jar on the table. I do it frequently, Lord forgive me, but the scolding voice of my mother in my head is loud enough to make me cower. Condiment containers on the table is right up there with not wearing a slip or having a dirty car: certain proof that you are just this side of common--and to true GRITS, there is nothing worse than being common.

Oh, the shame of being a Common Goddess instead of a Comma Goddess! That's enough to give me the vapors. So I promise I'll do better this week, Mother! I'll get a manicure, make the boys cookies from scratch, and I'll mail every one of those get-well cards--right after I finish this next chapter.