The First Blog Post of 2012

So, after writing a post about the importance of blogging on a regular basis, I stopped blogging. I have excuses, of course, don't we all? But none of that matters now. It's 2012 and with the New Year comes the opportunity to wipe the slate clean. I'll get caught up and move on.

First of all, we never did decorate the tree. The holidays snuck up on me. I'm not sure if it was because they fell on a weekend or what, but Christmas and New Year's Eve caught me completely off guard. Luckily I have old kids who mostly wanted money and gift cards or I would have been sunk. The only Christmas cookies we had were gifted to us. (They were delicious, by the way, if any of the bakers are reading this.) I sent out very few holiday cards, most of them to people out of state. To summarize: I failed to prepare properly for Christmas and nothing bad happened.

Early in December I finished a book and sent it to my editor who claimed to love it. Have I mentioned how much I like my editor?  :) We're still working on the details, but it will be a 2012 release, hopefully in time for summer reading. I was calling it The Road Trip but that may be changing. I had thought it was the perfect title until someone in my editor's office assumed it was a comic romp ala The Hangover.  It is not. It does have some humor, but nothing too zany, and I don't want people to buy the book thinking that's what they'll get. Titles can be difficult.  We'll see, I guess.



Buy this book. It's free!

 I also have a short story, Turning A Corner, on Kindle. For the next five days it will be free, which is everyone's favorite price. If you get a chance, I'd appreciate a click. I wrote the story several years back, so it's somewhat different than my current style. The story is about a group of high school students from Wisconsin who travel to Germany. This is the description: When a group of Wisconsin high school students visit Germany in 1978, everything goes as planned until Saturday night, when their teacher, Frau Heller, allows them to go out without a chaperone.

Coincidentally, I was part of a student group who went to Germany in 1978, but the story is fiction, or at least that's the way I'm telling it. I was a junior in high school at the time and I paid for the entire trip with money saved from my job at Treasure Island. Now Treasure Island may sound like a really fun theme park, but in actuality it was a discount store owned by JCPenney. Maybe sort of like a Kmart? I worked in the record department, which was without a doubt, the coolest department in the store. I wore a powder blue smock with a pin-on name tag. When I arrived at work, the outgoing employee would hand over the key to the diamond stereo needle drawer. The key was attached to a spiral lanyard wrist band. Very official and important. If anyone wanted to buy a new stereo needle, they had to go through me. And then I had to escort them to the checkout to make sure they paid for it. It was a lot of power for a sixteen-year-old, but I handled it well.

I looked for a photo of a Treasure Island online, and all I could find was the picture below--a closed, abandoned store. Certainly not the thriving, blue-smocked metropolis I remember. The store was known for its distinctive zig-zag roof line.

If I had known Treasure Island would eventually close, I'd have taken some photos myself. I thought they'd be around forever. 

This month I'm also working on putting together a PowerPoint presentation because I have a few school events lined up and kids love visuals. My first school visit will be next week via Skype. I am terrified, but everyone (all the people who won't be doing it) assure me it will be easy and I'll do fine.

And lastly, I started another book. I'm trying to get as much done as possible before I get the notes back from my editor for The Road Trip (title may change, because it's not a comic romp). This new one is a complete departure for me, which will make the marketing department at Amazon Publishing gnash their teeth. What can I say? I like to mix it up.

So, now you know everything that's new with me, and all about my first paycheck job as sales clerk in the record department at Treasure Island, the coolest department in the entire store. If you have a minute, share some details about your first job. Enquiring minds want to know.

Cheers,

Karen