So the news is, I am finally starting another book! I will admit that following the publication of Starting the Colt, I had no more interest in writing. I had a rough idea for the next book (even for several more books), but I hadn't been able to develop it enough to motivate me.

For awhile I struggled with guilt, wondering if I was being a "quitter." I felt quite blessed to have two published books, but I had sacrificed other interests in life in order to do that, and selling my books continued to take a big chunk of my time. Maybe some day I would feel like writing again, but until then, I chose not to feel guilty. There was nothing to blog about, so no need to feel guilty about not blogging about writing. I wanted to ride, not write! When people asked me if I'd been writing, I always did a double-take, not sure what I'd heard, and countered, "Did you say riding? or writing?" Funny how those two interests were so related in my life, even sounding the same.

The only problem was my subbing. Kids at school often told me how much they loved my books and asked me if there was going to be another one. I would give some vague answer, not wanting to say I was done writing books but not wanting to give false hope. I'd say, "Well, I'm not sure, I'm not working on one right no"; I'd say that writing a book is so time-consuming, especially when you have a job besides writing.

The turning point came one day this past week at the middle school when I was just overwhelmed by how many kids talked to me about my books. Then a few days later, at the ranch hand rodeo, I had a big conversation about writing with one of the vendors whose son was also a big fan of my books. It seemed like there was some conspiracy going on to mess with my mind!

After the rodeo, I was shocked to find that I was actually toying with the possibility of a third book! I dusted off my idea and did a little brain-storming. Lo and behold, it started to shape up and grab me! I still didn't say anything about it to anyone--until today. Subbing at the middle school again, I got brave enough to verbalize my plans to my class, telling them how they and the kids at their school had played a big part in my decision. They were so excited! While they worked on their stories, I enthusiastically worked on my plot, crafting the various conflicts that would center around the new character I was introducing.

I'm glad I took that little vacation from writing--apparently it was needed. I don't guarantee there will be a third book, but as of today, I am officially working on it! Cold weather is here, daylight savings is over--it's high time to start a new book!

The deeper I get into the curriculum unit I'm creating for Starting the Colt, the more fun I'm having. At first it was hard work to determine and formulate the right kinds of questions, but now, over half way through, the questions are becoming more obvious to me, as I find them building on earlier questions. For each chapter, there is a page of writing/discussion questions and journal prompts, then a vocabulary page.

I'm especially enjoying the vocabulary pages, because I find words interesting. In fact, I start with the vocabulary page, reading through the chapter looking for any words or phrases to focus on. I find that usually my list breaks down into two groups: horse or cowboy terminology, and interesting words. I don't start with the question page because that "seems" like harder work. But in the process of gathering up my vocabulary words, I "discover" the chapter questions without really having to work at it.

Vocabulary activities include glossary and dictionary, context clues, similes, idioms, slang, synonyms and antonyms, root words, origins, parts of speech, domain-specific language in several domains, etc. Right now I'm in the middle of an interesting rabbit trail that started with double-ought sized horseshoes and turned into a math connection page on ought/aught/nought/naught. Now I need to organize all that information and make it interactive.

I haven’t blogged for awhile. Actually, I took a break from book stuff for a month or so, other than a few phone calls and emails. To tell you the truth, the book was starting to feel like my slave-driver; I felt guilty any time I was not spending my spare time on selling or thinking about the sequel to The Orange Slipknot (my summer project). I had been hitting the marketing aspect pretty hard, so I decided to just relax, do other things in my spare time, and hopefully let all those contacts bear fruit.

I enjoy reading about how the brain works; I recently read something interesting about how to increase your creativity. Work on your project for awhile, then leave it for an hour, or a few days, go do something else. Relax, do something different and enjoyable, don’t think about your project. Meanwhile, your brain will be working on solutions, and next thing you know, ideas will come to you.

My school job will turn to summer vacation in another week, and I plan to spend a good part of my summer working on the sequel. I haven’t worked on it for a few months, devoting my spare time instead to marketing. So I am now rereading what I had written; I will then leave it alone for a few days before starting to work on it. I will trust my brain to be working on it in the background, kind of like my computer is working in the background as I type, updating my anti-virus system. Hopefully when I am ready to bring up that “program” (the sequel), my brain will provide me with the updates it’s been working on. It’s worth a try, and I like this idea better than forcing myself to work on a project so hard that it seems like a chore.

Meanwhile, I have been spending more time seeing grandkids, reading, surfing the Web, playing the piano, visiting with friends on the phone, riding horses, yard work, watching TV (mostly news and horsey stuff), and chatting with my horsey Internet friends. I took a vacation from working on my book so that when my REAL vacation starts, I’ll be ready to get back to work. That’s kind of a paradox, isn’t it?

Lately I have been working on the Nevada pages of the curriculum unit. I wrote The Orange Slipknot because I wanted to share my love of Nevada--not the glitz of Las Vegas, but the beauty and uniqueness of buckaroo country. I grew up in California, so Nevada is my adopted state. I was a town girl, not a country girl. I never imagined I would grow up to marry a cowboy and raise my kids 50 miles from a town. Life here was so different from what I had known. My letters home to family and friends were filled with adventures and anecdotes that had them shaking their heads. More than once I was told I should write a book. Those letters contained the seeds of stories to come.

When I started my journey into writing, I began by reading books about writing for children. They all advised, "Write about what you know and feel passionately about." I knew I would write about kids growing up in Nevada. My first piece of writing was called "The Best Thing About Nevada," in which a boy tells about all the things he loves about living in Nevada and cowboying with his dad. I didn't know it then, but it was "Ben" in disguise! So many elements from that essay found their way into The Orange Slipknot years later.

Not too long after that I took a course on writing for children. Several of my assignments became Nevada pieces of one sort or another. The first piece that I sold was a magazine article about kids and horses. It would be a few years before I came up with a story that I thought I could develop into a book, but this book was destined to be about growing up in Nevada's cowboy country.

Cowboy country is ranching country, and ranching means beef cattle. As I got more and more interested in sharing my ideas with kids unfamiliar with this lifestyle, I began to realize that many kids don't even know where hamburger comes from. I got involved with Ag in the Classroom and started reading Range magazine. I began to think about how I could use stories to help educate kids about agriculture while entertaining them with cowboy tales.

Agricultural roots were once strong in this country, but now most people are so far from that lifestyle that they have little concept of the relationship between ranching and our food supply. Much of what people do hear about ranching is filtered through the environmentalist view that ranching on public lands is evil and that ranchers are rich free-loaders. Many people probably associate cowboys with either the past or with rodeos, not realizing that this lifestyle is still alive and well in the contemporary West.

I was fairly sure that few juvenile publishers were interested in my topic, preferring urban and multi-cultural settings. When I found Raven Publishing's website and read that the publisher was from a ranching background, my hopes rose. Finally I found a publisher who shared my values!