My friend Anna (aka BeachMama) is here from Canada and she’s been taking photos of me for all my various “head-shot” author needs. Surprisingly, they’ve been many and I’ve been winging it with hand-held crap shots which was not really very professional. Don’t even get me started on the shot that is on the back page of my first two books.

Anyway, It’s very weird being on the other side of the camera. I’m probably the world’s most awkward model. But she’s making it fun, thankfully.

I’ve tried to show her all the best sides of the sticks, which is a tiny bit challenging. Of all places to come visit when you’re in California…I don’t think my town is on the top of anybody’s list. Unless maybe you’re working for People of Walmart. There are a few amazing spots but of course since I’ve been on the lens side of the camera (and trying desperately to keep my giant green purse and camera phone out of the shots), I don’t have many photos to show you.

But I will soon! She’s taking tons of photos of me and making me look fabulous! She’s a pretty amazing photographer.

So I took her to Palm Springs. She took a thousand photos of me.

I instagrammed it.

Today I’m taking her to the beach. Then she has to fly away home which is very sad. But it’s been a blast having her here!

I know, I took forever this year. I’m so sorry. But it’s all fixed up and in the shop now! Next year, I promise I’m starting on it in August!!

Okay guys, I finally finished the official SAJ posters. In fact, I designed two of them which is not really a good thing because I only want to print one version. But the Paris version was dying to get out of my head, so I let it out. If I don’t print it, it’s not a loss. It will show up somewhere…maybe a book cover? I don’t know yet. Before I go to press though I wanted to ask your opinions. Which poster do you like better? Which one would you actually hang up? I mean, if you were into that sort of thing of course.

And if you were hunting for the sentences and emailed me, Yay! You get to have one of these. However, as of right now, I will no longer be accepting emailed sentence lists. Thank you everyone who played along. I knew you were a fun stealthy bunch.

Here are the secret spy sentences for your proofing pleasure. I think everyone got them all right so no worries there. If you emailed me, you’re in. Free posters all around!

a. It’s a cold day for pontooning.
b. The spotted cuckoo is flying backwards.
c. The moles snuck into the garden last night.
d. The black dog walks in the noon-day sun.
e. The chimera has three sets of teeth.
f. The blue lake freezes in winter.
g. The green tea brews in tranquility.
h. The polar bear collects spare change.
i. The cheese stands alone.
j. Your sedated mouse is in need of a companion.
k. The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.
l. The last swallow of summer is winging his way over the horizon.
m. Silence is of the Gods…only monkeys chatter.
n. The dolphins are in the jacuzzi.
o. Do you want a shipment of chocolate?
p. Surely the caged whale knows nothing of the mighty depths.
q. Tell the man standing on the corner that the oyster owns a fine wristwatch.
r. The best chestnuts are to be found on Pigalle Square.
s. The pheasant has no agenda.
t. We need to send in The Urbanator.
u. The eagle flies at noon.
v. The green parrots have migrated to the south.
w. My postillion has been struck by lightning.
x. When the dogs away that’s when the cats play.
y. In London, April’s a Spring month.
z. Guys, I know Kung Fu.

I’ve been puttering away at my desk these days.

With my constant companions: coffee and the very big kitten that likes to sleep in my lap. It’s like she knows I get lonely when Bug is away at school.

I’ve been making all sorts of things for you guys to see along my book tour. I’m very excited about it. I think you will be too.

Production has been a little rough going. Making, fixing, making, fixing…the things I do for you! Just kidding, this is sort of like playing. But I really do hope it pays off in the end because all this playing is not paying the bills!

Five cars later, I finally got it right. Stay tuned. This post will show up on Tuesday of next week!

And this one on Wednesday. So fun! I can’t wait to see what my secret agents do with them!

Bug was inspired by the ninja costume.

Hi-Yah-Wah!

Now you see me…

Now you don’t. Wait. What? What’s going on here? I don’t know. I think she was looking for something.

Anyway, just wanted to pop in (after nearly a week of dead, dead silence) and tell you what we’ve been up to.

We also had a tea party at my grandma’s this week. I should make this a post on it’s own but the way I’ve been keeping up with the blogging…we all know that is never going to happen. So here it is squished in with another post. I hope you don’t mind.

We go over to my grandma’s and aunt Keren’s house every Wednesday for dinner and lately they’ve been doing theme dinners. (I come by my love of theme-parties genetically.) Every Wednesday my grandma asks Bug where she’d like to go for the following week’s dinner. We’ve been to Hawaii (yummy teriyaki), Thailand (for me because I love Thai food so much) and I think Italy (for Saltimboca!). Last week Bug said she wanted to go to London so my grandma and my aunt Keren put on a grand tea party spread. It was so fun! Tiny sandwiches, tea, scones with clotted cream and jam…it was fit for the Queen!

So that’s what we’ve been up to!

Mark your calendars! My book tour starts next Monday! I’ll be posting where to go here on this blog so check in.

The time has come! I finally finished SAJ Numbers and now I get to schedule a little virtual book tour. You might have thought I was going to come to your town and set up a little table and hand out cupcakes. I wish I was. Bug has perfected her signature and everything. I might do that locally but I’m not big enough to travel quite yet. But it could happen. I just need your help.

What I need right now are 26-30 bloggers who would be willing to host a little book tour for me. Just one post. There will be prizes, crafts and even a secret clue game. It’s going to be fun and don’t worry, I’ll do all the hard work for you. I will have a press release ready that you can just copy and paste blurbs from or you can interview me OR you can host a little craft that I will set up for you with printables!! It will be fun! You’ll be part of a tour with some other big bloggers (I’m calling in favors from all my old-school blogging buddies from way back) so you’ll get a lot of traffic to your site (at least that’s my evil plan anyway) because everyone will have to find the secret clue in each blog post.

Is this a mission you would like to accept? Email me and we’ll set up a date.

Numbers will drop November 15th just in time for the Kindle Fire (so you can see it in color!) The other books are already out but don’t buy them or pimp them now because I want everyone to make a big fuss on the 20th so it will get a better chance to rise to the top of the book charts and hopefully stay there if it gets good exposure. This is the strategy.

But between you and me, it’s my next book I’m excited about. The one I haven’t written yet: SAJ goes to Paris. I’m giving myself a year to illustrate it and it’s going to be full scenes instead of just illustrations on white. I’ve got a taste for this book-making business and I’m really excited about it. Maybe you’ll join me?

I’m interrupting my diligent work on my profit and loss reports to bring you this post. Did you know that filing for divorce is like filing your taxes? So guess who is in paperwork hell today as I tally up all my invoices and subtract my mountain of receipts? ME!

Remember how I vowed to convert to an electronic system last April when I did my taxes? Didn’t happen. But the good news is I’ll be ready this coming April. Or at least January through September will be ready. Anybody want to volunteer to come visit me and set me up with apple money or some other such program that will log all kinds of paypal and banking reports for me? I’ll be your best friend and make you cookies or something.

Anyway!

Good news: I have a new work space. You can see it up there. That’s my trailer park carport turned into an outdoor country kitchen. I’m not into country or anything (hold off on sending me those duck towels) but the work space is awesome. I really love it. As you know, I’ve been writing more craft tutorial posts on other sites these days and I’ve been having an awful time photographing them in my windowless kitchen. Every step of the way I have to open my carport door and stick whatever I’m photographing outside with one hand (the camera’s in the other) so I can get some natural light on my subject.

It wasn’t going very well with the dog and the cat and the flies and the kid coming in and out when they weren’t supposed to. Everyone was always going the wrong way and I do not have a screen door. I can’t just go down to Home Depot and buy one either because I live in a TRAILER with a mini door that does not conform to big box standards. I could find one on a camper or something but that is just not going to happen any time soon and I don’t really feel like buying one of those rolling expandable screen doors either because I’m just a dollar short and a day late or something or other. See above paragraph about profit and loss reports.

But now I have a lovely table to work and photograph on. One step at a time! Before I didn’t even have a camera so I’m actually making tons of progress at life this year. One of these days I’ll be a regular well-oiled machine, probably about the time I have to move into a teeny tiny apartment and start all over again with some new challenges. That’s life, right?

I almost forgot to share where the table came from! It’s my sister-in-law’s. I think my brother found it in a dumpster. My sister-in-law doesn’t even know I’m borrowing it. It was at my mom’s under a giant pile of boxes just getting dusty and full of black widow eggsacks so I think CC will be happy to know it’s being used and loved. And yes, CC, I promise I won’t spill paint or anything toxic on it. It’s mostly just for photographing.

Very, very busy at the office.

Some of us.

Busy, busy. (These are the rejected sketches.)

Very busy.

And when we’re done being busy we drop dead from exhaustion.

Zzzzzzonk.

In other news: I have a post up on my review blog talking about how my kid won’t wear what I pick out for her in the morning. Chime in with your two cents and you might win a $25 gift card for American Living clothing! Hurry! Contest ends this Friday!

I love these little illos. So often I get pigeon-holed with the cutesy stuff and I don’t like to think of myself as a cute-monger. I don’t make scrapbooks! I’m sophisticated, damnit! I mean ninja bunnies! (That’s my new curse word care of Bug.) But the cute just sneaks in and I am better at it than I am at other things so I try to embrace it and work with the skills God gave me. Sometimes it works, sometimes it blows up in my face. But this post is not about my flops. It’s about my successes. I’m sorry, can you tell I’m still working through some of my feelings about failure?

Anyway, I’m really happy with this design. I love working with Heather. She is the best web designer ever and worth every penny. And I’m not just saying that because she’s my friend. I truly respect her sense of design and her obsessive need for NO CLUTTER. She always does such a good job. I just recently designed a whole website myself for a client and now I have even more respect for her. It was hard and I’m still not 100% happy with it. When it launches I’ll try to share that here too.

(Jill Hart and OMSH)

I also really love this site. Jill Hart is a Grandma who does all these cool things with her grandchildren. People like her make me want to get older. Life does not stop just because you wake up one the morning with arthritis. How cool is it that she does all these things with her grandchildren? It’s like a whole home-schooling curriculum! I’m seriously impressed and so happy to work with her. I hope she keeps needing illos because I love making them for her.

* I’m sitting here on my comfy hotel bed, dressed but all wrapped up in a mess of white sheets, thinking I really have no excuse for not typing out a Blogher post. I’ve got time to spare as I wait for my roommate to finish up her tap-tap-tapping Skyping or whatever it is she is doing so busily (working, I’m sure) and hours to go until we have to check out and attend some kind of family Ford picnic event across the street.

San Diego really is a nice spot to be. The weather has been beautiful, of course. It wouldn’t dare not to be. We’ve stayed inside most of the time but when we do go out it’s always just right.

I’ve been here lots of times before but I’ve never had the luxury of being right smack in the middle of downtown and not having to to worry about where to park and how much it is going to cost. My car is safely tucked away in the hotel garage, costing a solid twenty-six bucks a day (cha-ching), and there’s nothing I can do about it so I’m just writing it off as a business expense and enjoying my freedom in a big city.

Last night we escaped the conference schedule and had a delicious business-related dinner with some friends (and possibly future clients) at an Indian restaurant in the Gaslamp Quarter. We were running late so we paid a pedi-cab to get us there and that was an adventure in itself.

I’ve been missing Bug like crazy but it has really been fun to be caught up in the buzz and fray of a zillion networking women. Though between you and me, my ears will be happy when it’s over. I think I have a semi-permanent ringing from all the constant talking going on in large echoing cement buildings with no windows.

Anyway, I’ve been having quite a nice time meeting new people and gabbing with old friends. I didn’t get a ton out of the sessions but that probably is my own fault. I think I’ve just been blogging too long and perhaps I’ve outgrown this convention. I’m more here to meet people and offer them my services as a designer than I am to learn about blogging.

How about some pictures?! I took a few. Not many but a few.

Me and OMSH.

Here are the kids the first day. Getting a chance to swim in the very nice pool made up for the fact that they didn’t get to stay overnight like we had originally planned.

A morning yoga session out our window that I did not attend and a 5K that I did attend. Woo! It was kind of fun to run around the foggy marina for a while.

There was a really nice reception on the hotel terrace where we got to eat fancy food and watch the sun go down.

There was a lot of fancy food.

And even a flash mob dance in the lunch hall. I’ve had that song in my head all weekend.

New friends! The girl on the right is Tori from Shiksa in the Kitchen. She is so sweet and her site is blowing up. She’s going to be famous someday if she isn’t already. You have to check her out.

And of course crazy OMSH. I always have fun when I’m with her.

Food, swag, massages, more food, talking, networking, pitching my design services to new people, dancing, more food, more swag. It’s all been very exciting and fun.

* this was written on Sunday I just didn’t get a chance to post it until today.

When you read the title of this post you have to make sure you say it super fast and a bit high-pitched like the maids do at a hotel, okay? Because that is the way it is supposed to read. I’m the boss around here. Hah.

I have stuff I need to discuss with you. If you feel like it, of course.

I’m working on the colors book. I’m ALMOST done. I have one more page to go and then the title page and such, which is really easy. But the last color is silver and of course the first illustration that pops into my head is a silver salamander seeking single sea horses on match.com or something. By the way, the color book is all in alliteration because I like books like that and I thought it would be fun. You’ll see. It’s not your average color book.

But I’m worried that a salamander seeking sea horses for summertime fun is not appropriate for kids. What do you think? He could just be seeking friends on the computer. Kids do that these days, right? And it’s sort of edgy like my U is for underwear page in my alphabet book which has gone over pretty well. I don’t think it’s offensive but then I know there are a zillion critics out there. As a parent or adult reading to a younger child, would you find that offensive or funny? My gut is to just go with it because usually the illustrations that shine strongest in my head are the easiest and most fun to make. AND I like books that have inside jokes for the parents.

Next: Blogher!!! Wooooo hooo! Guess what? I won the Knorr cooking contest for my Chicken Chili Chocolat recipe. Can you believe it? That was unexpected. I’m not a foodie and I don’t even have a cooking blog but I might be participating in a cook-off in front of an audience at Blogher! Whoa!!! I’m kind of scared actually! I hope don’t get stricken with the shakey voice. I used to get that in public speech class. Shudder. Though I think I can just make fun of myself and get through it. I’m pretty sure I’ll be the worst cook there.

There is a chance I might not do this though because the only reason I entered this contest was to get a ticket for my sister-in-law and now there’s some small print about the prize (worth $3K!!) not being transferrable which is a real drag since I can’t really use any of the prize otherwise. I already bought my blogher ticket back in February, I’m sharing a hotel room with a friend and I only live an hour and a half away from San Diego so it’s not like I need a plane ticket. I really hope they work something out for me because I think this would be super fun for me and CC.

And since we’re on the subject of blogher and everybody seems to be asking, here is what I am wearing. Probably, maybe.

I’ll probably just pack every single item in my closet that I like and decide when I get there. That’s my usual strategy. Though I have some new dresses that my mom made me buy and they are pretty snazzy. The one in the middle is super tight and fitted but it has black stripes in all the right places so it makes me look like I’m two sizes skinnier than I am. I’m thinking that might be the perfect Secret Agent outfit when I’m on stage cooking. Pow! Bam! Snag! Grease stain! Wait, no snags or grease stains on my new dress!! I don’t know. I’m just going to wing it. If all else fails, I’ll just wear jeans and my favorite tank top with sequins (!).

So what do you think? The housekeeper wants to know. And yes, those animation marks on my shoulders in the middle dress are emphasizing the GIANT shoulder pads. I’m so 80′s flashback. But hey, when you got hips like I do, you gotta work it. It worked back then, it’ll work now. I’m not too proud to beg. Cue Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.