I believe that this U-Tube link is a great way to contribute to the back to school theme this month. It's a lecture by "only a child" to the adults in charge. She delivers quite a lesson.

Back to school. Maybe it’s the word you dread all summer or maybe it’s music to your ears and your dying to hit the halls. Me? I anticipate going back to school.
After a mere three months of extremely low brain activity, I’m almost ready to hit the books again.
I said almost.
Sure, I like the excitement of returning to school. New books, new assignments, new......okay you got me, new drama; but what I can’t seem to accept is the late nights studying, the back pains, the aching hands from writing three pages of algebra exercises, etc.
You know what I anticipate the most about “going back to school” though? It’s one step farther from high school and one step closer to college. Actually I don’t know whether to shout with joy or burst into tears at that statement-but I still like the idea of kissing high school goodbye.
Hmmm. That does sound nice, leaving high school. No more nerve-racking trips down the hall, frantically looking for a room number. No more silly teachers, no more cliques or fashion wars. No more guys playing the “table” drums during a test. Oh nuts, that probably happens in college too.
I will miss high school.....eventually. I’m mean, hey, I won’t be young forever. Enjoy hanging with friends, laughing at stupid jokes, and running through the leaves this semester.
Until next time, don’t be afraid to tell that table-tapping guy to, “Be quiet!” and keep your head screwed on your shoulders. You’ll need that thing, trust me.

Thanks again Lee for letting me share my thoughts on “back to school.”

Thank you, Morgan for taking the time to write such a thoughtful post. Come again, okay?

And for those who enjoyed Morgan's post, be sure to pay her a visit at her blog, Books and Literature For Teens. Great contests, excellent reviews.

The Story Siren's previous post on appreciating what you have is truly lovely. But  we all know what the best part about starting a new school year is...

SCHOOL SUPPLIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, I'm sure some things have changed since I was in school. People probably envy each others netbooks or smartphones instead of their Trapper Keepers or pencil cases. But whether your tools are electronic or old skool, there's just is something about a brand new tool or container than whispers new possibilities that this year will be different. This year I will use my brand new _____ and I won't be so disorganized that I will lose book reports on no less than three separate occasions. This year I will use my shiny new ______ to rock the math/science classes I struggled with so much last year. This year my brand new _____ will so impress my fellow students that I will be forced to start turning down friend requests on Facebook so my Updates feed doesn't look like a CNN ticker. When you have a bright shiny new thing, ANYTHING seems possible.

But you know something? There is no spoon! Or in this case, school supply. Those possibilities are always present, always available. You don't really need the bright shiny new thing. You just have to make the choice to change, and then stick with it. Because in the end, the school supply is not going to really fix it for you. If you don't choose to be organized this year, you'll probably still lose those book reports again. If you don't decide to start kicking ass in that class you always struggle with, you probably won't.

Although really, having an awesome lunchbox will make you popular.

Today is Kristi's first Guest Appearance here at the Ninjas. We hope it won't be her last. Welcome, Kristi.


First, I want to start out by extending a thanks to the Ninjas for inviting me to be a guest! I always perceive myself as someone that doesn't have much to say, so lets hope I won't disappoint!

Today the theme is Back to School. I, for one, can't believe that it's that time of year again. Where did our summer go, it seems that this year has just flew by. Time always flies, whether you're having fun or not. Luckily I've been having fun, but back to the topic at hand. Back to School.

I loved going back to school every year. Fall is one of my favorite times of year, with the leaves crunching under your feet and warm apple cider. Ah, it's making me nostalgic just thinking about it. Not the mention the smell of all the new school supplies, shopping for new clothes, and the allure of the unknown. What would this school year hold!?

Every year I hoped that “this year” would be different. That this year, that boy would notice me, that this year those girls would want to be my friends. I was sure that my meticulously planned outfit and my brand new shoes, would propel me from a nobody to a somebody. That my new hair cut and zit medication would work their magical wonders, and I'd go from plain Jane to a mesmerizing Molly. And guess what, it never happen, my new shoes didn't propel me to instant popularity. Not even once. Finally I excepted reality, that this wasn't a fairy tale and things that just don't happen. And yet, even though I knew that it would never happen, I secretly never stopped wishing it would.

I think I was so worried about being accepted and noticed that I forget to look at the big picture. I was to busy focusing on things I thought I wanted, instead of seeing the great things I did have. Like my friends, my family, the awesome person I really was.

If I have any advice to give you back to schoolers, it would be this. Take this new school year as an opportunity to discover who you really are and how great you really are. Don't limit yourself! And don't forget to take the time to crunch in the leaves.

i was supposed to post this last weekend
but forgot about it entirely, as i tend to do with
things these days. under a tight sequel deadline
with other fun stuff thrown in!

last saturday i had a signing at barnes and
noble and the love NINJA author margie
attended and asked many great questions
as well!



the drama was driving UP to the signing.
accidents on the 5 north leading me to try
and make up time going on a toll path--
wailing to weezer the entire way to try and
destress.

bad idea. i got pulled over by a police officer
for speeding just when i was making record
time getting on time to the signing. =(
never again!

thankfully, altho i arrived five minutes
late sweaty frazzled and melted like my
mini carrot cake muffins, with most of my
guests already seated (meep!) the signing
still went very well.

this is one speeding ticket detour i hope
to never take again!

I've turned my life over to Ms. Fateful Detour and booked a flight to Tahiti. Let her do the work of running my life. Unlike that spunky Lia Milthorpe, I'm ready to acknowledge that I have absolutely no control over anything. Good thing Michelle Zinc didn't use me as a model for her spunky protagonist in Prophecy of the Sisters or it would be a very short book indeed.

Most of what has happened to bring me to where I am today has been Fate turning me in whatever direction suited her.

I met my husband because she saw fit have a rusty water pipe burst in front of my house just before finals that Friday. I couldn’t walk to campus on my usual route so I took a DETOUR. He saw me, followed me to class, waited and "accidentally" bumped into me on my way out after my final.


I wound up with a full-time position as a lecturer because I went to a party at the last minute instead of going to a movie. DETOUR. At the party I met a linguistics professor who was starting a new department and was looking for people with teaching experience and an MA in anything related to language and culture. “That would be me,” I said.


I wrote Sliding on the Edge because someone I was sitting next to in a coffee shop said, “Want my newspaper? I’m finished.” The article about self-abuse jumped out at me and I took another DETOUR, put down my mystery novel and read to my horror how many young people cut or burn themselves.

I’ve left my cell phone number with Ms. Fateful Detour and if she tires of her job creating DETOURS for me, she can call. I’ll take a shot at making decisions, but in the meantime the beach looks like a very nice place just to be.

Today we have FRENETIC READER joining the Ninjas. Welcome to the Ninjas and thanks for the great Fateful Detour blog.
************************

When Lee first asked me to be a guest blogger, I was more than happy to write something. I love the ninjas, so I would be honored to write a post for them.

But then I found out what the topic was.

Honestly, I was stumped. I didn’t even really get what “Fateful Detours” meant at first, but the more I thought about it (and once Lee gave me an example), the more it made sense. But I still didn’t know what to write.

There are some smaller “detours” that have happened in my life, but they were so long ago that the details are fuzzy, or I’d rather not write about them because 1) they would end up as a rant or 2) I just don’t want to.

One idea I kept coming back to was about blogging, since that’s what takes up a lot of my time now, and why I was writing this post in the first place. And even though James used my idea before I thought of it, I’ll write about blogging. Not how I got started, but why I stuck to it.

I started blogging back in April of 2008, and when I first started, I was always kind of frustrated. All my reviews sounded awful, or I couldn’t think of what to say, and I couldn’t seem to write them enough. I also never seemed to have any readers, and I could never think of anything original for my blog. Even though I didn’t post that often, the whole blogging thing was too stressful and frustrating. So near the end of May 2008, I figured I’d just stop.

A few days after that decision, my class went on a week long trip to Washington DC. Whenever I’d think about how I hadn’t been on the internet in a while, I’d automatically remember that I didn’t schedule any posts for the week I was gone or that I would have a million posts to read when I got back. Then I’d have to remind myself that no, I stopped blogging and didn’t need to worry about posting the week I was gone. I would then feel a lot better.

When we had free time during the trip, we got to walk around shops and such, and somehow my friends and I would always end up in a bookstore. Once we went to a Barnes and Noble and when I’d see a book I’d never seen reviewed, I’d think “Oh, I wonder if I could review that and see what everyone else thinks.” But then I remembered I’d decided to stop blogging, and forgot about the book.

Once I returned from Washington DC and slept for about a day, I went online and the first thing I check was my blog email, even though I really didn’t “have” a blog anymore. I had a few comment notifications, and then thought “Well, people are reading my blog, I guess. Why don’t I unquit?”

Obviously, I did unquit. And, well, look where I ended up. (:

So thank you, Washington DC, and thank you commenters for being like detours, and bringing me back to blogging. :D
******************************
We thank Washington DC too! Ninja people, be sure to visit THE FRENETIC READER and see what's hot on the reading scene. There are some great reviews on this site.

First off, thanks so much to the Word Ninjas for inviting me to do a guest blog! So, this month's topic is Fateful Detours. Now, I don't lead an exciting life and I'm still very young (only 23), so my life has not had many detours, fateful or otherwise. But I decided to do a different take on the story of how my blog got started. I've spent a couple times in various places talking about how I got started but I never talked about the extenuating circumstances except in one vlog I did for Jocelyn of Teen Book Review. So let's get started.

As any parent (or at least mine) will tell you, summer is a time for a job, not for lazing around inside all day. So I had lined up an internship in the summer of 2007 but that would only take up 15 hours a week, as it was unpaid, and I'd just be working mornings. So that left the afternoon and evenings wide open. I had been rejected from coming back to the hosting job I had at Lone Star Steakhouse a few months earlier because it was under new management who didn't like me for some odd reason. But that's another story and I'm not (that) bitter about it (much). I'd been working there on and off during my breaks from college from June 2005 through January 2007; I had been deemed by the servers as the best host ever. And now, I was not allowed to come back because of my performance during my winter break for the '07-'08 school year.

So that left me without a job to come back to, and therefore had to job hunt. So I put in applications with various bookstores and other retail places. Now that I had experience (something that had deterred me from getting a retail job before), I figured that this would be my time to step up from the food service business and into the land of retail, preferably the section of land containing books. Only two bookstores called me back- an indie just down the street from my internship (which has now closed down; I noticed this when I was visiting the area a couple weeks ago and that made me sad) and a Books-A-Million just a couple minutes from my house. Both interviews went very well, I thought, but in the end, neither one wanted me.

No other place called me back either; apparently, having job experience isn't all it's cracked up to be. I had no job and just an internship that took up a small fraction of my weekly time. In the meantime (here's where the usual blog story kicks in), the amazing Lauren Barnholdt was trying to do PR for her then-upcoming book Two Way Street and was asking all her LJ friends to post reviews on Amazon and B&N.com and to tell their friends about it and blog about it, etc. She even offered herself up to interviews if you felt so inclined to do one. I immediately wanted to do one and she of course agreed. I came up with the questions and found out how fun it was to come up with questions and interview one of my favorite authors. I wanted to do more and so spent several weeks talking with my friend Lauren (not Barnholdt, another Lauren- I know way too many, lol) and figuring things out, like where to put the blog, what to call it, etc. I set it up on Myspace one afternoon after I had a few posts planned and BAM! Book Chic was born.

So thank you to all the retail stores out there who didn't call me back at all because otherwise, I'd have been way too busy to start one of the most wonderful things in my life. This blog has opened me up to such amazing books, authors, book discussions and fellow book lovers. I am so glad to have this blog and to have it still running after two years and still going strong. It's simply fantastic.

But hey, retail stores out there in my area, please hire me now. Because I have bills to pay, groceries to buy, and need gas to fill up my car with. I don't wanna be kicked out of my apartment complex and have to live on the streets. It's cruel out there and I'm very fragile; I would not last a day being homeless. So look deep in your hearts and hire me. Thank you.

*************************************************************************************************************

It was great to have you visit the Ninjas, James. Followers can see what Book Chic is all about by visiting the site. Be sure to leave a comment and say hi to James. Go to the blog as well to see current reviews. They're great!

This month's Word Ninja theme is "Fateful Detours", a topic with particular significance for Prophecy of the Sisters, the most recent Word Ninja book release, but I'll let Michelle go into all that when it's her turn to post.

My life seems riddled with fateful detours. In fact, I have a hard time thinking of anything in my life that went as planned. The places I've lived, the jobs I've had, the people I've met, hell, even being a Young Adult novelist...none of it was planned. I have a knack for getting lost. Some might call this a fault, but I prefer to think of it as a skill. I've noticed that a lot of people get stressed or nervous when they get lost. But I get lost gracefully. Maybe it's just because I'm so used to it. Maybe it's because I know that the state of "being lost" opens you up to possibilities you never would have had otherwise. When you're wandering through the pouring rain in the pitch dark in the Highlands of Scotland, utterly and completely lost, trust me, you have to be open to just about anything. When you've just taken the wrongest of wrong turns into the worst part of Brooklyn's Bed-Sty neighborhood, you better be ready for anything.

And when you are ready, when you can take a deep breath and be upon to it, that's when you find the cool stuff. The unexpected stuff. The just plain weird stuff. And those are the details you'll always remember.

So in these last few weeks before school and other Fall seriousness begins, lets think on happy accidents and fateful, sometimes fortuitous detours. And even the unfortunate ones make for some pretty funny stories.

I totally have a thing for sea glass.

I've been collecting it forever, starting as a child along Lake Erie in Buffalo and making my way up and down the shores of places like Myrtle Bach, Acadia, Martha's Vineyard, and Venice Beach in California, loading up my pockets or beach bag with colorful treasures from the deep.

Readers of Twenty Boy Summer will recognize my love of sea glass as it appears throughout the story, first on the cover, then in jars, in jewelry, and along the sandy shores of Zanzibar Bay, California. As narrator Anna Reiley learns from her neighbor and first love Matt Perino, red is the rarest and hardest to find. After spending every summer at his family's beach house, Matt had still only found one red piece, which he'd made into a bracelet for his sister. For Anna, Matt always brought back mason jars full of the other colors from Zanzibar Bay -- blues, aquas, whites, browns, greens. She keeps them in her room as a reminder of Matt and the ocean. As the full story unfolds and Anna finally gets her own trip to California, red sea glass comes to mean much more than just a rare find on a beach treasure hunt.

My personal sea glass collection is extensive and ever-growing, but unlike Matt Perino, I never found a red piece in the wild. Not even one. I've got all the usual colors, plus dark and sky blue, sage green, and pink. I've got pieces of old Orange Crush bottles and porcelain plates worn smooth by the waves. I even have some of the actual glass Little, Brown used in the photo shoot for the Twenty Boy Summer cover. But my collection was always missing that elusive red.



Earlier this month, I went back to the summer camp I'd always attended as a kid, every summer for a week until I graduated high school. This time, however, I wasn't a camper. I was a counselor, working with kids aged 6 through 10. Dunkirk holds so many wonderful memories for me -- summer loves, best friends, shooting stars, hearing the waves of Lake Erie shush against the shore at night. I was so excited to be back there, this time seeing new memories fill the hearts of kids attending camp for their first time. I never forgot what that was like.

One night, we took the kids down to the beach just before sunset. We wandered the shore, plastic baggies in hand, looking for treasures that the previous week's stormy weather had turned up from the deep. Though sea glass has been more difficult to find on ocean beaches in recent years, the lakeshore sparkled with it, and our bags grew heavier with each step. One of the other counselors who'd read Twenty Boy Summer told me she was on a mission now to find red sea glass. So was I, as I always am whenever I hear the waves against the shore.

As we continued on our treasure hunt, two of my cabin girls, Mari and Brianna, asked me about sea glass and the different colors and where they came from, and as I was talking about how difficult it is to find red glass, Mari found a piece. A real, live red piece. She was so excited! I was, too. It wasn't my find, but I'd never been so close to it's discovery before.

And then... moments later... with Mari as my good luck charm, I did it. I found my very first piece of red sea glass, right there along the shores of a place that defined all the summers of my childhood and young adult years, just as the sun was setting. Nothing could have been more magical.

[cross-posted on my blog]

my desktop is littered with fotos from the
newbery banquet–which i hope to post soon.
but tonight, i have neither the energy nor focus.
i spent most of the weekend working on the
sequel, and i’m falling in love with it.

it feels exactly like when you start falling for another
person–you can’t stop thinking about him.
you wonder what he is doing all the time.
you wake with the thought of him, you sleep and
hope to dream of him. you replay the
short, meaningless conversations you’ve shared
and you add dialogue–with intent, purpose
and feeling.

you change the scenery. instead of passing one
another in the hallway going to classes, you’re
in the quad sharing lunch and discussing the
meaning of life and love and being, as the world
revolves around you in a an exquisitely
low hummed, slow motion.

it feels a little like that.
and it’s the reason that writers endure the often
tortuous, terrifying process of writing.
over and over. so we can fall in love again.

...

writing can definitely be like everyday magic.
but a first visit to comicon san diego with the
convergence of NINJAS certainly is NOT!



sarah rees brennan [THE DEMON'S LEXICON], not an official
ninja but most officially cool and i both stopped by for MARGIE
and KAMI NINJAS' first signing of their debut BEAUTIFUL
CREATURES. they gave away all 250 copies. amazing!!



KHY and SENFAYE NINJAS with me before another
YA author signing! i'm dressed as chun li from streetfighter! =D

I think it was I Heart Monster, one of our Word Ninja bloggers, who was doing a poll on everyone's favorite paranormal character. Without a second thought, I answered John Constantine, protagonist of the Hellblazer comics (yes, there was a Constantine movie...we do not speak of it).

What I love most about Constantine is that he's just this ordinary, everyday English bloke. Whether he actually possesses any magic is debatable and somewhat beside the point. It's what he's got inside that counts. Grit, charm, and balls of pure adamantium, he could talk his way out of a pact with the devil or into a room full of beautiful angels.

There's been some great posts this month on finding everyday magic all around you. It's true. If you want to see the magic in the world around you, it is there. Waiting. Practically begging you to appreciate it.

But let's not forget that other kind of magic. The kind you find within yourself that lets you do what you have to do. It can be the simple resolve of sitting down every night to write, no matter how high the rejection slips pile up. Or it can be as vast and terrifying as facing the loss of a loved one and choosing to find the hope within that.

We are all capable of such magic.

Welcome Lauren Becker who runs an online blog, Shooting Stars Magazine, that is all about books...but music, movies, TV, and more. It's your multi-purpose magazine online! Along with that, she's worked for the site Teen Scene magazine for over a year, has written for Venus Zine and Sadie Magazine, and writes reviews for the magazine Romantic Times.
Check her out.

www.shootingstarsmag.blogspot.com
www.myspace.com/shootingstarsmagazine
www.twitter.com/shootingstarmag

What Laren says about Everyday Magic. Go Lauren.


I don't really believe in magic...not the wand-waving, spell-casting kind at least. I do, however, think that magic occurs every day in people's lives. It just depends on what. For me, I think that a lot of things are magical: friends and family, good health, good times, etc. To pick just one though? Books. Okay, I'm a book blogger...this is surely not surprising or very interesting. I do apologize for that, but I love to read. I don't know how I got started (my parents never really read) but I've loved it for as long as I can remember. I like happy books, sad books, crazy, books, and more. I'm not a fan of everything (very little sci-fi or horror for instance) but each book has a story to tell and whether it's Harry Potter or realistic fiction, it's all magical to me. I have a whole world at my finger tips. I can escape for an hour or two and live a life that I might know or will never witness. It's fun, it's exciting, it's...you got it, magic.

Right this moment I'm actually reading a book called Ballads of Suburbia by Stephanie Kuehnert. It's due out this Tuesday, July 21 ,and I've already pre-ordered my copy but the ARC I was lucky enough to receive is amazing (only 40 or so pages left now!) It's not a book with wizards, elves, vampires, or werewolves. It's about regular people living their lives in the early 90's. So why do I like it so much? It speaks to me...I can relate to some things...and the people and subjects that I can't still feel real to me. It's all wrapped up in this great book that is pure magic. Plain and simple. Every single book is magical to me, whether I like it or not. Someone, somewhere will...and what's more amazing than that?!

Thanks for stopping by The Word Ninjas, Lauren. Hope you'll come back.

As I write this, I have three teenagers playing music in my basement.

That is, they are actually PLAYING music on the bass, guitar, and drums, amps and all.

My house smells awful because my fifteen-year-old daughter and her best friend decided to help me out by painting the massive hallway that runs through the center of the house.

And my two youngest are playing a VERY rambunctious card game.

This is pretty much the soundtrack of my life.

Sometimes it makes it hard to concentrate on writing or even on posting. Which is why I'm late posting this.

Sorry! But sometimes life gets away from me. It used to bother me. I used to be one of those very Type-A people who didn't like being late and didn't like being less-than-perfect in any way. I met with a personal trainer three times a week, calculated everything I ate, had a staff of six at a technology consulting firm, and tried to be home early enough that the nanny didn't have to stay late TOO often. I spent a lot of my time with a knot of anxiety in my stomach, worried that I was letting someone down and worried about what everyone else was thinking.

But somewhere along the way, it got old. I got tired of worrying so much and trying so hard to be what everyone else wanted. Most of all, I got tired of making the people around me unhappy because I was so worried about everything being just SO.

This probably seems like it has nothing to do with Everyday Magic. But I kind of think it does.

Because there was a time I NEVER would have been late with a post. I would have had it in on time, no matter what. But I might have missed some things doing it. I might have missed playing Crazy Eights with my youngest daughter (we just played - I beat her 2 out of 3. Heh). I might have missed listening to my son and his friends record a new song. I might have missed talking to my daughter in the kitchen while I cooked homemade fajitas.

So instead of kicking myself for being late with this post, I'm looking at it as a sign of progress. A sign that I might just finally know what really matters.

It's not perfection. It's not adherence to a timeline. It's not multi-tasking.

It's all the little things that occur when you just let things happen a little.

When you let go enough to let the magic find you.

I believe in Everyday Magic. I wake up on a summer morning, and, you know what, that is Magical. Where did I go for all those night-time hours? What Magic calls me back--the sun? A stir in the air that brushes against my eyelids and whispers, "Come with me" ?

What is more Magical than those seeds planted in March that have slowly poked green shoots toward the sky then suddenly sprawled over the ground to become bearers of round red tomatoes or delicate yellow squash?

And then just when I'm totally wrapped inside this Magical summer there's that sudden shift of light when October raps at the front window. "Look at the sky now," it says. The pumpkins are fat, and even though I hate to say goodbye to those tomatoes, there's a sense of rightness about this change. And like all sensible creatures I prepare for the next Everyday Magic--the Magic of long nights, thick sweaters, and flickering fireplaces where books, always Magical, are even more so.

Welcome our first guest for July. Here's Harmony Book Review's take on Everyday Magic.

When Lee asked me to guest blog, my response was “Heck yeah!” but then when I found out what the theme was, I was a little unsure. I’ve spent the last few days thinking about what Everyday Magic really is and I don’t think I’ve come up with the answer yet. But isn’t that the point? If we could pin-point it, know what it was before it happened, it wouldn’t be magic anymore.

Magic happens to everyone at some point in their life – who hasn’t found money on the ground or had someone take unexpected care of them? Even at 14, I know for a fact I’ve experienced it. For example, I was down in Washington D.C. this past month and stopped in the library. The librarian started talking about how ALA was being held there next year and she must’ve read something on my face because the next thing I knew, she was asking if I was coming down again and if I was, she’d get me a pass. Tell me that’s not magic – if I hadn’t been pulled toward the library, that chance never would have been open to me.

I’ve found that most of the time, those little magical moments are not to be talked about. Most of the time, anyone who wasn’t there can’t understand it and when you try to explain it, the magic and allure disappears. Sometimes it’s even easy to see it as a mere coincidence after getting another opinion, even when you know in your heart that it’s not.

Loved your Guest Blog. Thanks for the visit.
Readers might want to visit Harmony at her blog to see what she's reading and reviewing.

Forgive me if I'm a little at a loss today. *G*

Everyday magic is the very best kind... the kind that sneaks up on us like dust motes in a slanted angle of sunshine, or fog coming in off the ocean. When you take the time to smell the roses, you might just find a tiny person curled up inside the flower. When you pause to acknowledge the moment, a door might swing open next to you.

It's not "everyday" magic that I'm feeling today, as this is certainly a Most Unusual Day. But even with the glitter and glee and fun and congratulations, the smallest things are still making an impression. My daughter explaining it's a book's birthday to her stuffed animals. The excited note in my mom's voice when I spoke with her on the phone.  My mother-in-law calling, tickled beyond all belief because her Amazon order showed up, and "I didn't realize it would be a hardcover! But that is wonderful!"

Yes. Yes it is. And the best part is that all those things will be true tomorrow. And the day after that.

In the blink of an eye, we're turning over the calendar once again, and July is upon us. A few restructuring things will be happening behind the curtains... please excuse the banging of hammers and the smashing of scenery in and out of place.

Themed blogging continues, albeit on a slightly shifted schedule, with the theme of "Everyday Magic."  Bumblebees working their alchemy in the blackberry bushes.  A child's smile. A hand upon your own. It doesn't take fairies or wands or word-spells to perform some of the greatest enchantments in the world, and illusions are oftentimes more real than we think.

I performed a peanut-butter-jelly spell this morning.  You?

Tabitha Olson -- avid reader, reviewer, BLOGGER with a long and successful blog record visits us today. When I asked her to guest blog about SUMMER, she said, "Of course."

Her blog is a tad different than others: it's about NOT WRITING. It's about jumping into those longed-for summers. This is definitely a Midwest girl's perspective and I'm pleased to have her visit the Ninjas with it. Even though she says this snippet from her past isn't part of any story, her description sounds like the basis for a great scene.

Welcome, Tabitha.

When I was a kid, I counted down the days until summer, starting right after Christmas. I grew up in the Midwest, which means frigid and harsh winters where it was often too cold to go out and play. We still did, of course, making snowmen and snow angels. But you could only roll around in the snow for so long before your fingers and toes screamed at you go inside.

Summer was a different story. Even though it was scorching hot, there was no school – which was always a plus. : ) Then there was trying to swing so high that your feet touched the sky, spinning on the merry go round until my head ached, eating Popsicle and ice cream outside as it dripped down my fingers, riding my bicycle and breathing in the breeze, basically doing anything outside.

And the best part was swimming.

The pool opened on Memorial Day and closed on Labor Day, and summer was in between. Even if it was a hundred degrees outside, I just couldn’t believe that it was still summer if the pool wasn’t open. Basically, for me, summer was all about being in the water. I didn’t care about the poolside or getting a tan, or how my lips turned purple when the water was too cold. I didn’t even care when the chlorine made my eyes sting so badly that I could hardly see. I just wanted to dive into that clear, rippling water and stay there until winter.

I learned to swim when I was four, and took to it immediately. In just a few short lessons, I was swimming the length of the pool and back, and loving every minute of it. I did this every year, wishing summer could last just a bit longer so I could stay in the water.

The summer after I started high school, the lifeguards all told me that I should join the swim team. I was tempted. I think I was a fish in a former life, because I always got the urge to jump into any large body of water. And there was a definite appeal to continue the swimming fun even after summer was over. Still, something seemed off. On the swim team, I’d be swimming back and forth, inside, with no sun, screams, or splashes. No. I might still be in the water, but it wouldn’t be the same. Summer added that little bit of sparkling magic to the pool water, and evaporated when it was over.

I smiled at the lifeguard, then dunked one of my friends under the water. She came up laughing, and we splashed each other and swam away. I may have chosen less swimming time, but that just made it even more special.

Like most writers, I have several stories going at once, all in various stages. One on its way to bookshelves, one nearly complete, and one just beginning.

Ah, that sweet sweet potential of a story just begun. Its my favorite time. But even before then, when it's just an impression or impulse with a few loose connections of events, there is the research. Right now I am up to my eyeballs in it. Anything to do with Frankenstein, Prometheus, or golems I am consuming at a furious rate. Books, movies, plays, anything I can get my hands on. It's not just about the fact gathering, but about submerging so deeply into something that it infiltrates you dreams, both sleeping and waking. Because that's what we're doing here. Converting the nuts and bolts of life into dream energy.

Of course, there comes a time when the research can bog you down. You start getting that itch to toss it all and just bang something out. At that point, there's a temptation to cling to the safety of the research. To use it as a crutch. But when has "safe" and "dream" ever been an interesting combination?

As the old saying goes, "Be bold, and the mighty shall come to your aid".

So soon my little story will need to spread its rough draft wings and, fly or fall, leave the research nest.