My Desert Sun

My good friend Diana Tuorto, who happens to be a superb author, just got some wonderful news: Her young adult novel My Desert Sun is going to be re-released! Probably sometime in late April. This is indeed happy news for all readers of young adult fiction - but especially for animal and horse lovers!

My Desert Sun is one of several books Diana has written, both in the voice of a horse, and all about horses. It is both a poignant tale and a revelation with regard to the conditions and the tribulation borne by wild horses. It is timely and important - and what's more, the proceeds from every book Diana sells go towards animal rescue in general and horse welfare, more particularly.

My Desert Sun is the story of Cayuse, a young, free-spirited mustang who lives in the desert and mountains of the American Southwest. While life in the desert is often peaceful and serene, Cayuse spends many days merely fighting for survival. However, he soon learns that survival among mankind is much more difficult. (From Diana's website)

I have not only read My Desert Sun, which I highly recommend, by the way, but I know first hand of its development, having been fortunate enough to have worked on a critique of it (in its earlier drafts), along with other members of our writing group.

More information is available from Diana about it at Cayuse's Canyon, Diana's blog.

Check it out!

Launch Time is Rapidly Approaching...

My erstwhile, hardworking and generally wonderful editor, Denyse Loeb just let me know that Penny Wishes is almost ready to be released now! The date is February 15th!

Am I excited? You bet I am!

And considering my birthday is actually tomorrow, it is most certainly a well-timed and a very, very welcome gift!

The cover art for Penny Wishes was created by Ron Leming. When you read the book, you'll be able to see why this really does capture the mood and setting of the book. I'll be posting a bit more about it all in the next few days. but in the meantime, don't forget to mark your calendar for February 15th - and then visit Lilley Press!

As London Tipton would say, "Yay me!" But I'd also like to add to that, "Thanks!"

It's been a while, hasn't it...

...but I decided it's a good time to post again!

It's been a busy time, but things are going pretty well. I just finished the third round of content edits on Penny Wishes with my editor at Lilley Press (thanks so much, Denyse!), and now we're into the line editing phase. The cover design looks pretty good - and I was lucky to have a designer who really tried to work with me and incorporate the things I wanted for the cover (thanks Ron!)

As for other news, I'm working on getting the packages ready for the Goldfinch 2009 readers so that they can start the process of ranking submissions. I know it'll be a tough job for them, because there are so many great prose and poetry pieces!

And, happily, Bound Brook Memorial Library has invited me to do a seminar/reading in April for National Poetry Month. They also very kindly accepted Mugging for the Camera into their circulation collection, which is awesome, considering it's a self-published book!

Finally, I'm on Facebook, which is a lot of fun, fairly addictive and also, a great way to network. Check me out there as well as on my website!

Things are looking good for 2009!