March madness

The three trips I had planned for March have now blossomed to five. Clearly, I’m not doing a very good job upholding my New Year’s resolution to travel less. Two gigs that were supposed to happen last month will now have to be squeezed into March…unless the spreading coronavirus leads to some cancellations. I’ve been home for almost three weeks and have been fairly productive despite a lingering cold. Stocked my shelves with nonperishable food, turned in an essay on the so-called rules of publishing, and I’m almost done reading Cyntoia Brown-Long’s memoir. That’s research for my PA novel, which my agent is preparing to send out now that I’ve put together a substantial writing sample. She’s troubled by the protagonist killing her abusive father but I’m basing my characters on actual teens–Cyntoia, Bresha Meadows, Chrystul Kizer. The contemporary teens’ stories unfold alongside those of historical figures from Central PA—Black women who fled, killed, or conjured in order to be free. My middle grade novel is due next month so I will have to shift gears and set the PA project aside for a while. Hopefully I’ll have time to write while I’m on the road—and I’ll be on the road a LOT this month. On Thursday I head to North Carolina for the Whirlikids Festival near Raleigh; from there I head to Charlotte for two presentations for Ed. students at UNC. I come home for a few days, I have my biometrics appointment in York, and then I do a couple of school visits in Philly before heading up to MA. Two more school visits in Philly and then I head to Houston for a week for the Texas Library Association’s annual convention. I’ll be a guest on the DC Public Library podcast at the end of March and then I have a couple days at home before I head to Kansas State University to deliver a talk at the “Fantastic Identities” conference of the Children’s and Adolescent Literature Community. I complain about being on the road but sometimes the connections you make with other readers and writers make it worthwhile. Last week I read with Julia Mallory at Midtown Scholar Bookstore and we had a great conversation about the power of poetry to heal or at least reveal trauma. Tomorrow I’ll be filming the young poets at The Mix here in Lancaster, and through Julia I’ve connected with some more teens in Harrisburg. I reached out to the Lancaster Public Library to see if they’d be interested in hosting a self-publishing workshop like the one I did in Philly at the Logan branch. They said yes so I’ll try to schedule that for April. I haven’t booked anything beyond the start of May so I’m looking forward to a quiet, stay-at-home spring! My horoscope says it’s a good time to buy a home so I feel justified spending so much time on Zillow…