calculating

I just used the EU’s online Schengen zone calculator to figure out whether I have enough days left in my 90-day allowance to visit Oslo later this month. I probably should have done that *before* I booked my flight and hotel but fortunately, I’ve got 5 days left. That also means, I think, that I’ve miscalculated my return date…you can spend three out of six months in the Schengen zone but that six months doesn’t start on the day you arrive…I’ll need to revisit that calculator as I think about the future.

This past week I realized that my plan of selling the foreign rights to the dragon series probably won’t work. Wouldn’t it be lovely, I thought, to have enough royalties coming in that I could write purely for pleasure? The books are still selling well in the US, but two foreign rights agents have told me that MG isn’t moving in overseas markets so I’ll have to focus/depend on the books I haven’t yet finished. My flight to Oslo is out of Dublin so that will give me a chance to research my hybrid verse novel set in Ireland and my Viking novel as well.

Everyone else may be writing a poem a day for NaPoWriMo, but this year I’m taking a break. Carole Boston Weatherford is Youth Poet Laureate and she’s shining a light on poets whose books have been challenged or banned. She’s also using her platform to have our work featured in Poetry Magazine, yet I struggled to find the three poems she asked us to submit. FIVE MONTHS of writing a poem every day and I only came up with about a dozen that I thought were good enough to publish. I asked three friends to pick their favorites, agonized for a few days, and then forced myself to hit submit. But I’m not forcing myself to write any more poems—for now. I finished reading Menewood, which was excellent, and will be reading Phillis Wheatley’s poetry from now on. Hopefully that will prepare me to write neoclassical verse for Glory & the Fifth Province…

My trip to York last week was a bit disappointing but the medieval stone walls captured my imagination. I was rushing to see the Roman city wall when a bird shat on me. Time will tell whether that “blessing” brings good luck…