Lately, a few people have asked me for the name of Abby’s handwriting font in the Abby Hayes series. I wrote to Scholastic to find out. It’s AmbersHand.  Or Ambershand? I wonder who Amber is! Abby’s long-lost cousin, maybe?

I just returned from vacation. My husband and I drove down route 81 and the Blue Ridge Parkway (through Virginia) to Savannah, Georgia. We were hoping for beautiful, scenic views on the Blue Ridge Parkway, but mostly we saw a lot of stark, black branches rising up out of  heavy fog. We also experienced rain, heat, thunderstorms, cold, and more fog. But no snow or ice. As a lifelong denizen* of the Northeastern states, that’s always a plus.

In Georgia, I saw my first alligator in the wild (woo hoo!) and, further north, ghostly deer galloping through a misty forest at night. We stayed in a lodge at Peaks of Otter; the lake was drained and we had scenic views of mud and rocks.

It was a great vacation.

* denizen means inhabitant

I don’t update these posts very often, as an Abby fan just pointed out to me. Sorry about that! A writer’s life basically consists of sitting in front of a blank screen, gnashing one’s teeth, and hoping to come up with a better idea than the last one. If I updated every day, it would go like this: Halfway through chapter one. Threw out chapter two, can’t seem to get chapter three right…  The other reason I don’t update very often is that for the last two years, I’ve been working on two series: Abby Hayes and Sister Magic.  If you’re ever faced with the choice of writing two at once, my advice is : DON’T DO IT!!!  It’s twice the pressure and half the fun. Oh, I admit, I love both series. But I’d love them better if they were separated by several years, and maybe a wide sea.