Pat McCarthy is the author of a dozen nonfiction books for children and young adults. She has published numerous stories, articles, puzzles and quizzes in magazines for children and adults. She teaches for the Institute of Children's Literature. She has also written encyclopedia articles and school curriculum. Pat is a retired elementary school teacher who subs to remain in touch with kids. Her hobbies are photography, travel, birding and scrapbooking.

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Why I Haven't Posted Lately

I've been really busy and haven't posted for awhile. I'm subbing in elementary school to help make ends meet. It also is good because it gets me back in touch with kids and how they talk, what they're interested in, etc.

I joined Suzanne Lieurance's Writers on Call, which is a series of conference calls on writing held on Thursday evenings. I think they're going to be helpful in getting me going on marketing my writing.

I think I mentioned the death of my refrigerator. There was no way I could afford a new one right then. My friend, Marge, let me borrow a little camping refrigerator she had. I was gone for a week at my sister's at a scrapbooking retreat, so decided to wait till I got back to look for one. It was funny how the whole thing played out.

A friend called and said a friend of his had an old refrigerator she would give me. I called her and she said it worked fine, but was very old and rusty and had a very small freezing compartment. I figured I could use it for a few months until I save up enough money to buy one. So my nephew and a friend went and got it. I made a stop on the way home, and when I got here, my nephew Tim said, "Mike has a deal for you." He's my next-door neighbor. Seems he had a really nice refrigerator in the garage that he kept beer in. He said if I gave him that old one (which was really pretty bad - I think it's like the one I had in my first apartment 40-plus years ago) he would give me his for what they paid for it, which was $100. So now I have a very nice refrigerator. While they were juggling these four refrigerators around, I got a call from Tim's wife asking what I was going to do with my old refrigerator. I said I was trying to find a way to get rid of it. She said friends of theirs wanted to know if they could have it for scrap metal. So that solved THAT problem! The whole thing worked out nicely.

I did get a rejection from Walker & Company on my MG novel. It was just a form rejection. Will send it a couple more places. It's still out at one house.

I'm going to try to post more often so everyone who reads this can hold me accountable for doing more writing!