Yes!

Look what's here!

From left to right: Beautiful, amazing, shiny, incredible, first-I've-ever-seen hardback copy of Operation Yes; back of promotional postcard with stellar flap copy on it; front of promotional postcard with same glorious cover on it; pinch-me-I'm-going-to-be-in-the-Scholastic-Book-Fair edition.

And if that's not enough, here are the two blurbs that appear on the back cover of the hardback edition:

"Transformative, inspirational, and just plain fun, Operation Yes is a book that not only nudges readers to look around and ask 'Where am I?' but may just give them the courage to create answers all their own." --- Linda Urban, author of A Crooked Kind of Perfect

"Operation Yes grabbed me on page one---how I would have loved to have been a student in Room 208! Sara Lewis Holmes provides a heartfelt and honest look inside the lives of military families with an unforgettable cast of characters. There's only one word for this book: Yes!" --- Barbara O'Connor, author of How to Steal a Dog

Would now be a good time to tell you that the blog and website for Operation Yes is up and running?

(www.operationyesbook.com)

Come see me!

Readers, start your story engines...

A blog tour for literacy

 "Share a Story - Shape a Future"

(Logo by Elizabeth Dulemba)

The full schedule (it's amazing!) is here. 

Story Robot

For my revisions, I'm doing some research into improvisational theater. I found the best blog! It's called Story Robot. (Sorry, Laini. I know you are Not a Robot.)

Anyhow, these posts made me laugh. And think about story. They may be about theater, but I think they apply to writing, too.

Head in the deep fryer moment.

The commitment meter.

Why connections make you laugh. (Link to "eight minutes of lyrical origami, folding history into a series of coincidences surrounding that most surreal of hours: 4 o'clock in the morning.")

Just what I needed.

He does comics, too.

My feet would like to ask you for a favor

Conversing in the blogosphere is an art form. Sometimes, I feel as if I'm at a huge party, and there are clusters of fascinating, nattily dressed people filling the multi-leveled hip club, with music thumping and lights flashing, and I'm running (in my sensible tennis shoes) from one cool conversation to the next. I'm running because, instead of talking about Spice Girl's baby, these people are talking books, and writing, and art. (The Eternal Conversation, right?)

At first, I tried to handle my rounds alone. Then I hired the much younger----but with such cute glasses!---Mr. Google Reader to assist me. Great! Now I could follow multiple conversations at once. The only problem was that (and here the party gets weird) if I actually spoke during one of these conversations, instead of just sagely nodding at the fringes, then I had to keep dashing back to that group of people to see if anyone had replied. Which was often days later. (How I would love to hear Dorothy Parker handle this kind of conversational time travel.)

A breakthrough occurred when I discovered I could subscribe to all comments as well as all original posts. (And just so you know, you can do that for the conversations here by clicking on the link "Subscribe to all comments" at the right.) And joy! joy! some blogs even offered to tap me on the shoulder only when a particularly scintillating conversation had new thoughts. (That would be found here by clicking on the title of a post, and then scrolling to the bottom for the link marked "Subscribe to: post comments.")

And here's where I need your help: I can't find these links for some of the wildly wonderful, totally fascinating, non-probation anklet conversations I want to follow. Is this not available in some blogging software? Or is it an option the blogger turns on or off? Please, I'm begging you, enlighten me. Because I really want to ditch my sensible tennies and slip on my three-inch bronze snakeskin heels.