Friendship, Maine

1. I sent off the second Shelter Pet Squad book to my editor yesterday, and contacted my first two September schools about our visits. And with that, I flipped the switch from summer writing to fall speaking!

2. Half a Chance made Nebraska's Golden Sower list (a state kids' choice list) for 2015-16. I'm thrilled!

3. I've been enjoying cucumbers and tomatoes from my garden. Unfortunately the slugs have also been enjoying them, so I have to pick the tomatoes before they're ripe and let them finish ripening in the house.

4. Andrea Skyberg has a fun feature on her blog where she asks writers and illustrators to give a tour of their work spaces. Here's mine!

5.  In each of my Shelter Pet Squad books, there is back matter about the animal, a quiz, ideas for helping shelter animals, and in the first one, I told my guinea pig Cookie's story in a "From the Author."

I was thinking about whether that "From the Author" should be a regular feature in the series. The second book stars a ferret, but also a goldfish. We've never had a ferret at my house, but years ago, we had a very special goldfish named Bubble. I decided that I could tell Bubble's story and see what my editor's think.

I remembered telling his story on my blog when I first started blogging (10 years ago!), and I thought it would save me time if I could find what I had written then and change it for a young audience. So this morning I went looking way, way back to a time when I had just seen Rules' cover for the first time.

Here is the story of Bubble.