I flew to Israel with a plan to have one short event in which I'd read some excerpts from Blue Sparkles to kids, in the exact real-life location where the book takes place. I discovered that being an author opens doors.

Since the story takes place in Modiin, I thought I'd leave the mayor a signed copy. His secretary thought it would be better if I met him in person. There was a whole photo-thing and he asked me some questions. Super-cool.

Then, I got a phone call from a librarian at one of the schools (my beta-reader niece and her friend, who is also a beta reader go there) asking me if I could give a lecture on writing. I said I would love to.

I think my writing is pretty creative, but that's because my mind is - so I decided that I needed to do something interactive. At first, it was supposed to be 12-15 girls, but after protests at the school (yes, really) it turned into 35. It was a wild experience for me, because my main goal had been to survive, but, despite my utter lack of experience, I was able to get all of the girls on board. They all participated and they came up with something amazing. It was so fun that I have to do it again.

In the past few weeks, I've also done beta reading for 4 novels (I offered to give brutally honest feedback, and absolutely stuck to that), gotten the Orange Sparkles audiobook into production, prepared Blue Sparkles for publication (7 days and it's out there!) and written the first scene in book 3 of the Magic Sparkles series (it has a wild concept and I have the best co-writer anyone could wish for!)

One more important thing is happening in 7 days. My six kids, who haven't all been in the same place at the same time since last July, will be spending a whole weekend together! Blue Sparkles