Happy New Year...and Stuff...

Well, after being out of the office for the better part of December (I was only actually here eight days out of the month) I'm back. While it was nice to be home to play with Murray, see my out-of-town friends who were in for the holidays, and do a little shopping, I'm happy to be at work today. I need my routine. It seems the more I have to do, the more I get done. When I'm able to sleep in and spend the day in my PJ's I tend to do both. During my time off, I watched a lot of reruns, wasted time on the Internet, occasionally napped, sporadically showered, and really didn't do much of anything. I couldn't even manage to read anything more challenging than InStyle magazine.

But that's all over with. Today I started to get and read through 09 CWIM articles. (I have a great lineup!) I've been working through a big stack of listings corrections for the book. I rescheduled my haircut because it interfered with a meeting (plan to chop off a lot, but may chicken out by Saturday). I got some material off to a freelancer. I checked in with the other editors. And I waded through a gigantic stack of snail mail (yes, we still get it). And now I blog.

Here are some random things I'd like to mention in my first post of 2008:

• Judging from their website, the SCBWI Annual Winter Conference in New York (February 8-10) does not seem to be sold out, so if you're thinking about going, hurry and make your reservations. If you attend, I'd love to hear about your experience at the event and post it on my blog. Email me at alice.pope@fwpubs.com after the conference.
• The CWIM newsletter will be emailed the second Friday of each month in 2008. If you're not a subscriber, click here to sign up. I'll continue to interview new authors for the recurring Debut Author of the Month feature which is also included on this blog.
• Be sure to visit my blog throughout January and February--as I get updates from editors and agents, I'll share important changes here (starting as soon at this week).

I hope you all had pleasant holidays and you were more productive than I was (if you wanted to be). I wish you all a happy 2008!