I’ll blurt out the big news first: Penguin has bought Sima’s paperback rights!
It’s good. Really good. It means a whole new “package,” apparently: another cover, another launch, another chance.
Very, very exciting. Even though I love the old cover & even though I have become a huge fan of Overlook Press, still, this is clearly a very good thing. June 2010: a summer read. I have to say, when I was writing Sima I never really envisioned it on a beach blanket. But apparently it’ll be marketed that way.
It must be all those boobs.
Meantime: things continue on here, the daily routines similar each day while, at the same time, the girls change constantly. It’s an interesting contradiction. In the last few weeks Eva’s favorite colour went from pink to purple to pink again, plus white. Horses are out; dogs and cats are in. She dresses herself easily, and has even started dressing Tillie–or rather, suggesting ensemble combinations which Tillie, unbelievably opinionated & strong-willed, mostly rejects, inevitably selecting something from Eva’s closet instead.
So Tillie trips along in size 4 dresses and Eva looks out for her. This weekend I watched in amazement as Eva carefully helped Tillie climb rocks, one arm protectively around Tillie’s back. They are both big into rocks, and right now Victoria’s best rock-spots are dotted with amazing blue wildflowers, an incredible setting which gives Tillie’s drowning-dress-look a very pleasing Little House on the Prairie aesthetic.
Another first this weekend: we had the kind of dinner party we all remember our parents having. You know, where the children amuse themselves in one room and the adults in another. As opposed to the kids being the entire focus. Don’t get me wrong: I like focusing on my kids. But my generation takes it too far sometimes. We’re so serious, so concerned, so protective…the other day I listened to Tillie crying out for freedom from the constrains of her car seat: “Up Mommy now! Up Mommy now!” and thought that when I was her age, if I were bored in the car I’d, well, go for a walk. I’d climb over the back seat, hang out in the “backity-back” –station wagons basically had playrooms–or crouch down in that soft spot behind the seats.
My father thinks the car seat is basically my invention –he’s chided me more than once for my “obsession” with car seats. “Admit it,” he’s told me, watching me strap in the girls for what he’d consider a short enough ride to not warrant seat belts, “everyone has their shtick, and this is yours.”
I’ve tried explaining that the car seat isn’t my shtick–it’s a law. And sure we’re all in favour of making the roads safer for our children. But our kids have lost some freedom, too. So Saturday night we toasted to the Penguin deal out on the deck while a roving band of kids made a mess of the basement. Aahh. New starts, and a revival, too.
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