Being a True Princess

Yesterday, I accompanied a group of True Princesses on their perilous quest to defeat the evil Snow Queen and her three sisters and restore peace to Cinderella and her prince's kingdom.

First, we vanquished Spring by helping her "grow" flowers (after, of course, she kindly released Aladdin and, um, the other prince, who were trapped in her tangled vines).

After Spring, the True Princesses fought Summer and convinced her that princesses were nice to people. The Princesses said the magic words and the beast and the mermaid became human again.

Then came the Autumn Robber. And, really, can you get a cooler name than that? Plus, she had  a sword, which always makes things more fun.

And then the girls faced the evil Snow Queen. Fear and ice filled the air as the battle raged. Or possibly it might have had it not been, you know, June in a desert. Anyway . . . Fortunately for our heroines, the various princes and princesses the girls met on their quest were there to help and, in the end, the Snow Queen was convinced of her erring ways and decided to be good again.

Ah, I love a happy ending, don't you?

(And, as a bit of trivia, the Snow Queen was played by the daughter of Janette Rallison, who is one of my favorite YA authors. Her books make me laugh and have happy endings. At least most of the time.)

This quest was part of The Princess Festival, a fundraiser for a local charity. My sister and I took our girls and they had lots of fun. In addition to the quest, they got to play crocodile tag with Peter, Tinker Bell, and Wendy--after "flying" through the clouds to Neverland. See the clouds? And the crocodile hiding under the bridge?

 
There was also a rousing game of Captain Hook says, played with... Captain Hook! (Are you surprised?) There was a pretend tea party with the Wonderland gang and a treasure hunt for the girls, which ended with a prince trying the slipper on their foot and pronouncing them a True Princess. My daughter was thrilled to hear that she's a True Princess and has informed everyone of that fact.

Anyway, this is a girls only event, but I highly recommend it--even if only to see the house and grounds that the festival was hosted at! Really and truly amazing!

What Happened

Contrary to what you might be thinking, no, I have not been eaten by sharks. 

Although if I had to be eaten by sharks, this giant prehistoric one would be a much more interesting way to go that the normal run-of-the-mill kind of shark.  Although, really, I'd rather not be devoured at all, not even by something as painless as summer vacation.  Which is what actually happened to me.  And my deciding that we weren't going to laze around every day and do nothing didn't help things.  Silly me--what was I thinking???

So between chores, museum visits, spur of the moment family vacations, birthdays, writer's conferences, and Arabic lessons, life has been a little crazy.  I haven't had time to write, much less blog about writing.  I wish I could promise to be better, but since I'm going to be leaving on Monday to spend a week holed up in the mountains with teenage girls as one of their "leaders," (me, who grew up in a house where "camping" consisted of setting up a tent in the backyard or even the basement--hey, I lived in Montana for years and some of my earliest 4th of July memories involve snow) the blogging probably isn't going to be as frequent as I might want it to be. 

And moving on...

I spent the last week at a conference called For Young Readers and had a great time.  I was in a workshop with Brandon Mull and I have to say that I'm really impressed with him, not just as a writer, but as a person.  Our entire workshop was full of wonderful people and we had a great time together (although some of us might not look like it in the picture).
 

I'm in the front (aka, the short) row, second in from the left in the purple and black shirt and jeans.  Surprisingly enough, my eyes are actually open, which rarely happens in pictures.  

I also have to say that one of my favorite moments was when my friend Joel (in the back row wearing glasses and standing next to Brandon) walked out of the women's bathroom, glanced sheepishly at the group of girls standing in the hallway and said, "Oops."  He then went in the correct place.  Yeah, apparently going in the wrong bathroom as an adult still gets you as much mocking as it would when you're a kid. 

There were a few things I learned at the conference that really opened my eyes and made me think about things differently.  One of them came from Alane Ferguson as she was doing a flash critique of first pages during one of the break out sessions.  She said that, once you've picked a metaphor, you need to stick with it.  For example, if you're comparing something to fire, stick with fire terms, like lit, burn, or what have you.  But once you've picked fire, you can't start using water terms, like wading.  I had never thought of things in that way before.  So there you go. 

It's been a few days since the conference and I'm still going through withdrawals/recovery.  It's amazing that something so mentally exhausting can be missed so much.

And now I should probably go put to use all of the great suggestions from last week and start revising my story before girls' camp next week makes me forget everything I learned.