An Impression in the Snow

A couple Mondays ago my youngest daughter came rushing into the house. She'd seen a really cool bird in the backyard. But even better, she'd seen it swoop down and scoop up a mouse right off the snow and fly away with it! Practically vibrating with excitement, now she wanted to know what kind of bird it was.

I pulled out the bird book and had her go through it. She thinks it was a horned owl. And to think she'd been in exactly the right place at the right time to witness it catching its dinner. I was a little envious.

Then she told me she'd also seen the tracks of the mouse trail and the owl's wings. Wait, tracks? Tracks??

There were TRACKS?

This I wanted to see.

So we went out, and although it was getting a little dark and the flurries were starting to fill them in, there was the whole incident laid out as an impression in the snow.

What a story those impressions told. We snapped a few photos and once again marvelled at how lucky she was to have seen that.

Of course, the snow impressions are now gone, but I'm hoping the impression they left on my daughter will last a lifetime.

You're Sending Me What? Something BAD?

Got an email today from an editor and the subject line really threw me for a minute. I first read it as meaning I was being sent something BAD about my forthcoming series. BAD was capitalized.

After I got over the heart attack, I looked at the subject line more closely. Oh, it said a BLAD. I was being sent a BLAD. Praying that wasn't a typo and it really was supposed to read BAD, I opened the email.

It was a BLAD! Hurray! A pdf of the BLAD to be exact. But my next thought was sort of a whispered: um...what's a BLAD?

Fearing to look at the file, I first Googled the acronym. And I found:

Bovine Leukocyte Adhesion Deficiency?

Um, don't think so.

Bioartificial Liver-Assisted Device?

Ya, no.

So that left Book Layout and Design. Yes! It was a Book Layout and Design!

BINGO!

Okay, so what the heck is a Book Layout and Design exactly? Performing more Google-foo, I found this definition:

Blad (Book Layout and Design)
A blad is a marketing and sales tool, used where printed sample material is needed in advance by the sales force to sell the title. A blad will often feature sections from the finished book, including the cover artwork, page layouts and images.

Hunh, who knew? Thank you Oxford University Press Glossary of Publishing Terms. May you continue to help many confused authors like myself.

So I finally opened the file. And it was awesome! I've never had a BLAD for one of my books before. It's my very first BLAD! And that, my friends, is definitely, most decidedly, and definitively not BAD.

The Horrible Hairy Holiday Surprise

How's that for a title? Sorry, I couldn't resist.

But it was hairy, it was related to the holidays, and it was a surprise. It's horrible, too, if you're arachnophobic. See:

This was lurking on the pineapple display in my local grocery store just before Christmas. I'm not too sure it's native. Could it have come in with the pineapples? It was a healthy inch and a half long at least. [[shudder]]

My daughters and I tried to tell store personnel about this unusual squatter but no one was interested in giving us the time of day.

I wonder what happened to it. Maybe there's a story there...somewhere.