These days, I have been:

• Relaxing at nearby Guemes Island (the rainy Northwest at its most beautiful!) after drooling over NotMartha’s adventures for so long.
• Getting ready for my trip to Madison, WI for WisCon.
• Chasing the broody chicken out of the nest box. (She wants to sit on All the Eggs, All the Time.)
• Starting over with Couch to 5K on the treadmill (see: rain) and thinking about the links between exercise to brain activity.
• Eating steel-cut oatmeal with frozen blueberries (but the blueberries don’t stay frozen — they cook, see).
• Reading lots (Summer of the Mariposas by Guadalupe Garcia McCall, The Peculiar by Stefan Bachmann, Eat Vegan Before 6:00 by Mark Bittman, Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins, listening to Midnight for Charlie Bone by Jenny Nimmo, read by Simon Russell Beale)
• Getting ready to start writing the next book. (So far, it has a girl with no magic, an angry tomte, and a problematic mother. I hope it grows more cool stuff soon.)