I mailed off my signed contract to Red Deer Press last week. I can see it would be valuable to have an agent when signing a contract, because I did find a few small discrepancies when reading over the contract, which the publisher was quick to correct for me. Editor Peter Carver and I had some email discussion yesterday regarding the original 67,000 word version and a subsequent 55,000 word version – we easily agreed that the original would be the working copy for editing. He hopes to get the first round of edits to me before Christmas. 

I have another chapter book story to write for JLS, the Korean language school.  The editor asked for a female protagonist this time, so I’m mulling over some ideas.  He’s away on vacation until January so there’s no immediate deadline there.

Seems winter has finally arrived. We’ve had a persistent cold wind for the past 48 hours or so, and I’ll be happy when it blows away. Think I’m just about finished my Christmas shopping; hopefully tonight we’ll be able to do some decorating around the house. Shannon has been the initiator of those activities these past few years; don’t know what will happen when she’s off at school next year until just before Christmas…A group of kids from Horton put on a comedy night last night and raised $1350 for cancer research, about 3 times the amount they raised last year so I guess Christmas is a pretty good time for fundraising efforts.