The Stolen Goldin Violin is being featured on Free Book Friday.  Visit to learn about the book, read interviews with the authors, and sign up to win!

Once again, we will be selling The Stolen Goldin Violin at this year’s Holiday Fest.  Holiday Fest is one of Stevens Point’s biggest and best arts and craft shows. 

Saturday, Nov 12 from 9am to 3pm

St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, 600 Wilshire Blvd.

Proceeds from the show benefit community holiday baskets.  So come and check out our booth, have lunch, buy some crafts, and know that you are helping feed the needy in our community !

It’s that time of year again, and I don’t mean Halloween.

It’s time for writers to put pen to paper or fingertips to keyboard!

It’s NaNoWriMo time!

This will be my third year as a NaNoWriMo participant.  The first year, if you remember, I wrote The Stolen Goldin Violin.  The second year, I upped my word count on Wilde Wagers.  This year, I plan to spend the month of November completely revising Syncopation and getting it ready to submit to Cornerstone Press in January.

So, I’m a NaNoWriMo cheater. The idea of NaNoWriMo is to turn off one’s internal editor and write an entire novel, from start to finish, during the month of November.  I did that the first year, but these past two years that system hasn’t really fit into where I’m at as a writer, so I’ve adapted the program to suit my own needs.  I love the supportive emails I get from NaNoWriMo, and being part of a writing community is amazingly wonderful.

I’ll keep you updated on my progress, and I encourage anyone who has ever thought about writing a novel to sign up.  It’s great fun!  Just go to NaNoWriMo.org and sign up today.  You are running out of time for 2011!!

Elementary schools are alive with reading. Students are excited about the books they read in class, they enjoy going to the school library, and they beg their parents to fill out the Scholastic book orders. Teachers of elementary aged children seek out new material, read it, and incorporate it into their classrooms. What are your elementary aged children reading? Most of it is not what you read as a child. The books are new and hip and relevant to today’s kids. The world of children’s literature is alive and vibrant, and elementary schools bring that world to students. Exciting stories in the classroom promote reading outside the classroom.  This doesn’t happen in later grades. Between elementary school and college, students stop reading. It happens in junior high and high school, and the current curriculum is the reason.

When examining what my children are experiencing in junior high and high school English classes, and listening to my college students about their reading experiences in high school, I see that the books being taught in high school are not chosen to encourage an enjoyment of reading. In eighth and ninth grade, my son read Great Expectations, The Fall of the House of Usher, Fahrenheit 451, Lord of the Flies, and Robinson Crusoe. I loved these books (English major that I am) when I read them, but couldn’t something contemporary be added to mix? The most recent of these books was published more than fifty years ago.

Classics are good for teaching; they show “universal truths” and provide good opportunities for analysis and discussion, but they are dated. They are hard to read. There are contemporary novels that handle the same “universal truths” and provide similar opportunities for analysis and discussion that adolescents would enjoy much more than the ones being used in today’s classrooms.

My son spent the first twelve years of his life an avid reader; he called the library his favorite place to be. Last year, he told me he hated English. His comment at the end of eighth grade: “The Diary of Anne Frank was the most cheerful book we read this year, and it was only cheerful because she didn’t know she was going to die.”

The classics should not be thrown away, nor should contemporary books be ignored. Amazing books are being written for young adults that could be used in combination with the classics. Compare The Lord of the Flies to The Hunger Games; Have journalist Anne Frank interview The Book Thief‘s Liesel Meminger. How would one of Sarah Dessen’s protagonists handle being stranded on a desert island? Students bored and not participating in group discussions? Get them to read Jodi Picoult and you’ll hear their opinions on a whole range of topics. Topics that matter to them.  If they discover a new author in school that they like, there is a good chance they will want to read outside of school as well.

Junior high and high school English teachers should take a look at what is going on in elementary schools. Reading is alive; it is dynamic; it is exciting in the early grades. It could be this in the older grades too.

Richard “Dick” Howard Caulfield died August 19, 2011, in Bloomington, Indiana, following a brief battle with cancer. He was born November 28, 1936, to Howard and Dorothy (Lovelace) Caulfield. Dick grew up in Indianapolis, went to Shortridge High School and received a bachelors and masters in education from Indiana University. He married Betsy Pearson, and they had four children.

Dick was first and foremost a teacher, at the elementary and middle school levels, all the way through graduate school. He was always willing to share his knowledge and experience gained from nearly fifty years of experience. He taught elementary and middle school in Indianapolis, worked as an educational consultant, and was a visiting professor at Indiana University.

Dick was active in the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. He was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, a Danforth Fellow, a regular presenter at conferences, and a writer for educational testing services and professional journals.

In his free time, Dick enjoyed golfing and watching Indiana University sports. He had season IU football tickets for more than fifty years.

Dick was one of the most generous people who ever lived. If you needed something specific, he would give. If you needed something vague, he would give. If you didn’t think you needed anything, he would give. If you didn’t need anything, he would give. Giving is what he did. Because of this, there are a lot of people walking around with holes in their hearts today.

A memorial service followed by a reception will be held Saturday, August 27, at 11:00am at Trinity Episcopal Church, 111 S. Grant St., Bloomington. Donations in Richard’s name may be sent to Waycross Episcopal Camp, 7363 Bear Creek Road, Morgantown, IN 46160 , or to the IU Foundation/Varsity Club at 1001 E. 17^th St. Bloomington, IN 47408.

We encourage those who cannot come to Bloomington for the service to reserve 11:00 ET on Saturday to spend a few moments thinking about Dick and joining us in spirit.

I’m an irregular blogger. I only post when I feel I have something interesting, clever, funny, or informative to say, but I’m a quiet person, both in person and on paper, and meaningful conversations develop slowly (if at all). My blog forces me to spend time in my head, trying to be poetic, to be a writer that people will want to read. For me, planning a blog post is an enjoyable mind-puzzle–more personal than a Sudoku, more challenging than a crossword, with no wrong answers but with some solutions being much better than others.

I’ve been in my head a lot the past few weeks, but I don’t feel like words are coalescing into anything worthwhile. A part of my life has been crumbling all around me, and I want to pick up the pieces through my writing and create something meaningful and beautiful. Something about my father. My father and I did not agree on very much, but he was a man with a large heart who wanted the best for everyone.

He died of cancer a few days ago. He was diagnosed with cancer only about three weeks earlier. For my family, death has moved swiftly.

I’ll write more when I can think what to say.

This blog post is a lame solution to my current mind-puzzle.  When I come up with something better, you’ll read it here.

Wendy Wetzel has won my blog/facebook name-your-favorit- children’s-story contest and will receive a copy of The Stolen Goldin Violin!

The Goodreads Giveaway winners are:

Katrina Buell, Indiana

Holly Kinsey, Georgia

Sam Pierce, Arkansas

Jo Ashley, North Dakota

Lionel Garcia, California

Their copies of The Stolen Goldin Violin are on the way.  I posted them today!

Thanks for playing and I hope readers enjoy our story!  If you didn’t win and would like to buy a copy, Order Here!