The Rose & Thorn Goes Live & Louisiana Book Festival

Isn't their poster gorgeous! The Louisiana Book Festival by Lorraine Gendron. Character based on The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, text 1992 by John Scieszke. Original Illustration ©1992 by Lane Smith. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, A Division of Penguin Young Reader Group. All rights reserved.

My friends! I am on my way to Baton Rouge, Louisiana for the Louisiana Book Festival!

If you are in the area, here is where I will be-- on a panel with a Louisiana author (Chris Tusa), and signing books:

Schedule 1 PM – 1:45 PM

House Committee Room 3

Book Talk: Troubled Girls, Lost InnocenceTwo Debuts: One Urban, One Country
Book Signing 2 PM – 2:45 PM

AND! The Rose & Thorn Journal is going live today! Our new R&T newsletter should be on its way to you; if you have not signed up to receive the quarterly newsletter and would like to receive it, please go the the Rose & Thorn and sign up HERE. Angie Ledbetter and I are excited, to say the least - and we both want to give a big shout out to two stand out staff members: Managing Editor/Sr Poetry Editor Cynthia Toups, and Newsletter Producer Susan Kramer -- I am astounded at how hard they both worked, and very appreciative. Our thanks goes to all the staff of R&T for their work. They went above and beyond the call!

I am writing this in such a hurry because I must get on the road. While I am away, someone else will sit on my porch in our cove and rock in my chair. Someone else will take our Big Jake and out Little Girl on their walks. Someone else will wake up in our little log house to crisp fall mornings and coloring leaves! Ah, lucky them....my mountain will wait for me to return.

So everyone, check out the new look of our baby: the Rose & Thorn Journal, and support the writers and poets there.

Wish me luck at the Festival -- *muwah!*