Two posts in one week: unheard of!

I do want to announce that the teacher's key has arrived! It gives the home-schooling mom a fair chance, even if she only glanced through the book last year when she bought it!

Precis of chapters and hints for "essay question" answers, it has it all! Enjoy!

I look forward to fall, but I'm never sure what will happen because I do work in emergency management when our call center is open. Last year, all my plans were blitzed on Labor Day, however I must make plans for events whether they come to fruition or not! Check out my events page, 'cause first event is this week ... time just sneaks up on us.

Editors' comments resemble instructions from a boss. The suggestions are  meaningful to them, but maybe not to you. I took a chapter book for critique several years ago and was told to "heighten the stakes, put in more tension and anxiety." I could hardly believe it -- for eight year olds?  I enquired just how I should accomplish that in a kids book. Parental discord was suggested, dumbfounding this amateur. Eventually I figured out how to spread fear and loathing among three children and two adults.
When my editor for 1777, Val Muller, asked for more emotion, my scene involved one child and one unconscious adult. I could only express the child's anxiety to leave the scene, because that would have been my own 12 year old reaction!
When I went to Writers' Project Runway two weeks ago, I wasn't sure what take-aways I would find.
​What I learned counted as the full answer to the question above. The lessons on layering emotion let me feel that I'd hit the jackpot!
Bravo Pennwriters for bringing Annette Dashofy and Hillary Hauck to us for a day and
thanks to Bobbi Carducci, for everything!

My last addition to Spot Writers told of a Trowbridge victim of the LaFourche Crossing battle in the Civil War. The attending surgeon was another Trowbridge, originally from Danbury, but practicing medicine in Stamford CT at the time of enlistment in the 23rd Ct. Volunteers.
If they did not know each other before, this could not have been the most pleasant meeting. Dr. William Trowbridge was left the only doctor on the field to care for almost two hundred wounded Confederates. How did it happen that the Union troops went off and left him with the opposing forces for six weeks? At that time their period of enlistment was up and they came back to fetch him and such Union wounded as had been taken. The Confederates appear content to have him to continue practicing as their doctor.
​Stay tuned!