At last I can trumpet the good news: Patrick has been accepted into the MFA program in writing for children at Vermont College! There has been a lot of happiness in this house ever since the news came in. I am not at all surprised, but I am very, very proud and excited for him. You can celebrate with him (and learn a very, very dangerous magic trick) on his journal.

In other good news, I finished Chapter Three of Kat by Moonlight yesterday and am still really loving the process of writing it. Better yet, suggested a magical addition to Kat's household that made me incredibly excited. I have absolutely promised myself to write the first 1,000 words of Chapter Four today...but as soon as I'm finished, I'm going to go back and add all the cool extra magical tidbits.

I was supposed to write the first 1,000 words of Chapter Four this morning, actually, but after an hour of tearing my hair out over various immigration websites - clearly not designed for clarity or ease of use! - and finding out, worse yet, that I'm going to have to sit a test in just two weeks on a book I haven't read yet just to find out if I can stay in the UK until this autumn - I was in completely the wrong mood for writing frothy YA fantasy. Instead, I growled and grumbled and burned styrofoam into a terrifying chemical crisp when I tried to make a frozen pizza for lunch, and I ripped out the scarf I'd been working on for days because the needles were the wrong size and my efforts had been wasted!!! (insert melodramatic shriek here), and, and...! It was that kind of morning. But I am slowly getting better, and Patrick has promised to bring me home fresh whole espresso beans and "something chocolate" when he gets back from work today...and I ordered The Sherwood Ring, which should be delivered at about the same time as the scary immigration book...so I think I will be able to do the writing later after all.

Whew!