A visit with Critter

We had a visitor come and stay with us for a short while. He's a cute little thing that has been making the rounds all over the blogosphere. He's been as far away as Korea and even made the rounds at the SCBWI LA Conference. His name is Critter and this is him being a little shy.

Critter is the creation of the talented artist Ian Sands and he came to visit the Oh residency courtesy of the lovely Christy Evers. She is sending him all over the real world to visit children's writers. At the end of his travels, Christy is going to auction Critter off and donate the proceeds to charity.

Critter came to visit at a whirlwind time for us. As much as we talked about going down to the monuments and seeing the Washington scene, we could never find the time to do it. Instead, Critter went to school with us. Here he is at George Mason University with Angus and Youngest.

The girls enjoyed showing Critter around the campus. They wanted to take him to class with me but I refused. I didn't know who would be more disruptive, the girls or Critter. He's a sassy little thing. He was egging the girls on, telling them that constant begging and whining would be the best way to get me to buy them a new puppy. And I'm pretty sure he put hot sauce in my diet coke. It was either Critter or Angus...

Fortunately for Critter, he made a new friend. This is Zombie Buddy. He was spending some time at the Oh residence waiting to be sent over to his new master, Zombie Mike.

They became the best of friends and many tears were shed when I had to part the two new best friends and send them off in different directions. Critter to Canada and Zombie Buddy to California. It was just as well as the two were being quite disruptive, talking into the wee hours of the night, eating junk food, watching loud reality shows, and playing lots of practical jokes. One of the jokers put garlic powder on my chapstick. Very not funny...

It was a short but fun trip with Critter and we at the Oh household wish him well on the last leg of his journey. We hope he raises a lot of money for St. Jude's hospital and finally ends up in a warm and caring home all his own.

Well Hello There!

I've been very behind, my apologies! It is for a good reason. My fantastic agent has gotten back to me on my manuscript and it looks like I'm in for one final round of revisions before submission.

YAY!

As always, I'm kind of blown away by his brilliance and his insight. My book keeps getting better and better. So I'm working hard on on this final set of revisions and getting excited about going back on submission. You know it will be over 2 years since the MS went out on submission the first time with my first agent. It is now completely unrecognizable and a million times better. And the pitch Mr. Fantastic Agent Man came up with is way cool and dead sexy. I'm excited.

So I'll be a bit tied up while I work and I look forward to sharing with y'all when the book goes out on submission.

In the meantime, congratulations to Avery for winning the Funniest Thing Overheard Contest with her saggy boobs! She has chosen her prizes and will be receiving 4 fabulous books to read whenever I can get my butt over to the post office.

Hopefully I won't be gone too long, but don't worry.

I'll be back.

Please vote in the Funniest Thing Overheard Poll

Hey guys, please do me a favor and vote in my little poll to the right of this post. We had some great entries and it was tough narrowing it down to 3. But these were the 3 that made me bray like a mule. However, I absolutely can't pick a winner from the final 3 choices. So I'm asking you all to pick a winner for me. The poll will be open until next Monday. The winner will get to choose 4 of the 5 books set out in the previous post. It's a good prize so you guys need to help me out.

Thanks and happy voting!