Tucked between Halloween and Christmas, at the heart of the fall season and yet pale in comparison to spectacular October, November remains my favorite month of the year.

Whether in my native France or in the US I’ve always felt happy and grateful to be alive in November.

There, the month signals the arrival of the Beaujolais Nouveau and prestigious literary awards. Here, Thanksgiving holds the promise of gatherings around yummy food.

Doesn’t hurt that November is also my birth month:)

This year I feel particularly thankful for November.

On the writing front, things are moving along.

Last week I found out that my latest book Chez Moi in the USA was selected for the annual Amelia Island Book Festival. It will be my fourth year as one of the authors who participate to the Authors in Schools program.

In February I will meet 200 high school students who take French classes. I can hardly wait!

Prestigious authors in all genres attend the Amelia Book Festival, so I was 100% unprepared for the email that popped in my Inbox also last week.

My Young Adult novel All the Mountains We Can Climb had been entered in a contest and won the selection for the Teen/Tween Scene, an afternoon event with students and authors.

More details will come, but I already know that Margot Lee Shetterly, the renowned author of Hidden Figures will be part of this panel, too.

Wow!

This three-day literary event ends with a daylong festival with book talks, signings and more. It’s always so much fun to meet readers and it’s an additional treat to reconnect with authors met at this festival. I’m happy to call some of them my friends.

To make November even sweeter my agent told me last night that several editors responded positively to the recent submission of my second manuscript. Some editors have already requested to read it. With enthusiasm, my agent added.

Manuscript #1 is still under consideration. Fingers crossed here.

And of course there is Thanksgiving, this American celebration that unlike other holidays I immediately embraced. For the food, since I adore pumpkins, sweet potatoes, cranberries, pecans, and pies, but above all for this pause that once a year we share, grateful for our family, our friends, and simply for the chance to be alive.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU!

Happy belated Halloween and happy November to each of you!

With Thanksgiving approaching and the holiday season soon in full swing, November is a busy month for most of us.

It becomes more challenging to find solitary moments amidst a frentic schedule. I came to realize that it never happens unless we decide to create those moments. And yet there are necessary if you write.

NaNoWriMo starts today and for full disclosure I had totally forgotten about it.

The manuscript that landed me an agent early spring is still under consideration. My second manuscript is now ready for submission and will reach editors before Thanksgiving. Another one is ready as well and I am revising two other pieces.

I found out that I love revision so much more now that I can rely on my agent’s guidance. My critique partners are still my early readers. When I decide, based on their comments, that I have a draft worthy of my agent’s time I forward it to her.

Since she signed me after reading one of my Picture Book manuscripts, I am focusing on such pieces for now, a mix of nonfiction and fiction. But I still love novels. A lot.

So when I found Anne Lamott’s inspirational pep talk in my Inbox this morning I decided to return to a novel I had just started before receiving an offer of representation.

It is a little scary to go back to words written months ago, but anticipation is already building inside me.

I am not officially entering NaNoWriMo, but I will create some solitary writing moments, because…

“You either start now, or it is not going to happen for you, and you are going to wake up at seventy years old (or eighty, if you are already seventy) filled with sorrow that you let your dream, your passion, gift, fall by the wayside. You start now, as is.

‘As is’ is the portal to creation, to new life.”

Anne Lamott