I have too many things I want to talk about today, so forgive me if it doesn't all feel cohesive:

1. First, my good news: I found out yesterday that Turkish foreign rights for Breathing sold! This is my first foreign rights sale, so I'm pretty excited. As my mom pointed out, it would be so interesting to see how Southern dialect sounds in Turkish, lol. (Randomly, I joined this Groupon thing a couple weeks ago where they send you an offer for a groupon everyday. The offer in yesterday's inbox was for dinner at a Turkish restaurant. Coincidence? )

2. It's Banned Books Week. And there's been a big uproar on the web this week as a Dr. Wesley Scroggins of Republic, Missouri, decided to challenge the right of certain books' availability in his town's public high schools. The three books he chose to question were Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, and Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler. Speak is thought of as one of the defining novels of young adult literature. It's about a girl who is date raped and essentially stops speaking rather than speak out about what happened to her. Dr. Scroggins described the rape scene as "soft porn". Um, what? I find that extremely disturbing. How do you equate date rape with pornography? And how ironic that he's trying to silence a book that speaks up for girls who have gone through this. Twenty Boy Summer was written by one of my fellow 2009 Debs. It's a beautiful book about grief and friendship and secrets. Scroggins thought the title sounded promiscuous. The book itself has nothing to do with promiscuity. So here's the thing: if he doesn't want to read these books, or he doesn't want his kids to read them, that's fine. But he can't be allowed to decide for anyone else. The Debs along with Little, Brown Books are giving away 100 copies of Sarah's Twenty Boy Summer! To enter to win one, go here.

3. Yesterday I chaperoned a fifth grade field trip to The San Jose Tech Museum. It was a very cool place and a fun trip. I highly recommend checking it out if you or your kids are at all interested in Science and technology. The exhibits are hands-on, educational, and fun. It was kind of overstimulating, though. As the kids got wound up, they became more and more hyper, running from one exhibit to the next. As I got wound up, I started to zone out, my brain no longer functioning. Eventually I quit trying to get them to read through the explanations at each exhibit and resorted to sitting on a bench checking email on my phone while they tested out all the techy experiments. I felt like I was about twelve when one of the teachers "caught" me zoning out on my email. But, hey, I was finding out about my good news, so whatever

4. If you are, have, or know any teens who like to write in the Bay Area, please be sure to tell them about this awesome conference I'm running along with Malinda Lo and Cynthia Omololu on October 17th at Book Passage. They'll learn a lot about fiction writing and have a ton of fun!

5. Finally, I thought I'd share a little lesson that's been making itself apparent to me over and over lately in case it might be useful to someone else. Here it is, ready? Quit rushing. Seriously. I know it's not super profound, but for some reason, I can't seem to grasp it. But deep down, I believe that there really is no reason to rush. And when I do actually remember to slow down, the results always amaze me. Now here's the funny part. This morning I typed up this entire blog, rushing to finish before it was time to go to watch the fifth grade spelling bee. I typed in the last word and the program booted me out, erasing the whole thing! So I had to leave and start over again when I returned. Just another little reminder -- slow down. So it didn't get finished before I left. Nothing happened. I'm trying to learn this. Baby steps!

Hope your weekend is beautiful and unhurried