Welcome to The VERB!

Scrapbooking. I’d been aware of this craze for some time, but hadn't had a chance to try it. Well, I attended a baby shower the other day, and one of our games entailed making pages for the baby’s scrapbook. Okay, this seamstress and needlepointer and crossstitcher was game. My friend Kim, a serious scrapbooker, spread out her accoutrements on the dining room table, which included papers, templates, cutting tools and stickers. After she explained the basic drill, we went to work cutting and pasting. I designed a baby boy page (his name will be Alex) with miniature baby clothes, pacifiers, bibs, bottles, a stork and a nice little quote about boys. All these floated around several paper squares reserved for the photos. What a hoot! Didn’t take me long to figure out why scrapbooking stores and scrapbooking parties are popping up everywhere. It’s addictive! Once you finish a page, lo and behold, you want to do another one. And with all these old photos around here, it's feasible I could do this till the end of my days. Just what I need—another distraction that costs money and takes time away from my writing. Back, scrapbooks, back!

If you live in the States, you know we’re about to have another rate increase on postal stamps, May 14. That means all those query letters out there have SASEs that probably carry the old stamp. I know editors/agents who will actually add the extra postage to the envelope. But many don't. What’s a writer to do? Wait. If you don't receive a response in a reasonable amount of time, re-send with the Forever stamp. At 41 cents a pop, this stamp will be good for mailing one ounce First Class letters anytime in the future, regardless of price changes. Buy them at your local post office or order online.

Reader Heide Kaminksi's new book, The Search for the Million$$$ Ghost, is now available online. You can watch the cool trailer at YouTube, and then hop over to Barnes and Noble to buy the book. Kinda like a twofer. 

And now, without further ado ... turn the page.

Elizabeth Guy
Editor
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