Wishes for a happy St. Paddy's Day

May your blessings outnumber
The shamrocks that grow,
And may trouble avoid you
Wherever you go.

In the whirling vortex leading up to today's Grand Holiday, with myriad kid activities and manuscript requests, I totally forgot to post a ghost tale of any kind yesterday. Mea Culpa. Life happens.

What, did I say manuscript requests?

I received one of those very thin SASE envelopes yesterday in my post office box. The kind that make you sigh when you see them sitting there in the box. Except this wasn't a form rejection, it started with "I am intrigued by your query..." and went on from there. A manila envelope with pages is winging its way to New York as I type. Let's hope the intrigued feeling continues.

And then last night, checking email in between my daughter's Art Day chorus recital and my son's indoor soccer practice down in Eastham, there was a request for a partial on another book from an editor at a small press.

Part of me feels like I've been here before, and that it could all crash and burn around me. But I'm hoping some of my husband's Irish luck rubs off on me and both books grab their readers in ways that make them say, "Yes!"

As all the rejections remind us, publishing is a subjective business. It only takes one "Yes."

Or in this case, two.

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Here's a song my sisters and I used to sing all the time, but especially when we were at my Grandma's house, searching for four leaf clovers in the meadow that was her side yard along Closter Dock Road, in New Jersey... does anyone else remember this?

I'm looking over a four leaf clover
That I overlooked before
One leaf is sunshine, the second is rain,
Third is the roses that grow in the lane.
No need explaining the one remaining
Is somebody I adore.
I'm looking over a four leaf clover
That I overlooked before.