Pictured: Harvest House authors attending Glorieta (that's me on the right, standing next to senior editor, Nick Harrison).

This is my second live report from the Glorieta Christian Writers’ Conference near Santa Fe, New Mexico:

I met Dena Dyer, who writes humorous books for moms. She's co-author of the Groovy Chicks series. Dena writes a blog for writers and moms called Amazing Grace-Land. You're going to hear more about Dena and about other "mom writers" I met in later posts.

And I finally got to meet Brenda Nixon, author of Parenting Power in the Early Years. Brenda and I have been exchanging e-mails for about two years and have long looked forward to meeting. Brenda is a wealth of knowledge about parenting not only infants and toddlers, but all ages of kids.

I talked with Nick Harrison, one of the editors from Harvest House, who informed me that the official publication date for my book is August 1, 2007. I can't wait! Okay, first I have to finish writing the manuscript, but I have only one paragraph left to write. Conclusions drive me nuts.

I've received plenty of inspiration from other adoption groupies here at Glorieta. The first day of the conference, I was on a panel of magazine editors and writers, and I mentioned that I specialize in writing about adoption-related issues.

For the remainder of the day, I was continuously approached by people who told me they are an adoptive parent, adopted person, or birth parent. I must have met at least 10 people who have a direct connection to adoption. I was privileged to hear several amazing stories.

As I was walking out of the cafeteria after lunch yesterday, a woman called out my name and announced, "I have to talk with you." So I sat down and she proceeded to tell me that she is the editor of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books. Guess what the next book in the series is? Chicken Soup for the Adoptive Soul.

In a future post, I'm going to share the details of what she told me about the upcoming book, and I'll share guidelines for those of you who want to contribute your own adoption stories for possible inclusion in the book.

Stay tuned for more about the cool stuff I'm learning.