A large envelope arrived from Charlesbridge yesterday. To my immense relief, the enclosed letter did not begin, “You know how sometimes you do something stupid that you wind up regretting? Well, your contract is one of those things.”

It was the first set of revision notes for The Day-Glo Brothers. (I signed the contract in November — that should give you some idea of how long these things can take.) I’m thrilled to have them, although a little daunted by the task of returning to a manuscript I haven’t touched — read? — in over a year. Fortunately, there were no ugly surprises, and my editor was perfectly clear about the big-picture things I need to focus on. Plus, she likes how I begin and end the story, so I just need to fix the stuff in between. Tee hee.

Having finished a draft this morning of the 10 pages I’m submitting for the October conference (I hope to polish those up during my lunch hours this week and hand them off to Austin SCBWI R.A. Julie Lake next Saturday), I’ll get going on Day-Glo first thing tomorrow. May the sentences in my rewrite all be shorter than that one.

Getting the revision notes kept me from getting bothered by another piece of mail that arrived yesterday — a “sorry, I’m full” letter from an agent with one of the major agencies. I had a solid referral and everything, but ah, well. This agent underlined “best of luck” twice, and I’ve got some other agent queries in circulation. I’ll live.