Out of the blue...

Every now and then, good luck just happens. Here I was, sweating over a particularly difficult blog post, trying to figure out my own complicated thoughts and put them down in uncomplicated words. Seeing hours go by, fretting over all the hours, beating myself up for taking all those hours.

And then, good news happened right out of the blue.

Way back in 1996, the children’s book author Eric Kimmel visited Anchorage, and I volunteered to show him Alaska. Martin Buser had offered to give him a dog sled ride, and I drove Eric out to the dog lot. In the car, we got to talking, becoming friends, and Eric said, “I’ve got an anthology I’m editing about Hanukkah. How about giving me a story about Hanukkah in Alaska.”

So I did. And he included it in A Hanukkah Treasury. And the story lived happily ever after.

And then, out of the blue, in 2012, I heard from Henry Holt, the publishers. They’d received an order for 10,000 copies of “Hanukkah in Alaska” for the PJ Library’s December 2013 book of the month. But it wasn’t a book … yet; could they make it a book?

So the publishing adventure began. There was only one moment of horror: when I realized the illustrator had turned the first person narrator into a little boy. She was a girl – had to be a girl! It was after all Sophie’s swing, Sophie’s moose, Sophie’s story. Crisis averted, the little girl became the hero of Hanukkah in Alaska, the book! And the book lived happily ever after.

In 2014, Storyline asked permission for an actor to read the book for video. That sounded good. Time passed, I forgot about it.

Then, just yesterday, out of the blue, came the word that the video was done, with Molly Ephraim reading it. It’s beautiful! Take a look yourself at Hanukkah in Alaska, the SAG Foundation video. And I guess the video will live happily ever after, too.

Saved from a difficult post, right out of the blue! That story is my lucky charm.