Celebrating Half A Million Visits By GLBTQ Teens And Their Allies... Including YOU! And some other good news!

Well, it's quite a milestone... We just passed 500,000 visits to this blog since I started over three and a half years ago.

While figuring out the number of blog readers one has isn't an exact science (or perhaps it is, but I am no scientist) this is not counting everyone who reads this blog via syndication or their google-readers or any other not-reading-it-here method of reading my posts. This is pure clicks to come here and check things out. To find out about the books for kids and teens with gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning characters and themes, and to explore queer teen culture and politics and Children's literature and our world and how to make our world a better place for all of us.

I blogged it. (Today's post is #1,004!)

And you came.

Over half a million visits!

Woot!

To celebrate, I'm opening up an "I'm Here. I'm Queer. What the Hell do I Read?" logo store... where you can get T-shirts, coffee mugs, and other "swag" featuring the amazing blog logo that the incredibly talented Jim DiBartolo designed!

It's fun,

It's fresh,

It's refreshing,

It's even a little bit cheeky,

And hey, it's a stylish way for you to celebrate all the great GLBTQ Teen and Kid Literature that exists today (as well as all the new stuff on the way!) and to show your pride, your smarts, and your support!

But most of all, I have to say thank you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. 500,000 thank yous.

I am so honored to be here, and to be read by you.

As far as other good news, I'm pretty excited to tell you that this past week two really nice things happened:

1. It's been formally announced that I will be the co-Regional Advisor for SCBWI-Los Angeles starting November 1st, working with the fabulous Sarah Laurenson. (I'm currently the Assistant Regional Advisor for our region.)



Here I am getting my ceremonial "scepter" - and yes, if you must know, it's a toilet plunger wrapped with sequins and a wiffle ball wrapped with tin foil attached with a string to enable me to play the try-to-catch-it game... which leads me to believe my position does double duty as royalty and court jester.

2. Also at our recent SCBWI-Los Angeles Writers Day event this past Saturday, I was given the Sue Alexander Service and Encouragement Award - it's our region's highest honor for acknowledging the contribution of a volunteer in the last year, and I was stunned, and moved, and incredibly honored to receive such an amazing tribute.



And hey, that's an actual lead crystal award - a book! (I joked that perhaps I should call it my "first book" as it's the first book to have my name on the cover - getting my interviews published in CWIM was swell, but I didn't make their cover!)

So it's been a big week - I am so grateful. And I'm excited to say to myself, and to all of you...

Get ready, there's more great stuff to come!

Namaste,
Lee

ps - And Happy Earth Day!
pps - my thanks to Rita Crayon Huang for the great photos of me getting my scepter and book!