Of all the illusions professional magicians proffer to their public, I still fall hardest for the gosh-darned rabbit trick. You know, bunny goes onto some kind of  fancy plate, someone puts a large domed cover over her, and Hey, Presto! The cover is lifted and no bunny! And yet, ten minutes later, a wand waves over the magician’s hat, and he pulls out the same bunny, looking slightly apologetic, but none the worse for her illusory adventure.

I’m feeling a bit like the bunny, emerging from a dusty, black, shiny hat. Both Andrea and I have had  a few of Those Sorts of Weeks, but that’s (knock wood) done and we’re getting ready to get back to our writing lives.

I wanted to say thank you to all the friends who checked in through FB and Twitter to make sure that our brief disappearance from the blogosphere was just that and that Andrea and I were fine.

And to all the participants in the Brighter Light challenge who’ve been waiting so patiently for the outcome, the results are ready!  In fact, they would be announced immediately except that Andrea’s beautiful island has been hit by a power and internet outage (yikes!) which means she can’t access our blog. Andrea will be back with us in about a week. In the meantime, I’ll try to keep us all entertained with some cute animal pics or a little soft-shoe. Gosh, it’s good to be back and to “see” all of you !

I first saw the phrase “I’m all agog” in an old children’s book, in a poem about a man named John Gilpin.  I was eight and fell in love with the word the way only an eight year old can – I even loved the way the word “agog” looked like a pair of starting, staring, amazed eyes. In my teens, “agog” got tangled up in my mind with a term of affectionate mockery used in Scotland centuries ago to describe an oversized mountain of a man: “Tha’ great lumping Gog,” they would exclaim. “You elephant.” In my mental web of meanings and ideas, to be agog became the experience of a great, huge gallump of anticipation – to stare up at a great mountain of excitement .

Many of you, like me, have been all agog to hear the results of the Brighter Light challenge of January. Every poem posted is pretty amazing, and I can’t imagine how hard it must be for Andrea  to decide between  all these bright lights.

Andrea was very much hoping that she would have the results of the contest for us by now, but it’s taking more time than she thought. I’m not surprised – too many amazing pieces of work here. She wanted to let you know that we haven’t forgotten and the results will be posted as soon as ever we can along with the prizes. Just like the storybook elephants, InOurBooks didn’t forget.

This evening, my child (and Brighter Light co-author) and I finally looked up “agog” in the dictionary. To be agog is to be: highly excited by eagerness, curiosity and anticipation. It turns out that my labyrinth of meaning wasn’t that far off. So really…we’re all agog, and I’ll post more about the challenge when we are closer to the results ~ Ina