I received a nice surprise in the mail today: a check from Highlights for Children magazine.  This wasn’t a check for a story I just sold; it was a check for reprint rights for a story they published in the fall of 1998.  As authors we all want to see our names on book covers, but don’t ignore the magazines for young readers.  Look for guidelines on line.  Magazine writing helps you tell a concise story.  Every word has to count.  Magazines reach lots of kids, you get a good writing credit, you get a morale boost while you wait for your book manuscript to find its way out of the slush pile, and those stories in magazines may live even longer than your books.  You never know when a nice surprise will arrive in the mail.  Happy writing!   Judy