http://www.hbook.com/blog/2009/11/lions-are.html

http://editorialanonymous.blogspot.com/2009/11/importance-of-community-and-research.html

I have a sister who has written 3 tween girl books. She recently sent me a contract she received from an agency for my review. In researching this agency it was not hard to uncover that it is a fee based scam sort of operation. I would love for my sis to have a real opportunity to get some healthy and professional critique on her writing. Unfortunately my rolodex is a little thin on literary industry folks. What's the best way to obtain information on reputable children's/ tween freelance editors that I could hire to work with her?

As regular readers of this blog know, I watch a lot of Sesame Street since I had my daughter. Before that, not so much, at least, not since my own childhood. But I am part of the original Sesame Street generation: it turns 40 this year---this week is the beginning of the new season---and I turn 40 (gulp) this coming summer. I was pretty much raised on Big Bird and Snuffy and Oscar, learning letters and numbers with them, and I love that my own kid is doing the same, now. (Although right NOW she is watching Barney, which I hate. I know, I know, that's mean. But I can't help it.) Personally, I will be THRILLED for the new season to begin, if only because we have watched all the ones from last year multiple times. As much as I love Neil Patrick Harris as the Fairy Shoeperson, and Sandra Oh as the Cookie Fairy, I'm ready for some new material. Although I never really get tired of Prairie Dawn. I just love that girl.


In other news, how much did I love Taylor Swift on SNL this weekend? I thought she was beyond fab, especially her monologue. If you missed it, it's here:


There was also a great send-up of the Twilight movie, although I kind of missed a lot of the joke because I, um, haven't seen it. I know, I know. I really should, especially with the second one about to come out, for professional research reasons if nothing else. I mean, it's a great thing when a YA book does this well. But honestly, I'm kind of suffering from Twilight burnout even WITHOUT seeing the movie. I mean, Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart are everywhere these days, and I feel like every time I turn around there's another series about vampires on TV or in the new releases on the bookshelf. And I am just not a vampire/werewolf kind of person. It probably makes me seem wholly unimaginative, but I like stories about real people and real life. This is why I never got into Harry Potter, either (and why my husband maintains I am a Muggle. But whatever).

Finally, on a more serious note, I'm sitting here watching a segment on domestic violence on GMA, and it's breaking my heart. They're talking specifically about teenage girls, and what they are calling the "Rhianna effect," i.e. that since she came forward and talked about being beaten by Chris Brown on Friday night, calls to domestic violence lines---and specifically teen targeted ones---went up considerably. This is an issue close to my own heart, because I wrote a book about a girl in a similar relationship, and since then I have literally gotten hundreds of emails and letters from girls telling me about their own stories with abusive boyfriends. It's a terrible, terrible thing, that this happens, and I so respect Rhianna for coming forward and shedding some bright, needed light on the subject. I was never in an abusive relationship. But several of my close friends, in high school and since, were, and they were not weak women. They were strong and smart and just got overwhelmed. It happens. But it doesn't HAVE to. There are resources and help out there. So if you need it, speak up. Tell a friend, a parent, a clergyperson, a teacher. Tell SOMEONE. Please. The number for National Teen Dating Abuse Helpline is 1-866-331-9474. Their website is here.

I hope you all have a great day.

This weekend my husband had a conference to go to in Boston, so E and I decided to tag along for the free hotel and the promise of fun in the city. Our good friends Sue and Pete invited us to spend a night with them in Cambridge, too, so there was a lot to look forward to.

On Friday, E and I dropped Peter at his conference and headed to the Museum of Science, which is one of E's favorite spots. What he didn't know, was that there was a special exhibit there. An exhibit he didn't even know existed.

When we got to the parking garage, there was a flat-screen tv outside that was advertising exhibits and the Harry Potter image flashed by. E said, "That's weird. They just showed a picture from Harry Potter." And I said, "Yeah, weird." ;-)

Then we parked the car and figured out how to get into the museum. As we were walking down the long corridor from the garage to the museum entrance, a little girl dressed in Hogwarts robes skipped by us. E looked at me and said, "Um, that was random."

"Totally," I said.

Then we got to the ticket lines and he saw the big Harry Potter screen again. And he read out loud "Harry Potter Exhibit" and he caught his breath because just then, he turned and saw this:



And he pretty much didn't stop grinning for the rest of the day. The exhibit was so cool. I think you've got to be a true lover of the books and movies to really, really love it. And since E and I both are, we did. When he sat in Hagrid's chair, he rubbed the armrests over and over saying, "I just can't believe I'm sitting in HAGRID's CHAIR!"

It was a very quiet day at the museum and we were able to spend as much time as we wanted at the exhibit. Tons of people passed us, rushing through. But I think were were in there for almost three hours. It was fantastic.

The next day, we headed to our friends' house. The last time we stayed with them, I got a call from my agent to let me know I'd sold my third book. This time, I got great news again!

1. Jumping Off Swings was nominated for BBYA! This was the last month to get on the list and I was pretty sure all hope was lost. So that was a BIG and wonderful surprise!

2. My new editor had e-mailed to tell me her edits for PEARL are coming my way!

I told Sue and Pete we really need to visit more often. ;-)

Sue and Pete live near Fresh Pond in Cambridge, which has a wonderful walking path around it. And apparently it is THE place to go if you have a dog. We love going for walks there with their two dogs, Allie and Katama. It's like doggie social hour:



It's so much fun to see all the shapes and sizes. And all the dogs are so friendly! :-)

We had such a lovely weekend. Full of happy surprises, laughter, and conversation with friends. It made me realize how precious these moments are. And how it would be great to fill our lives with more of them. I'm going to try really hard to do that.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Monday Morning Warm-Up:

Describe a dog you remember from your childhood. Either yours, a relative's or a friend's. What's your fondest or most powerful memory of that dog?

 
I worked hard on my copyedits this weekend, but I also drove down to Massachusetts on Saturday to see my parents and my daughter.  It's nice to see that my mom and dad are settling so well into their new home. My daughter is recovered from the flu, but still tired. 

Driving down the Maine Turnpike, I was mulling over a few things in TOUCH BLUE when a truck passed me.



I decided to take it as a good omen. :-) 

It reminded me of a December day a couple years ago when I came down to the Scholastic Book Fairs warehouse in Maine and signed RULES during a day of their warehouse sale.  Lots of people who work there came over to meet me, including one of the truck drivers. 

"So, if I see a truck on the road, it's you?" I asked.

He glanced wryly at his boss beside him then grinned at me. "Um, well, if the truck's going the speed limit, that'll be me. If it's speeding, it's one of the other guys."


HOT ROD HAMSTER will be in that truck next Spring!

Julia and I were planning to visit the Emily Dickinson House in Amherst, MA, but they're having renovations. So we decided we'd visit that museum another time, and we went to Northampton, MA. I'd never been to that town before, but it's a cool, artsy place.

     
  Not many towns have such an impressive town hall.

And where else could you see goats in coats, ascending penguins, or buy an octopus lamp or an umbrella raining cats and dogs?

  
     I bought the umbrella!

And L. K. Madigan. . . looky, looky what I found in the bookstore!!!



The New England Children's Booksellers Advisory Council is part of the New England Independent Booksellers Association (NEIBA). You're a favorite of theirs!  Congratulations!

So I got a lot of work done on my copyedits this weekend, but I also had a nice visit with my daughter and parents. 

 Next time, Em.
Emily Dickinson's House

Tweets copied by twittinesis.com

Or: In which I post a random series of links and thoughts, many recycled from my Twitter activity of the past week. Or: In which I provide you with some good reading and viewing to keep you busy until I get back from San Francisco next week and can write a real post again.

- I finally watched Happy-Go-Lucky and loved it. Mike Leigh has such a distinct point of view as a filmmaker, and truly understands the power of comedy. Laughter is a razor-sharp tool in his hands. If you're a Netflix subscriber, this one is available as a watch instantly.

- Speaking of a distinct point of view, if you feel like every realistic YA novel you pick up sounds the same and you're tired of it, read Bennett Madison's The Blonde of the Joke. It reminded me somehow of The Virgin Suicides, though it's been so many years since I read that book I can't say exactly why.

- And speaking of the deadly knife-edge of humor, Jon Stewart needs a special Emmy for these eight-plus minutes that amount to a TKO of Glenn Beck.

- A.O. Scott has an article in the Sunday Times about children's movies, mostly, but really all of his (very insightful) observations apply to YA and kid books as well (and the contrast between them and entertainment for adults). Among other things, he writes:

Sometimes we make too much of the division between generations, which is after all not a gap but a continuum. Every adult is a former child, just as every child is an incipient adult, and at their best, children’s film and literature (which of course are almost never made by children themselves) is an attempt to communicate across this distance. Young viewers may see a premonition of what lies ahead as well as a sympathetic rendering of what they already know, whereas adults may find pleasure in recalling old hurts and relief that they are not at the mercy of them.

On the outside Bernadette was mostly monsterly.
She lurched.
She growled.
She caused mayhem of all kinds.
But underneath the fangs and fur,
Bernadette had a deep...dark...secret.

All will be revealed August 31, 2010!!!!!!!

http://www.amazon.com/Mostly-Monsterly-Tammi-Sauer/dp/1416961100/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257735866&sr=1-11

http://editorialanonymous.blogspot.com/2009/11/how-to-illustrate-for-children-oh-thats.html

I'm currently studying Illustration at the Arts University College at Bournemouth in my second year. I've been given a brief where I need to design 5 rough ideas and 3 final images for a children's book. The brief is that I've got to pick 5 religions and pick one section from their story about creation and illustrate it for a child. I've been given no text as of yet so I need to be mindful that the text will take up at least a third of the double page spread I've got to design for each image.

And so as I was reading through your blog and all your posts, i was wondering whether you had any advice about how I should go about this and if you could give me some information about what's successful in the realm of children's books.

Our Celebrity Judges . . .


. . . are still hard at work pouring over the (practically) millions of contest entries for the Bodacious Book Contest.

So, Peepy and I decided that while they were working, we'd have some fun!



Yes! We went to see NPR's Wait, Wait . . . Don't Tell Me! live at the Pasadena Civic Center . . .


We got there early so Peepy could chat with some of her friends. Then we found our seats . . .


The panelists were these funny people . . .


Here's the crew setting up . . .


Then the show began! The guest star who played "Not My Job" was . . . squint and see if you can tell . . .


Yes! It was George Takei, a.k.a. Sulu from Star Trek, the original series.. Peepy was thrilled that she got to meet him in person . . .

(Okay, so maybe she didn't actually meet him in person. But don't tell her that.)

It was so cool because we are fans and there's even a Star Trek geek featured one of my upcoming books!


The show was amazing and funny. It was called an "evergreen" because they're not sure when it's going to air--but it will be repeated several times, as needed or when the staff goes on vacation.

In the meantime, here's this weekend's show with Tony Hawk as guest star. And here's Tony Hawk when he autographed Son's skateboard deck . . .


Oops! Back to the show!!!

Afterward, the audience rushed the stage. It was exactly like a U2 concert!!!! Almost.


It was all so fun that as soon as we got home, Peeps told Chekov all about meeting Sulu and told him that she now wants her own radio show . . .


BTW, if you're a grandparent, have a grandparent, or know a grandparent, CHECK THIS OUT. Yes! AARP likes Bobby!!!

(Above: Me and my grandmother at my uncle's wedding.)

Also, I thought this was totally cool. CLICK HERE to find out about the fork in the road . . .


And in honor of Tony Hawk, there's this . . .

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A twelve-year-old girl told me today that she liked my hair. Ha! No one ever likes my hair. I don't even like my hair! I am on the verge of 37 and still can't even figure out how to properly do my hair.

So I will cling to this compliment. If I knew how to needlepoint, I'd put it on a pillow.

Apparently canned food can kill you. A client of mine who owns a restaurant read an article that links canned food with cancer.

http://editorialanonymous.blogspot.com/2009/11/fragile-contains-dreams-please-do-not.html

Do children's book editors know that they hold children's book author's dreams in their hands?

http://www.hbook.com/blog/2009/11/can-i-buy-umlaut.html

"The young miller is naive, vulnerable and over-enthusiastic, with a poetic imagination, but not psychotic! As to the cycle's ending, his death in the brook makes me think of the Philip Pullman trilogy His Dark Materials. Pullman imagines death as a dispersal into the universe, an absorption into the cosmos, and that's very much the sense we have here."

word card by Samantha


Kid:  I want that.

Mom:  You want everything.

Kid:  Of course I do. I'm a KID!  

:-)

I am returning to the motherland next week, and having my very first ever Pacifica event. Pacifica! Where it all happened. My high school experience, that is. It is also the place of Deanna Lambert's high school experience, as told in Story of a Girl. If it is too traumatic for you to actually go to Pacifica, come see me in San Francisco, at the Books, Inc./Not Your Mother's Book Club Fall Book Bash, with colleagues Barry Lyga, LK Madigan, Andrew Smith, and Allen Zadoff. Details for both below:

Thursday, November 12 @ 7 p.m.
Pacifica Public Library - Sharp Park - 104 Hilton Way - Pacifica, CA
____

Friday, November 13 @ 7 p.m.
Books, Inc. Opera Plaza - 601 Van Ness - San Francisco



I'm also doing a private book club event, and a couple of school visits.

Hope to see you there, somewhere, in the fog.

 Here's my quote for the day:

"Writing is like having about twenty boxes of Christmas decorations. But no
tree. You're going, Where do I put this? Then they go, Okay, you can have a
tree, but we'll blindfold you and you gotta cut it down with a spoon."
				--Carolyn Chute

http://www.hbook.com/blog/2009/11/if-jim-carrey-says-its-christmas-now.html

artisq is e x p a n d i n g her world on the web. She has a new blog at www.LauraLudwigHamor.blogspot.com.

And to kick it off, she is having a GIFTaway!
You already know her new silver website is over at etsy. You can find it by going to www.SilverFreckles.com.

DRAWING WILL BE on her birthday, November 12!

To enter:

1. Post about this contest on your blog, including a link to www.SilverFreckles.com. (feel free to pull a picture of a bracelet from the site).

2. Then go to her NEW BLOG and comment on the giftaway post---------
http://lauraludwighamor.blogspot.com/2009/11/silver-freckles-promo-and-giftaway.html

and put your blog address in these comments, so she knows where it is mentioned. On NOVEMBER 12--HER BIRTHDAY!--she will draw a name from OVER THERE and that person will win a bracelet from Silver Freckles!

***you do not need to have freckles to enter this contest.

*** BONUS!! If someone pulls the contest from your blog and gives YOUR BLOG credits I will enter your name a second time! (I will read all the posts to find that out).


***DOUBLE BONUS if you have previously purchased a bracelet from me your name is entered again and again for each purchase! I have a list-- I am checking it twice!

you can also follow me on facebook at SILVER FRECKLES! : )

I am going to have a facebook contest in December.

******************************************************
Endorsement by Tammi Sauer:
Wuhooh! Enter, people. I have a WRITE bracelet and lovelovelove it. It's inspiring...and GORGEOUS. It's the double whammy in jewelry!

1. This was the first week of what I'm calling TOFFT: Time Off From Facebook and Twitter. I won't say I've been able to avoid them altogether. At least once a day, I check in and see what's going on, and maybe update. But I USED to be on multiple times a day, updating and checking, and since I've stopped I actually feel better. I think that for me, all that updating and stuff drains the same energy I need to write, and I really need that for writing these days. So if you've been trying to contact me via Facebook or Twitter, I apologize. I'll be back sometime. Maybe in the new year?

2. Someone left a comment the other day, worried about Coco and wanting an update. You ask, I give. (Unless it's on Facebook or Twitter.) So Coco is doing really well. She's basically back to normal, which means following my daughter around vigilantly, waiting for dropped bunny crackers, attacking Monkey for no good reason, and bringing me her chicken to throw whenever I sit down. (In fact, just as I wrote this, she instigated a wild play session with Monkey has them racing back and forth across the house. I wish you could see it.) Anyway, we go back to the vet next week to get another set of x-rays, and that's when we'll see if her spleen is still really enlarged. I am thinking good thoughts. If her outer behavior is any indication, though, she's fine.

3. I was at the mall the other day, on November 2nd, when it happened. The clerk wished me a Merry Christmas. I couldn't help it: like a reflex, I said, "It's too early!" I mean, honestly. In the clerk's defense, though, I WAS buying a Christmas book, Olivia Helps with Christmas, which, incidentally, I now know by heart a mere three days later. I'm sorry but November 2nd is just too early to be wishing anyone anything but Happy Thanksgiving. Am I wrong? Oh, probably. Yet more proof that I am a cranky old woman.

4. In other news, my daughter continues her obsession with her little plastic Jesus Christ action figure. I can't figure it out, as she has TONS of other toys, but she insists on taking J.C. (as we call him) everywhere with us. Now, I am not a religious person. I was not raised in the church, nor was my husband. But we do live in the Bible Belt, so I am very aware that faith is a thing people take seriously, and I do not want J.C. being dragged to Whole Foods or our playgroup to offend anyone. So I went out the other day looking for another action figure that maybe wouldn't be so, um, sacred. I found a Cleopatra, which I thought was great. But Sasha was less than impressed. I mean, she LIKES Cleo okay, but really just as a buddy for J.C. to hang with while we build him block houses. I guess I need to keep looking. Meanwhile, I'll just do my best to make sure J.C. is properly treated. The other day Sasha left him on a table at this clothing boutique, where he was surrounded by lingerie. Not good. I'll work on it.

5. Finally, I'm excited to report that my office is really starting to come together. The bathroom is almost painted, this really nice blue, and the main room is a kind of apricot, the ceilings a bright white. We've ordered cabinets so people don't have to see all my clutter the minute they walk in, and I've pruned down my book collection a bunch so I don't have to haul boxes and boxes of stuff over there and fill it up the second it's done. There are still a few things I need, though. Like I'm thinking I really want to buy a time clock, the kind we used to have at the restaurant, and put it up right by the door. Then I can fill out a time card with my name (and maybe a little heart next to it, like I used to at the Burrito) and clock in whenever I sit down to write, then clock out when I leave. I'm thinking this might help me feel more professional, which I have not been feeling at ALL lately. Mostly because I'm in this weird no-man's land (no woman's?) where i don't have a full time job, but am not a full time stay at home parent either. It's a great thing to be able to hang with my daughter so much, and I wouldn't change it for the world. But it's hard to do all this--writing, blogging, updating, answering emails, just keeping up in general---in only twenty hours a week. I mean, I CAN do it. But I get kind of crabby, and that's not good for everyone. Maybe if I'm clocking in and out, it'll feel more like a real job and I won't feel so guilty about everything I'm not getting done. We'll see.

Have a great day, everyone!