Market My Words

On Saturday at the Gaithersburg Book Festival, I led the audience in a jody call:

I don't know but I've heard it said
A book's not finished 'til it's been read.

So how do you finish the job---and get your book into the hands of readers? I'm with Shelli at Market My Words today talking about just that.  Let me know what you think.

Brontë Sisters Power Dolls

"The joke's on you, narrow-minded cur!"



*Found on Facebook, courtesy of Edna Cabcabin Moran via Christy Lenzi. (Facebook time courtesy of Mac Freedom, which enabled me to write this morning so I could play at lunchtime.)

Twiddle or Twitter?

As I see it, next Wednesday, Sept. 30, at noon EST, you have two choices:

1) You can twiddle. Twiddle your thumbs, twiddle your pencil, twiddle away your lunch hour reading 1,000 Dust Motes to Spy Before You Die

OR

2) You can twitter along with Cheryl Klein and me as we chat about OPERATION YES, the writing and editorial process, and which one of us has a marked obsession with pudding.

You can find us in the top secret chat room located under the hashtag #YESchat.

For more about these choices, see Cheryl's post Would you rather . . .? in which she deviously tries to cloud the pudding discussion with pie and cake.

If you have no idea what Twitter is, please see InkyGirl's post "Writer's Guide to Twitter." Hop on the Twitter wagon at Twitter.com, practice a little, and be ready to join us on Sept. 30.

PROGRAMMING NOTE:  For the #YESchat, I'll be tweeting from my @saralewisholmes account and Cheryl from @chavelaque.  Amusing, informative, and delicious posts will then be re-tweeted at a later time from my @operationyes account. Please feel free to twitter with me on either account beginning today or on any other day ending in Y.

"A laundry basket of cheese"

It's a scramble around here. My tasks:

1) Reading classic middle grade fiction, both for fun and to prep for MG Book #3, which has its own notebook, but not its own title or much else yet. Latest titles:  What Would Joey Do?  The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (a re-read which may spur me to re-read all of Aiken in one gothic gulp.)  

"It's a horrible place! But don't let anyone hear you say so! The school is full of tale bearers. Everyone is always hungry---and Mrs. Brisket rewards anyone who carries her a tale against another person. She gives them a bit of cheese. She has a big laundry basket in her room full of bits of cheese, ready cut up."

2) Preparing to host Poetry Friday this week. This was the kick in the pants I needed to write a new poem and practice the "just get something on paper" I've been preaching to those who've asked me about writing lately. The biggest writing sin? Ignoring the impulse to write. Second biggest? Judging what you've got before you've got it.  Train yourself not to cringe. ;)

3) Completing an author bio/publicity questionnaire for Scholastic, which involved tracking down contact info and forcing myself into marketing mode. Actively ignoring the fact that ARCs of Operation Yes have been sighted and in some cases, read.  (Why, oh why, do I always suddenly realize with a stab of terror how public my work is?) Which relates to the next item....

4)  Daydreaming about being invited to the National Book Festival.  PLEA FOR HELP!!!  Does anyone know how authors are invited?  I know I'm small potatoes, but Michelle Obama has a stated mission of support for military families, which would dovetail perfectly with the story of Operation Yes.  But I have no idea how the Library of Congress draws up its lists of authors. Any help would be appreciated. 

4) Brainstorming ideas to pre-write posts for the Operation Yes blog I'll be launching in September---I want it to be a place for teachers and kids to find out more about military families, improvisational theater, cool kid projects, and the story behind the book. Also, prizes!

5) Keeping my senior on track to graduate. Today, his car wouldn't start and he didn't have lunch money. But I think the ten lines of iambic pentameter he wrote for AP Lit last night were in his fist as I dropped him off. (He said "fare thee well" as he left, so something is soaking in.) Maybe I should put out a laundry basket of cheese, both for him and me.

6) Oh, and I almost forgot: for the Bridgett Zinn benefit auction, I bid on and won a custom teacher's guide for Operation Yes, prepared by Natalie Lorenzi.  She and I have been emailing back and forth to start that project rolling. Whee!

Interview with my agent!

I love it when I discover something in common with someone I already know and like immensely. In an interview with writer Gretchen McNeil, my rockin' agent, Tina Wexler, reveals one of her guilty pleasures as "popcorn for dinner." Oh yes. Salty. Eaten with fingers. Is notably a "whole grain." Can be thrown at other people.  (Goes well with sushi, too, I might add.)

Please go read the interview. I didn't mean to distract you from digesting that full meal.  Meanwhile, Tina, how about we split this popcorn dish for dessert? 

Maybe it's too early to set up a Google search for Operation Yes

Search Result: 

"Depth 6.0 in. Height 18.0 in. Weight 2 lbs. Color Champagne Cleaning Vacuum Cleaner Type Handheld Dust Collection Bagless Filtering Method Filtering system. Miscellaneous Cordless Operation Yes. Tags Home and Garden Vacuum Dirt Devil ..."

But it's not too early to show you the bracelet my husband had made for me:

P.S. And it's green, so I'm wearing it today for St. Patrick's Day. 

I love it when good things happen to good people

A quick note to say CONGRATULATIONS to Laura Arnold! She's been promoted to Editor at HarperCollins Children's Books. I'm jazzed for her, and for all the authors who'll get to work with her, because she is unfailingly gracious and kind and whip-smart.*

I asked her what kind of manuscripts she hoped to acquire in her new job, and she wrote to say:

"Right now I'm primarily looking for middle-grade and really strong YA. I also work on chapter books, but we find that is a crowded market. Still, if there is something stand-out in either chapter book or picture book, I wouldn't rule it out."

Laura also mentioned that "In September I'll be a moderator for a teen fantasy panel at the Brooklyn Book Festival, with Gail Carson Levine, Holly Black, and Justin Kirk." Oooh! Doesn't that sound like some serious fairy dust is going to get thrown around? (And I should have asked, but didn't: I found Googlezilch about Justin Kirk as a writer, so is that Justin Kirk, the actor?? And if so, is he being cast in a teen fantasy movie? Or am I wildly speculating?)

OH. Turns out it's Daniel Kirk, picture book author/illustrator making the crossover into teen fantasy with the forthcoming Elf Realm: The Low Road. That makes more sense. And how interesting...

As always, you should research any editor before sending out a manuscript. HarperCollins is closed to unsolicited general submissions, but I wouldn't dismiss the possibility of a specifically targeted, superb manuscript being read.

*Laura, as you might remember, was on the Mid-Atlantic SCBWI panel with me last fall. She looks after Letters From Rapunzel for me now that Lauren Velevis is off getting her MFA.