Fall in Virginia: Books, conferences and friends

Posted on October 26, 2015 by madelynruth@yahoo.com

Hi, all. It’s been a busy two weeks so I wanted to send out some recaps from recent events. I keep explaining to people that I have to do recaps because my flip phone doesn’t allow me to live-tweet — or to tweet at all, for that matter. I’m fearing that this year is proving to me that I might need to step up my technology a bit, which will make my friend Sharlene very happy. (I’m not doing this for the tweeting, but because I need full-time access to a GPS to keep me from ending up in Maryland when I’m supposed to be driving in Virginia.)

Teen Read Week: Arlington Style

Since no one can wait until the NovaTeen Book Festival in March (the page will be updated soon, I hear), the organizers (Arlington Library and One More Page with Danielle Ellison, Nico Piro, Lelia Nebeker and more) put together four panels of YA authors talking about narration, world building, reading and writing. I learned so much from listening to everyone there, and was glad to reconnect with author friends from all over the state (plus two from Canada and Philly). The afternoon drew fans not just from Arlington, but from Sterling and Fredericksburg, too.

Teen Read Week: Richmond Style

I am not exactly a James River Writer, since I’m not living along the James, but every year at this time I feel the Richmond Love, big time. The Richmond Library Folks (Natasha Payne-Brunson, Patty Parks, and a cast of thousands) team up with authors (Lana Krumwiede this year, with extra support from Elle Blair) to put together a true celebration. What do we celebrate? Writing! Reading! Being from Virginia! Writing about Virginia (and all kinds of other places, too). And teens! This year, we tried speed dating, rotating from table to table and talking about our books. One of the same Fredericksburg girls who was at the Arlington event came to Richmond, too. (I’m jealous because she says this week she’s also going to YALLfest.) The event just changed its name to YAVA, but it includes middle-grade novels, too, and this year was the first year that the library gave away a $1000 prize, which went to Gigi Amateau for Come August, Come Freedom. Finalist prizes went to Cece Bell (El Deafo) and Erica Orloff (In Dreams).

Bonus: I got to spend the rest of the night hanging out with Wendy Shang, working on our once and future manuscript.

A heap of photos can be found on the library flickr page and on Natasha’s tumblr. Here’s one of most of us together, and a couple of goofy shots.

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Me and Cece

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Squishy faces: Gigi Amateau, Meg Medina, Wendy Shang, and me with my regular camera. We are lucky this is not a disposable…

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Bill Blume, Jodi Meadows, Sara Raasch, Sarah McGuire, Anne Blankman, Cece Bell, Me, Wendy Shang, Laura Krumwiede, Martina Boone and Tom Angleberger. (Not pictured: Kat Spears, Steve Watkins, Gigi Amateau)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SCBWI: Mid-Atlantic Style

This past weekend, I was super lucky to  be on the faculty this year for SCBWI Mid-Atlantic, which holds a fantastic October conference put on people who care SO MUCH about writers and writing in our region. Shout-out to the generous organizers (Ellen Braaf, Erin Teagen, Valerie Patterson, with speaker care by Moira Rose Donohue) and a slew of dedicated volunteers. Not everything went smoothly. The winds from the tropical cyclone cancelled Kathi Appelt’s flight, so she had to deliver the keynote by Skype. Then a fire alarm went off in the middle of the presentation. But she was gripping, charming and unflappable. The organizers were charming and unflappable. And all went well.

I was on a marketing panel, and preparing to be on that panel taught me tons. I’m going to save that for a separate post, but I will tell you that the operative word is COMMUNITY.

If you missed it, or in case you were there and want more, Jen Malone, the moderator of the panel, is doing an online workshop this Sunday (Nov. 1) about marketing smarter, not wider, and you can still sign up.

When we walked in to kick off the conference, each of us had to bring a word of inspiration. For that, my word of the day (and you may scream, ala Pee-wee, if you hear it again) was FRIENDSHIP. That’s because friendship is at the core of so much of our writing for kids, and because I’ve met many of my closest friends through writing and through SCBWI.

That’s all for now!

Sarah McGuire, Jen Malone, me

Sarah McGuire, Jen Malone, me

Posted in marketing, Mission Possible, read local, virginia writers, world domination, writing | 2 Comments

Debut: Lisa Lewis Tyre

Posted on October 19, 2015 by madelynruth@yahoo.com

Lisa Lewis Tyre grew up in a family of storytellers in Tennessee. Her debut novel, Last in a Long Line of Rebels, got a pretty star from the folks at Publishers Weekly who called it “an accomplished debut.” The book, which came out last month, is about 12-year-old Lou, who lives in the oldest house in county. Until the county threatens to tear it down, that is. A book about families, mystery, history, and family history.

REBELSMe: I noted in your bio that you use the term SOUTHERN children’s author to describe yourself — the southern came first. Could you talk a little about why?

Lisa: I find identity so interesting. There are people who place it in their faith, their politics, gender, etc. For whatever reason, I can’t seem to separate mine from my Southernness.

Me: As someone who had to stop watching House of Cards because of Kevin Spacey’s (alleged) South Carolina accent, I wondered what pressures you feel when you’re depicting the South in your work. What are you striving for?

Lisa: I know what you mean about watching southerners depicted in film! I wanted to portray the interesting, fun, wonderful characters that we have in the South, without making them a caricature. It’s a fine line. Hopefully I did the area justice!

Me: You grew up in a family of story tellers. Tell us one of your favorite family stories.

Lisa: Ah, there are so many! One of my favorites involves my grandmother. She was one of 11 children, and the first few have very normal names. Somewhere around child No. 7 things take a weird turn. One evening before she was born, her Uncle John was leaving a pub. Someone called out from the dark, “Is that you, John?” He said yes, and was shot and killed! It turns out the person was waiting on a different John. It was a case of mistaken identity! My great-grandfather was so upset, he swore he’d name his children so that it would never happen to them. That’s why I have a grandmother named A.G (still alive at 102!), great uncles named QX and Leathers, and great-aunts named Gracie ToeToe and Tipsy Topsy!

Me: So no problems thinking of character names, then! When did you first you consider yourself a storyteller?

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Lisa

Lisa: It’s a recent discovery. I think preserving my family stories has gotten more important to me as I’ve grown older. If they’re not written down, we’re going to lose them! That’s why I blog about my family’s history so often on my website.

Me: And when did you first consider yourself a writer?

Lisa: The bar is always moving. I guess now that I’m published I can say out loud that I am, but secretly I’ve been saying it to myself for years. Saying it would help to remind me that writer’s write, so I needed to get to work. If I didn’t believe it, who else would?

Me: I don’t think people ever get tired of “It’s-my-first-book” stories. Why don’t you go ahead and tell us that one?

Lisa: Sure! I grew up about 3 miles outside of Livingston, Tenn., on a tiny stretch of road that the locals called Zolicoffer. One day, I asked why they called it that and they told me that during the Civil War, General Felix Zollicoffer had camped there. As if that wasn’t exciting enough, they then said that during the 1950s, some kids found gold nearby. The theory was that it belonged to the General. I never stopped thinking about that gold, obviously, and LAST IN A LONG LINE OF REBELS was born.

About six years ago I decided to get serious about publishing a book, so I finished the manuscript, started querying, and found my wonderful agent, Susan Hawk. I am so incredibly happy that she took it to Nancy Paulsen. It’s a dream come true!

Me: Give us a six word summary of your book. (I know, right?)

Lisa: Lou hunts gold to save house.

Me: And some fun questions: How about telling us your favorite Southern meal?

Lisa: Fried Chicken, potato salad, baked beans, homemade rolls, with deviled eggs.

Me: Favorite Southern dessert?

Lisa: Pecan Pie

Me: Favorite Southern slang?

Lisa: Hold your taters – Mainly because my mom used to say it.

Me: What are you working on now?

Lisa: I am working on a middle grade novel about a 12 year-old girl who, after the death of her mother, finds that when she was born she was placed up for adoption for 8 days. Rather than go and live with some awful relatives, she decides to pursue a relationship with the family she almost had.

Thanks, Lisa! You can find out more about Lisa by visiting her website at lisalewistyre.com or by following her on twitter at @lisalewistyre. And to read more about middle grade books, be sure to check in with the folks at Marvelous Middle-Grade Mondays.

Posted in author interview, middle grade | Leave a comment

Fighting with A Teen-ager in the Age of Mass Shootings

Posted on October 12, 2015 by madelynruth@yahoo.com

I wrote some words this week and ended up mailing them to politicians. I’m posting them here, too:

It’s Monday morning and my daughter just huffed off to school like she was looking to star in a remake of The Excorcist. She hissed something at me, followed by an icy good-bye and a door-slam. It’s the typical, beginning-of-the-week stuff that happens when teen-agers are forced to wake at 6:30 a.m. Her jeans from last year didn’t fit anymore, which seemed to be my fault. She couldn’t find her library book, which was my fault, too. She didn’t get enough sleep, the oatmeal was runny, she was mad, she was tired, she was late.

In my head, for the rest of the morning, all I can hear is the slam of that door. If we lived in different times, maybe I’d hear something else: The chirping of birds or the cats fighting in the bedroom because apparently they have a hard time with Monday mornings, too.

But we  live in these times. Kids go to school and they don’t come home. And even before I was a mom, I was an obsessive worrier. So I think: What if someone walks into school with a gun? What if the last words I hear from my daughter are boiled in anger, punctuated by that door slam?  

I fight back the urge to chase her to school in my pajamas. Embarrassing her in front of her friends would be my fault, too, of course. Yet if something really does happen, as it did in two more schools this week, I won’t forgive myself.

I think about that Brady Bunch episode — the one where Mike teaches us you should never go to bed angry. That’s always been a rule in our house. We never made a rule about Monday mornings.

Late-morning, I get a text. “I’m sorry.”

I text back. “I love you.”

I count the hours until school is over, and we can replace written words with real ones.

While I’m counting, I write down these words. I’m not sure where to send them; nobody seems to listen anymore. We’re all so full of words, on both sides, and we blow them away like dandelion fluff. Nothing grows. Not a conversation. Not a fuzzy, yellow flower. Not a change.

I know there are people out there trying to do something about gun violence and anger in our country. Maybe you’re one of them. You should be. I should be.

Because the shootings haven’t slowed or stopped. They have left behind dead and survivors and families and friends and responders and strangers who are drowning in grief. They have woven their way into the denim fabric of our society: We can no longer have simple arguments with our teenagers without hearing a gun blast in a door slam.

We have to fix this thing. We have to.

Posted in anxiety, family, gun control, guns, stress | 2 Comments

Genre Jumper: Pamela Ehrenberg

Posted on October 11, 2015 by madelynruth@yahoo.com
Pamela+EhrenbergThe first book I read by Pamela Ehrenberg was Ethan, Suspended, a novel about Ethan Oppenheimer, who is shipped off to his grandparents in Washington, D.C. while his parents are busy not getting along at home. Her Tillmon County Fire, told in multiple points of view, features stories linked by one incident. These are books that could be read with children, sure, but not the sorts of books that are read to kids while they’re sitting on your lap. So when I heard Pam was publishing a board book about parsley for PJ Library, I knew she had earned a spot on the genre-jumping team (not yet an Olympic Sport). She was kind enough to answer my questions, starting with one for which I already knew the answer.
Me: Which came first: Chicken or egg, picture book or novel?
 
Ethan Suspended coverPamela: Novel, definitely. Picture books used to scare me, the idea of not having any “wiggle room” since every single word has to count for so much. But in 2013 I decided to conquer my fear, and I signed up for the 12 x 12 online picture book challenge. It was so energizing to delve into something where I considered myself a beginner, where I could feel free just to play without pressure to be good at it.
Me: What was the first thing you ever published. (And yes, grade-school newspapers count.)
Pamela: Hmm—can I count my first public reading? My kindergarten class had illustrated stories and dictated the words to classroom volunteers, and then we shared them out loud.  Mine was something about a large group of people living in a house with a witch, and when I got to the end, a boy in my class shouted, “Because the witch ate everyone!” 
Which wasn’t my intention at all! But that boy’s intense reaction, and my dismay at his misunderstanding–was the first time I realized that my job as a writer only half involves putting words on a page: what really matters is what those words do after they’re in the reader’s mind.
I think the experience of having my books reviewed is a lot like reading that story to my kindergarten class—holding my breath to see if I told the story I meant to tell!
Me: When did you publish something in a different form?
 
Parsley coverPamela: I’m delighted that my first board book, Planting Parsley, is coming out this fall from PJ Publishing! Constanze von Kitzing did a great job with the illustrations—I love that there’s this whole other dimension to the process when working with an illustrator. And I loved when the publisher mentioned that the book passed its safety test—it’s new for me writing for an audience who might still be inspired to chew (literally!) on their literature!
Me: Are you a one-project-at-a-time writer or do you mix it up? How easy is it for you to go back and forth between forms?
 
Pamela: I’m definitely a mixed up—I mean mix-it-up—writer. Life as a single mom means writing during odd blocks of time, so I need to have a project at the ready when there’s an unexpected half-hour during baseball practice or an unexpected afternoon during a visit with grandparents. As for going back and forth between forms—I feel like it’s more about going back and forth between characters and their worlds, that the form doesn’t matter as much. It’s like having lunch with one friend in one setting, and dinner with a different friend somewhere else.
Tillmon cover
Me: Are there places or themes you tend to explore, both in your writing for younger readers and writing for older ones?
 
My Twitter handle (@PamelaEhrenberg) says that my books are for “young people and others ready to take on the world”—so I think my characters who are two and those who are sixteen, and those in between, are grappling with some of the same issues I am: navigating a diverse world, interacting with the environment, and rising to meet challenges in regard to our personal relationships and our faith. There’s one topic I’m currently exploring in two separate works in progress, a YA novel and a Seussian picture book, and that has to do with a racially insensitive name of a sports team. I’d love to see either of those manuscripts get published in time to help the DC football team owner come to his senses on this one!
 
Me:What age group do you prefer?
 
Pamela: As a parent, I find it gets better and better: as my kids get older, I get a better view of the people they’re becoming. I love that my 6-year-old knows more than I do about most of the animals at the zoo, and I love being a test audience for my 10-year-old’s social justice platforms. (She is currently working on a campaign to advocate for a Muslim-American American Girl doll.)
As a writer, I think a lot about the Jamie Lee Curtis picture book When I Was Little. The main character is turning 4, but she explains how her 3-year-old self, 2-year-old-self, etc., etc., continue to exist inside her. I’m very much still the 11-year-old not sure where to sit in the cafeteria, the 4-year-old picking brown spots off my Fritos at snacktime, and the 16-year-old in the safe-but-daring synagogue youth group dance. It’s nice visiting with all of these selves when I write . . . and also nice knowing I don’t need to be any of them all the time!
Me: What has writing in one form taught you about writing in another?
 
Pamela: Writing novels taught me how to really get inside a character’s head: how even if the main character of a board book is a toddler planting a parsley seed, I have to step into their (Velcro) shoes and see the world from their eyes, including the excitement of dirt and the inevitability of messes when you’re two. Writing novels also taught me about “getting it right”—painting the details of a character’s world with enough accuracy that readers can suspend their disbelief enough to step into the world of fiction. Planting Parsley required two conversations with an observant Jewish botanist to make sure that this 200-word board book got it right in terms of the plant’s growing cycle in relation to the Jewish calendar.
Me: Is there a genre you’d like to tackle that you haven’t tackled yet?
 
Pamela: So I’ve done a middle-grade and a YA novel, now a board book—and my first big-kid picture book is tentatively scheduled for fall 2017. Sometimes I think it might be fun to write for grownups someday, but I’m having so much fun with projects for young readers that I’m not in a hurry. In the meantime, I’d like to find a publisher for my chapter book series someday: I remember when my daughter started reading independently, thinking that there was a lot of room for growth in making things available for newly independent readers who feel like they’re too old for picture books (even though they really aren’t).
Thanks, Pam! You can find out more about Pam at her web site, or be following @PamelaEhrenberg on Twitter. Planting Parsley will be released to PJ Library kids just in time for Tu B’shevat. Pam also has a new book called QUEEN OF THE HANUKKAH DOSAS coming out in 2017 with FS&G. “Somehow, the book combines an incident from my childhood in the 1970s with a #WeNeedDiverseBooks lens toward contemporary, multicultural Judaism,” Pam says.
Posted in author interview, diverse books, genre jumpers, picture books | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Rainy Days

Posted on October 1, 2015 by madelynruth@yahoo.com

It’s raining and the weather forecast is calling for more. In a few days I will feel trapped in my house, longing to see something brighter than my daughter’s yellow umbrella.  In a few days — or heck, who am I kidding? a few hours — I will be checking the basement for water and searching for the wet vac and trying to stop the kids from yelling at each other over who ate the last pumpkin bar. I will be urging everyone to help me clean the sun room, which everyone will rebel against based on the fact that there isn’t any sun. I will be reading news reports about flooding and falling trees and hurricanes.

But for now, at the beginning of the storm, I am loving the thrum of the rain on my roof, the cat yawning in my lap, the smell of chicken and dumplings bubbling in the crock pot.

For now I am loving that the rain is giving my family an excuse to stop. To read. To be as lazy as this gray day will allow.

We’re not rushing off to afternoon soccer practice. This weekend’s games will likely be cancelled, too, so for a moment, I imagine putting something different on our schedule — something new and out of the routine. Maybe I will. Or maybe I’ll find some old movies, black and white to match the sky. Maybe I’ll just stay here with the cat, listen to the thrum, and write.

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Posted in reading with kids, weather, writing | Leave a comment