Sunday, June 28, 2020

"Dragon Pearl" Wins Locus Award in YA category

The Locus Awards for 2020 were announced yesterday as part of a virtual weekend event. Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee won in the YA category.

The other nominees were:

  • King of Scars, Leigh Bardugo
  • The Wicked King, Holly Black
  • Pet, Akwaeke Emezi
  • Catfishing on CatNet, Naomi Kritzer
  • Destroy All Monsters, Sam J. Miller
  • Angel Mage, Garth Nix
  • War Girls, Tochi Onyebuchi
  • The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth, Philip Pullman
  • Shadow Captain, Alastair Reynolds

Friday, June 26, 2020

More June Childlit Book Releases

So here I go with my second list of childlit books publishing in June. These are books releasing during the 2020 Pandemic and thus not having access to traditional public appearances for their authors.

Once again, these are titles that came to my attention through social media. Many, many more books are publishing this month.

June 2 The Day I Was Erased, Lisa Thompson, Scholastic Press 









June 2 Donut the Destroyer, Sarah Graley and Stef Purenins, Graphix













June 9 Glitch, Laura Martin, HarperCollins  











June 9 Five Things About Ava Andrews, Margaret Dilloway, HarperCollins









June 9 Doodleville, Chad Sell, Penguin Random House 










June 16 The Stepmom Shake-up, Niki Lenz, Penguin Random House 











June 16 Smooth, Matt Burns, Candlewick  









June 16 The Rider's Reign, Jessica Day George, Bloomsbury











June 16 Raising Lumie, Joan Bauer, Penguin Random House











June 16 American Immigration: Our History, Our Stories, Kathleen Krull, Harper Collins










June 23 Ick, Melissa Stewart, Penguin Random House  











June 23 National Regular Average Ordinary Day, Liza Katzenberger, Barbara Bakos illustrator, Penguin Random House










June 23 Beastly Bionics: Rad Robots, Brilliant Biomimicry, and Incredible Inventions Inspired by Nature, Jennifer Swanson, Penguin Random House







June 23 My Eyes Are Up Here, Laura Zimmerman, Penguin Random House 











June 30 Our Favorite Day of the Year, A.E. Ali, Rahele Jomepour Bell illustrator, Simon & Schuster







 

June 30 The Great Chicago Fire, Kate Hannigan, Alex Graudins illustrator, First Second

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

"Gone-Away Lake" And Books As Places To Escape To

Recently Jen Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page wrote about the gift of being able to go back to visit books, "no matter what happens in your regular life." Gone-Away Lake by Elizabeth Enright is one of a list of books she has revisited many times and reread this summer.

I certainly recognized that title, because it is a much-beloved--perhaps cult, in the good sense of the word?--book. I knew I'd written about Gone-Away Lake here at Original Content. It turns out that twelve years ago, I actually read it. It doesn't sound as if it was a big comfort read for me, but I did find it interesting, because the book was published (and a Newbery Honor book) in 1957. The child leads are from the 1950s, but the book also deals with a couple of older characters from an earlier period. In 2008 I said,

"There's nothing here that will provide a big, climactic scene or even much of a plot. Gone-Away Lake is just a lovely, elegant, atmospheric story about a really good summer.

Back in the 1950s it probably gave child readers a window into an earlier, more elegant time. What I find interesting about the book is that now, after all these years, it gives us a window into the 1950s." 


The book was contemporary, supposedly, at the time it was written. But because that was 50 years before the time I read it, it had become a sort of historical document.

"After reading Gone-Away Lake, I envision the 1950s as a time when young boys dressed up in flannel suits to travel by train. Their older sisters wore hats while traveling. Boys (but not girls) carried "killing jars" so they could off the various bugs they collected. (There's something you don't see often in kids' books these days.) My gut twisted up into knots when the kids decided they would keep Gone-Away a secret from Julian's parents because it was fun to have something just for themselves. But keeping secrets from your parents doesn't appear to have been dangerous back then. Nor was it dangerous to enter a stranger's ramshackle house. And nobody thought twice about elderly people squatting in abandoned houses because they didn't have the money to live anywhere else.

It was a different time. Not a better time. Not a worse time. Just different."


I can definitely see why someone today would want to spend some time reading something like Gone-Away Lake, why they would want to visit a different time.

When I have heard of the love for Gone-Away Lake, it's usually come from adult readers recalling having read the book. I don't know how twenty-first century children new to the book would feel about it. I hope Ms. Yingling sees this post and can offer some insight into today's young readers and Gone-Away.

Sadly, my own experience rereading beloved books has not gone well.

I've just learned that Elizabeth Enright was also a short story writer. New Yorker subscribers can access a couple of her stories from the 1950s at the magazine's website.


Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Mark Twain House Offering A Virtual Writers Weekend

The Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford, Connecticut runs writers programs off and on throughout the year. On Saturday and Sunday July 10 through 12 it is offering a Virtual Writers Weekend. This means you don't have to be in the greater Hartford area to attend. Or, of course, worry about what to wear, gassing up the car, where to park, or what you'll do for lunch. 

The weekend involves speakers and programs on a variety of different types of writing. I don't see anything specifically for children's writers, but the Mark Twain House expects to be adding more presenters to the schedule so something could come. Keep checking.

The registration fee is only $75.

Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Time Management Tuesday: Reading "Boundless Creativity"--Finished!

I finished reading Boundless Creativity: A Spiritual Workbook for Overcoming Self-doubt, Emotional Traps, and Other Creative Blocks by Martha Alderson last week.  I have to say, I found a lot of the spiritual aspects of the book heavy going. There are some more practical elements that did work for me.

In fact, using this book really kick-started a project for me this summer. It got me out of what I call an "overwhelm period."

"Boundless Creativity"'s Practical Takeaways For Gail


Inner Spiritual Goals. I found this helpful, and I hope to stick with using it. My inner, spiritual goal is, by the way, "Finish something." I work to keep this goal in mind especially when I'm exhausted and/or overwhelmed from too many tasks. Finish something. Choose one task that can be completed, even if it's cleaning the kitchen counter, and finish something. Finish something.

Yeah, this is what passes as spiritual for me.

Outer Creativity Goals. I am going to stick with one inner spiritual goal, at least for a while, but outer creativity goals will change with time. Mine for May/June was "Completing a book blueprint for 143 Canterbury Road by mid-June." The system Alderson described for reaching an outer creativity goal, for breaking down the goal into daily objectives/tasks, was very helpful. It could be described as adding a visual element to planning and working. I altered her instructions and, still, I'm actually writing using the blueprint I worked on.


Inspiration For The Future

 

 As a result of reading Boundless Creativity, I
  1. hope to do more visual daily objective planning for future projects.  

  2. plan to rework a time management strategy I've discussed here in the past with ideas I got from this book. 

  3. will try to come up with a way to make finishing projects easier. 

                                                                                                            

 

FTC Disclosure:  I received my copy of Boundless Creativity from a publicist marketing it. 





Saturday, June 13, 2020

Whispering Pines--The Retreat And The Conference Center

The New England Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators was bummed this past week by the news that the University of Rhode Island is closing the Whispering Pines Conference Center and Environmental Education Center at its W. Alton Jones Campus in West Greenwich. This was the site of the NESCBWI Whispering Pines Retreat for nearly 25 years. Though this fall's retreat had been cancelled, for obvious reasons (I'm looking at you 2020 Pandemic), it looks as if planners were  thinking about 2021 before the closure news broke.

Many people attended this retreat annually. It was sort of an intellectual, creative get-together for them and friends/colleagues. My guess is that the NESCBWI will be able to move on and find another site where writers can have the same kind of experience. Change can be good. Embrace the change. Look forward to new opportunities. Ommm.

Personally, I only went to Whispering Pines twice. 

Gail At Whispering Pines



I first attended Whispering Pines in 2006 as a featured writer or mentor/staff member. I don't recall what I was called. This was back in the good old days, because 2006 was two years before 2008 when publishing was hammered by a recession. (This year, we call 2008 the good old days.)  I was very pumped up by the experience. I hadn't been there twenty-four hours before I was thinking about graduate school, as I used to do every few years.

While ruminating still more about my first Whispering Pines experience, I got over my interest in graduate school. I mean, I was over it in days. In part this was due to the fact that the Whispering Pines staff put me up in what is known as the Eisenhower Suite, though I just learned that Ike never slept in it during his visits with Alton Jones. He never stayed overnight there at all. Oh, no! The suite had a private bathroom, though. Even distance MFA programs usually have a residential requirement at some point on a college campus with a traditional housing situation. After Whispering Pines, the concept left me cold. The place spoiled me.

In 2010 I went back to Whispering Pines as a day participant. While there I had one of my first experiences with how sophisticated SCBWI members are in critique groups.

And Now...Pictures!


All my Whispering Pine pictures are from 2006. They are interesting because they are so totally focused on what interests me--walking and eating. My Facebook Friends will confirm that I rarely post about anything else.

First off, the main building. On the campus, there are others where workshops were held and conference participants slept. We had our meals here, and the faculty slept here. I guess I was feeling self-involved and didn't take pictures of anything else.





       






My weekend at Whispering Pines was jam-packed with literary and people stuff. I did squeeze in a walk of around 20 minutes, if memory serves me.






Another view of the so-called Eisenhower Suite.  It was a little rustic, but there was plenty of room to roll out a yoga mat. Years later, I would attend another weekend retreat as a participant. I did swing a room by myself, and it did have a private bath. But it took "rustic" to a whole other level. The Eisenhower Suite was presidential in comparison.




Last, and most importantly, the buffet. There was also a wine bar available the first night. (Maybe the second, too. I don't remember.) I do like a glass of wine with dinner. Whispering Pines had a reputation, at least in the past, for good food. In fact, I have a family member who attended a weekend event there who found the food too good. In my very limited experience of  retreat sites, this place did, indeed, have very good food.

I have a couple of pictures of the dining room, but they're blurry. I have standards to maintain here at O.C.

So Whispering Pines was a lovely spot. But as I am always saying here, on the rare occasions that I go to conferences/retreats/workshops, I am interested in content. I'm sure the Whispering Pines team can bring their well-regarded content to another site.


Thursday, June 11, 2020

June Childlit Book Releases


As usual, these are childlit books publishing this month that have come to my attention through social media or on other people's blogs. (Mainly Ms Yingling Reads this month.)  Depending on what I see over the next couple of weeks, I may do another post before the end of the month.

June 2 A Song Below Water, Bethany C. Morrow, Tor Teen












June 2 You Should See Me In A Crown, Leah Johnson, Scholastic









June 2 Dusk Explorers, Lindsay Leslie, Ellen Rooney illustrator, Page Street Kids









June 2 A Song of Wraiths and Ruin, Roseanne A. Brown, Harper Teen













 June 2 Brave Like That, Lindsey Stoddard, HarperCollins











June 2  Silver Batal: Race for the Dragon Heartstone, K.D. Halbrook, Henry Holt 












June 9 American as Paneer Pie, Supriya Kelkar, Simon and Schuster











June 9 Seven Clues to Home Gae Polisner and Nora Raleigh Baskins, Knopf Books for Young Readers









June 9 A Family for Louie, Alexandra Thompson, G. P. Putnam's Sons










June 9 Kindergarten Hat, Janet Lawler, Geraldine Rodriguez, Simon and Schuster









June 30 Play in the Wild, Lita Judge, Roaring Brook Press









Tuesday, June 09, 2020

Taking Advantage Of A Pandemic

My group writing spot

 The Group Write


You may have heard stories about writers getting together somewhere to write. Maybe at a coffee shop. Maybe at a library. Maybe at a little diy retreat at someone's home.

No, I've never done anything like that. I've never seen the point. Why do I want to be with others to write? I am, of course, speaking from the privileged position of someone who doesn't have children at home or a day job to work around. I know some people like to do a group sprint in order to get some control of their time, to force them to take advantage of a small amount of time, and I understand that. In the past, however, when considering a writing get-together I always thought about the time I'd be using to get dressed up enough to be with other people and then drive back and forth to the writing site. How much time will I have to spend on being friendly? And what if everyone works harder and faster than I do? Why would I want to risk experiencing that?

Yesterday, though, I took part in a one-hour noon write-in on Zoom organized by the Greater Hartford SCBWI Meet and Greet Group. Four of us gathered from...wherever...with an image and sound of a fireplace playing on a corner of our computer screens for ambiance... A pseudo-retreat.  We barely saw each other. Chatting was limited to messaging about whether or not we could hear the fireplace and saying good-bye at the end of the hour.

Seriously, this went well for me. I did work the whole hour, beginning writing on a project I've been outlining for weeks. I definitely got something done. I was happy.

This would not have happened if people could get together for real. In a coffee shop or a library or at a diy retreat in someone's home.


A Workshop On My Sun Room Couch

If only I could attend all workshops from here

I wrote here back in April about the digital workshops the SCBWI has been offering for its members during the pandemic. Yesterday afternoon I viewed one that had been originally presented in May, Using Scene To Build Story with Linda Sue Park.

This was an excellent program, especially for those of us who self-identify as organic writers (often referred to as pantsers) and have trouble isolating and working on the elements of a story. Park talked about using character/plot/ setting together.

I probably wouldn't have attended this workshop in a traditional conference setting, mainly because I don't go to that many conferences. And when I do, I look for workshops with "plots" or "plotting" in the titles, hoping that they'll address what I see as my number one writing problem. Given a number of workshops to choose from, I might not have realized that this one would, indeed, address my number one problem.

What Does It All Mean?


Both yesterday's group writing gathering and the workshop were positive experiences for me. And I would never have done them in a pre-pandemic world. I don't know what to make of that. What does it mean for what I'll be doing in a post-pandemic world? Will this type of on-line living still exist?

Well, why speculate about the future, right? I will just live with the more robust on-line life I have now. Omm.


Friday, June 05, 2020

A Portrait Of The Author As A Young Woman

This spring, here at Chez Gauthier, we reorganized and cleared out some old photo albums. We came upon a picture that I would have loved to have used as an author photo at some point. Unfortunately, it was taken about five years before my first short story was published and somewhere in the area of twenty-plus years before my first book was published.

I suspect I didn't like this picture at the time it was taken. I often find I now like pictures of myself that I know I disliked years ago. In this case, in addition to looking young, which I appreciate above all else in photos of myself, I think I look booky and thoughtful, as if I'd just come from an author reading, one of those kinds that just go on and on, or a graduate school lit class. Maybe I just got home after sipping a little Chardonnay with some writers.

Those are all things I rarely do, by the way, except for, these days, drinking Chardonnay. So I guess it would be great if in a picture I could look as if I'd just done those things instead of looking as if I'd just watched part of a TV mini-series or read a back issue of Newsweek, something I may have actually been doing in this one.

We also found this picture of me working in the second bedroom of our first apartment. What is amazing about this picture is I work in this same kind of clutter now. And, because I cook a great deal and our kitchen and office are on different floors, I have set up a small work station like this in a spare bedroom in the house we're living in now so I am always close to a stove and a desk.

I actually had a flannel shirt on this morning.

I'm not sure what this second picture means.



Tuesday, June 02, 2020

Time Management Tuesday: Reading "Boundless Creativity" Part III

I've been reading Boundless Creativity: A Spiritual Workbook for Overcoming Self-doubt, Emotional Traps, and Other Creative Blocks by Martha Alderson, because I think creativity--encouraging it and how we use it--can have an impact on how we manage time. I hope so, anyway.


In Week One of my Boundless Creativity blog arc, I wrote about inner spiritual goals and how I've been using one.

In Week Two, I wrote about outer creative goals and how I've been using one.

In Week Three, I'm writing about...

Commitment/Discouragement

 

In Boundless Creativity (and in her earlier book, The Plot Whisperer) Alderson writes a lot about what she calls The Universal Story, a common structure she believes underlies all stories. When she lays it out graphically, it looks like a variation on the traditional plot diagram, though Alderson goes into detail about what she sees happening in each part.

Alderson also suggests that this story structure is part of our lives and our creative projects follow this structure, as well. I can't claim to understand The Universal Story, but I see it as a sort of plot structure (like The Hero's Journey, but not so complicated and mind-numbing). However, this idea of a creative project following a plot structure is very interesting.

For instance, Alderson says that at one point in our own project's Universal Story we will become less excited about what we're doing, begin to doubt ourselves, and not feel we can move forward. If you follow any writer blogs or twitter accounts, you've probably seen people write about the point in a project where the writer knows that what they're doing is crap. (No other word for it.)

The project I've been working on is just an outline. And, at the point I was reading about this discouragement thing in Boundless Creativity, I was also pounding my head against a wall over whether or not I've spent way, way too much time--years, people, years--trying to find the perfect plotting method. Maybe, I was thinking, I should accept myself as an organic writer and stop trying to make lengthy plots before starting to write. Maybe instead of hunting for the plotting secret, I should spend a few years hunting for the organic secret.

Yeah. That was a good idea.

So I spent an hour or two hunting on-line for material on organic writing.

Then I went back to working on my outer creative goal to complete an outline by the middle of June, because I have that inner spiritual goal about finishing one thing.

So that was an interesting experience. What will happen next?

FTC Disclosure:  I received my copy of Boundless Creativity from a publicist marketing it.