Gail's Sense Of Snow

I grew up in central Vermont, as my loyal readers probably know. I headed a little further north in the state for college. I've lived all my adult life in central Connecticut, which is southern New England, which often is no stranger to rough winter weather. That backstory explains, I hope, why I have a love/hate relationship with snow. I love snow if I can be inside watching it or outside frolicking in it for a bit. I hate it if I have to travel through it, either as a driver or a passenger. I hate it if any family members are out driving in it.

By which I mean driving through a snowstorm.

I found  Five Total Strangers by Natalie D. Richards intense and disturbing, which is what any writer wants from a reader, totally because it involved five people driving through a snowstorm. The main character is a teenage girl on her way home for Christmas who accepts a ride from a slightly older young woman she'd met on a plane that had just landed. Their airport is now shutting down because of an expected snowstorm, and older woman has rented a car and offered rides to four people, including our narrator. None of them know one another.

I stayed up too late reading it one night. All because of the snow.

There is a secondary story line related to a stalker. I don't think that was necessary. This could have totally worked as a snowpocalypse survival story.

Oh, on top of the snow issue, these strangers were driving through Pennsylvania. I've driven in Pennsylvania in the fall, not the winter. I don't know if I have been on one of the highways named in the book, but I find whatever Pennsylvania route we always end up taking when we're going to the Midwest an ordeal, because the exits are few and far, far between. All I can think of when I'm on that highway is how long it would take emergency vehicles to arrive in any kind of weather--on a beautiful summer day--because it's been so long since we passed the last on-ramp and there's no sign of another one.

I'm getting stressed just writing this. I believe anyone who's lived in a northern state would. I don't know of anyone old enough to have a driver's license who doesn't start hunting for help from a higher driving power when a snowstorm is predicted.

Well, except for my late Uncle Gerry who worked for a public works department. I once heard him refer to snow as white oil, because of all the over time he collected--driving a snowplow.

Time Management Tuesday: Let Me Refresh You About Tweetdeck

This past Saturday afternoon I sat out on my deck with my laptop and watched Greg Pincus's Maximizing Your Social Media Presence and Effectiveness, which he conducted at the end of May for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. You have to be a member to watch the archived workshop, and it will only be available for a limited time. So I will tell you it was a very decent intro/overview to the major social media networks and how writers can use them. If you are a writer (or anyone else) new to social media and have a chance to hear him speak on the subject, it would definitely be worth your time to do so.

While discussing Twitter, Pincus mentioned Tweetdeck, which I am very fond of. I was reminded of my two-part Tweetdeck Time Management Tuesday arc from 2015 and decided I'd reconnect readers with it. Tweetdeck is a huge help with managing the time involved with using Twitter.

Managing The  Beast That Is Twitter With Tweetdeck, Part 1

I really get into detail here on how to use Tweetdeck, because I had to work out all these things when I was learning it. 

A couple of possibly random thoughts:

1. In his talk, Greg Pincus compared Tweetdeck to newspaper columns. In my post, I compared it to a filing system. Use whatever metaphor works for you.
2. In my post I describe how my nephew introduced me to Tweetdeck. He's still active on Twitter, but the last I heard, he wasn't using Tweetdeck anymore. Aunt Gail isn't giving it up until someone finds her something better.

Managing The Beast That Is Twitter With Tweetdeck, Part 2

In this post I described what I was actually using Tweetdeck for and how I was doing it. I'm still doing pretty much all those things. Additionally, I will set up temporary columns for topics that will be of interest to me for a short time. Black History Month and Women's History Month are examples. They both can generate a lot of Twitter information about books during the months when they occur. Whenever I take part in Pidmad, I set up a pitmad column so I can see what other writers are pitching and lend my support to those I find interesting by retweeting them. When these short-term events are over, I delete the column so I'm not overwhelmed with column after column after column.

Realizing you can add and delete special interest columns on Tweetdeck makes it incredibly flexible.

In rereading this I see that six years ago I was repeating tweets a few times a day to increase the chances of them being seen. I haven't done that recently, but now that I've been reminded that I used to do it, I'll start again with some of my tweets.

In conclusion, Tweetdeck is a huge help in managing Twitter both in terms of accessing the content there and posting your own. You can definitely do more with your time using it.

Action And Adventure Or Post-Apocalyptic Or Zombie Lit?

Turns out The Last Kids on Earth by Max Brallier is the first in an entire series that I've missed somehow. It's also a Netflix series. Where have I been?

PenguinRandomHouse classifies these books as Children's Middle Grade Action & Adventure, and I think that's accurate. This is a fun spin on a post-apocalyptic zombie and monster world with an anti-hero middle grade protagonist. It's probably for the older side of middle grade, kids who won't feel a lot of anxiety about seeing children fending for themselves in that kind of universe. 

The author does something interesting to help make that happen. The main character is a foster child who has gone from family to family. His most recent unpalatable foster parents raced out of town without him when zombies and monsters started appearing. Another significant character saw her parents being ferried out of town by authorities, knows they survived the initial attack, knows they didn't want to leave her and may be looking for her. My point being, these kids, at least in this first book, aren't dealing with the pain of finding loved ones among the walking dead. We're not talking a Rot & Ruin-type universe.

Another interesting point about this book--for a middle-grade book it has quite a few of what appear to be illustrations. Except these aren't illustrations. They are graphic elements that are actually carrying part of the story. You treat these things as illustrations and just shoot past them, and you're going to miss some material.

All-in-all, an interesting, entertaining read.

Time Management Tuesday: Living Chaotically

I just finished up another May Days, that month of the year when I get together with some Facebook friends to set aside a time, in this case the month of May, to work on something special. For some people it's finishing a draft, for others it's editing, or getting started on something new. Our leader checks in once a week with encouragement. There's a lot less enthusiasm at the end of the month than there is at the beginning, but, nonetheless, a good-ish time is had by all.

I Love Set-Aside Times

I use the term set-aside time for blocks of time set aside for a special project. You see them a lot in writing. National Novel Writing Month is a famous one. Last November I wrote flash for a month. Last summer I wrote it for six weeks while taking a flash writing workshop. I've been doing May Days for years, and my May group gets together in October to do it again.

Set-Aside Times have a couple of benefits.

• Concentrating on one thing helps you to slow down. You're not frantically juggling multiple tasks and can thus be more productive with one of them. Working harder on just one thing is a relief.
• Working on one thing for a relatively short time helps us to manage chaos. At least that's what I speculated last year, and last month it actually worked for me.
  

 

My Plan For May Days

For this year's May Days my goal was to get through first drafts of 3 chapters, which I thought might get me to an important turning point in the story. Recently I had only been doing 2 chapters a month, so this would be a push. I wasn't thinking in terms of writing every day or of writing a certain number of words. I was thinking in terms getting to a certain point.

Living Chaotically

As so often happens for me, I started May Days unable to work for the first four or five days of the month to tend to family. I can't even remember how long I had to put off starting, but it was a significant chunk of time. 

 

I was experiencing my old friend, chaos. I took a breath, didn't give in to the what-the-hell effect, began again, and leaned on whatever other tricks I'd learned for dealing with chaos.

Then I learned another one, which I'm calling Living Chaotically. 

Remember, I was only thinking about getting to a certain point in my manuscript. The only way to get there, I decided, was to give in to the chaos and give up my weekends. If I couldn't get to the end of a chapter or some other good stopping place by Friday, then I would have to give up the order I've established in my life--no working on weekends--and get to those points by working then. Essentially, I was adding more chaos.

But only for the month of May. I thought I could live with this kind of chaos for one month. And I could.

What Did I Get For Living Chaotically?

I didn't actually get to the point I wanted to get to, because I added at least one more chapter. And then I was noticing that the point I wanted to get to was coming too late in the story. And then I realized I needed to start another draft. 

Since I am a big believer in not pushing through to the end of a first draft when you know something's wrong, that was exciting rather than despair-making. Beginning again, in my experience, always leads to moving forward. 

So I was very happy with my May Days. I got some significant work done, but more importantly, I found a method I plan to use again to deal with and become comfortable with chaos.

Some Virtual Opportunities For June

I love virtual author appearances. Here are some I've stumbled upon. This post will be updated throughout the month as I stumble upon more.

June 1 Alicia D. Williams and April Harrison, Brave & Kind Books, Decatur, Georgia 12:00 PM ET 

June 2 Nick Bruel, Turning the Page, Monroe, Connecticut 6:30 PM ET

June 2 Ann Hood, Bank Square Books, Mystic, Connecticut 7:00 PM ET

June 4 Sara Farizan, Charlie Jane Anders, A.S. King, Rebecca Kim Wells, Silver Unicorn Bookstore, Acton, Massachusetts. 7:00 PM ET 

June 5 Debbi Michiko Florence and Josephine Cameron, Print A Bookstore, Portland, Maine 6:00 PM ET

June 5 Stephanie Sorkin, R. J. Julia Booksellers, Madison, Connecticut 10:30 AM ET

June 10, J.C. Phillips, R. J. Julia Booksellers, Madison, Connecticut 6:30 PM ET

June 10 Jamie Pacton and Becky Albertalli, Blue Willow Bookshop, Houston, Texas  7:00 PM CT

June 14 Mary Alice Monroe, R.J. Julia Booksellers, Madison, Connecticut 7:00 PM ET

June 15 Sarah Beth Durst and Jessica Day George, Blue Willow Bookshop, Houston, Texas 5:00 PM CT 

June 15 Shelli R. Johannes and Mike Moran, R.J. Julia Booksellers, Madison, CT 4:00 PM

June 17 A.C. Wise, Space Cowboy Books, Joshua Tree, California 9:00 PM ET

June 22 Maddie Frost, Silver Unicorn Bookstore, Action, Massachusetts 7:00 PM ET 

June 23 Daniel Aleman and L.C. Rosen, R.J. Julia Booksellers, Madison, CT 7:00 PM ET

June 27 Jacqueline Woodson, Blue Willow Bookshop, Houston, Texas 4:00 PM CT

June 29 Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows, Brigid Kemmerer, R.J. Julia Booksellers,  Madison, CT 7:00 PM ET

June 30 Jennifer L. Holm, Savanna Ganucheau, Stephanie Cooke, Blue Willow Bookshop, Houston, Texas 5:00 PM CT

So Now The Publishing World Is Interested In Children's SciFi

Thirteen+ years ago, my blogging buddies and I bemoaned the fact that there was so little science fiction for children. Fantasy had control of children's publishing. Thirteen years ago, when I was shopping around a middle grade science fiction manuscript, I often saw children's agents who wouldn't represent science fiction.

Last month Book Riot had an entire column of middle grade science fiction. Well, thirteen years is a long time.

May Childlit Book Releases

Promoting new children's books during the pandemic hit a number of happy buttons for me. 

• I love a sense of mission
• I love a little obsession
• I love that my blog stats have gone up over the period that I've been doing this

This is hugely time consuming, though. So next month, to try to carry on while making a little more time, I'm going to drop the publisher names from the book listings. Getting the book title and author names out will help the publishers, anyway.

Hmm. Maybe this situation could become a Time Management Tuesday post. 

May 1 Whole Whale, Karen Yin, Nelleke Verhoeff illustrations, Barefoot Books  (Announced date. Author on Twitter says release has been delayed, but it sounds imminent.)

 

 

 

 

May 4 Princesses Can Fix It, Tracy Marchini, Julia Christians illustrations, Page Street Kids

 

 

 

 

 

May 4 The Last Shadow Warrior, Sam Subity, Scholastic

 

 

 

 

 

May 4 Glitter Gets Everywhere, Yvette Clark, HarperCollins 

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 4 Flight of the Puffin, Ann Braden, Nancy Paulsen Books/PenguinRandomHouse

 

 

 

 

 

May 4 Fearless, Kenny Porter, Zach Wilcox illustrations, Graphix/Scholastic 

 

 

 

 

 

May 4 Thrive, Kenneth Oppel, Knopf/PenguinRandomHouse

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 4 Freaky Funky Fish, Debra Kempf Shumaker, Claire Powell illustrations, Running Press/Hachette

 

 

 

 

May 4 The Adventure is Now, Jess Redman, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux/Macmillan

 

 

 

 

 

May 11 The Road to Wherever, John Ed Bradley, Farrar, Straus and Giroux/Macmillan

 

 

 

 

 

May 11 Lucky Girl, Jamie Pacton,  Page Street Kids

 

 

 

 

 

May 11 Thanks a Lot, Universe, Chad Lucas, Abrams  

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 11 Unsettled, Reem Faruqi, Harper Collins  

 

 

 

 

 

May 11 Mission Multiverse, Rebecca Caprara, Abrams

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 11 Bear Bottom, Stuart Gibbs, Simon & Schuster 

 

 

 

 

 

May 11 Jo Jo Makoons: The Used To Be Best Friend, Dawn Quigley, Tara Audibert illustrations, Heartdrum/HarperCollins 

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 11 Just a Boy and a Girl in a Little Canoe, Sarah Mlynowski, HarperCollins 

 

 

 

 

 

May 11 Pawcasso, Remy Lai, Henry Holt/Macmillan

 

 

 

 

 

May 15 The Science and Technology of Leonardo da Vinci, Elizabeth Pagel-Hogan, Micah Rauch illustrations, Nomad Press

 

 

 

 

 

May 18 The Little Spacecraft That Could, Joyce Lapin, Simona Ceccarelli illustrations, Sterling

 

 

 

 

 

May 18 Gwendolyn's Pet Garden, Anne Renaud, Rashin Kheiriyeh illustrations, Nancy Paulsen Books/PenguinRandomHouse

 

 

 

 

 

May 18 Saint Ivy: Kind at All Costs, Laurie Morrison, Amulet/Abrams Books 

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 18 Taking Up Space, Alyson Gerber, Scholastic

 

 

 

 

 

May 18 Jude Banks, Superhero, Ann Hood, PenguinRandomHouse

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 18 I'm Getting a Shark, Brady Smith, Nancy Paulsen Books/PenguinRandomHouse

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 25 What Are Your Words?, Katherine Locke, Anne Passchier illustrations, Little Brown

The 2021 Tassy Walden Award Ceremony Is Coming Up Next Week--You Can Be There!

Every year since 2001, the Shoreline Arts Alliance in Connecticut has sponsored the Tassy Walden Award, a competition for unpublished children's authors and illustrators in this state. This year's winners and finalists have been announced, and the awards ceremony is next Wednesday, May 26, at 7:00 PM ET. It....is...virtual!!!!

This Year's Winners And Finalists

Picture Book Text

Winner: Sabrina Petersen--Postcards from Papi

Finalists: Patricia Finnegan--We are the Vel-Crows

                Bethany Jensen--Ballerhino

                Jodi Kelly--The Allergic Alligator

                Stephanie Yu Lim--The One and Only Carnegie Hall

 

Illustrated Picture Book Writer/Illustrator

 

Finalists: Thomas Drew--The Night of the Jangler 

                 Pamela Hanks--Paige and Webb: Ski Adventure 

 

Middle Grade Novel

 

Winner: Rudy Vener--Iceteroid 

Finalists: Miriam Giskin--You Bet

                 Kimberly Mach--Beneath the Straw

                 Dawn Michelle Mancarella--Orchard of Sorrows 

                 Jackie Mead--The Missing Mask

                 Cynthia Sygrove--Kate of Fayerweather Island 

 

Young Adult Novel 

Winner: William Ollayos--Lightening Born

 

Honorable Mention: Paige Classey Przybylski--Heavy Lightness

 

The Tassy Walden Award is important in this state because a number of winners and finalists have gone on to publication. This is not a one-and-done award. It's often a stepping stone to other things.

This Year's Ceremony

 

This year's ceremony features a speaker, author Nancy Tandon, whose first two books will be published next year. One of them, The Ghost of Spruce Point, was a finalist for the Tassy Award in the middle grade category. She also happens to be a member of my writers' group, which, yes, is a way of making this about me, but also an attempt at some professional transparency.

 

You can register to hear Nancy and, you know, attend an awards ceremony! 

I'm going to have to fix myself up a bit for this, in case it's a Zoom event where you may be seen by others (versus a webinar where you're not ), because I'll actually know some of the other audience members.

 

The Young Readers Edition Of A "Scary but True Story of the Poison that Made People Glow in the Dark"

Years ago, The Horn Book did a special issue on history books for children, describing how in days of old, such books were often children's versions of adult books while these days original historical
research and writing is being done for the children's audience. I can find neither my blog post on the subject nor links to The Horn Book articles I recall. Hey, but it happened.

My recollection of that Horn Book material lead me to pick up The Radium Girls: Young Readers' Edition, The Scary But True Story of the Poison that Made People Glow in the Dark by Kate Moore. It's the 'young readers' edition of her book, The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women. Both books might be described as horror history about the horrendous illnesses and early deaths among women painting clock faces with radium so their numbers would glow in the dark. They died or lived, some of them, seriously compromised lives so people could read a clock without turning on a light.

This is an important story not just because of the misery endured, but because of the impact these women's experience had on labor law. And because many of these women were, indeed, adolescent girls when they began working in the factory that's practices killed them, you can definitely see why this story would be of interest to younger readers.

I read the YA version and skimmed sections of the adult version, trying to determine how the two books are different. 

• I had trouble keeping the different women covered in this work apart. The things that happened to them were terrible, but they tended to be a blur of terribleness for this reader. In skimming the adult version, I think there was more detail, something that would have helped with my reading problem.
• Some of these women had children over the course of the period covered. A couple of times I did briefly wonder when that happened or how, given their illnesses. While skimming the adult version I came upon a woman suffering severe gynecological problems. It came up in another area, as well. I don't believe any of that made it into the young readers' version. So could we say sex was cut for the young?
• In the adult version, a major player's wake and funeral are covered quite extensively, including a painful scene involving her young children. That doesn't appear in the young readers' version. Death certainly isn't left out of this book, as one woman after another dies. But what might be described as the survivors' experience of death was.
• The young readers' version had photographs. I didn't see any in the adult version. 
• The title change is interesting. The adult book is called  The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women, suggesting the women involved will be the focus of the story. The young readers' version is called The Radium Girls: Young Readers' Edition, The Scary But True Story of the Poison that Made People Glow in the Dark, suggesting the radium will be the focus of the story. I didn't notice the subtitle until after I read the book. I definitely didn't feel it had been about radium, and my skimming of the adult book suggests that the major difference between the two is material that was dropped, not a shift in subject matter. What was the purpose of the title switch? To try to make the book less threatening by trying to put the burden of the story on the radium rather than the women whose lives it destroyed?

The writing style isn't difficult, so if I were a teacher, I'd recommend teenagers just go ahead and read the adult book. I don't know at what point even younger readers start reading material like this, though I saw a couple of reviews at Amazon that said children as young as 8 and 9 have read the young readers' version.

While reading The Radium Girls, I began to wonder if it was history or a journalistic treatment of an event that occurred in the past. Sadly, I am not knowledgeable enough to answer the question.

Some Virtual Opportunities

Here are some opportunities to see a number of children's literature authors--sometimes more than one at a time--from the comfort of your home. Choose appropriate snacks for the time of day. NOTE: I will add additional May dates to this post, as I come upon them.

The Silver Unicorn Bookstore in Acton, Massachusetts is featuring the following events. All can be accessed at the store's event page. Scroll down to look for them. 

• Wed., May 12 Virtual Paperback Launch for Debbi Michiko Florence and Jo Knowles 7:00 to 8:00 PM ET
  
• Thurs., May 13 Math-Joy Picture Book Spectacular. Rajani LaRocca, Sara Levine, and Carrie Finison 7:00 to 8:00 PM ET
  
• Wed., May 19 Adventures in Middle-Grade Three-Author Event. Rebecca Caprara with Kaela Rivera and Sam Subity 7:00 to 8:00 PM ET
  
• Sat., May 22 Saturday Morning Story Time. Phaea Crede and Terry Runyan 10:00 to 11:00 AM ET
  
• Thurs., May 27 Middle-Grade Author Event: Jenn Bishop, Laurie Morrison, and Tanya Guerrero 7:00 to 8:00 PM ET

John Green Tour, various bookstore sponsors, ticketed event. Tour supports his new book of essays.

• May 17, Northeast Stop, 7:30 to 8:30 PM  ET
  
• May 18, Western Stop, 10:00 PM to 11:00 PM  ET
  
• May 19, Southern Stop, 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM  ET
  
• May 22, Midwest Stop, 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM  ET 

May 19 Alyson Gerber and Jarrett Lerner, Best of Books, Edmond, OK 7:00 PM CT

May 20 Stuart Gibbs, Children's Book World, Los Angeles, Calif., 10:00 AM presumably Pacific Time  Pre-purchase required for individual registration

May 22 The Peter Panel, Aiden Thomas, Kayla Ancrum, A.C. Wise, Cynthia Leitich Smith, Martha Brokenbrough 7:05 PM ET

May 24 The Renegades of Middle Grade: James Ponti, Janae Marks, Stuart Gibbs, Sarah Mlynowski, Karina Yan Glaser, R. J. Julia Booksellers, Madison, CT  7:00 PM

May 26 Abdul-Razak Zachariah, Norfolk Library, Norfolk, CT 4 to 5 PM ET