When you don't have kids...

...the kitty gets a Halloween costume.

Kinda Bummed

I received a call from my rheumatologist this week.  Unfortunately my lab results did not come back as hoped.  My hemoglobin, red blood cells and white blood cells are all abnormally low.  They were low earlier in the year when I had lab work but at that time we were taking a wait and see approach as it could have been a fluke or something temporary.  Now however it appears that there is something more serious afoot.  I have an appointment on October 25^th to revisit my rheumatologist so we can have a “discussion.”  I know that this is something that I have little control over but I couldn’t help feeling like a naughty child who was being called into the principal’s office. The most logical explanation is that my body is attacking my red and white blood cells much like it attacked my platelets many years ago. I also made an appointment on November 12th with my hematologist from long ago as he did an excellent job of treating my platelet munching problem. For now it looks like my adoption medical letter will be on hold until we can get this situation sorted.   I would probably be exceptionally bummed if it wasn’t for the fact that I have plot, characters and words, words, and more words swirling through my brain taking up too much space for worry to creep its long tentacles into my mind (that’s brilliant, that’s what the worry monster in my novel will look like; a giant creepy octopus). This is just another bump in the road and as long as the bump stays “a protuberance on the surface” and doesn’t turn into a gigantic fiery chasm I should be able to remain positive.

Book Festival Fun-Part 4 (and the last I promise)

The last event at the teen tent and the one I was looking the most forward to was a discussion panel entitled "Reaching Out to Young Adult Readers."  There were five authors on the panel.

Ellen Jensen Abbott writes Young Adult fantasy.  I looked her books up when I got home and at some point I'd like to get around to reading one.

Charlotte Bennardo writes tween/teen novels which seem to be a cross between Sex and the City and Percy Jackson.  They seem to involve shopping...a lot.

Barbara Dee writes books for the female tween crowd.  They look sweet, cute and sincere and seem to deal with relationships with friends, siblings and parents.

Elisa Ludwig stated that her work was inspired by her love for the Sweet Valley High series.  Her book looks to be a cross between something like Gossip Girl (though I can't really say since I've never seen it) and Robin Hood.

Aaron Starmer had me at, "people describe my work as being weird and just a little bit creepy." Since that is what people often say about my writing he instantly became my favorite.  His first book is about a group of kids who must escape their school's basement after getting locked down there by their crazy vice principal and his second book is about a boy who thinks he may be the last person on earth.

Surprisingly not a lot of people showed up to the panel discussion.  It was me and one other woman who asked most of the questions.

I asked about how to write young adult characters without making them sound too cliche. 

My favorite responses...

Barbara Dee- Ask someone who is the age of your character to read parts of your novel out loud so you can hear how it sounds.  You'll know if it doesn't sound right.

Aaron Starmer- Don't write how you think your characters should sound.  Write how your audience thinks they, the audience sound.  He said that when adults reviewed his books they complained that his characters sounded too mature for their age (something both John Green and Orson Scott Card have been accused of) but his intended audience loves the characters because they feel that they do sound mature.  Don't dumb down what you write just because it's for tweens/teens.  They will appreciate not being talked down to.


I also asked if they could share a mistake that they had made as a new author and what they learned from it.

Barbara Dee- I wanted everyone to like me in the beginning so I agreed to all of the changes that the publisher and editor wanted even though I knew some things didn't make sense for the characters.  She said she had to learn to balance saying no with listening and taking their suggestions.  She and the other authors agreed that once you make it to the publishing stage, your book is a team effort and you have to learn to be part of the team.

Elisa Ludwig-said she was surprised at how long the process could take between writing a first draft and finally getting your book published.  Everyone agreed that it isn't how good of a writer you are but rather the talent is in the editing.

Some of the other points of advice I found interesting

Aaron Starmer-As a new not yet famous author, don't make your main characters 13 or 14.  He had a 13 year old character and his publisher asked him to change the age to 12.  Apparently, book sellers have a difficult time selling books that have 13 or 14 year old characters because tweens tend to favor their own age and teens like to read about characters older than themselves.  I found this to be both interesting and helpful. Aaron also stated that his best piece of advice though he knew it sounded cliche was to write the book that you would want to read because if you try to write something just so you can be popular and published it probably won't turn out to be any good because it's not what you love and are passionate about.  I really wanted at this point to ask if he would take me under his wing and mentor me because if he can write weird and a little bit creepy books and get published there may be hope for me.

Barbara Dee-agreed with Aaron about writing the book you want to read and advised not trying to jump on a genre/trendy band wagon.  She said that writing/publishing is a lengthy process and if you try to hitch your star to a specific trend, sparkly vampires, for example, by the time you are done your novel, everyone will have already moved on to the next big thing.  You never know what's going to catch on so just write what you want to write.

Ellen Jensen Abbott discussed world building and talked about making maps of both her world and even the buildings she uses/describes.  She stated that she wants to make sure that when her character is walking through her house to go to her bedroom she makes a left every time so there is continuity.  I never thought about drawing plans for buildings. It was a great idea.

I did end up purchasing one of Aaron Starmer's books and I won't lie about the fact that the cover art had a strong influence on my decision. Since I purchased it at the festival he also signed it which was pretty cool (I hope it turns out to be good because he was my favorite author of the day).

Altogether it was a fantastic day and hopefully next year I'll put a little time into being prepared.  They post which authors are going to be at the festival well ahead of time so I will try to actually read some of their books so I can feel more involved in the discussions.

Book Festival Fun-Part 3

The majority of my day at The Collingswood Book Festival was spent at the Teen Tent. 

The age range for this tent ran from tweens to young adults.  That is my favorite genre both to read and write and I was very interested in hearing what the authors had to say.

The first author I listened to was Rob Buyea.  He talked about his tween book "Because of Mr. Terupt."  He drew quite an audience of starry eyed tween fans who asked all manner of questions.  He was extremely friendly and engaging.  The one piece of advice I took with me was to take something you have seen or something you know and then expand on it.  He gave the example of being a teacher and reprimanding a student for playing with the water fountain and making a huge puddle of water on the floor.  Then he read an excerpt from his book where the main character described the traumatic experience of seeing his principal slip on a puddle by the water fountain exposing her giant flowered underwear and worst of all...she had a wedgie.  The kids were in hysterics by the time Rob finished reading and I may have been giggling just a bit.

The next author was Pat Hughes. She writes historical fiction for the tween crowd.  She reminded me of the stern elementary school teacher who causes all of the kids to pray very hard over the summer that they get assigned to the other teacher's class. I was too scared to take a picture of her for fear of being chastised.  There was a teacher there with her class and each student had a sheet of paper with four questions written on it so there were plenty of questions to go around. Someone asked if she thought the imagery and topic of war (she has written books about both the revolutionary and civil war) was perhaps too mature a topic for her audience.  She asked the kids to raise their hands if they watched South Park or Family Guy and a few of the kids raised their hands.  She made the point that what she wrote was historically accurate and had educational value and was no where near as mature as what is shown in those cartoons.

The final stand alone author was A.S. King.

Though her books are for teens the audience was made up of almost all adults.  Just from what I could gather her books were a combination of John Greensih angsty teens and historical fiction/history lesson. She seems to link her present day character with someone from an important historical event from the past.  It sounded intriguing. Her most popular book "Everybody Sees the Ants"  is about bullying (though she didn't make it about bullying intentionally) so bullying was a bit of a topic of discussion.  She called herself a pantser writer which meant that she "writes by the seat of my pants." That means she doesn't organize or outline, she just writes and sees where it takes her.  She admitted that not all of her ideas have worked and she has a draw of failed novels and keeps them around so that she can cannibalize them.  I liked that description.  A.S. King was interesting, insightful and friendly and I enjoyed listening to her speak.  She was also slightly sarcastic and funny which made her chat entertaining.  She seemed like someone you would want to grab a cup of coffee with and sit down to converse with one on one for a while.

Book Festival Fun-Part 2

Another musical act pulled me in with their siren song about macaroni and cheese.  The name of the band was Ernie and Neal and they were performing in the kid's tent.  Their music was fun without making my ears bleed.  If I had kids I probably would have picked up one of their Cds.  (can you spot the little boy who dressed himself today?) I especially liked the song called, "The Pink Pig Pancake Picnic Polka."

There was an entire children's section filled with lots of fun.

There was a puppet show to watch,

games to play,

and crafts to complete.

What kid wouldn't want a set of Hamlet finger puppets?

I enjoyed walking through the Book Festival Gallery.  It was filled with illustrations from various books that were featured at the festival.

A large portion of the festival is made up of tables where authors promote their books.

I'm not much of a poet but the people who were in the poetry tent seemed to be having a good time.  They were working on composing poems about the animals they hate the most.  There was also a paint a haiku wall.

 

To be continued...

Book Festival Fun-Part 1

      Today was one of my favorite days of the year.  It was the day of the Collingswood Book Festival.  The book festival is to Nanowrimo what going to the Philadelphia Christmas market and hot chocolate at Max Brenner's is to the holiday season; it gets you in the spirit.  In the morning I went book hunting.  Everyone knows that the best place to hunt books at the festival is "the place at the end."

10 books for $1 was hard to resist so I rummaged through the children's bins and chose my 10.  Aside from the book "Wings", I tried to pick books that were more boy oriented since we are more likely to adopt a boy and the majority of our current kid's books are kind of girly.  The kids at the "place at the end" were having fun picking out their own books.

There were plenty of books for adults too.

The church usually has a good children's section.  I found two books there for 50 cents each.  There was one booth that sold just science fiction books.  There were boxes and boxes of science fiction books.  I didn't find anything I wanted but it was still fun searching through the boxes.  One store was giving books away for free.  I was getting pretty weary though at that point so I decided to take a break.  Hunting books is thirsty work.

I was excited because just when I needed a break, my favorite music duo "She Hates Me" began to play.  It was the perfect chance to grab a seat and review my spoils.

Begin Before the Beginning

First a quick update.  I survived my first week back at work though I did end up having a dental emergency.  When I went to my rheumatology appointment my doctor wanted me to get blood work just to check that I was okay before she wrote an official letter saying that I was okay.  Since my dental issue involved lots of jabby needles I decided to delay more jabby needles until this week so I’ll find some time soon to get my blood work done.

What I am super excited about at the moment is that it is almost time for November/ Nanowrimo.  What’s that (asks the one person who hasn’t grown tired of me talking about it)?  It is National Novel Writing Month; a time when people who enjoy writing engage in a challenge to write 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days (there is a kids version too where they can set their own smaller goals).  There is a fun website (Nanowrimo.org) where you can display your information, chat with other writers on forums, receive encouragement from The Office of Letters and Light and read or view pep talks from authors.  Many “regions” have groups that get together during the month to hang out, write and encourage one another.  Don’t knock it until you try it.  Hanging out and writing with other people is a lot of fun. 

This will be my fourth time doing Nanowrimo.  My first time I learned about it during November and it was impossible to catch my word count up.  My second year I completed the challenge making me a winner.  My third year I started an IVF cycle half way through November and had to drop out and last year I started an IVF cycle at the start of November so I didn’t participate at all.  This year I am determined to win again.  While I was home recovering I worked on some basics (you can’t start or write any of your actual novel until 12am November 1^st).

This is a scattering of my notes and basic information

I found these nifty Character Worksheets Online and thought they were quite helpful.  They helped me figure out a lot of things about my characters and my world.

Drawing up my world map made me wish I knew more about Cartography.  That would be a good class...cartography for writers.

I enjoy writing novels for children and young adults so I'm planning on this year's project being another young adult novel.

The Title: The Key Carver (Hence the picture at the top)

The Synopsis:

“Once the doors are opened they cannot be closed. Once the doors are closed they cannot be opened.”

   Brannon was born with the gift to see doors.  Doors that are part of a vague prophecy that has kept those that can see the doors locked away in solitude.  Today is the day that Brannon escapes. He is determined to see what is behind the doors freeing the next poor child born with the gift from a life of imprisonment.  Before he can open the doors he must find someone who can carve the keys or in his case abduct someone who can carve the keys.  On the run from his mentor and his carver’s fiancé and brother Brannon has a difficult challenge ahead and must figure out if his actions will destroy his world or save it.