A Catching Up Post...

Hopefully you've missed me, dear readers. My blog has been quiet for a bit as I was home in bed for a week taking Vicodin and watching Law & Order reruns with frozen edamame in my pants. And one should not post in that state.

But I'm back at work now, almost all better and pretty much caught up on my work. Now to catch you up...

• My birthday was a week ago Wednesday, but I rescheduled it due to the situation described above. (So if you asked me, I'll tell you I'm still 41.) I've decided it will officially occur on March 20th, at which time I will be in New York to catch the end of the NYC Teen Author Festival. Click here for the event schedule posted on the readergirlz blog. There's all kinds of stuff going on all over the city, including the World's Biggest Book Signing in the World! at Books of Wonder (where they also sell cupcakes). Look for tweets from me during the events and a post or two when I get back.

• SCBWI announced their 2010 Golden Kite Award recipients. Their award for fiction went to SEA OF THE DEAD by Julia Durango; nonfiction to ASHLEY BRYAN: WORDS TO MY LIFE'S SONG by Ashley Bryan; picture book text to THE LONGEST NIGHT by Marion Dane Bauer (illustrated by Ted Lewin); picture book illustration to GRACIAS THANKS illustrated by John Parra (written by Pat Mora). Honor award recipients were also announced. The winners will be honored at the Golden Kite Luncheon at the SCBWI Annual Summer Conference in LA (July 30-August 2) which will be covered by SCBWI TEAM BLOG.

• This weekend is our first WD Editors' Intensive of 2010. If you can't make it to this one, mark your calendar for September 11-12 when we'll be offering another weekend of information and critiquing featuring yours truly as well as a raft of other awesome WD editors.
  

That's it for now. I'm off to do some interviewing, editing and WRITING (all my favorite fun work stuff).

NYC Teen Author Festival--My First Day...

I arrived in New York on rainy Thursday to catch the last few days of the Teen Author Festival. That afternoon I met my friend Aaron Hartzler (who is the Director, Communications & Design for SCBWI) for a 4 o'clock reading at the 67th branch library featuring Rachel Vail, Courtney Sheinmel, Martin Wilson, Lisa Ann Sandell, and Cecily Von Ziegesar (pictured below in my rather dark photo, L to R, holding up their books).


Oh...I really adore listening to authors reading their own work. There's something sort of magical about it. I'd love to have a continuous bedtime rotation of YA authors reading me a few chapters every night before I fall asleep. Courtney Sheinmel told us she got the idea for her book My So-Called Family, featuring a girl whose father was a sperm donor, from a "The Today Show" story. Cecily Von Ziegesar read a scene from an early Gossip Girl title showing us the book version of why Blair Waldorf didn't get into Harvard (no cocktail parties or text messages involved). Rachel Vail's reading from her upcoming book Lucky offered humor and a great character. Lisa Ann Sandell's writing was lyrical and beautiful and I wasn't surprised to hear that her book A Map of the Known World is her first first prose work, her previous books written in verse. As for Llambda Literary Awards finalist Martin Wilson--after the reading teens were fighting over who got to read his book What They Always Tell Us first as he gave his copy to the library.

And that was another wonderful thing about this reading: teens. There were a bunch of them. And they (pretty much all) paid attention and they asked thoughtful questions and they seemed to have a relationship with the YA librarian which was wonderful to see.

After the reading we were off to Books of Wonder for the debut of Tiger Beat, the first-ever all-YA-author band including Libba Bray, Daniel Ehrenhaft, Barney Miller, and Natalie Standiford. Tiger Beat's opening act was David Levithan and Rachel Cohn (rockin a flannel shirt and eye liner) offering readings from their book Naomi and Eli's No Kiss List (in both English and German!) and a reenacted scene from the movie version of Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist.


Then Tiger Beat seriously rocked (they were, like, good) and everyone cheered.


And waved foam Tiger Beat rock'n'roll hands.


Oh--and attached to Books of Wonder: a cupcake place! Aren't they pretty. (The chocolate icing was fantastic.)


Last, here's a reenactment of part of Aaron's conversation with the girl who sold us cupcakes. (I forget her name. I will call her Kara.)

Aaron: Hi Kara. Are you excited about the authors here in the store?

Kara: Oh. I'm not really into young adult books.

Pause.

I'm sixteen.

Aaron: What do you read?

Kara: Neil Gaiman.

I'll Be in NYC for the Teen Author Festival Tomorrow...

And all weekend. So:

• I may or may not be blogging throughout the weekend, but I will definitely post about the NYC Teen Author Festival events I attended when I'm back at work next Tuesday.
• I will be doing much much tweeting, so if you follow me on Twitter, look for my posts.
• If you're there, find me and say hi. (You know what I look like because you see my picture whenever you visit my blog. Just remember the me-not-really-being-blue thing.)
  

Writer's Digest Editors' Intensive
March 21-22...

In just a few weeks we have a great event coming up at the Writer's Digest HQ here in the Nati--a Writer's Digest Editors' Intensive.

Late last year when we came up with the idea to do an event for writers here in our offices, I admit I was a little worried. Don't get me wrong--I thought it was an excellent idea. (We've got an amazing amount of writing and publishing knowledge in our collective WD brain and we're all about sharing it with writers.) But we didn't have a lot of time to promote it and we were asking people to come to Cincinnati in winter two weeks before Christmas. (I didn't really want to be in Cincinnati in the winter two weeks before Christmas.)

I was so excited when the event quickly sold out (people came from all over!) and even more excited to feel the energy in the room the first day of our event. The writers who attended asked great questions and gave us such positive feedback. I really felt like we were giving them what they needed and helping them. And it was limited to just over 50 attendees, so our event really had a more intimate feel than many others.

Because the response to our first event was to tremendous, we've schedule four more Editors Intensives for 2009, the first on March 21-22. Besides a full day of presentations and Q&A (on topics like revision, networking, and pitching), attendees get a 30-minute one-on-one critique of the first 50 pages of a manuscript, a free sub to WritersMarket.com, and a CD featuring Writer's Digest interviews. And (since our December attendees told us they would have liked more time to hang out with us and each other) there will also be informal Saturday night mingling.

You can click here to get all the information on our Editors' Intensive. (It's cheaper if you register by next Wednesday.) Note that although I'm on the list of editors presenting, I actually will not be--I couldn't pass up the chance to attend the NYC Teen Author Festival (which you will certainly be hearing about on my blog and my Twitter account.) I'll be presenting at the June and the October Intensives. Rest assured, however, that my co-workers handling the March event are awesome.