Moving to Hawaii

Aloha.

Unpublished is on hiatus while I relocate my family to the beautiful Hawaiian Island of Oahu.

Stay tuned for more information on this exciting adventure.

SCBWI Conference Day Three

Day Three was the best yet!

The morning began with Why Narrative Nonfiction is Hotter than Ever by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, Deborah Heiligman, Elizabeth Partridge, Tanya Lee Stone and Ken Wright. It was very informative and I gained some valuable tips in case I change my focus. I also was very pleased with the possible marketability of the new writing project I am going to have my kids work on! Yay! Family writing project!

Carolyn Mackler the author of The Earth, My Butt and other Big Round Things presented a keynote entitled For Richer or Poorer: Writing Through Good Times and Bad.

Justin Chanda did a workshop entitled Simon & Schuster: The Not So Distant Past, and the Really Fast Approaching Future. This was another very informative workshop. He shared that Middle Grade is on a downtrend right now--(Boo) Teen is out selling adult and blasting at full force, and that those poor picture books are hardly in the picture at all. Apparently the classic picture books, Goodnight Moon, Suess, etc, out-sell new picture books 2 to 1! He suggests that if you want to sell a PB it needs to be shorter, younger, sweeter, funnier and quirkier! Part of the issue with Picture Books lag in sales is that kids are reading older books earlier these days. Mr. Chanda believes that part of the reason that YA or Teen is flourishing is because of the adult crossover. More and more adults are reading YA as a guilty pleasure. YA is the new Romance genre! He also believes that the "Harry Potter" generation have grown up into voracious readers and are causing the boom. (I think that Stephenie Meyer chick has something to do with it too!) Books from the Blog-O-sphere also contribute to the Teen frenzy.

The Golden Kite Luncheon & Awards Presentation: John Parra for PB illustration in Gracias Thanks, for non-fiction, Ashley Bryan: Words to My Life's Song (sweetest man ever), for fiction Sea of the Dead by Julia Durango, for Picture Book text, The Longest Night by Marion Dane Bauer. Congratulations.

But the best workshop of the entire event so far has definately been Deborah Halverson's The Ultimate Checklist for Submitting to Publishers: 10 Tests a Novel Must Pass to Prove it is REALLY Ready for Submission to Publishers. Now I have to admit, I was a fan of Team Halverson before I even got here. I follow her blog Dear-Editor and love, like, everything she says. But her workshop was incredibly awesome and so incredibly practical and helpful and useful that it is by far my all time favorite. (That's a lot of incredibly) I took copious notes, and learned tricks (10 of them!) that will make my novel even better! And Deborah is even more awesome in person and I couldn't have been more pleased with her workshop. She is the author of Writing Young Adult Fiction for Dummies which will be in stores June of 2011. And I got my copy of Big Mouth autographed for my son Cy! I hope to use her editorial services in the near future. Awesomest of awesome.

Gennifer Choldenko's keynote was Kill the Bunnies: Writing Novels for Today's Kids. I love her book Al Capone Does My Shirts and she has a sequel Al Capone Shines My Shoes and a third book to wind up the trilogy will be out next year. Her newest book No Passengers Beyond this Point will be out later this year and is apparently groundbreaking. I can't wait to see what she's done.

The final keynote of the day was by Rubin Pfeffer and David Diaz, they discussed the future of publishing with the advent of the e-book and what that might look like in the publishing world. Exciting, and ultimately (possibly) more lucrative for the authors.

Another full day at the SCBWI Summer Conference. Only one day more to go.

SCBWI Conference Day Two

Day Two began with a line of literally 75 people-- all waiting for their morning coffee at the lobby Starbucks. Yikes. After a very long wait for my morning buzz-- I was ready for my first keynote of the day:

Writing for Kids: A Three-Quarter Life's Work by Gordon Korman. It was a fascinating talk about Gordon's very successful and highly unusual career. Gordon shared with us how at 12 he sent a story he wrote to the Scholastic Bookfair people (he got the address off the classroom order form). He received an offer four months later. Wow. Not how it usually works.

The second keynote address of the morning was Literary Agents View the Market Place. Josh Adams, Ginger Clark, Lisa Grubka and Ken Wright answered questions from a moderator. It was very informative. I think what was most valuable from this keynote was the incredible difference in Agents attitudes about their roles in their clients lives. Ginormously varying opinions. Very eye-opening.

My first workshop of Day Two started the day off with a bang! Lisa Grubka from Foundry Literary gave a very informative workshop on query letters entitled Query Letter Boot Camp: The Do's and Dont's You Need to Get Your Query in Shape. She shared a lot of valuable information about her preference on query letters. She seems like a super cool person and someone I would really like to represent me.

Instead of lunch I had my First 15 Pages Professional Critique by Courtney Bongiolatti from Simon and Schuster. It went very well. She loved my characters and their voices. She said that it was a very solid, classic middle-grade girl figuring out a place in her world story. She said my character Reese has an intelligent, thoughtful, sensitive voice that would appeal to MG readers. She loves my characters Kami and Joy-- she thought they were very unique and quirky. She suggested I change the age of my character from 13 to 12, which I totally agree with. She thinks it has great long term potential and a classic MG girl style that does well in schools and libraries. All that from just the first 15 pages.

Unfortunately I missed most of Marion Dane Bauer's keynote, but I understand it was very emotional.

The keynote Pursue your Passions by E.B. Lewis was awe inspiring. He is the very prolific illustrator/artist who has illustrated over 30 picture books and has won the Coretta Scott King Honor award three times as well as the Caldecott. He shared his illustration process with us as well as his amazing fine art Icon pieces that he is currently working on. They are beautiful tiny paintings on lottery tickets, the portraits of black children barely revealed through scratch marks. Beautiful and poingnant.

I attended the workshop What's Hot, What's Not by Jennifer Rees just because I think she is awesome. (I already know what's hot.) But Jennifer's message was that ultimately we shouldn't be chasing the market, we should be writing what we are passionate about. It was nice to learn a little more about what she is looking for because she is my ideal editor. She and Deborah Halverson, whose blog I follow, and who I hope to have the opportunity to "bump into" at this conference!

Gail Carson Levine's keynote Sweat and Magic was very interesting. She covered suspense builders and plot predictability and provided various helpful writing prompts in order to "get to know" your characters better. The quote "I am pretty new, you don't know me yet," will haunt me for a lifetime.

The Heart and Soul Celebration got started poolside around 7:30 tonight. Many people were in costume and really let loose. I remained demur but enjoyed rubbing elbows with the likes of EB Lewis and Ashley Bryan (illustrator winner of 6 Coretta Scott Awards!). I may have enjoyed a cosmo or two... All and all another very exhausting but rewarding day.

SCBWI Day One

Exhaustion.

That is how I feel after my first day of the SCBWI Conference in LA. (I am sure getting up at 5:45 to make the trek into LA from Westlake this morning could have contributed to my exhaustion) I think I will be better prepared (and rested) for tomorrow.

I'm not sure what it is, but I've felt totally on edge today, like I'm afraid I'll miss something...
I have attended conferences before, PTA and National Library Conferences, and I always enjoyed them immensely, but today I was wound so tight. Tomorrow will be better.

Today was filled with entertaining Keynote addresses by Jon Scieska and Loren Long. Both of which are hilarious people! MT Anderson has a lovely singing voice.

My first workshop of the day was How to Approach Agents Without Scaring Them Off by Ginger Clark of Curtis Brown. The answer: Don't be Crazy. I was hoping for the "secret" tips for querying. She did share some valuable information about things to consider when offered representation. I will store these tidbits away for when that option becomes available to me.

My second workshop was Submission Strategies by Josh Adams of Adams Literary. He shared lots of information about the agents' submission process to publishers.

By far the highlight of my day, though, was talking to fellow writers and illustrators at the Wine and Cheese Reception. After skipping dinner, my $10 glass of wine truly hit the spot! I've already met some really amazing and talented people and hearing their stories and struggles made me feel part of something really incredible. I am looking forward to tomorrow.

SCBWI Summer Conference, Los Angeles

I am totally stoked to be able to attend my first writer's conference this summer in Los Angeles.

The SCBWI Summer conference seems to be a who's who of authors and industry specialists. There will be Keynote Addresses by M.T. Anderson, Marion Dane Bauer, Gennifer Choldenko, Paul Fleischman, Gordon Korman, Gail Carson Levine, Jon Scieszka and many more. I hope to gain insight into these successful authors' careers and "learn their ways" (Nacho reference).

There are 80+ break-out sessions on every aspect of the craft and marketing. I am so very excited to learn as much as I possibly can in these four days!

I have signed up for a manuscript consultation and am very excited to talk to an industry professional about my work.

I will try and share as much information as I can on my blog.

Query Letter Quandary

So on the tail end of those last two rejections I was once again questioning my query letter.

I posted a couple of my most recent letter variations on the querytracker.net forum website (Which is a part of querytracker I had not even utilized before).

The Forum is pretty awesome, you can ask for query help, post your first 5 pages for feedback and get the latest dish on agents.

I posted my letter in hopes of revamping it and getting unbiased opinions from other authors dealing with the same issues I am.

I got some strong input, started to rethink things and then rewrote my query. I used my "New" letter and queried three new agents. All three were rejected within that next week.

Huh? I was scratching my head, feeling confused and sorry for myself...

And then I got a request for pages from a query letter I had sent out two months before. AND it was that same query letter that my colleagues had previous torn apart on the Forum.

I then realized that I've had four requests from this very same query letter. More than any other version I've tried.

I think I'll stick with the original-- it seems to be working.

Bottom line? Don't ask me. But take that criticism with a grain of salt.

Advice from Stephen King