SCBWI Austin

Cross-posted from the Blue Rose Girls blog:

Last weekend I went to Austin, TX for the first time for the Austin SCBWI "Write in the Heart of Texas" Spring Conference. Thank you to everyone who helped make the conference possible, especially Regional Advisor Tim Crow.

I was especially excited to go to Austin, not just because I had heard such wonderful things about the city, but also because it gave me an opportunity to meet some of the authors and illustrators I've worked with and/or corresponded with, and yet never met in person. People like the fabulous and generous Greg and Cynthia Leitich Smith, who hosted a great party the night before the conference at their beautiful home.And then of course there was Chris Barton, author of the upcoming S.V.T. (and no, I won't tell you what it stands for) who picked me up at the airport and took me to Hoover's for my first sample of mac n' cheese in Austin (as well as grits and jalapeño creamed spinach):
and some Elgin sausage (with more cheese grits):
After the conference, he took a few of us out to the Congress Bridge for a viewing of the largest urban bat colony in North America. Here we are with Chris's agent, Erin Murphy.
The viewing didn't quite go as planned, although it was still a lovely evening. Apparently, the weather was a little too cold and wet, and the bats didn't emerge till after sunset, so it was a bit hard to see them, but before giving up (as most of the other spectators did), we found a spot right in the corner of the bridge where we could see them wisp out under the streetlight. It was quite eerie, actually, almost like ghosts spiraling out from under the bridge. I took a bunch of pictures, but they're pretty dark. But I swear, if I lightened and enlarged this, you'd see bats. Really.
Chris has a great description of our evening here.

After the bats, we were off to sample a bit of the live music Austin is known for. Chris took fellow presenters Erin Murphy, Deb Wayshak, and me to Flipnotics where we stumbled upon Colin Gilmore and his band performing. Apparently Colin is the son of Jimmie Dale Gilmore, a name I wasn't familiar with, but one that Chris and Deb got quite excited about. And dad happened to be in the audience, as well. Pretty cool!
And of course, to back up, there was the conference itself. It was a very well-run day, packed with speakers and critiques and portfolio reviews. Everything was on a tight schedule that pretty much went off without a hitch, except, I'm afraid, my talk. I forgot to watch the time, and although I had timed my speech beforehand, I hadn't accounted for all the tangents I would go off on, and I ended up both going over my time slot by ten minutes, and also having to skip over the end of my speech, probably about ten more minutes worth of material. Partially because of that, I wasn't happy with it overall. I also wasn't sure if the talk was too dry, or too discouraging--as loyal readers of this blog know, there are a whole new set of issues that come up once you're published. But, well, I hope I gave everyone some good information. I'll be posting some excerpts of my speech here and there. To start, here's a part towards the beginning of my talk, which was titled "The realities of children's book publishing."

I’d like to share with you all the single most important piece of advice I’ve received during my professional career. In fact, I find it so important that I wrote it on a Post-It and have it up in my office to remind me every day. And I heard this advice from the oddest source—from Andrea Jung, CEO of Avon—yes, the cosmetics company. Little, Brown was formerly owned by Time Warner, and while we were housed in the Time and Life building, we were occasionally invited to Time Inc events. I belonged to A3, the Time Inc. Asian Affinity group, and won a spot at a luncheon where Andrea Jung was speaking. She spoke about a pivotal moment in her career, when she was second in command at Avon, and passed over for the CEO spot in favor of an outside candidate. At the time, she had an offer to be a CEO at another company, and was counseled by Avon Board Member Ann Moore, who was CEO of Time Inc, “Follow your compass, not your clock.” She decided to stay with Avon, a company that she loved and believed in, and was promoted to CEO two years later.

Follow your compass, not your clock. I think this advice holds true in all of your careers as well. I think so many of us are rushing, anxious, constantly comparing our own careers with everyone around us. We all need to make sure we remember the things that are really important to us.

And now, back to what's really important to us--the food! (Okay, I'm being cheeky, but you know me, I love the food pictures.) After the conference, we were treated to another fantastic meal at Threadgill's where I sampled the local specialty, chicken fried steak. And of course had more mac n' cheese. And no, although I tried my darnedest, I did not finish the whole steak.
The next day I had brunch with author Diana Lopez, whose first middle grade novel, Confetti Girl is slated for the Spring 2009 list. We went to the lovely (and packed) East Side Cafe were I had migas for the first time--delicious!
We met up with Greg and Cynthia Sunday afternoon at BookPeople--truly, one of the best bookstores I've ever been to. Their children's section is fantastic, and I was especially impressed by their selection. And, of course, I was thrilled to see many of the books I've edited on display, such as Firegirl by Tony Abbott:
Plenty of Grace's books, too!
And Chowder by Peter Brown:And finally, Sergio Makes a Splash by Edel Rodriguez, which just got a starred review in Publisher's Weekly!
Here are Greg, me, and Diana in the kid's story time section:
Then Cynthia, Greg, and I went off in search of cowboy boots (I didn't buy any) and margaritas at Guero's Taco Bar.
And then it was back to BookPeople to meet illustrator Marc Burckhardt. We went to dinner at Lambert's Downtown BBQ where we had fried green tomatoes, ribs, and, of course, mac n' cheese. For those of you keeping score, Lambert's mac n' cheese scored highest in Austin in my book (although I must say, it still doesn't compare to Silvertone in Boston).
Whew. I'm stuffed.

And now, back to packing. I'm off to Atlanta, GA for the International Reading Association conference. No doubt I'll have more food pics to share when I get back. Maybe I'll see you there!

Italy trip--highlights

Italy food pics

Courtesy of animoto.com, as always.

Speech suggestions anyone?

**This has been cross-posted on the Blue Rose Girls blog.**

My next trip (I wrote about my last one here) is to Austin for their SCBWI Conference on April 26. I've been thinking about what I'd like to talk about--I was asked to talk about something that both published and unpublished writers could benefit from.

Here are a few of the topics I was tossing around:

1) I was considering recycling (and refreshing) the talk I gave at the Oregon SCBWI conference last year. I titled it We Are All Diverse: My path to publishing, your path to publication. To be honest, it was kind of a hodgepodge speech, with some "you can do it!" encouragement to the unpublished, advice on goal setting, and also a discussion about diversity and the importance of it in publishing. I think even the published got some good stuff out of it, and since only the 60 people at the conference heard it, part of me would love to share it with a larger group. (Plus, I get to share my parents' love story as part of it.) Perhaps if there's anyone reading this who was in attendance, they could weigh in.

2) I was talking about this with Sara during our trip to Florence, and a suggestion she had was to discuss the different types of publishing experiences a writer can have--for example, a huge auction and the advantages and disadvantage that holds, versus a small advance, publishing at a big house versus a small house, etc. Perhaps I could combine this with a discussion on the "pitfalls of publishing"--issues and situations that authors may not normally think about.

3) One of my authors had suggested a while back that I talk about what makes me want to acquire a project, what are the things I think about when evaluating a manuscript, what comes into play. I'm not sure if there would be enough here to fill a whole speech (I think I have 45 minutes to an hour), but I could certainly throw this into whatever topic I decide to go with.

Any thoughts on any of these? Any suggestions? I'd like to pin down a topic by the end of this week so that I can prepare the speech this weekend. I'd appreciate any feedback.

And I've never been to Austin; I'm excited!

Bologna!

I'm reposting this from the Blue Rose Girls blog (see original post and comments here). I hope to get around to writing more about the trip soon.

*******

I got back from Italy Monday night. It was an overall fantastic trip in almost every way.

I was there mainly for the Bologna Book Fair. For those of you not familiar with it, here is a description from the website:

The Bologna Children’s Book Fair is the most important international event dedicated to the children’s publishing and multimedia industry. In its 45th edition, the Fair offers more than 20,000 square meters of exhibition space with a simple, easy-to-understand layout.

In Bologna, authors, illustrators, literary agents, TV & film producers, licensors and licensees, packagers, distributors, printers, booksellers, and librarians meet to:
• sell & buy copyright
• find the very best of children’s publishing and multimedia production
• generate and gather new contacts while strengthening professional relationships
• discover new business opportunities
• discuss and debate the latest sector trends

As a publisher, we go to sell foreign and film (etc.) rights for our books, and also go to possibly buy book rights from foreign publishers, agents, etc. My company generally sends four people every year--two people to sell, and two people to buy. Going to Bologna was always a kind of pipe dream for me, as generally only the publisher and editorial directors get to go. I hoped it would be a possibility some day--I certainly didn't expect to be able to go so soon, but I was fortunate enough to be tapped to go for the first time this year and help buy.

I arrived with two of three coworkers on Saturday afternoon. We rented a car and drove to our hotel. The first thing we noticed about Bologna was that it was sunny and nice. The second thing I noticed was that there were a lot of colorful, little cars. The third thing I noticed was that there was a lot of graffiti.

We checked into the hotel, and then a colleague and I (it was also his first trip to Bologna) decided to get something to eat and explore the city a bit. We found a little outdoor place on via dell' Independenza. Here I am with my first pasta meal, appropriately tagliatelle alla bolognese. So good.
Later that night, we scouted out a bookstore, and of course made a beeline to the children's section. I found an Italian edition of Jerry Spinelli's Love, Stargirl, and found it amusing to see my name surrounded by all the Italian (you may recall that he thanked me in the acknowledgements for letting him use my name for one of the characters):
The next day we set up the booth. Here are a few walls:

I was excited to see a whole wall devoted to my beloved Sergio Makes a Splash by Edel Rodriguez:

And, of course, another devoted to the Stephenie Meyer books:

After setup we strolled over to the Piazzi Maggiore to sit in the sun and have lunch. I had been told that mortadella was one of the specialties in Bologna, so I ordered a mortadella sandwich and was delighted to discover that it was basically bologna. I had wanted to eat bologna in Bologna!

After that, my time in Bologna was a blur of meetings and dinners. We were basically all scheduled for 30 minute back-to-back-to-back meetings from 9 am till 6 pm every day. The first two days I went to most meetings with our Publisher, with a few separate ones here and there, and then Wednesday and Thursday I had my meetings solo. It was exhausting, overwhelming, but awesome.

The exhibits were divided into halls, which were for the most part sorted by country. I think there were around 6-8 halls, but I spent most of my time in just 4 different halls--the US, UK, French, and Asian halls (with other countries mixed in). Our appointments had for the most part been planned with location in mind, but of course there were those few times where we found ourselves going to a meeting in Hall 25, then having to jump to Hall 30, and then back again. But despite all the rushing around, I think the people buying (like me) had the better deal--all I had to do was listen and say what I was interested in. The people selling have to sit in the booth all day and give the same sales pitch meeting after meeting.

I've met with many a foreign rights agent before, so that part was nothing new, but it was great to put some faces to names, and to see publishers from countries we don't normally meet with, like France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Taiwan, and more. I was really drawn to the art styles of a lot of the European publishers, but oftentimes found the content a bit too obscure, sophisticated, or inappropriate for the U.S. audience. For example, my publisher joked that many of the French picture books feature death, nudity, and smoking. I saw plenty of the former two, but unfortunately (fortunately?) none featuring the latter.

All of the agents were regulated to the agent center, which apparently was in a new location this year. Many of the agents expressed dissatisfaction with the new digs, one reason being that they were up in the mezzanine, with no bathroom! I thought the windows were quite nice, though. But the crowded tables gave one the impression of a coral.

I didn't see anything that I absolutely loved right away, but I requested many picture books that I wanted to spend more time with, and of course when it comes to fiction, you just have to read it. It seems that in the past, people more often actually bought things while at the fair (I remember as an assistant running P&Ls and faxing them to my boss in Bologna). We did get a few offers on one of our big upcoming fiction titles, and heard of a few other books getting offers or a lot of interest, but nothing really jumped out as being the "book of the fair." I think the exchange rate played a role in this, too. But there were some promising-sounding things, so we'll see. The emails following up from after the fair are starting to trickle in.

On the selling side, I was of course curious to hear about the books I'd edited and the interest they were generating. I think the three main books that were getting a lot of requests were Sergio (out next month), The Curious Garden by Peter Brown (Spring 2009), and Wabi Sabi by Mark Reibstein, illustrated by Ed Young (Fall 2008). It was interesting to hear the Japanese publishers' take on Wabi Sabi. Apparently, only one requested to see it, which I suppose is not surprising--it would be like us buying in a picture book about baseball or Thanksgiving from the Japanese. Not impossible, but probably not likely. And one Japanese publisher greeted the concept with skepticism. "How can a picture book explain wabi sabi? It is too complicated. Impossible." I think we were successful, but I'll be curious how this one is received when it comes out.

We dined with various packagers and foreign publishers on Monday night, with our French subagent on Tuesday night, and on Wednesday night, the children's agents from McIntosh & Otis arranged a get-together--various agents, editors, subagents, packagers, etc. gathered together in a little outdoor area to drink wine and compare conference notes.

I met up with a friend and went off to Florence for two nights on vacation after the fair, which I hope to post about on my personal blog at some point (I LOVED Florence. Gorgeous city), but that just about sums up the Bologna Book Fair for me. I hope to be invited back some day! And just for fun, I'll leave you with a few food pictures. Oh, the food.

Ciao!

Best Dance Crew

Lately I've been mildly obsessed with Randy Jackson Presents America's Best Dance Crew on MTV. The finale is this Thursday, and I'm rooting for JabbaWockeeZ. Check out the mad head spin at the end. Unbelievable.

• MTV
• Music Videos
• MTV Shows
• Entertainment News

I'm on the radio!

If you happen to be free tomorrow (Saturday, March 8) between 1:00 - 1:25 pm EST, tune into WBAI 99.5 FM to hear me interview authors Grace Lin and Justina Chen Headley about their books out this year (that I edited): YEAR OF THE RAT and GIRL OVERBOARD, respectively.

WBAI is celebrating International Working Women's Day by having 29 hours of women-only programming, and an organization I've been involved with, the North American Taiwanese Women's Association (NATWA) asked me this year if I'd like to put together the segment. We taped last night, and I think it went okay, despite me losing my voice earlier in the week due to a cold (if you hear a cough in the background while Grace is speaking, that was me--I thought my mic was off!).

I actually had a lot of fun doing this--I did a lot of radio in college (news producing, reporting, and anchoring, plus deejay and production training) but none since, so it was cool revisiting that world and being at a radio station again.

You can also tune in via their website.

Blue Rose Girls weekend

Here's a new animoto.com video from our Blue Rose Girls weekend a few weeks ago--with rollerskating!

I've lost my voice

No, not in terms of politics, but my speaking voice.

Betcha can't tell, though, huh?

I had a slight cold in the middle of last week. I had a cough on Friday, but insisted on going ahead with a publishing Karaoke outing that was planned for that night by T.S. and others.

I sang A Whole New World with T.S. It wasn't too bad. At a friend's advice, I sipped scotch in between songs to help sooth my throat (I tried to order a hot toddy first, but the bar tender had no idea how to make one). Then I sang Un-break My Heart. My voice started straining a bit, but I was impressed with how it was holding up. Growing Pains theme song, The Rainbow Connection, and then sang backup on one last power ballad before leaving. I think that did it.

I haven't lost my voice this badly since college--a day or two after screaming at the Big Game, it was gone. I think it came back after a day or two...

It's so odd to not be able to talk. Yesterday a girl asked about my Sony Reader while on the train, and I could barely squawk out an answer--oh, how I longed to show it off to her. I babysat my cousin's kid Owen last night, and I managed to squeak out questions and talk to him, but not with my normal energy. And I couldn't sing to him, or even read to him for long without having coughing fits. He was so good, though.

Today I went to dim sum with Sara and her family and some friends, and it was torture not to be able to actively participate in the conversation. There were so many moments I wanted to contribute a story or ask a question. Here and there I jotted notes down on a pad, but that was unwieldy and slow, of course. It was easier when I went to the WBAI studios for a planning meeting--at least it was quiet, and I was able to be heard.

I need my voice back by Thursday at the latest--I'm supposed to tape an interview of authors Grace Lin and Justina Chen Headley on behalf of NATWA2 for the WBAI, 99.5 FM in New York for Women's Day, airing on Saturday, March 8th. The show will air from 1-1:25, so tune in! You can listen online, and hear for yourself if my voice has recovered.

Any advice on getting my voice back quickly? It seems that the best thing to do is to just not use my voice. I've also heard gargling salt water; drinking hot liquids; cinnamon and honey tea; hot water with fresh garlic, lemon, cayenne pepper, and honey. I have garlic breath right now.

***

I watched the movie Once tonight. This is the movie with the Oscar-winning song "Falling Slowly" that I'd heard being compared to Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, which I love. I actually bought a pirated DVD of the movie while in China (I know, I know, bad). Anyway, it was excellent. Beautiful, thoughtful, touching, and for me was reminiscent of the Before movies, and also Lost in Translation.

I was charmed by the two main characters' performance at the Oscars, and then enjoyed this Q&A with the actor Glen Hansard. I loved his anecdote about meeting Bob Dylan.

***

Last Friday was a two Met day for me. I took the day off to hang out with my brother who was in town for a conference. It was a messy, snowy day, but his flight made it in. We trekked over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which I really enjoyed--I used to pop in more often when it was on my walk home, but haven't been in at least two years. We mainly focused on the modern art wing, but wandered through at least half of the museum, I think.

Then I was off to meet a friend for dinner and then the Metropolitan Opera production of Otello. Fantastic. I had never seen this performed before, nor read the play, although I did know the basic story. What a painfully tragic, beautiful show. I don't know much about opera, but the sets and constumes were gorgeous, the voices clear and soaring. Libby later told me during our Blue Rose Girls weekend that Othello is the production that has inspired the most audience intervention--people yelling at Othello, or even physically jumping on stage to prevent certain characters from killing other characters (I don't want to give it away for the few of you who aren't familiar with the story). Totally understandable, considering the unfairness of it all.


***

Anyway, that's all for now. I hope to be able to talk soon.

Why do kids lie?

I thought I'd cross-post this from the Blue Rose Girls blog:

Is it Monday already? Let me start off with a joke. An oldie but goodie (I first heard this from my Dad):

What do George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr. all have in common?



?



?



?


They were all born on holidays.


Anyway, I've been enjoying my three-day weekend and so once again was caught unprepared for my day to post, so I'll leave you with this fascinating article that is the cover story in New York Magazine. (I originally saw it via Educating Alice.) It's all about why kids lie, when they first start lying, and what it all means. One tidbit I found fascinating is that kids actually have to be pretty smart to lie: "A child who is going to lie must recognize the truth, intellectually conceive of an alternate reality, and be able to convincingly sell that new reality to someone else." These more advanced kids start lying at age 2 or 3. So...if you catch your kid lying at that young of an age, take consolation in the fact that he or she is really smart.

The article asks if kids are copying adults when they lie--they observe adults telling white lies all the time, and they're also probably confused when adults coach them to lie--for example, when they're told to say they like a gift they don't really like. And, of course, they lie to escape punishment.

I also loved the description of the "Peeking Game" experiment.

Anyway, just read the article, I'm not doing it justice. But a warning--the photographs that accompany the article are pretty creepy.


And Congratulations to the winners of the 2007 Cybils!