Cybils Nominations Are Open

The nomination period is under way for the 2009 Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards. Now through October 15, you can visit the main Cybils blog to learn about the awards and nominate your favorite titles in a number of categories (you can vote for one title per category).

As nominations keep rolling in, Round I judges are busy gathering initial selections, and they'll narrow the field over the next couple of months. This year I'm serving as a Round II judge for the Middle Grade/YA Nonfiction category — so later this year I'll help evaluate the Round I panel's "cream of the crop" short list of MG/YA nonfiction books published since October 16, 2008.

So . . . read any good kids' books lately? Of course you have. Now go add them to the list — we want to know which books you L-O-V-E LOVE!

EFA Fall Classes Start Soon!

I recently rejoined the EFA board as education chair, and I am pleased to share news of our Fall 2009 Education Program. We have an exciting season of targeted professional-development opportunities planned and hope you'll join us for some of our online offerings and/or live events in Seattle and NYC.

ONLINE CLASSES

How to Get Freelance Writing Work (starts 10/13)

Editing Memoir and Narrative Nonfiction (starts 10/15)

Dealing with Nightmare Clients (starts 10/21)

Proofreading (starts 11/2)

Turning Journal Entries into Polished Pieces (starts 11/30)

Writing from Healthy Starts (starts 12/1)

SEATTLE EVENTS

Getting Started in Editorial Freelancing (10/17)

Blogging Basics (12/5)

NYC SEMINAR

Supplementing Your Income with PR Work (11/14)

For full course descriptions, pricing information, and a link to EFA's online registration system, see EFA's main catalog page. Be sure to act now and SIGN UP for any classes you're eyeing, especially those starting just around the corner in October. Class size is limited, and some courses do sell out early.

Hope to see some of you in class! And please share this notice with any interested friends and colleagues.

Can't Be Said Enough: "RIP, Reading Rainbow"

To ease the pain of losing Reading Rainbow to the ages, the Onion has published this exclusive opinion piece by LeVar Burton. Click on over for a good chuckle followed by a moment of silence for what's been removed from the cultural landscape:

"My Living Nightmare of Encouraging Kids to Read Is Over"

And, please enjoy this clip of the Reading Rainbow theme:

A Brief Tear on the "Fun" of Writing

Did you watch the Emmys telecast last night? I didn't. I did, however, click on a few Emmy-related news links early this morning and came across this E! Online quote from Mad Men creator (and statue winner for writing) Matthew Weiner:

"When you get something like this, it makes writing look fun, but it's not."

To me, winning an Emmy — or, how about a pretty, pretty Newbery?!?!? — for writing does in fact sound super fun! Yet, as a writer, I know that the work that goes into most award-winning works is, ahem, a whole lotta WORK.

Fun can and should be had while working at any job, certainly. And I doubt any writer /*slash*/ thinking human being would unfavorably compare writing work to, say, physically difficult labor or otherwise emotionally unpleasant occupations (use your own POV/imagination here). Few writers have to work under downright smelly/filthy/scary/dangerous/extreme-temperatured conditions, after all.

When you are a writer (and yes, a kids' writer, even!), you have a job to do. You figure out how you will do it. You get started and actually finish. You meet your deadlines. You collaborate with your editor and your fact-checker and your agent and whomever else you need to keep happy. You, the plumber, the surgeon, the store clerk, the sales rep, the lawyer, the teacher, the animal trainer, the photographer, the chef, the baseball coach, the park ranger, the dentist, the personal assistant, the banker, the carpet cleaner, the engineer, the pastor, and everyone you know in every job you can think of have everything in common ------- you all get it done.

So. I feel obligated to point out and echo and beat to absolute death Matthew Weiner's sentiment. Even though I very much enjoy (and I do mean very.much.enjoy) being a writer who sometimes gets to create fun works, I felt the urge to blog that I never sit down to my desk . . . and I do mean NEVER . . . thinking, "This is going to be fun."

Instead I think things like "This should be easy" or "I have no idea where to start" or "I can't wait to try my new idea" or "Yesterday's writing was crap" or "I need some new research" or "It's time to interview my expert" or "I'm going to solve that plot problem if it kills me" or "Just 1,000 words to go" or "I wish I didn't have to do ANY of today's tasks . . . but of course I will, because that's my job."

And thus concludes my brief tear on the "fun" of writing.

September 8 Is International Literacy Day

It's International Literacy Day!

I read this morning that approximately 780 million adults worldwide cannot read or write. Notice that? I said "I read" it. Today my plan is to tap into the gratitude I feel about the life afforded me by the ability to read and write . . . and pass it on.

In that spirit, I just moved a long-standing to-do to the top of my list: It's time to (finally) load the car with the three boxes of extra books that have been hanging out waiting to be gifted, donated, and sold. I'll feel good, the basement hallway will look better, and — I hope — some of my very gently used (and some new) books will help strengthen a reader's skills or just brighten someone's day.

How will you observe the ILD? You might head to the library, buy a book, or read to/with/in front of your child. These are all things you can do any day, of course. But it's nice to get a nudge sometimes, don't you think?

Too Cool Not to Share

Pictorial Webster's: Inspiration to Completion from John Carrera on Vimeo.

My Fall YA Release

Have I mentioned how bad I am at promoting my books? I mean, here I sit with my own blog, and I have yet to mention in this space that I have four new books out this season. All were released in August!

(To be fair to me, I did mention the books on Facebook and LinkedIn. But, really, what self-respecting author doesn't take to the blog right away!?!)

The biggest — meaning, thickest — book is part of ABDO's Strong, Beautiful Girls series. It's called Frenemies: Dealing with Friend Drama, and it features fictionalized scenarios illustrating a number of the very real friendship issues that middle-school girls face, along with research-based advice for handling them.

My author copies are currently in transit, and naturally I'm looking forward to actually seeing the finished product. Funny thing is, I've already received (positive) feedback from an adult reader. So the book is out in the world, available for consumption . . . and yet . . . because I haven't touched it, Frenemies still exists only in abstract — and Word file — for me.

I'll be talking about the book at my local SCBWI chapter's Inside Story salon October 28. Can't wait for that, and I'll be sure to share more about the event afterward.

Back soon with a post about my other three releases!

Authors Guild to Host Google Book Settlement Teleconference

As many readers know, the Authors Guild has been tracking and reporting on all things "Google book settlement" for about a year — and this Thursday, August 13, they're hosting a free teleconference on the topic for authors and agents. It takes place at 3:00 pm Eastern.

Find more information and sign up for the call here. For links to all relevant issues pertaining to the case, click here.

The New CWIM Is Here!

My intrepid postwoman just plopped a fat 'n' fresh copy of Alice Pope's 2010 Children's Writer's and Illustrator's Market on my doorstep!

It looks great. No, I haven't read the whole thing. (It just came, remember?) And I probably won't. (Not a reasonable goal, really.) But I did want to pop in to give this edition a big thumbs up.

It's always a great resource for market info and insightful articles from industry pros. This year, though, I'm thrilled to see the new feature of access to an online database of all the markets listed in the book. I don't buy this resource every year (last edition purchased: 2003), but that little bonus makes me very, very happy — and it will likely turn me into an annual customer. (Smart move, publisher!)

Shaking Off the Cobwebs

Last night the dog and I took a stroll, and with every few yards of progress, I batted and spit my way through yet another crop of tightly spun cobwebs. (The pooch seemed unaffected.) A heatwave had emptied our neighborhood parks and sidewalks for a good week or more, leaving the spiders with free rein. (Note that over the weekend, I also discovered webs — and the teeny little spiders that crafted them (!) — in the drying rack next to the kitchen sink. My explanation, and I'm sticking to it: Very few windows in my built-for-the-Northwest house have screens.)

It's still quite warm for our climate, but the heat is much less oppressive now, and the promise of markedly cooler temps starting tomorrow has been dangled. I'm so giddy about the downward trend that I decided to work away from my home office today. Last week, the heat and constant sleepiness were distractions, problems to overcome, heavy burdens to bear/loudly whine about. Today, though, with things looking up I worried that a livable temperature might make me too tempted to either (a) catch up on neglected-due-to-heatstroke household things that I can easily do tonight or (b) answer the siren call of a pretty summer's day, resulting in the need to work on WORK tonight, when I have firm plans to not do any of the aforementioned "household things."

So, I went for a bracing wake-up walk and then whisked myself off for a Workday Wi-Fi Crawl. Free wi-fi implied. It was a terrific change of pace and perfect for the editing work featured as today's main to-do.

At 7:30, I headed to a nearby coffee shop for emails and such over a latte. Most other patrons were headed someplace else, so I scored a comfy chair next to a handy table. Cool! Midmorning I switched to my nearest library branch to do some work-related library-ing before settling down for several hours of quiet, focused editing.

Hungry by midafternoon, I tried a never-busy dive lunch joint I knew to offer wi-fi (to which I've always said, "Who would use that here?"). Worked out fine! Then, to finish out the crawl, I grabbed a cold tea and headed to a shady, wi-fi-equipped park close to home. I sat at a picnic table facing a lake and was surprisingly productive there, too. Nobody was swimming or even stirring until around 4:30 — and by then it was time for me to get home.

Tomorrow will be business as usual, as usual. I truly do prefer to work in my office at the big-girl's computer. (That doesn't sound quite right, but neither does "adult computer." I'm comparing my large, tricked-out desktop machine to my small, just-functional-enough laptop, okay?) But today sure was lovely. The change of scenery/pace cleared my web-filled brain and renewed my weary spirit — and I look forward to tomorrow's nothing-special workday with — yes, I think it's true — happy anticipation.