Gardening with chickens & ingenious bookstore event

A bunch of you have written asking for chicken update pictures. Earlier this week, BH and I took a couple of the girls out to help us weed the flower beds.

They are bug-eating machines.

A man and his chicks.

Along with the garden (we’ve been eating the first peas this week) and the chickens, we’ve been busy in the Forest preparing for ALA and this fall’s book tour. I’ll post my ALA schedule early next week. I’m not sure when I’ll have the tour details… certainly by August. I’ll be on the road a LOT, so I will probably be showing up wherever you live. If you bring your chickens to my booksigning, I will pet them.

On Monday night, we enjoyed a special book event, courtesy of the river’s end bookstore. Author Michael Perry is on tour promoting his new book, COOP, as well as his other titles.

   (His books make EXCELLENT Father’s Day gifts, btw – funny and heartfelt.) Michael is a small-town guy, like us, and is interested in encouraging people to buy local and live sustainably. Instead of the standard booksigning, for his event the bookstore took over a new restaurant in Oswego – La Parrilla.

    The restaurant was chosen because of its commitment to buying from local farmers. Guests had to buy tickets ahead of time – cost of book was included in the price of the ticket, as well as dinner.  The event sold out, we all enjoyed a very yummy dinner, and left with sore ribs from laughing so much because Michael Perry is a very funny guy.

Michael is posting on Shelf Awareness every day on his tour. His blog entry about Oswego gives his take on the evening.

   I’ll be spending Father’s Day with these two guys – my husband and my dad. I am in charge of deviled eggs and potato salad. They are in charge of the beer.

See you on Monday!

Author Fantasy

Many people think that the life of the author must be incredibly glamorous, filled with cheering crowds of adoring fans, travel by limo, and being heralded by marching bands.

If you read this blog regularly, you know that the reality is very far removed from that fantasy.

Except for yesterday.

The Teen Book Festival in Rochester is the top teen book fest in the country. Maybe the world. Thousands of teens came to listen to a couple dozen YA authors. We were all blown away by the magnitude and wonderful atmosphere of the event.

  It’s always good to start an event with a cool cake. We had a dinner on Friday night at the Strong National Museum of Play so we could meet each other and hang out with some of the incredible librarians whose volunteer efforts pull TBF together.

I FINALLY got to meet Barry Lyga, who is much nicer than he wants to admit. You can see him TODAY at river’s end bookstore in Oswego, NY at 2 pm.

And I met Lisa McMann, which I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.

They really did drive us to the event in two limos.

  Here’s an interior shot of the limo I rode it. You can see Matt de la Peña toward the back on the left, Alyson Noel on the far right, and just to the left of Alyson, Holly Black.

And when we got to the Nazareth campus, Ellen Hopkins and Terry Trueman were transferred to a motorcycle & sidecar. At the front of the procession? An honest-to-goodness marching band.

That was when I knew the day was going to be a waking fantasy.

  Then I saw the giant posters of all the authors on the walls and began to doubt the "waking" part of that previous sentence. It felt like a fever dream.

We all spoke on a "lightning round" panel in the gym, then broke off to give workshops to smaller audiences. Thank you everyone who took the time to hang our at my presentations!

At the end of the day we met back in the gym to sign books. And sign books. And sign books. For hours. It was heavenly.

Again – THANK YOU to everyone who stood in the very long lines!

ESPECIALLY….

The mom and daughter who traveled from Long Island for the event AND

the mom and daughter (I think her name is Mackenzie) who traveled all the way from Massachusetts (Worcester, maybe?) for the event. I see a new trend: mother-daughter book festival road trips!!!

Now I head back to the Forest where there is no marching band, but there is a handsome husband, overzealous dog, baby chickens and a garden that needs some attention.

Thank you very, very much Teen Book Festival. Amazing experience.

Hero worship & WFMAD 28

Toni Morrison is one of my heroes for many reasons; she’s a gifted, brilliant, powerful author, she lived in Syracuse NY for a while, and now, she’s helping our country remember. (Here’s a non-NY Times link for those of you who aren’t registered with them.)

That bench is now on my Must-Visit list.

I am deep, deep in my research, trying to figure out how to wind the strands of my character’s story around historical events. I’m swimming in a sea of correspondence with historians and preparing to meet a couple of them.

One of the more interesting aspects of writing historical fiction is meeting those historians who have made one tiny facet of your story their entire life’s work. It’s sort of like challenging Kobe Bryant to a game of one-on-one, knowing that he’s not going to cut you any slack, but feeling like you’ve got your game on and you have a chance.

I spent a good hunk of yesterday marshaling my arguments for a historian who doesn’t believe that oxen were used to pull the artillery wagons towards a fort under siege. I’m pretty sure I’m right; he’s wavering, but he doesn’t seem to have any evidence to back up his concerns. If any of you, by chance, have anything to contribute to this conversation, please get in touch with me.

In honor of today’s WFMAD session, I present to you…..

… my desk.

WFMAD 28

Today’s goal: Write 15 minutes and maybe a little more, because it’s Monday.

Today’s mindset: organized

Today’s prompt: Today is all about the space in which you write. I have written in many, many places (my former writing spaces are an essay waiting to be written) and now I have my own slice of heaven. I work on the third floor of our house, in a loft space tucked under the eaves. I have a giant teacher’s desk from the 1920s that I trash-picked from my parents’ trailer park. I do not have enough bookshelves, but BH is going to change that when I go away on book tour. This is my creative kingdom.

If you are taking your writing seriously enough to try and do it every day, then it’s time to examine your writing space. What else besides writing happens there? Does it say “Dedicated Writer at Work” or “Sure, Go Ahead, Interrupt Me, I Don’t Really Want to Finish This Novel”?

The Guardian has a regular feature on writers’ rooms. I hope they do more.

If you can’t think of anything else to write about, today I’d like you to sketch out or write about the positive, affirming changes you are going to make to your writing space. Do you need to tidy it up? Get rid of visual clutter? Pay the stack of bills? Add flowers or a candle? Is there music in your space?

Extra-super bonus points will be awarded to those folks who actually act on their palns for their writing nook.

Scribblescribble….

Nose to Grindstone & WFMAD 17

The 18th century beckons so I’ll keep this short today.

Bookavore has a wonderful interview with Cory Doctorow.

I know that Gossip Girls and their ilk upset a lot of people, but how is it that they can’t see all of the literary books in the bookstore? What do you think about this rant?

Today’s goal: Write for 15 minutes.

Today’s mindset: terrified

Today’s prompt: What smell represents fear to you? Why? Write about a memory with that smell, or give a fear/smell relationship to your character and write a scene in which it comes up.

Scribblescribble…

A slight delay…

Yesterday was a loooooooong day that stretched into the night, and I still didn’t get everything done that I had hoped. So my post about The Very Nearly Perfect Thing will be a little delayed. I think I’ll make a video to explain it and hope to put it up late today or tomorrow.

First, sad news: Tasha Tudor has died. I have long admired her work and really appreciate how she chose to live her extraordinary life. The linked article refers to her need to make money from her art to support her children after a divorce. She said “the wolf at the door is very good for people” because she felt she would not have developed her talents without the need to pay bills. That is a very healthy perspective.

Thank you very much to everyone who turned out for last night’s Readergirlz chat! Mitali Perkins will be posting excerpts on her blog very soon. I’ll link to it as soon as it’s up.

We had a little rain yesterday and were given a beautiful gift at the end.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic Breathtaking.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic Especially because the rainbow ended (or began?) in our garden. (Photo credit: BH aka Scot Larrabee)

Good Solstice, everyone.