Blog – Page 94 – Laurie Halse Anderson

May 28, 2009

No, I’m not at BEA. Yes, I’m pouting. Join me?

I have nothing to whine about. I know. I’ve been to BEA (The Mother of All Bookseller/Author Conferences) many times.

And I’ve had a blast.

But like I said, I am NOT whining. I’ve been all over the place the last six months, met awesome booksellers and readers, and it is only fair that my publishers send other authors to enjoy the festival/celebration/frat party/book extravaganza that is BEA.

I am not whining, I swear.

I am pouting.

I can’t help it. There are SO MANY people I would love to hear again (looking at you, Sherman Alexie). I want to eat the frozen pastry at the Children’s Booksellers Breakfast. I want to sprain my ankle on the convention floor. I want to stay up too late and get up to early.

:poutpoutpoutpoutpoutpoutpoutpoutpoutpoutpoutpoutpoutpoutpoutpoutpoutpoutpoutpout::

In the best tradition of middle school social dynamics, I have decided to host my OWN party. If you are going to BEA, you are SO not-invited.

The party starts now and goes through the weekend. I am calling it the BEA 09 Pout-a-Thon.

If you are stuck at home, turning that vivid shade of envy-green, consider yourself invited.

How do we make this happen? A couple of things. I think I’ll be making LOTS of little blog posts through the weekend. Chime in the comments section. Pretend that you are having coffee or a glass of cheap wine with me at one of those parties. Ask the questions you’ve always wanted to ask. You might have to ASK LOUDLY, because the room is already filling up and it’s hard to hear ANYTHING!

I’ll also be chattering on my Twitter feed all weekend.

There is on ongoing conversation at Meebo (see below):

There is a BEA Twitty Party going on. Sign up and hit that one, too. Yes, it is much along the lines of my Pout-a-Thon, but trust me, there is more than one party going on BEA, so we need more than one party for us stuck-at-homes.

The dress code is casual, friends. I’ll be wearing pajamas and a sweatshirt.

Will you join me? Tell all your friends, wake the neighbors, and be sure to bring your dogs and cats.

The party starts ………………………. NOW!!!!

May 27, 2009

Writing Prompt!!

I haven’t done one of these in a long time, but since I am diving back into being a writer (as opposed to being an author, which has consumed the last several months for me), I figured you should, too.

This is the surprise I found in my garden this morning.

Write for fifteen minutes about this. Don’t analyze. Don’t plot. Don’t outline. Just write.

May 21, 2009

A long weekend’s worth of links & deviled egg inquiry

I am slowly transitioning from insane farmer woman back to being a writer who gardens a little. By the end of the weekend, the new vegetable plots should be finished, seedlings in, and seeds sown. And it’s a good thing because I am itching to get back to writing. All the travel and work stress is almost gone, and being in balance again is now appearing possible.

The glass is now installed in the Magic Window, the walls and most of the ceiling are up, and the cool chimney pot we found at the salvage yard is in place on the roof.

Our friend Steve, a natural born Tinkerer, has been up here helping out. He’s our lead elf for alternative energy issues. (The goal is to keep the cottage completely off the electrical grid.) The small wind turbine came last week. At first they mounted it on the garage roof, but that was a bad idea. Then they put it on a 10-foot pole in the back meadow. Better. Now it’s on a 20-foot pole in the back meadow – MUCH better. They are still experimenting with the exact location to take the best advantage of the winds. The other piece of the electric system will be a solar panel that should arrive next week.

Just writing all of this down makes me tired.

Aside from gardening and hanging with friends this weekend, I am going to try and make yogurt in my crockpot, thanks to a tip from Bookavore.

Don’t know what you’re going to do this weekend? I have a few suggestions:

Change a life. Buy a book for a boy in prison (thanks to all at Guys Lit Wire!)

Read Jezebel’s review of Wintergirls.

Read this jaw-dropping interview with A. S. Byatt in which she discusses her new book, The Children’s Book, a novel set in Edwardian England that examines the destructive side of creativity. (For the record, I usually like her books a lot and am looking forward to this one.) In the interview she says some rather stunning things, such as, “Yes, because I noticed that there’s a high rate of suicide among the children of children’s book writers.”

And “I think that most of the children’s writers live in the world that they’ve created, and their children are kind of phantoms that wander around the edge of it in the world, but actually the children’s writers are the children.”

In the first comment, I believe she is speaking only within the context of children’s writers from the Edwardian era, but the second comment seems more general. Any thoughts on this, gentle readers? (The book is available in the UK and Australia now, comes out in the States in October.) (And thanks to Judith in Australia for the info about this!)

That ought to hold you for a couple days.

ONE LAST THING!!! Do you have any secret ingredients you put in deviled eggs? If yes, please tell me what they are!

PS – GoogleLitTrips has a very nice feature on FEVER 1793. Check it out, teachers!

May 18, 2009

Halfway through the garden

If you’ve been following me on Facebook or Twitter the past week, you’ve noticed I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time in the garden. What’s up with that?

It’s my therapy.

After the insane amount of travel the past six months, my brain is fried and my soul is tattered. There was no earthly way I could dive back into writing. Many people take vacations when they get burnt out. Packing my suitcase to go away again was the LAST thing I wanted to do. So I pulled on my pink rubber boots, grabbed the shovel, and headed for the back yard.

The first order of business was the flower beds. Last year, they were home to both flowers and veggies, but this year all the beds we can see from the house are flower-based. (The beds we can’t see from the house get a little more sun, that’s why. And we have a short growing season, so we have to take advantage of whatever sun we get.)

It took about a week to get all the plants and seeds in. Our land is on top of a hill that is mostly glacial till. This means a large part of gardening means extracting large rocks and filling in the hole with imported dirt and/or homemade compost.

This is the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, of a boulder that was two feet tall and big enough around for me to just be able to get my arms around. Thankfully, it had the good grace to split into 5 manageable pieces when I finally removed all the surrounding dirt and smaller boulders. The extraction took two hours. My back is a little sore, but it was worth it!

This week I’ll be catching up on more correspondence and beginning to shift my brain back into writing mode. And – most importantly – I’ll be whipping the vegetable beds into shape. I am fretting because I am very late getting my peas in – that will be the first order of business.

A few book notes.

WINTERGIRLS made The New York Times Editor’s Choice List. As did CHARLES AND EMMA, by my friend Deb Heiligman.

Last Friday, we enjoyed the very last event on the WINTERGIRLS tour, at River’s End Bookshop in Oswego, NY. More than 100 people came out; one guy drove up from Philly, others came from Potsdam, Rochester, and Rome (NY, not Italy). It was a blast. Thankfully, the fire marshal did not stop in to count heads.

And finally, what do you think of The Happiness Project? Is it a load of manure or something worthwhile, useful, and life-altering?

May 14, 2009

Appreciating your goodness and harvesting rocks

Wow. You guys are incredible. I can’t begin to express how much your comments and emails about the New York Times discussion board kerfuffle meant to me. Thank you, thank you!!! I am blessed to have such kind readers and friends!

Because of the stress from the past six months of travel, and losing my Simon & Schuster editor (he was laid off last week – I am still too upset to blog about it rationally), and everything else, I’ve been mostly gardening this week. Despite the soothing effect of attacking the boulders in my garden with an iron bar, pick axe, and rototiller, I am still having nightmares about zombies. Go figure.

But the rocks are slowly yielding, seeds are being planted, and I have no doubt that the zombies will soon crawl back to where they belong.

Cottage Update!!!

While I’ve been wielding my pick axe, BH and his tribe of elves have been hard at work at the cottage.

This is the interior of the north end. The windows are up high because there will be bookshelves underneath them.

They have put the Magic Window in place in the south wall, and filled in the gaps around it. The glass guy is supposed to be here this weekend. He’ll install the clear, insulated, UV-filtering glass – can’t afford stained glass yet – someday!!

The insulation crew did their job this week, Coler Natural Insulation of Ionia, NY. Their spray-foam insulation is based, in part, on soybean oil and is a healthier choice for both me and the environment.

Insulation guy at work! The cottage is much, much quieter with the insulation in place. Next step, along with the glass being put in place, is for BH to put up the ceiling and interior walls.

Last but not least notes!

Gail Carson Levine has started blogging. Drop by and welcome her to the blogosphere!

TWISTED won the Eliot Rosewater Indiana High School Book Award, given by the Indiana Library Foundation (and named after one of Kurt Vonnegut’s characters – how cool is that!?) Thank you, Indiana!!

TWISTED was also nominated for the Kentucky Bluegrass Award. Check out the whole list!

Off to hit zombies with a shovel…