Home Again

24 hours of driving in three days to take my son back to college this last weekend sucks. I hope I'm done with all the car trips for awhile. I'm TIRED! And we've already been back to school for almost two weeks here. What is with that?!? Starting school on August 10th!!! I've lived in New Mexico for two decades now and I'm still not used to it. This California girl knows in her bones that school should not start until after Labor Day. So there.

At the moment I've got a tormenting question about Tracey Adams, agent extraordinaire in North Carolina.

For those of you who went to SCBWI LA, I cannot find *anywhere* in my notes what Tracey said about subbing to her. I know that she'll take submissions after a conference, but I don't know whether it's just a query letter or query with synopsis, or query with three chapters or what . . .

Anybody know and can drop me a line? I didn't make it to any of Tracey's break-out sessions, but I did get to talk to her Saturday night at the Silvery Moon party and she gave me her card!!! Does that mean anything? I hope, I hope, I hope! She did say she would remember me and we did get to talk about a couple of my projects (albeit very briefly).

But my problem now is HOW to sub to her exactly. THANKS for any help!!!

Books I read this Summer

And the list is PATHETICALLY small. I've been frustrated not to have more time to read. It's like if I want to read a book I can do that and still get everything done that's going on in my household or if I want to write a little, maybe I can do that. But my days are too packed to be able to read a book AND write both. Maybe someday when my boys don't take so much time, attention and worrying. Because, of course, I can't NOT worry, can I? Nope. Impossible.

1. ENCHANTED, INC. by Shanna Swendson (adult chick-lit fantasy)
2. I'M NOT JULIA ROBERTS (Laura Ruby, adult novel by a fab children's writer. She's awesome with this book, too!)
3. BURIED by Robin MacCready (YA suspense)
4. ANGEL MONSTER by Veronica Bennett (Stunning historical fiction about Mary Shelley who wrote "Frankenstein")
5. GOLDEN by Jennifer Barnes (YA paranormal)
6. THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET by Brian Selznick (self-explanatory!)
7. THE SUMMER SHERMAN LOVED ME (MG literary)
8. THE RUNAWAY PRINCESS by Kate Coombs (MG/YA fantasy)
9. I'D TELL YOU I LOVE YOU BUT THEN I'D HAVE TO KILL YOU by Ally Carter (ADORABLE YA chick-lit)
10. WHAT HAPPENED TO CASS MCBRIDE? by Gail Giles (nail-biting YA thriller)
11. STORY OF A GIRL by Sara Zarr (YA contemporary)
12. OUR TOWN by Thornton Wilder (read for a book group. Very interesting)
13. JOHNNY VOODOO by Dakota Lane (YA romance)
14. TANTALIZE by Cynthia Leitich Smith (YA vampire romance)
15. VANISHING ACTS by Jody Picoult (adult suspense)
16. GRIEF GIRL by Erin Vincent (YA memoir) I'll be posting about this next week when I get back in town. I met Erin in LA and this is an incredible book!

Only 16 books for three months! That's gotta be a record for the least amount of reading in my entire life!!! And I have at least 20 books waiting to be read. I ALWAYS have about 20 books waiting. And research. And school lessons to be prepared. And I keep hearing about great books out there and put them on hold at the library or buy them and the stack just keeps multiplying.

Confession: I'm supposed to be reading WAR AND PEACE by Leo Tolstoy this summer, too, for my book group's discussion in September. Ha, ha, ha! (Ssh! I rented the movie.)

Get a Free Book - before it's even published!

HarperCollins is giving away free Advanced Reading Editions (ARE) of books coming out this fall. Sign up with your email and snail mail (so they can send you the copy when they do the drawing) and then you get to write a review and answer questions about the book. The books offered look fabulous.
Especially check out my friend Alex Flinn's newest book, due out in October, BEASTLY!
What a cool idea! Don't miss out.
Here's the link: http://www.harperteen.com/firstlook/index.asp#books
Hope you're a winner!
Hope I am, too!
P. S. Sign up your teenagers and tell the teenagers you know. They can get a free ARE, too!

Ergh!

Drat, for some reason the You Tube link isn't working. I've tried repeatedly. Sorry and hmmph!

Just Google "Britain's Got Talent, six year old Connie singing" and you'll go right to it. Pretty amazing. She even made one of the judges cry.

You gotta see this!

This little girl is ADORABLE! Wow, what an amazing voice, timbre and pitch! She even gets Simon smiling.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En0A8KGMgq8

On pins and needles for news from seaheidi!

I'm also printing up my handouts for the SCBWI monthly schmooze tonight. Yep, I'm speaking - about synopses. For some strange - but very nice - reason I've been having a lot of luck with mine. I have, like, a 75% YES rate from agents on my query/synopsis who want to see my manuscript. Of course, getting a YES for representation is a whole 'nother problem - but one I WILL lick. For starters, I've figured out a couple problems that I'm going to revise before I do any more querying.

Pointers from my little presentation will be posted tomorrow! Right now I gotta get dressed and get out of here. It's a 45 minute drive to Albuquerque and I'm meeting a writer friend for dinner beforehand. And yet, I'm fixing dinner to leave for the family. Hey, how come it always works like that for us Moms? The only way we can get out of the house is to make sure everyone is fed and happy first. :-)

Juicy Bits

From the L.A. Conference that is . . .

Rubin Pfeffer, Publishing Director of Simon & Schuster:

"A great book is one which sends the reader off to find the next book."

Ellen Wittlinger, author of ParrotFish:

"Art (or books) can take you out of a small world and open the door to a larger world. Art can save you."

John Green, Author of Looking for Alaska:

"Writing is an act of translation as much as it is an act of creation. "
"The great challenge is to translate a feeling or emotion or experience into a story that lets the reader feel the same emotion and have the same experience. "
"Truth doesn't lie inside the facts, it lies inside the people of your story."

Emma Dryden, Vice-President and Publisher at McElderry Books

"If an editor doesn't feel the story and love it and have it resonate to them, then publishing the book would be a disservice to the author. "

Kate Schafer, Agent at Janklow & Nesbit

She wants a book that makes her feel like something big and wonderful is happening.
Word of the Day: Optimism

Linda Sue Park, Newbery winner for A Single Shard:

"Finish. The. Book." (borrowed from Jane Yolen)
"Write the book more than you talk about the book."

Dinah Stevenson, Publisher at Clarion

"No two people define well-written in the same way."

In other news, this afternoon the whole gang (my family that is) went to see Bourne Ultimatum. Loved it! Very thrilling. I love mysteries and thrillers, but I've been too chicken to try writing one myself even though all my books have suspense and danger built into them. But they're not considered *thriller* per se.

Speaking of movies, we finally rented "Bridge to Terabithia" a couple weeks ago and I ADORED it. I thought it was very true to the book and I cried at the end, just like I cry when I read the novel. It was very emotionally stirring and I thought Jess and Leslie were PERFECTLY cast. The movie haunted my thoughts for days. The ending was perfect, too.

Notes from Emma Dryden, McElderry Books

Emma was so smart and wise in her keynote address and in her workshop on writing the novel. I really liked her a lot.

Here are a few tidbits:

1. Write what you know, write what you feel, write what you care about.

2. Books are for the soul. Books are how we preserve our culture. (I never thought about books in quite that way before, but how true it is. We can see our culture change throughout the decades through the books we have and the books that have lasted.)

3. All writers are working their way through a darkness and into the light just like our young readers are trying to do as they grow up. (I'm realizing this more and more about myself the longer I write.)

My themes and premises change depending on what I'm going through at the moment or what I've gone through during my life in the past. Maybe I'm confessing more than I should! Ha! But a writer's theme is never written down as such in the pages of their manuscript or even spoken in concrete words by a character. And that *take away* value a reader gets from a book might be something completely different for another reader. But a good book, a meaningful, emotional story always has one.

Opening L.A. Keynote

First up: The incredible Mr. Walter Dean Myers. He was raised in a foster family. His father was a janitor and he told us that to this day his parents still don't quite *get* what he does for a living. Once he heard his mother on the phone talking to a friend and she told the friend, "Walter's job is typing stories". Ha!

The following part of is talk is where I really connected with Mr. Myers. My roommate, Kristin, and I had this very discussion on the plane the previous evening as we flew over so I was pretty wowed when Walter talked about it in the very first hour. It felt like he was talking to me.

He posed the question: Why am I - or why are you - a writer? Here are some typical assumptions from the outside world:
Is he a writer because he comes from a family of storytellers?: NO
Is it because he loves words?: NO
Is it because he loves to play with language?: NO

He's a writer because he loves to create and he loves building world that only he can envision and create and then try to bring it to life for others. Books always took me out of the boring real world and into a new, better, and more exciting place and that's the reason I wanted to be a writer, too, from the time I was very young. I think books are BETTER than real life.

Walter went on to discuss searching for the details of our *world* and our characters. Not only physical details, but emotional details. Details that explode the moment, that re-create a moment, that re-define a moment in a familiar but new way that connects you to your readers. Selecting the right detail is what we do every time we sit down to write. Find the details that convince your reader.

I'm off to search for the right details for my WIP, The Healing Spell. Happy searching to you, too!

SCBWI L.A. TOTALLY ROCKS!!!!

Gosh, why did it take me 11 years to get back to this conference? I am so psyched and so pumped and so filled with emotions and energy and inspiration I want to jump up and down and gush and cry.

Believe me, we all cried and sniffed and pulled out our tissues during so many moments throughout the whole weekend. And laughed and hugged and talked. More like yakked our heads off!

Of course, editors, agents, and keynote authors abounded the halls and dining tables, but one of the best parts of all, for me, was meeting such great new friends. Something I never expected.

Cool people I got to meet for the FIRST TIME after knowing them online:

seaheidi
bluemalibu
gneri
jo_no_anne
carriejones

Some awesome people I met and "friended" as soon as I got home:

griefgirl
pamm
lisa_schroeder
grizzlygirl1
kidlit_kim
kellyrfineman
kirkglaser

A totally cool, smart chick I got to meet again:

cynleitichsmith

And some other people I've known online that I was thrilled to meet in person in LA!

www.coleenparatore.com
www.lindasuepark.com
www.ellenwittlinger.com

Other writers I talked to during workshops and between keynote speeches like:

Carrie Watson
Rachel Rodriguez
Clark Leland Childers - who only gave me an email address and not a website, silly boy!
Vicki Thomas
Suzanne Taylor (who is gorgeous, expecting her first baby, and won a FREE conference next year!)

A few gals during the Historical Fiction writers group Sunday night:
Carole Estby Dagg
Lynda Pflueger
Sarah Wiseley Croley

MORE conference news the rest of the week so stay tuned!

SCBWI L.A. Here I come!

It feels surreal that I'm actually getting on a plane in two days. I went 11 years ago - only time ever - the year SCBWI celebrated it's 25th anniversary. About 400 people attended and it was fab of course.

I hear there are 800 + now that attend. I think I will feel like a mouse. I'm excited, nervous, terrified. Will I be brave enough to talk to people? Will I look like a dork? Will I know what to say without sounding like an idiot if I get close to an editor or agent - or one of those fantastic authors I worship? I need to go calm my fluttering heart.

Hey, please drop me a quick "Yes!" if you're going! Should we do a Blogspot/Live Journal gathering? Or will that amount to about 400 of us? Cool!!

Maybe we should wear name tags with our LJ personas. Hope to see/meet you there! Safe travels and *see* you in about a week!

Rattlesnake Rain!

Good stuff in the mailbox - my author copies of the August Cricket magazine with my story "Rattlesnake Rain"!!! It's the lead story, too - WOW! I'm thrilled. And it looks gorgeous, the illustrations are beautiful! It looks like they took the theme of my story and built the whole issue around it. Need I say, I'm excited?

Check out the issue from your library or bookstore - or if you subscribe already, enjoy! (The link shows the August issue)

Protect Your Work!

This is a great post by Diana Peterfreund on her blog. She gives out some wise and terrific writing advice - and her first book Secret Society Girl was pretty terrific, too. The sequel, Under the Rose, just came out last month.

I love her latest from Thursday, July 19th - Protect the Work! That's YOUR work - your writing, your time, your ideas, your voice, your style, your strengths, your passion.

Here's a snippet that really resonated with me because this is an issue that's been on my mind a LOT the past few months as I keep rewriting to please everyone else or to *fix* whatever is supposedly wrong with my manuscripts.


". . . Just because someone didn't like a particular aspect of your book doesn't mean you did it poorly. Nor does it mean it's your job to fix that aspect. It's their problem. I read on a blog the other day about a speech that writer James Rollins gave at Thrillerfest (pardon the hearsay, but the lesson is there, even in parable form): "He'd read the reviews for his first book and noticed that many of them commented on lack of characterization. So he was trying to work on the characterization. He submitted the manuscript to the editor, who saw some of the characterization attempts and asked him what he was doing. He told her, and she said that his great strength was making a book a page turner and to stop worrying about what the reviewers were finding wrong." That's protecting the work. Do what you do best. What one person hates about your work will be another person's favorite part. Don't try to be all things to all people, or you won't please anyone."


Read the whole post - it's wonderful.

As Promised

Repeated words in WIP's . . . only a week late. Hey, it's summer, right?

When I finished the revision into first person from third and I was going back to look at some of the scenes that ended up getting a LOT of reworking - and then ya get nervous thinking you've left in little typos and *loose* words - so of course I had to read it a third time JUST TO MAKE SURE - which I'm still not, but after awhile you just gotta mail it and move on to the next project . . .so ANYWAY, I started thinking about some words that began popping out at me over and over again. So I made a list and did the find/replace thing and discovered there were some words which stuck out like obnoxious gremlins.

Here they are:

1. Miserable - I kept worrying that I'd used this word verbosely, but it turned out I'd only used it 4 times in 80,000 words. I left them alone. Maybe I've just read this manuscript a dozen times too many so 4 turned into 48 in my mind.

2. Quickly - 41 times, revised down to 11

3. Suddenly - 22 times, revised down to 5

4. Instantly - 16 times, revised down to 5

5. Immediately - 11 times, revised down to 6

6. Stared - 28 times, revised down to 10 (My gosh, everybody plus the camels were staring at everything and everybody all the time! Enough already.)

7. Slowly - 18 times, revised down to 3. (My slowly's were actually slowing down the story)

8. Belly - 25 times. I got this down to 12 and patted myself on the belly - I mean back - because it IS a novel about belly dance, after all. But I also have 8 gut's and 12 stomach's and 7 abdomen's.

It was AMAZING how taking out the word usually ended up not just replacing it, but revising the entire sentence and paragraph into something tighter and smoother and more vivid. It was an interesting exercise, but surprising how long it took. But then NOTHING about revision is ever fast.

Formula: E.R.T. (estimated revision time) x 5 = A.T. (actual time)

Has anyone else ever done this, and what are your pet/favorite repeated words?

I've been underground for nearly four weeks because I suddenly decided to write my novel, Secret Rites of the Goddess in first person. If I'd known the work it would end up being I may not have even begun, but there it is. 120 hours later I'm doing the final check-through. And then I want to check out. Actually, I had this goal to revise two more novels this summer . . . silly me.

So the rewrite starts out innocently enough . . . I single space, paginate like a *real* book and make tons of changes along with all the *Jayden's*' to *I* and *hers* and *she's* to *me*. I also cut about 10 pages in extraneous verbage. I'm thinking, hey, this is pretty good. I like the voice better, I'm into the character more. And it only took me a week.

But another voice nags. "Go through it one more time. "
I obey.

I print out a hard copy this time instead of rewriting directly on my computer screen. I use bigger margins and bigger spaces so I can see and make corrections easier. I'm shocked as I'm reading and marking. My pages end up BLOODY! I mean, my red pencil is spilling its guts!

I rewrite the prose even more and I end up cutting 40 more pages of just plain verbage. Yes, 40! I guess I talk more on the page than I do in real life - although my three sons would majorly disagree. So in the end I've cut 10,000 words. It's now 80,000 words. I've put all the changes in and this round takes me 2.5 weeks of 8 hour days.

I'm burned out and couldn't face it Monday morning so I took a break and read two books yesterday and ran errands and took my son to the dentist. I needed that. Um, the books, not the dentist. The books helped me get out of *my* head and help me see the world again. I'm ready to finish today and mail this to a very patient, but highly interested agent.

Tomorrow . . . an interesting observation about repeated words.

8 Facts about me

I've been tagged by Barb O'Connor.

1. My favorite book growing up was The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge, but I don't particularly like horses. Good thing the book isn't really about horses!

2. I drink only fat-free milk with my pan of brownies. Ahem - I know they cancel each other out.

3. I wanted three daughers after having my three sons, but it never happened.

4. I have a golden Egyptian Goddess Selket sitting above my desk.

5. I know how to speak a little Bulgarian. Zdrasti!

6. I'm a part-time Mary Kay Beauty Consultant - but I don't do *parties* at all.

7. I've never been a morning person, but I get up at 5 a.m. to teach a class at church for teenagers.

8. My husband proposed to me with a plate of fortune cookies. Inside the last one was the saying: "Confucious say: Will you marry me?" He baked them himself.

Now for the fun part - I get to tag 8 other people!

Carrie Jones
Lauren Barnholdt
Melissa Wyatt
Alexandra Flinn
Janette Rallison
Mette Ivie Harrison
Mary Pearson
Julie Prince
Crissa Chappell

You're it!

Pioneer Woman!

Whew, boy! I'm leaving at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning for a wilderness pioneer re-enactment trek. Am I a sucker for punishment - or just blessed with the adventurous spirit as my pioneer forebears? Think I'll tell myself it's the latter.

We're going with a group of about 150 including the teenagers from church, pulling handcarts, and wearing 1850's dress. Thirty miles on foot with only a 5 gallon bucket with all our stuff. Yep, that's all under and outer and sleeping clothing, toiletries, jacket, rain poncho, flashlight, chapstick, sunscreen, first aid, T.P., towel, wet wipes, sunglasses, the works - in 1 five gallon bucket. With a lid, you've got an instant stool for the campfire. Another bag holds bedding, blanket, pillow.

We've been getting tons of rain this month which is really unusual so I'm praying for sunshine. As long as I'm praying I'll ask for NO 95 degree weather either.

I'll let you know if I survive the trip. I'm going as Ann Roberts Griffiths, my ancestor who left Wales in 1843 as a newlywed of 13 days with her husband Joseph and traveled from Liverpool all the way to New Orleans and then up the Mississippi to Illinois. From there she traveled 1300 miles across the western prairies to a new home.

I can't even imagine doing that NOW, let alone THEN. She's my hero. And we have practically the same name. My middle name is Anne and my maiden name is Griffiths so direct descendant here.

So back to packing. I just emailed three chapters and brand new detailed synopsis (written this weekend) off to another agent who requested my novel, Secret Rites of the Goddess. She even called my idea *brilliant* - so I'm just a teensy, weensy bit psyched!

Enchanted Fridays – Journey of a Novelist

I’m thrilled to interview one of the best YA authors out there and someone I've learned a lot from - Alex Flinn!

We're talking about DIVA today, but don't forget that Alex's next book BEASTLY comes out in October from HarperTeen, and sounds absolutely delicious!

KIMBERLEY: What was the seed for DIVA? What led you to write a novel about Caitlin after your book, BREATHING UNDERWATER?

ALEXANDRA: I got a lot of requests for a sequel to BU, and I really had no idea what I would possibly write about. "Nothing interesting is ever going to happen to Nick again," I explained to the kids who e-mailed, and I firmly believed that to be true.

A few people, not all girls, asked for a book about Caitlin, and I toyed with the idea of writing a book about her, after the book, going to performing arts school, because I had gone to a program like that my last two years of high school.

Then, I did a school visit where I was discussing abusive relationships with several girls who had been in them. "Why," I asked, "are so many girls in this school in abusive relationships." One girl replied, "It's a small school. If you broke up with your boyfriend, there'd be no one to date."

I thought that was sad that these girls thought they had so little going on in their lives, that they needed a boyfriend so badly that they'd accept one who hit them. And that sort of provided the spark of the idea for DIVA, to write a book about a girl pursuing her dreams and realizing that those dreams did not necessarily need to include a boy.

The opera part came a little bit from the fact that Caitlin was a singer in the first book and a lot from the fact that I like opera, and I think it is misunderstood by most young people (including my generation). People think opera is boring, but it actually has enough blood, guts, cheating spouses, and undying love to fill a season of Desperate Housewives and several Manga books. I used the opera, La Traviata, among others, as a parallel to Caitlin's and her mother's lives. La Traviata has been used in several modern movies, including Pretty Woman and Moulin Rouge, so I thought teens would get it.
KIMBERLEY: How much of Caitlin’s journey toward singing opera, performance arts school, auditions, and teachers experiences mirror your own?

ALEXANDRA: A lot of the little things that happened to Caitlin happened to me or my friends. The bigger things didn't. Caitlin's parents are not my parents, and I never knew a boy like Nick. Caitlin's best friend, Gigi, is an entirely fictional character. The only characters who were loosely based upon real people were Caitlin's friend, Sean, and some of the teachers (Rowena, for example, is sort of a hybrid of two of the three voice teachers with whom I studied). But the little day-to-day things that happened to her (including her terror that she would be asked to dance on the side of the stage) were taken from my own life. I think writing an autobiographical book would be very challenging, but making the book about Caitlin gave me the opportunity to take the story away from my own and just choose bits and pieces I liked about what happened in real life.

KIMBERLEY: Are Caitlin’s favorite operas and arias your favorites? If someone has never been to the opera before is there one that you would recommend they see first?

ALEXANDRA: La Traviata is a favorite of mine. Some of my other favorites are more complicated to explain within the context of a book, like The Tales of Hoffman, or they are not for Caitlin's voice part, like Cavelleria Rusticana, so I didn't include them. The first opera I ever saw live was Turandot, which is an excellent choice because it has a compelling plot, unlike some of Puccini's other opera's, which focus more on beautiful music. Probably the "chestnuts," by which I mean the popular operas which are performed constantly, are the best ones for a beginner. These include Carmen, Madama Butterfly, Pagliacci, La Boheme, and Rigoletto.

KIMBERLEY: One of the most emotionally powerful scenes in DIVA, to me, is on pages 90-94 when Caitlin runs into her old boyfriend Nick, an abusive boy that she finally found the courage to leave. Her feelings toward him are so real. On one level, Caitlin still feels in love with him and yet she keeps telling herself that she shouldn’t have these feelings and tries to remind herself of how badly he treated her. Unfortunately, the good memories of Nick are hard to shake and she’s torn and a bit miserable. The doubts and insecurities she expresses in her online journal ring very true. I think many girls and women can relate to those feelings. We’ve all had them at one time or another when we’ve dated boys/men who weren’t good for us, whether they were actually abusive or not. Were those scenes difficult to write?

ALEXANDRA: I volunteered at a battered women's shelter and worked at the State Attorney's Office with domestic violence cases, before I became an author. After I became an author, I talked about dating violence with a lot of teens at school visits. At most schools, there are at least one or two girls who tell me about their abusive relationships. A lot of the stuff Caitlin puts in her journal that day is stuff I talk about with kids at school visits -- the whole question of "Why doesn't she leave him?" I know well why girls don't leave, but I hope my books help them to consider why they should.

KIMBERLEY: The most surprising or unexpected thing that’s happened to you since publishing your novels.

ALEXANDRA: It's really surprising to me that kids read my books in school. When I was in school, we mostly read stuff like Charles Dickens or, if we were really lucky, George Orwell, but never anything more modern than that. It never occurred to me that anyone would assign Breathing Underwater or Fade to Black. I think the topics appeal to teachers, and the real-life situations appeal to students.

KIMBERLEY: What are you working on now?

ALEXANDRA: My upcoming novel, Beastly, comes out in October. It's a modern, urban version of Beauty and the Beast.

KIMBERLEY: Share with us your secret "Diva" wish!

ALEXANDRA: My editor always talks about "What will readers take away from the book?" So my wish is that girls who read the book because it has a pink cover, might still take something away from it, whether it is insight into their own relationships with boys or their mothers, or maybe a little interest in the performing arts.

A big THANK YOU to Alex for stopping by and giving us a peek into her life and inspiration. Applause, applause!!!

Go hang at her Live Journal: alixwrites.livejournal.com and her web site www.alexflinn.com!

Yay for me!

I did it - I typed "The End" five minutes ago!!!

I'm WIP-ped. Sigh. Why do I always feel a bit of a let-down at the end of a first draft? I usually cry during the last few pages, but I didn't for this novel. Maybe because the phone kept ringing all day! It's hard to ignore your kids though - especially when they've got the car. Maybe it's also because I've been trying to get to the end for so long I was just too frustrated to *feel* anything. There have been so many interruptions. Like yesterday I had to stop drafting and go over the editor's notes on my story coming out in August in Cricket magazine and send it back with some rewrites so I ended up not finishing the novel like I'd hoped after all.

So The Death of Pharaoh Tutankhamun ended at 109,891 words. Time to get out the scissors. Or a hatchet. But not for a few weeks. On Monday I hit a rewrite on another book project for an interested agent.

Still, I should celebrate, right? I'm ready to kick back with a movie and some cookies. Warm, fresh chocolate chip anyone?

Chain me to my desk!

My Enchanted Fridays Interview is suspended for a week due to a frantic past couple of weeks of writing. Yes, I've actually been writing again and what's that up ahead? Can it be that there's LIGHT at the end of this arduous, black, winding, stumbling block filled tunnel? After nearly a year of plowing through research, re-plowing, fretting, moaning and groaning and gnashing of teeth, stops and starts, head-banging days, and mostly utter terror that *this* is the book that I just cannot finish, oh my gosh! I think I'm actually going to type THE END to the first draft of The Murder of Pharaoh Tutankhamun today. (Maybe at midnight, but still.) Please, don't let anything happen to stop me. Bar the doors. Lock the windows. Unplug the phone. Get off the Internet! What's that? No, please, not the Interneeeeeeeet!!!

Um, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

I'll let you know if I'm still breathing tomorrow morning.

Enchanted Fridays – Journey of a Novelist

I’m thrilled to interview one of my favorite authors this enchanting morning—Barbara O’Connor!!!

Barbara and I have one of those "old-fashioned" friendships –like before the telephone was invented and visiting each other was pure fantasy for two buddies living on opposite sides of the country. We discovered each other on a writer’s chat group, started emailing and haven’t stopped—and it's been ten years!!!! Friendship through the written word—I’d say that’s perfect for two writers.

Barbara O'Connor

HOW TO STEAL A DOG

Frances Foster Books, FSG, 2007

Barb’s web site: www.barboconnor.com

Visit her new blog, too! http://greetings-from-nowhere.blogspot.com/

Kimberley: How did you get the idea for HOW TO STEAL A DOG?

Barbara: This story started with a sign posted in a garden center near my home:

Still Searching for Willy.

No Questions Asked.

A hefty reward was being offered for the return of the little dog described as “very shy." I left that garden center with two pots of geraniums in the trunk of my car and Willy on my mind. He stayed there for a long time and wouldn’t go away. And then one day, as with most of my books, a title popped into my head: How to Steal a Dog

I tried and tried to think of a story to go with the title, but, as usual, that didn’t work. I always have to wait and let the story come to me. I had almost given up hope when the character of Georgina Hayes appeared in my imagination, along with the first sentence of the book:

“The day I decided to steal a dog as the same day my best friend, Luanne Godfrey, found out I lived in a car.”

And then I was off and running.

Kimberley: Do you have any personal experience with homelessness? How did you go about doing the research – or maybe you just have this brilliant imagination. Which I totally do not doubt!

Barbara: I just have a brilliant imagination. (Kidding, of course.) Thankfully, I have no personal experience with homelessness. And why Georgina presented herself to me as homeless is a mystery. As for research, I confess that I did the research after I wrote the story.

Flannery O’Connor once said, “We don’t need to be immersed in experience, we just need to contemplate it.”

So that’s what I did. As I wrote Georgina’s story, I transported myself into that car where she lived. I imagined how it looked, how it smelled, how she would sleep, where she would keep her stuff, what she would see outside her window.

But I knew that it would be important to portray her situation sensitively and realistically. I needed to research, to educate myself about the reality of homelessness, and, in particular, rural homelessness. So I read everything I could get my hands on about rural homelessness, primarily from government agencies, such as the National Coalition for the Homeless and the Rural Poverty Research Center.

Kimberley: Love Georgina’s notebook ( I have a love affair myself with the color purple.) Was the notebook part of the book’s initial conception, or did it come later? We see her entire character arc through that notebook.

Barbara: Glad you like the notebook! I love using those sorts of devices to portray the feelings of a character. I used postcards in MOONPIE AND IVY and drawings in TAKING CARE OF MOSES. Georgina’s notebook was an effective way to show her evolving feelings about what she had done.

Kimberley: What was the best/worst part of writing HOW TO STEAL A DOG?

Barbara: The best part was crawling into Georgina’s head and actually stealing a dog. That was fun! The worst part was trying to figure out how to get her out of her predicament and trying to be realistic about her homelessness, yet still sensitive to the issue.

Kimberley: Where did the characters of Carmella and Mookie come from? (For those who haven’t read the book yet, Carmella is the owner of the stolen dog and Mookie is a homeless man full of down to earth wisdom and wit.) They’re so brilliant and quirky, and yet very real. Do you have this secret stash of fabulous characters hidden in your basement?

Barbara: Oh how I wish I had that secret stash! Carmella came purely from my imagination, but Mookie was inspired by a real person. My mother lives in an assisted living facility down in South Carolina. There was a wonderful old man who lives there – named Mookie! He sits out front all day long so he can smoke. When he told me his name, I knew I had to use him in a book. (His real name is Green Hill, Junior. That’s a pretty cool name, too.)

Kimberley: Tell us about your journey to publication. Give us the low-down on the agent/editor hunt and where were you when you got THE CALL that somebody wanted to publish your book?

Barbara: I started my career with biographies for children, but since my heart is with fiction, I’ll tell you about that journey. I actually got pretty lucky. I was in a writers group with Leslie Guccione, an author who, at the time, was writing a series for Scholastic. She offered to send my manuscript to her editor, Ann Reit. Ann liked the manuscript (Beethoven in Paradise) and asked if I’d be willing to work with her on revisions. Of course I said yes! We worked together on it for several months and then Ann decided it just wasn’t right for her. Talk about disappointing! But she offered to connect me with an agent, which, as you know, was a big favor and one which I was extremely grateful for. The agent was Barbara Markowitz. Barbara and I were a perfect match and are still together. Barbara ultimately sold BEETHOVEN IN PARADISE to Frances Foster at Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

I remember exactly the moment I got THE CALL. I was on vacation with my husband’s family in Florida. I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited.

Kimberley: Any advice for aspiring writers?

Barbara: Two things come to mind first for me with regard to aspiring writers. First, focus on finding your unique writing voice and write something different and fresh. You’ve got to stand out from the pack in such a competitive business. Second, don’t give up. Publishing requires lots of perseverance.

Kimberley: What are you working on now? Any books coming down the pipeline?

Barbara: I just finished the copyedits for my next novel, due out in the spring of 2008. It’s called GREETINGS FROM NOWHERE. This was a fun book for me because I was ready to challenge myself and try a multiple viewpoint story. This one has four points of view and was much harder than I had anticipated. Hopefully, I pulled it off. Time will tell, I guess.

Kimberley: The most surprising or unexpected thing that has happened to you since getting published.

Barbara: I wasn’t prepared for how much marketing I would have to do. I always figured you just write a book and get it published and that’s it. Ha! Little did I know I’d have to do mailings and prepare brochures and speak at conferences and all those things that I’m not particularly good at and don’t particularly enjoy.

Kimberley: What is your own secret wish (goal) for your life or writing?

Barbara: I’d love to reach a level of success where I could earn enough from royalties to not be so dependent on school visits for income. That would be cool! (Although I do enjoy going to schools a lot.) And name recognition would be pretty groovy.

Kimberley: My own secret wish is to meet you someday, but I won’t, um, steal a dog to buy my airplane ticket, okay? Thank you so much for being with us today, Barbara – and please, don’t stop writing!!! You have more fans than you know.

Barbara’s web site: www.barboconnor.com

Visit her new blog, too! http://greetings-from-nowhere.blogspot.com/