#TSOLG Paperback Palooza: Five Random Questions with Tracey Baptiste

Tracey, knee deep in Summer and sand.

To celebrate the paperback release of THE SUMMER OF LETTING GO on March 31st, I'm super excited to announce that I am hosting a reading and writing (!!) Author Palooza on April 29th at the Huntington Public Library.

Several other amazing kidlit, MG and YA book authors will be joining me for the fun and hands-on writers workshop, and I thought it would be nice to get to know them -- and me -- a little in the weeks leading up to the event. 

You may read all about the event HERE on the facebook event page, and even if you can't come to the event live, please  join the page and follow the fun.


So, on to the getting-to-know-them part of the festivities... 

I've asked each guest author to share their favorite piece of writing advice (or quotes that have helped or inspired them) as well as to answer five random questions from a big list I provided. Many of their answers are quite entertaining! You'll see! 

So, over the next several weeks, I will share their answers (and may even chime in with my own answer -- or comment -- to the occasional question in pink ...)

Up today, guest author Tracey Baptiste, author of the forthcoming THE JUMBIES, on sale April 28th!! 

With its able and gutsy heroine, lyrical narration, and inventive twist on the classic Haitian folktale “The Magic Orange Tree,” The Jumbies will be a favorite of fans of Breadcrumbs, A Tale Dark and Grimm, and Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. 

Don't know what a Jumbie is? Here's a field guide. 

You can read all about Tracey HERE. 


I asked Tracy to share one of her favorite quotes about writing and I must say, I love it:

One of my favorite writing quotes is really about doing research, and it’s from a book I reread often, On Writing Well by William Zinsser: 

“If your mother says she loves you, find a second source.” It’s based on an old newspaper adage about double-checking facts, something that’s great to keep in mind when I write and edit nonfiction.

Now on to Five Random Questions with Tracey Baptiste... 

1. When was your first kiss? 

I’m sorry to tell you that my first real kiss was when I was 13, which is even more frightening when I think about my daughter fast approaching 13. It was at a party that I went to with my cousin (also 13) in a small village in south Trinidad. On weekends, people would throw parties and they were innocent enough that our parents would let us go for a few hours. Older kids could stay later, but my cousin and I had to leave around 10. Anyway, I started dancing with a boy, and he kissed me. I was surprised, and also trapped because the back of my shirt was caught on something. I eventually ripped away and ruined a perfectly good shirt. It wasn’t that I minded him kissing me. He and I dated for a bit after, but I was just surprised and uncomfortable, and sort of grumpy because I really liked that shirt.

              

2.  Got any nicknames? 

My mom used to call me Nat, short for Natalie, my middle name. My first name was supposed to be Natalie, but my dad was the one who went to do my birth certificate (they didn’t do them in the hospital with both parents present in Trinidad. Someone had to go to the Registrar’s office and fill out the forms) and when he did, he gave me a name similar to my two older cousins that ended in “y” and had a hyphenated “Ann.” So my real name is actually Tracey-Ann, just like my cousins Debby-Ann and Shelly-Ann. Anyway, my mother refused to call me Tracey-Ann, and called me Nat. Even when she called me by my first name she never used the Ann. When I got married, I officially dropped it.

3. What's the grossest thing you ever ate?

I must admit, I'm having a bit of a hard time, cutting and pasting Tracey's answer here. . . *holds nose* Here goes:

I think a lot of people would find blood pudding super gross, but I grew up eating it, and it’s delicious. It’s literally pig blood in pig intestines. So yeah, gross, but also a delicacy in Ireland and in Trinidad, where I grew up. I like it warm on freshly-baked bread with a little pepper sauce on it. Now I’m hungry. Thanks.

*gags* (No, seriously)

4. What did you want to be when you grew up?

Amazingly, I always wanted to be a writer. You’d think I would have gotten started sooner with my career since I never really deviated from the plan, but here we are.

5. If your superpower wasn't writing, what other superpower would you choose?

I always wished I had the power of mind control, specifically to control what people see. As a small, brown-skinned girl, I always felt intimidated, especially after I moved to the United States at the age of fifteen. I noticed very quickly that people who were brown were treated differently from people who were white, and I wished that in some situations, I could make people see me as a different person just to see how the reaction would change. 

So, there you have it. . .  a few random things about author Tracey Baptiste, including that last poignant one. 

Hope you'll check out all Tracey's books and look for her forthcoming THE JUMBIES, and if you're anywhere local, that you'll join us at the Huntington Public Library on April 19th for the reading, book signing and, if you're a tween or teen writer, the hands-on writers workshop with all these fabulous authors! 

Registration begins April 6th! 

And don't forget to preorder THE JUMBIES and a paperback copy of THE SUMMER OF LETTING GO. 

xox gae

Friday Feedback: Ending it All (or at least a Chapter or three. . . )

Happy Friday, campers!!!!

Do the extra !!!s help?

If I'm having a hard time sounding authentic and enthusiastic, well, the truth is, I'm a bit melancholy that our penultimate Friday Feedback is already here.

WTF?!

Teachers Write goes too fast!

Summer goes too fast!

Don't let me get started on all the rest of things that are blurring on by in a heartbeat. . .

Alas. Here we are, the 8th of August with one week to go, so it seems fitting to talk about endings. So, I've asked guest author, Will Ritter, to chat with you all about just that. Or his take on that, which is how to write a good Chapter ending.

This is Will, making copy edits to a mss.

Will is the fun and quirky author of the forthcoming debut novel, Jackaby, (from MY esteemed editor, Elise Howard at the amazing Algonquin YR).

Jackaby is described as: "Doctor Who meets Sherlock" and features a detective of the paranormal as seen through the eyes of his adventurous and intelligent assistant in a tale brimming with cheeky humor and a dose of the macabre.

CHEEKY HUMOR and MACABRE? I'm in! You?

Anyway,

That is one awesome cover...

Jackaby has been getting rave advance reviews, and, as always, Will will be spending a good deal of time here today, so please check it out when it releases NEXT MONTH!

So, without further ado, here's Will (and me chiming in once in red) with Friday Feedback:

As the school year approaches and Teachers Write draws toward an end, I’m thrilled to be here to talk about endings. I’m not going to devote much time to THE end. THE end is important, but in a way it’s also easier to write. Chapter endings, I’ve found, are much trickier.

Building up to THE end takes a lot of work, but as I approach, I generally find my direction is pretty clear. After all, I’ve been planning it and pushing toward it for the entire book. It’s a lot like wrapping up the end of the school year—finish everything and then leave them with something to think about. Chapter endings are more like wrapping up a unit or a single lesson. They need to make the preceding work feel productive, and set the stage for what’s to come. They need closure and continuity.

A successful chapter ending occurs at a natural threshold. Shifts in location, time, or emotion are all common places to draw that line—but my favorite ones also set one foot over the threshold, enticing readers to step through and see what lies beyond. 
Sorry to butt in, but I love this: "... my favorite ones also set one foot over the threshold..." I mean, I love that. Because it gives you a perfect image in your brain. So, yes, do that! Do that when you end your chapters!
I don’t worry too much about chapter size, although I tend toward shorter chapters as a preference (a pacing choice common in YA). I just try to end each chapter on a strong emotional beat, in a way that will pull readers forward. I want each ending to feel solid, but I don’t want everything to be resolved too neatly. Readers shouldn’t be fully satisfied until the final page.

There are three ways chapter endings go for me. (1) The nature of the chapter pushes things forward on its own, and all I need to do is tack on a nice clincher that reminds readers of what made the chapter exciting. (2) Other times, I’m in an emotional lull, waiting for the fun stuff in the next chapter. In those instances, I often tuck in something portentous like “I told myself not to worry—everything would be okay. I would not discover how wrong I was until morning.” (3) On rare occasions, however, I find I’m in a lull before a lull. When that happens, there’s no manner of clever wording that can make a chapter ending work. I need to edit out the fluff or just rewrite to keep up the pace.

In the following scene from my current WIP, my characters receive some disquieting news from a policeman, and then go to investigate it (a very archetypical detective-fiction plot point). I had originally taken time for the characters to put on their coats, and written some nice period imagery about a carriage ride to the scene. Blegh. Dreadful. I can work in those details in ways that don’t kill the timing. Instead, I hacked away the florid crap and ended on the stronger beat. I want my reader to feel the bubbling urge to follow me into the next chapter, just as my leads want to follow their liaison to the crime scene. What do you think? Does it draw you along, or does it still fall flat?

* * *

“I’m not here to arrest you this time. I’m here to…” Marlowe took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “I’m here to enlist your services.”

Jackaby raised an eyebrow. “What did you say was the manner of Mrs. Cambridge’s death?”

“Call it unnatural causes,” said Marlowe. The corners of my employer’s mouth twitched upwards. Marlowe rolled his eyes and nodded obliquely toward the street. “Just hurry up. I’ve got a driver waiting.” He stamped off down the front step, not bothering to ask if we would be right behind.

* * *

So here's your chance. Share an excerpt in the comments that's a chapter ending (or a section ending...) and see if it leaves us wanting more.

And please be respectful and remember the RULES:

• what works, first. 
• If something doesn't, why not? 
• And no more than 3 - 5 paragraphs, the latter if short! 

Thanks for being here, Will! Congrats on Jackaby's imminent arrival!!!

Will & gae

Friday Feedback: A True Story from Avi . . . and Character-Building.

So, as many of you know, I had a BIG birthday this week.

And what better birthday week present than to have an author participate here on my blog whose work I not only admire, but also read aloud to my own boys when they were younger!

Talk about the perks of becoming a published writer...

When Avi offered to guest host a Friday Feedback, I thought (omg! omg!) what to ask him to talk about?!?! I scrolled through his blog -- which is rich with wonderful writing information, by the way) and came across a version of this post he shares below here on Character Building. It so resonated with me, that I asked if we could head in that direction.
This was weeks ago, and, so, I was particularly excited when, last Friday, the issue came up in the comments about a character describing himself by looking in the mirror.

Like starting a story with the weather or a character waking up from a dream, it is, of course, a "common-wisdom-says" no-no to have a character describe him or her self using this technique. As I wrote in the comments, however, I have mixed feelings about this hard rule against (and most hard and fast rules for or against anything). I do believe there are times when a character -- especially a teen girl -- will look at her image in the mirror and react to what she (or she) sees, and that this action, and its reveal (the character's subjective perspective on what she sees), is right and organic for the story.

From The Summer of Letting Go.
My editor left it in, so I assume she was okay with it too.

It did get me thinking again about how hard it is to describe a character well, to figure out the right amount of description and make it occur organically.

When it comes to a character's physical description:

• How much is good and needed? 

• How much should a writer leave to the reader to fill in? And, 

• Even if you don't describe your character to a great degree in your story, do you, the writer, need to know what he or she looks like in detail, in order for that character to feel authentic and come alive on the page?

Here to talk more about this is the author of more amazing books than I can count, including in no particular order, the Newbery, and other award, winning winning Crispin: The Cross of Lead, Poppy, Nothing But the Truth, and The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, as well as the forthcoming Catch You Later, Traitor, March 2015 from Algonquin Young Readers. You'll learn more about the story below in his post!

As always, I hope you will pick up the book when it comes out and share it with your students in your classroom!

So, without further ado, here's Avi.

Here is a true story.

Of all my books, Bright Shadow, took the longest to write—fourteen years.  

Of course, I did not work on it continually all those years, but picked up, put it down, until, finally, it was done.  I was rather obsessed with it, a medieval fantasy, about a girl who is given—without her knowing it—five wishes.  In the text, there is very little physical description of the girl. 

A few months prior to the publication of the book, I dropped into my editor’s office. “So glad you came by. We just got the art for the cover of Bright Shadow.”  He held it up. I looked at it.  My instantaneous thought was, That’s not her nose.

I am not aware that I ever thought of her nose before—nor did that nose have any consequence for the story-- but unconsciously, I must have pictured her because, the artist had not depicted her nose as I had imagined it. 

Did I say anything to my editor? No.  I felt silly. But I do believe that knowing—albeit unconsciously—what my character looked like, helped me write that book.

I thought about this because my next book, Catch You Later, Traitor, will be published early next year. It is, as they say, in production.  The story is told by Pete, in the first person. Just recently, I received this note from my editor’s assistant:

“One more thing: Our art director has asked me for a physical description of Pete, to give to the jacket illustrator. I’m looking through the manuscript and not finding anything too specific. Would you mind letting me know how you picture Pete?”

In other words, though this book has been in my head—and on paper--for something like eight years, actively working on it for four years, only then was I required to think (consciously) what my lead character looks like.

I quickly wrote back (note: the story is set in 1951):

“He’s 12 years old, just about to go into his growth spurt. (His best friend, Kat, the girl in the story, is taller than he is.) But at the moment, his is youthful looking, not particularly adolescent. Rather innocent, in fact, though on the edge of growing older. Stands tall. Wants to be tall. No slouch. Wishes his voice was lower. I’d bet his hands seem a little big, likewise feet, but not his ears. Nose, blunt, round.  Round cheeks. His eyes are dark and that is the most intense aspect about him. He looks at things, people. Curious. He will be tall, (taller than his father) and on the slim side, long faced. He would like to look like a lean, hard faced movie detective…but won’t, ever. Black hair. Curly. Not particularly neat in dress or hair. Wears Converse sneakers. Lumpy vest sweaters his grandmother knits. Collared shirts. No t-shirts to school. Might have a denim Eisenhower jacket. There is nothing athletic about him—but he enjoys playing sports, punch ball, dodge ball, stoop ball—city sports. He’s a reader, but does not wear eyeglasses. There are not many laughs in the book, but I bet he has a good grin, and he likes jokes. When he is worried, it is obvious.”

 

Voila! The beautiful cover for Catch You Later, Traitor,
coming March 2015 from Algonquin YR.

My point is this: knowing your character outside your book will help you write about him—or her—inside the book.  

So, given that it's Friday Feedback, let's think and post about character today: Either a literal moment of character description that you're working with or trying to get right, or a section where you're hoping your outside knowledge of your character's physicality will help you get the inside passage right. See, as you read Avi's excerpt, if you can feel how his knowing his character physically helped him to develop the character's personality.

And, please remember the RULES: What works first, what doesn't if something doesn't, and keep it short, please. NO MORE than 5 paragraphs if short, or 3 paras. if they are long. 

My huge thanks to Avi for being here. 

Now, the first few paragraphs from Catch You Later, Traitor. Enjoy!

Catch You Later, Traitor

CHAPTER 1

The way I see it, I stopped being a kid on April 12, 1951.

That afternoon we were playing our regular afternoon recess punch ball game out in the schoolyard. I was about to smack the ball when Big Toby, who always played catcher, muttered, “Hey, Pete, that true about your parents?”

I looked over my shoulder. “What?”

“Is what Donavan said about your parents true?”

I stared at him as if he had walked off a flying saucer. Why would Mr. Donavan--our seventh grade teacher--say anything about my parents? And how come I hadn’t heard?

“Come on, Collison,” Hank Sibley yelled at me. He was near second base, which was someone’s sweater. “Stop gabbing. Recess almost up.”

He blew a huge bubble with his gum that popped as I punched a shot inside third.

Kat, the only girl playing, raced home.

Our schoolyard was cement, which meant if you slid home, you’d peel off your skin. So no sliding allowed. Anyway, Kat stomped on her geography text—our home plate--and yelled “Dodgers win!” well before the ball was thrown home.

Grinning, I stood on first base--my English reader. Next moment the school bell clanged. Recess over, we grabbed our stuff and headed back to class.

“Kicky hit,” Kat said to me.

Kat’s real name was Katherine Boyer. Some people considered her a tomboy. I couldn’t have cared less. She and I had been sitting next to each other ever since fourth grade. In fact, we did most things together—school, homework, movies, radio and TV. Her mother once said we were back and forth between apartments so much, it was hard to know who lived where. Kat was like the other half of my brain.

“Thanks,” I said, but Big Toby’s question—“that true about your parents?”—kept bouncing ‘round my head like a steel marble in a lit-up pinball machine.

We poured into Brooklyn’s Public School Number 10. The old brick building had no music room, no art room, no library, and no gym. All the same, it stank like a locker room. 

________________________  

- gae & Avi

Friday Feedback: Pushing Your Idea to New Heights

With Huntley Fitzpatrick at
Eight Cousins Books
where we googley-eyed a lot of covers. 

Hey all! I had an amazing time at Eight Cousins Books on the Cape, and Bunch of Grapes on Martha's Vineyard last weekend, and somehow a whole 'nother week has gone by. . .

This week, I finally finished my rewrite/overhaul of my manuscript. Now, I've started reading through it trying to figure out if it's good or if it's total crap.

As I've said before, yes, the chasm of not-knowing is that wide. We get too close to the point where only time, and a few sets of more objective eyes, will start to tell.

As I was finishing up the revision this week, I got this great post from this week's guest author/feedbacker, Nova Ren Suma. Honestly, it took my breath away a bit, and made me want to go back in, and try to push my writing more, once again. A thousand sighs when that happens, but, man, do I learn a lot from other authors.

Lovely and pensive Nova Ren.

So, if you don't know Nova Ren Suma for some reason, you should. She is the author of the YA novels Imaginary Girls and 17 & Gone. We're not only literary agency "sisters" both with Dystal & Goderich, but we're publishing house sisters now, too: her new novel, TheWalls Around Us, comes out March 2015 from Algonquin YR. Already, I'm hearing some pretty awesome buzz around it. So please add her earlier books, and especially WALLS to your must-read lists! 

So, here you go, you lucky ducks. Here's Nova:

Last week you got some great advice here on Friday Feedback on beginnings, and now I’m here to trip you up and ask, So you have an awesome first few pages… Great! But what comes next?

Some of us (not naming names… though her initials are NRS) have been known to spend weeks, even months, polishing up that novel opening, getting it just so and just right, only to discover that we’ve lost momentum and aren’t exactly sure where our story should go next. This is often the moment when it feels so easy to give up… To set the novel aside… To see what’s on TV or who’s saying what on Twitter…

But wait.

Maybe what you need to do is push your idea to new heights—and by that I mean, sometimes the most excitement moments of writing come when you get creative and do something shocking. When you raise the stakes.

Here’s an example: 

When I was writing the very first exploratory draft of my novel Imaginary Girls, all I knew at first was that it would start with two sisters at a party at a reservoir in the middle of the night. I had a lot of dramatic happenings I knew would threaten their close relationship, but there wasn’t any BIG, WORTHY moment coming at them head-on that would shake things up.

I was writing a scene in which the older sister, Ruby, dared the young sister, Chloe, to swim across the reservoir in the night.

I lost myself when Chloe was swimming. There was backstory I wanted to insert. There was scene description I got carried away with writing. There were memories. There were pieces to Chloe’s character that I wanted to subtly introduce. There was a lot, and for quite a while she was treading water while I wrote my way through them.

Then it occurred to me: Wouldn’t this scene be way more interesting if something active HAPPENED, like, right now?

But what?

Something mysterious.

Something shocking.

Something that would turn this scene—and this story—on its head.

That’s how, on a whim, I decided to have Chloe swim into a dead body.

Everything changed about the story from that moment, through this sudden experiment. It opened new doors. It gave new possibilities. It offered mystery. And it gave me the chance to really raise the stakes and make some exciting, promising story choices.

So here’s my advice to you when you find yourself treading water in your story, not sure where to go next:

• ·       Make something active happen to throw your character off-course
• ·       Raise the stakes of your story
• ·      Give yourself the opportunity to make interesting choices
• ·       Surprise your character and surprise your readers…
• ·       And you may just surprise yourself

If you want to see what happened with that dead body in the water, you can go read the first chapter of ImaginaryGirls, which was published in 2011. But if you want to see me working through that very same problem in a brand-new piece of fiction, because it's Friday Feedback, now you have your chance.

Here’s an excerpt from a project I’m working on in which I decided to raise the stakes in a scene—possibly with a fantastical twist—and then see where that might take me.

So what do you think? Don’t forget the rules: What works? What doesn't, if something doesn't? And… imagining this comes some ways into the story, would this keep you reading? 

(And, when you're posting your excerpts please remember NO MORE THAN 5 paragraphs if they're short, no more than 3 paragraphs if they're long!)

   

I hand over my set of keys, and it’s when my cousin Misha is walking away, descending the rows of bleachers, that I discover this thought inside me. It’s a bad, unbuttoned thought. I want something to keep her from getting to the car.

I guess I simply want Misha to stumble on the bleachers and drop my keys so I can take them back, maybe fall in the dirt and mess up her cheer uniform. That’s not what happens.

It’s a coincidence, I decide, that the wind comes right then. But is it?

A wild, whipping howl grows in force and slams straight into the bleachers, jolting the entire structure. The weather reports had given an all-clear before the game, but they must’ve gotten it wrong. A storm must have been coming, because it’s roaring all around us now. It’s directly overhead.

There’s a burst of rain, gushing down on us and then leaving us dry as quickly as it came, but that’s nothing. It’s the continued battering of wind. The wind that overtakes the field behind the high school, threatening to raise the bleachers from the ground and transport them with us clinging into Lake Erie.

The wind swirls, and I swear it seems to be centering itself around my cousin in her dark red cheer skirt. It’s like an animal, the way it comes for her. Like it wants to devour her.

I watch as she’s taken, lifted from the bleachers into the swirling sky.

She’s forced up from the bottom as if her teammates have her feet, but there are no teammates to spot her and there’s nothing under her feet. She climbs into the air, held by nothing, her arms out grabbing nothing, the nothing flapping and slapping at her clothes, trouncing her hair.

The bleachers are far below her now, the flashing 0 of the home team’s score at level with her bright blond head. She writhes in the wind, and then straightens. She’s suspended, her body frozen, her eyes on me.

I find myself moving toward her, my arms reaching up and out for her, but my fingers can only graze the toe of one white sneaker. Then they can’t even latch on to that, because she’s lifted beyond the reach of my fingers, into the rattling, shuddering roar at the heart of the windstorm.

I’ve never seen anything like this before. Or wait—have I?

I have. 
_____

Nova and I will both be here around 11 EST this morning, and not before, so please don't worry if we're not here until then.
And, as for the ARC drawing last week for Amy's A Matter of Heart, I forgot (see, finishing manuscript), so I promise, I'll go back and do it this week (and announce it midweek!).  Happy writing!

- Nova & gae

Good on Paper, Reading for Life, and Catching Up

one fraction of the photos we took to get one good one...

People don't believe me, or think I'm being humble or something, when I try to explain that I'm just a mediocre, often-lazy, average human, wasting tons of precious time, who simply knows how to make herself look good on screen or on paper.

But, it's the truth, yo. I'm no fool. I know how to make myself look good "on paper." I know how to market myself, to sound busy and productive, and certainly how to take four thousand photos to get one good one (and then retouch that one several times to hide all the shadows and folds).

In the spirit of disclosure, now you know.

Really what I do daily, is long to be better and do more. To eat less and healthier, to get more exercise, and, mostly, to waste far less time. Life is short and I am getting rapidly older. I want to add more to this world.

And yet I often find myself distracted. Lazy. Not making the most of each day.

Not even really knowing how.

So when a chance to participate in an organization called Reading for Life basically fell into my lap, I jumped on it. I mean, how hard is it to jump at what's placed there? All I had to do was pop on my computer for a Skype visit and hang out with some kids who had read my book. Sure, maybe those kids have somewhat troubled pasts, when I have led a mostly-charmed life. So maybe I felt a twinge of nerves about how they might relate to me and my mostly unedgy, tween-safe THE PULL OF GRAVITY.

But, what was the worst that could happen? They'd be bored and jaded and hate me, and we'd spend a few awkward moments on Skype.

Of course, that's not what happened at all. Instead, we spent an amazing 45 minutes or so on Skype, and I hung up feeling lucky and more charmed for having the opportunity to use my book and newly-cultivated writer's life, to make a connection with some really-deserving kids.

A mutual affection society was born and I started doing what I could to spread the word of Reading for Life.

Fast forward to this May, when I will head out to South Bend, to spend some real, quality, one-on-one time with these kids, as well as with Alesha Seroczynski, the amazing founder and director of this organization, IN PERSON.

RFL, making ME look good on paper...

Although I'm not the best traveler (read, adult-onset fear of flying) I am SO looking forward to this visit, including a 5/20 appearance at the B&N University Park Mall at Mishiwaska, which I'm hoping may be full of some of the wonderful Nerdy Book Club peeps from that pocket of the US, and an all-day visit to North High School in Napanee, IN with Kelly Vorhis and her "kids," all in all another whirlwind visit to that beautiful section of the US.

Because, yeah, I just got back from there. A whirlwind two days at the Fox Cities Book Festival, in Appleton, Wisconsin, where between Friday and Saturday, I visited THREE high schools and two libraries, Appleton Public Library, and the Kimberly - Little Chute Library.

During my second visit, this one with the Writers Group at Appleton East
(after Appleton North, and before Appleton West)

All of that followed my book release party for The Summer of Letting Go at Book Revue Huntington (you can find photos at that link, if you wish), a 90-second Read Event at the Dolphin Bookshop with some of my favorite old and new MG & YA peeps, some sundry Skype and quick in-person visits, a few guest blog posts (Dear Teen Me, and Nerdy Book Club in particular) and, alas, a week of the dreaded flu upon return from my trip to Wisconsin.

Hopefully, I'm on the mend, and back at it all, and you're all caught up (to the extent that you wanted to be). I have LOTS of writing (and revising!) to do, my older son already finishing up his first year of college (?!?!), my youngest one driving with his permit, and getting ready for summer including another one full of Maccabi basketball, this time with "games" in Detroit. Plus, there's a visit to the wonderful Eight Cousins Bookstore in July.

With all that said, I've got a calendar full of appearances and events hopefully updated and fully-corrected HERE (see sidebar to the right), and maybe another super-secret, fabulous announcement here soon.

Maybe, maybe not. ;) Stay tuned.

xox gae