Conferences/Workshops

WLTA Austin June 15-17, 2007

The agent I interviewed with asked for an email submission, so I got that off to her. If she doesn’t like it, there were two others who said they were interested. I’m keeping my fingers (and toes) crossed.

I believe there is a lot of value in going to conferences. When you and agents or editors meet face to face, it is much easier to decide whether you want to want to have a business relationship with them, and I’m sure, for them to decide about you. It is also good to meet other writers. No telling what kind of connections you can make or what sort of useful information you might learn (or impart).

Useful Tidbits
Middle grade books sell the most. Partly because librarians are encouraging kids to read the most at that time, and partly because boys tend to stop reading around 10 (cutting into the YA/Teen market).

Paranormal/supernatural is very hot right now

Girls will read about boys, but boys will not read about girls (unless they are vampires, or buried alive)

Tweens (older MG, younger YA) are very popular

The “gritty” trend for YA may be starting to wane
 
Contests are great for building your writing credentials, so enter as many LEGITIMATE ones as you can.

Graphic novels are hot and getting hotter

 

Ruminations

Good Morning, Ladies!

When I put out birdseed in the morning, I usually have a quick look around the garden to see what’s happening. This morning, I found that our (very) small Mexican Olive tree was crawling with ladybugs and ladybug larvae. If you’ve never seen a ladybug larva, they look like they would be good candidates for monster movie creatures. I came back in and told my daughter to put on her shoes because I wanted to show her something. She was delighted with the adult ladybugs and fascinated by the grey and black larvae. She isn’t a very girly-girl. Last week, she netted baby crawfish for her fish tank.

We had ballet recital pictures today. I tarted my three-year old up with lipstick, blush and eyeshadow. She was delighted. I think there is something kid of creepy about little girls with makeup.

The lid wasn’t quite all the way on the sandbox when it rained on Wednesday. Now it is a sand swamp. My little boy is delighted with it, however. I’m sitting downwind of the jasmine vine, which are in full flower right now. It is warm, 80ish, and When the breeze dies down, the smell from the jasmine and the wax leaf ligustrum is almost overpowering. Baby sparrows in the birdhouse call for food and I can hear a red-bellied woodpecker in the trees nearby. The Texas Bird Book says that white-winged doves live west and south of San Antonio, but there are usually half a dozen or so of them at my bird feeder. A young grey squirrel keeps his eye on us as he nibbles corn below the feeder.

I’ve come up with a number of ideas, just being outside. Now, if I just had time to write all of the articles and stories that are in my head…

 Butterflies get all the press, but lots of other creatures morph from one thing to something completely diffent.

Ruminations

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

Alright! It’s 9:00 and the kids are in bed. But, a storm is coming through and the power is out. No internet, but the laptop works fine. And I have three hours of battery life left. I am sitting on the bed and I can see my reflection in the dresser mirror. I look like some mystic with a glowing crystal ball in front of me. Or like the ghost story teller at a campout, with the flashlight held under my chin. It seems like a good night to write a ghost story…

Odds and Ends
I was at a stop sign behind a minivan a couple of days ago. It had a license plate frame that said “LIFE IS SACRED.” In the window, it had a bumper sticker that read, “Go Army.” Is there such a word as oxymoronism?

My daughter-who-will-be-four-in-three-weeks has quite the social calendar. She’s had an average of 1.5 birthday parties per week this month. And she’s got dance recital coming up. Pictures are on Saturday. I’m trying to think how I might persuade her to sit still while I put on her makeup. It almost makes me feel a bit cringy. Hopefully, it is not the insidious start of beauty pageant momdom. I can see the cover of the tell-all non-fiction book now: Confessions of a Pageant Mom.

The trees whip around in the wind, and passing showers of hard raindrops clatter on the windows and skylights. I hope my tomatoes don’t get flattened. I like storms. I Can feel their raucous churning energy flowing through me. I feel the sizzling shiver of lighting in my skin and the thunder echoes somewhere deep inside my being.

Ruminations

Dependency

I bought a laptop on Monday. I’ve been lusting after one for about a year now. That’s where my tax refund went…

It is great. We set up the wireless gateway on Monday night. Everything was fine. Then the phone stopped working. Then the DSL went. AT&T informed me that a telephone trunk line was severed and they are working as hard and fast as they can to fix the problem.

I had some bills to pay, so we went to the mall. Then I thought, do I really want to access my bank and credit card accounts over an unsecure network? So my hubby is playing with the kids at the play castle and I’m updating my blog. If they don’t get the line fixed soon, I may have to (God forbid!) put paper checks in the mail. I don’t write paper checks anymore.

I hadn’t realized how dependent I had become on the internet. I keep up with friends & family, enter contests, critique and submit manuscripts for critique, pay bills, do reasearch (my NF articles are languishing). I look around. There are at least four of us using the mall hotspot. If terrorists really wanted to cripple America, they’d find a way to take down the internet.

Purveyor of Fine Collocations