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The Magic Word 4.5 STARS Elizabeth discovers she has no friends when no one wants to come to her birthday party.  Elizabeth does not understand why she has no friends until she talks to her mom.  Mom suggests Elizabeth learn to be more considerate of her classmates and teacher, and to learn to use the [...]

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Today at Booklights I’m sharing reading readiness games to play with your preschooler. Easy activities — not the ones involving macaroni, wooden dowels, and a glue gun. Though if you have a suggestion for using those three items, it can be today’s bonus feature.

I’m not in the mood to write much more, and I do want to limit my computer time today. I spent too much time online yesterday. It was actually kind of helpful that Twitter was down this morning. I know, crazy talk. But my Facebook page is getting hit with everyone’s Tweets — especially with all the authors heading to SCBWI. I’m thinking if folks are going update Twitter every twenty minutes, perhaps the connection to Facebook could be turned off. Maybe it’s just me. I am a little tired and cranky.

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(Check out this graphic from the blog Indexed before reading the poem.)

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Doc says I have the flu.

I suspect he's right. I also suspect I have a touch of bubonic plague and more than a little yellow fever as well. I'm taking the medicine he ordered and trying hard not to groan too loudly.

More good news about TWISTED came in, but it hurts to type so I will tell you tomorrow. Assuming tomorrow comes.

Tell me something funny. Please. I'm begging.

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Most of the day so far was spent doing doctorish stuff (boring tests, nothing scary) and getting back to our house in the boondocks from the big city, Syracuse.

I came across mention of the Institution for the Sick and Drooping Poor in a series of essays written by Sir Walter Scott. This was established by Dr. Thomas Beddoes, one of those horribly energetic fellows of the late 1700s who prove to us that we are all lazy slugs. He did a little of everything, including opening the aforementioned Institution, researching cures for consumption and scrofula, and experimenting with laughing gas. What a guy. His formative childhood experience was watching his grandfather die when the old fellow broke his ribs. The ribs punctured his lungs and led, in quick order, to his death. It made young Thomas think about lungs a lot.

Anyway. I wish his Institution was still open. I feel droopy today.

And I must revise my book.

dramatic eeyore sigh

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The writing has gone well this week. And that's all I want to say about that because I am getting superstitious.

The other stuff I've been doing made me think about the differences between being a writer and being a published author. So, a list. maybe this is my Friday Five.

1. A writer writes stories and poetry.

1a. An author writes email to the kind people who ask her to visit their school, their library, the monthly meeting of their historical society, their book club, and explain that while she actually likes those kinds of visits, she cannot attend because she doesn't have enough writing time as it is.

2. A writer writes stories and poetry.

2a. An author writes email to conference organizers with details about airplanes and questions about hotel rooms, and more email declining to read a self-published novel about the "pain and torment of (fill in the blank) and one soul's journey to rise above it", and more email declining to share her agent's name, and more email with questions about publication dates, galley dates, revision dates, and more email inquiring of experts some profoundly obscure facts.

3. A writer writes stories and poetry and reads stories and poetry.

3a. An author writes blogs and reads blogs and comments about blogs and posts pictures to blogs. She writes to her web guy and beats herself up for not writing more content for the website overhaul.

4. A writer wakes up in the morning and eats and moves into her story without pause.

4a. An author wakes up in the morning and eats and moves into the phone call list: to the accountant and the kids and the mother and the mother's doctor, then she rearranges her Netflix queue, and finally sits down to write .... speeches because she has a bunch of them coming. This reminds her to chase down a couple of hotel reservations.

5. A writer writes.

5a. An author wishes she could write more.

And now you now how the non-writing part of my week went.

In other news...

Thanks to everyone in Bishop who came out to hear me at SUNY Cortland last night. I hope Thursday wasn't too thirsty.

I am not familiar with the graphic novel, Eightball #22, by Daniel Clowes (though I did like Ghost World). If any of you are, would you care to comment about how the book led to the resignation of an English teacher?

Lunch today: hard-boiled eggs and fresh acorn squash with honey.

I have to fire the Eagles defense and special teams from my fantasy football team. This is killing me, but the boys are not coming through. Sigh.

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This week the poetry challenge at Miss Rumphius is a lune. It’s a five word/three word/five word poem. Or alternately, three/five/three. I could reshape my haiku of the other day, but I’ve actually had another lune in mind today.

The days fly by faster
Hours feel shorter
In the last August weeks.

I’m so bummed that summer is almost over. I love the lazy days and late nights. I love the beach trips and pool visits. I love watching my kids spend the morning reading in bed. I am not ready to go back to the crazy schedule of school. I’m not nearly ready for long sleeves (though in Virginia, we get at least through September on that one). I’ve had one week off from work so far, and I like it, and I’m not ready to go back to work.

Though I have to admit — while I was at Borders today, I started straightening out the chapter books in the kids’ section. I couldn’t control myself. I guess you can take the girl out of the library, but you can’t take the library out of the girl.

We were spending gift cards today. The eight-year-old bought an early chapter book series, The Jewel Fairies. I read the related Rainbow Fairies series to her, and since then I’ve decided that she can buy these books as long as I don’t have to read them aloud. Of course, I’m keeping my thoughts to myself, as I am very pleased that she picked the books out and is actually reading the the first one voluntarily. The eleven-year-old bought two new My Dumb Diary books and an American Girl publication, A Smart Girl’s Guide to Sticky Situations. I’m not questioning those choices either. She actually wanted to buy Pick Me Up, but I knew it was cheaper on Amazon and told her I’d buy it there.

I have such a stack of books at home that I didn’t even want to look at anything at the store. Maybe that is a better explanation of why I felt compelled to put all the Junie B. Jones books back in the correct order. I didn’t want to be tempted to buy anything at the store, so I figured I’d better keep busy.

At home I feel like I’ve been busy, but I can’t quite figure out what I’ve done. September is speeding toward me and the books aren’t read or reviewed, the living room is full of random stuff, and the garden looks like a Darwinian experiment. I’m not ready for fall, and I think it’s best if I just pretend that it isn’t coming.

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I think I'm recovered from ALA now. I hope to do a whole wrap-up on Monday over at the Blue Rose Girls. But in the meantime, I'll just say that it was busy, exhausting, thrilling, and fun. I attended the Caldecott/Newbery dinner for the first time and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I seemed to have barely a minute free from Saturday through Monday, was booked most days from 8:30 am till 11 at night. It was the busiest conference I've ever attended. But more on that later. I got home late Monday night, only to go to work early on Tuesday to prepare for our Focus meeting for our Spring 2008 list. For those of you who don't know what Focus is, it's sometimes called Launch, sometimes called Presales. Basically, it's the first formal meeting that we have to introduce our books on a certain list to the sales force. Generally, we have a Focus meeting, then a Presales meeting, and finally the formal Sales meeting. At my company, the editors usually only get to present their titles at Focus, and then only the editorial directors present at Presales and Sales (although this policy keeps changing). Just to give you a sneak peek, my four hardcover titles for the Spring 08 list are:

Sergio Makes a Splash by Edel Rodriguez: this is the first picture book both written and illustrated by Edel, and he's using a completely different art style--very simple, graphic, bright. Sergio is a penguin from Argentina who loves water but doesn't know how to swim.

The Blue Stone by Jimmy Liao: our follow up to The Sound of Colors, this is another 80-page breathtakingly illustrated book. This one follows the journey of a blue stone as it is transformed from one thing to another. It's carved into an elephant statue for a museum, then becomes a bird statue in an elderly woman's garden. It becomes a stone cat in an orphanage to keep the children company, and a heart-shaped necklace for a teenager's first love. This is a story of the different possibilities of life, and finding home again.

Crocs! by David Greenberg, illustrated by Lynn Munsinger: another installment in the "gross animal" series, alongside Slugs!, Bugs!, Snakes!, and Skunks! When a boy and his dog need a break from the busy, dirty city, they go to a tropical island for vacation, not realizing they're about to encounter an islandful of crocodiles.

The Postcard by Tony Abbott: his follow-up to Firegirl (now out in paperback), this one is quite different. I like to call it Holes meets Chasing Vermeer meets Carl Hiaasen. When Jason's grandmother dies, he's sent down to Florida to help his father deal with the funeral and selling of her house. A mysterious phone call leads Jason to discover an old postcard that launches him on a journey to uncover family secrets.

So, keep an eye out for these books come Spring! In terms of my workload, I'm almost done dealing with this list, and am about to start concentrating on my Fall 2008 list. I have a lot of novels on that list, so I'm anticipating more craziness. I had a moment of despair today thinking about it. There are times when work is hectic, but I can see an end in sight, I can see it getting better. But today, I realized that for the next three months its only going to get worse. My cube has been a disaster zone for the past month, and it's past the perfect mess state, and has now reached the unproductive, I-can't-find-anything state. But I stayed at the office till 9:30 tonight, put together my new shelves that I ordered from OfficeMax, and managed to create a semblance of order once again. I went through old emails from a month ago and responded and sorted emails dated up to June 7th. I'm hoping to get through another few weeks worth tomorrow. I'm feeling better. I'll have two days next week to catch up, and then I'm off for vacation to Southern CA for a family reunion on the Fourth of July. I have no more trips planned for the rest of the summer, so I should have plenty of time to get work back on track.

I think I can, I think I can.

On a brighter note, last night I went to see Manu Chao at the Prospect Park bandshell. It was a miserably hot, sticky night. The subway down there was slow and crowded. I was sweating sweating sweating. But after I finally met up with my friends, drank down a cold beer, made a work call, and finally the music started, all was wonderful again in the world. The rain held off until the middle of the encore, and by then it was welcome and exhilarating. We danced in the rain. Later that night, my phone stopped working. It said "Car Kit" on the face of it, for some reason. I googled it and discovered this was probably due to water damage. I thought I'd have to buy a new phone. But today, I went to Verizon, and instead of asking me if the phone got wet, the technician said, "Well, this is usually a sign of water damage, but as there is no physical evidence of this, we'll replace the phone." Woo-hoo!

Sometimes things work out.

Okay, I pounded out this post because T.S. complained that I don't post a lot anymore. Happy now?

Oh, one more thing. I FINALLY finished reading Carter Beats the Devil which some of you have noticed has been in my "What I'm Reading Now" queue for probably the last 6 months or so. You probably thought I just wasn't updating it, but you were wrong. I've really been reading it for that long. I kept putting it down and starting other things and losing it and then finding it again and reading more. It was a really really great book, and I wish I had read it without all those breaks, but regardless, it was still a fascinating, compelling read.

I'm hoping to finish New Moon tonight, which I've also been reading for a while.

And with that, I say good night.

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It's been another crazy busy week (Connie and I cranked out four acquisition proposals in a day and a half, including one last-minute auction project), but capped off with our very first company outing in Central Park, complete with hula-hooping, three-legged races, egg carry, bake-off, basketball, volleyball, softball and kickball, and more. I was roped into helping organize a softball game, and as I mentioned here, I also suggested kickball. The main game was softball, though, and I'm glad it was. I played on our company softball team back when we were based in Boston, and even though I've never been very good, it just brought back good memories. I played catcher, the position I used to always play back in the day. It's just a plain ton of fun. And I was captain of the winning team, woo-hoo! We won 4-0 after 7 innings. During the game I kept feeling like I was pulling something (what's the muscle on the back of the thigh?), and also got hit by the softball on my right knee while running to third (actually, I was already standing on third when the ball hit me), but I'm not really complaining, it was a great time. What I always loved about our softball team in Boston is that it united people from different departments. I have very little contact with coworkers outside of the young readers division, so it was good to meet some new people and get to know some familiar faces better.

The kickball game was a little scrappier and shorter, just three innings, and I think we lost 4-2 or 3-2. But it's just so fun seeing grown adults playing kickball. It's fantastic.

And THEN, later tonight, I ran in the Chase Corporate Challenge. My team introduced ourselves to each other by saying our name, department, and our running experience. It was weird realizing that I was actually one of the more experienced runners there. I'm used to being the amateur runner, the one just starting out, the one who never quite considered herself a runner, but now, 15 years later, multiple races, half marathons, and a marathon under my belt, including 3 or 4 Corporate Challenges, I guess I'm an old pro. There were so many people running their first organized race, and I must make a special shout-out to Jill, who only started jogging a month ago. She finished, and ran the whole way. Congratulations, Jill! You'll be running marathons before you know it. I remember my first Corporate Challenge in Boston my first or second year working at my company--it was my first official race, too.

Just as the race started, I heard someone call my name, and who would it be but Cheryl! Scholastic had the coolest T-shirts. Ours was plan navy blue with our logo on the back. And I didn't even wear mine because there were only larges left. I'm determined to make sure our company has a cool T-shirt next year.

I've been running regularly, but haven't been working on my speed. I made my goal to finish with an average of just under 10-minute miles, but after a quick start, weaving through the crowds, I ran an 8-minute first mile. I decided to try to keep up the pace. It was hard, I tell ya. But after raining for about a half hour before the race, the sky opened up, rainbow and flowing clouds and blue sky, and it was absolutely gorgeous, a little muggy, but overall perfect running weather. I crossed the finish line at 31:22, which if you subtract the 2 minutes it took to get to the starting line, means a net time of 29:22. Which means I ran about 8 and a half minute miles!!! (right? I'm horrible at math, as I mentioned in #6) I've never, ever, run a race that fast. Maybe being sore from softball and kickball actually helped, because it felt good to stretch out my muscles by running.

Phew. Then got caught in the rain on the way home. I'm absolutely exhausted.

Now I have to pack for ALA. My basic schedule is here, so if you're going, please stop by the booth and say hi!

I hope I'm not too sore tomorrow... Read the rest of this post

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I've bitten off more than I can chew.

You all may have noticed that I love to organize. I also adore a good project. But in cleaning up my own archives, review notifications, and boxes of books this month, it's time to accept some facts about my limitations.

In a way, this sad post relates quite nicely to a meme tag from NYCTeacher: The Summer Goals Meme. So I'll be combining the two in a tidy Summer Goals/Facing the Facts list.

1. The Edge of the Forest. The Forest is my great love. And, I really wanted to avoid a June/July issue this summer. But, due to conferences and summer research/travel, I'm going to have to publish a June/July issue instead of two separate ones. The upside is that June/July and August will both be big issues. The downside is that I feel like a failure.

2. Children's Book Reviews. Children's Book Reviews is another of my pet projects. I really wanted to create a central place on the web where kids and parents can find blog reviews of books. Multiple reviews of the same books, even. I entered in the archives of about 10 blogs including my own and planned to continue down my list of 12 more blogs. But I can barely keep up with my own and the Forest's archives. I have to admit defeat here as well. However, I intend to still host Children's Book Reviews and invite anyone who'd like to enter in their reviews to send me an e-mail and I'll teach you how to do so. It's very easy, especially if you archive already. I get several hits a day from CBR, so someone is using it. (Fuse #8--I failed you most of all.)

3. Okay. So these are my big disappointed-in-self issues. Try to accept and move on to other goals.

4. Say no to all but one community/school volunteer "opportunity" for the next academic year. DO NOT agree to everything.

5. Participate in MotherReader's 48 Hour Challenge.

6. Exercise 30 minutes a day, even if it's only walking.

7. Write, write, write.

8. Enjoy hanging with the kids this summer.

9. Use the term "man flu" at least once a week for the next year.

On to more archiving, notifying, and stacking of books!

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So, a bug has been going around, and I've seen many a friend and coworker fall, but I always think, "I'm strong! I don't get sick!" Plus, I take Airborne. But Wednesday morning I woke up early with a scratchy throat, thought it wise to go for a run, got thoroughly cold, and by late morning I realized that I was about to succumb to sickness. I made it through lunch, and then went home to rest up. But the happy news is that I still got work done, had a nice chat with a certain author about a certain mysterious manuscript which I ended up acquiring and am super excited about. I had another fun geeky (yes, that's a clue) acquisition last week that I'm also really excited about, and I'm sure both will be made public in the near future.

At any rate, I've been out of the office for the last two and half days. I'm not sure if my thermometer is faulty, but yesterday it said my temperature was 102.2 degrees! I took a lukewarm shower and took an Aleve, and gradually it came down to normal. But this morning, it's back up. I made a doctor's appointment. Let's hope there's a magic drug I can take that will get me up and running in the next few days.

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I went to post a question yesterday—something asking about the validity of the statement that to have an interesting hero you must have an interesting villain and how anti-heroes factor into this—when I realized that it would have been my 350th post. Now why 350 seemed to be this awe-inspiring landmark, I don’t know, but it filled me with a sense of purpose, a need to make pronouncements about the future…

And a horrible case of writer’s block.

How dare I post something trivial for this bench mark, this sign I’ve been going strong since May July 2005. What could I possibly be thinking? I needed to whip out my best bleached smile and political suit and make promises about the future, not post pictures of a pair of ripped jeans with the novel, An Abundance of Katherines, peeping through the tear so that I could make a visual “in your pants” joke.

No, dammit! This blog stood for truth and research and sobriety and the American way…

Huh, no wonder the initials for this blog are B and S. Yeah, I don’t know where the heck I was coming from either. It became obvious that I really had been under the mental weather lately if I was trotting out those tired excuses because the truth is (and was) that I’m rarely sober (humor-wise, I try to make it a habit not to drink before 5 pm), and that many of these blog entries had been written while I reclined in a half-asleep, thought jumble on my couch. Half the time I don’t understand me, so I’m really surprised when y’all seem to get the point I’m trying to get across (which is a sign of your obvious intelligence and powerful deductive skills. Literary Sherlocks, the lot of you).

This doesn’t mean that I don’t research items. I do, but as it is not with the same library-haunting skill that I used in undergrad I tend to discount my abilities. Something I’ve been told to knock off. In fact, I’ve been informed I need to lose the whole self-doubt, (cue whine) but I don’t knooooow what I’m doing (/whine) act because I’m too damn old to bear the nicknames Mona Whiner and Sarah Heartburn anymore.

(As an aside: thank you mom and dad for “gifting” my little four-year-old self with these lovely monikers in the first place. My shrink will be billing you as soon as I find someone who understands my special needs.)

Not that I’ve been complaining, (Yes, I have.) but being stuck in anonymity limbo a lot longer than I thought along with a strong dose of bad television viewing has eroded my drive, and this inability to perform had led to a lack of self-confidence. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Or maybe it’s just a bad sexual pun. Whatever. What I’m trying to say is that I’ve got a lot planned for this blog and I just need to get off my ever-expanding heinie (how else do you think I ripped those aforementioned jeans) and do it!

I am a Bookseller (at large), hear me shelve!

Hear me flip pages?

Dear lord, how can I motivate myself if I don’t even have a good battle cry? I’m doomed. Doomed, I say!

Okay, now even I’m tired of me, which is usually the state I must hit so that I can bounce back and get things done. And those things are as follows:

--I’ve contacted several publishers about getting on their publicity mailing lists so I can start keeping track of what’s new and interesting. Ideally I want to showcase and highlight books that could really benefit from word of mouth/internet chatter and talk about either what the authors are doing publicity-wise and what makes their book unique. For example, the Boss Lady has been telling about this fab book Rain Village that she thinks needs a lot more love. It certainly has a gorgeous cover, which we all know I'm a sucker for.

--I want to celebrate your books and follow their progress: the ones you’ve just sold and the ones coming out. I don’t mean just send me your press release and call it a day because that makes me feel like one of a thousand other targeted blogs and my eyes start to glaze over as I read it. Just write me an email and tell me what’s up. It doesn’t even have to be a long one. And I promise I’ll get back to you. I’m getting better at this email thing (apparently my mental powers are not yet strong enough to deliver my answers directly to your mind. Obviously I’m not a relative of Professor Xavier.)

--I want to host other booksellers’ stories. Admit it, you miss ‘em. Hell, I miss ‘em. I want to hear about their crazy customers, find out if there exists some universal book truths, and also hear about what does and does not work when it comes to publicity and signings. Also I just want to talk to some crazy, cool booksellers who deserve some rewards for toiling in the stacks. All opinions provided can be downed with a little tequila and cut with some salt and lime if necessary.

--I want to continue trying to keep us all up on what’s new and interesting in the publishing world. It’s been the year of hijinks, no reason it should stop anytime soon. (Someone did just by the rights to Regan’s job-ending creative biography, 7, by Peter Golenbock, you know. It will be interesting to see how well it sells and how Murdock and Co. respond to the numbers.)

What does this mean for you? More content, hopefully more fun, and more stuff for us to discuss.

What does this mean for me? A reason to get my butt off the couch, my office organized and my head back on straight. I want y’all to have fun coming here and I want to have fun writing stuff we both enjoy.

Of course, I still want to torture y’all a little, which means the obligatory “in your pants? No, in my pants!” post with An Abundance of Katherines sticking out of my ripped jeans is mere posts away.

I said I needed to fire up, not grow up. I know my limits.

Happy 350th post!



*I plan on weeding filler posts out of the archives which will probably reduce this post down to 345 or even 340, greatly diminishing its current significance. But hey, that’s the future, this is the now!

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And then the next day I was out of the office for the SCBWI Intensive Writer's Workshop which I wrote about here. And missing those two days of emails put me so behind in my responses that my inbox got so clogged up that I could barely send an email without getting more email telling me that my inbox was over my memory limit, and to please delete mail, so I try to clean out my email inbox just enough so that I can actually send email. And then last week I was busy putting together two proposals for our acquisition meeting this week, and also found myself in the middle of a big auction for a big book that I want very badly. So I was up to my ears in P&Ls and comparable titles and writing my pitches. And then a minor celebrity was pitching a book and wanted a meeting, so I that took time to prepare for, and then there's the three Spring 2008 picture book manuscripts that I need to edit that should have been transmitted to copyediting last August, and the Spring 2008 novels that also need editing, and the Fall 2007 catalog pages that are circulating, and first-pass and second-pass pages for my Fall 2007 novels, and the proof for my Fall 2007 picture books, and sketches for a Spring 2007 picture book, and final art for another Spring 2007 picture book, and then more emails and emails and emails. And then needing time to read manuscripts for other editors for editorial meeting, and trying to read my own submissions, and then more emails, and phone calls, and meetings meetings meetings. And second-pass pages for a 200+ nonfiction book just landed on my desk today to review. And having to figure out costing issues for same book. And of course every day I have meetings meetings meetings.

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