Lucy and TybeeMy first guest puppies! Many thanks to Lucy Kubo, high school librarian and reader extraordinaire, for being the first one to jump on my offer to feature readers' pups on the blog. Though, I must say, the puppy pics and stories are really coming in...you would almost think people loved their pets!
Lucy writes, "What a great idea! I’d like to share photos and the story of my newest family member, Perez, aka Prezzi.
"In Texas, it is a spring-time ritual to take pictures of one’s
Perez in the bluebonnets children/babies/spouses/ loved ones in the bluebonnets. This year the bluebonnets are a bit sparse due to the lack of early spring rains but they have finally decided to put on a decent show anyway. Yesterday evening I took the pooches out for their bluebonnet portraits; here is Perez, the newest member of our family."
Most recent photo of Ella, taken this a.m.My friend Melanie at the blog Reclusive Bibliophile recently gave some thought to what her blog needed. The answer she came up with? More puppy. Her blog needed more puppy. So, inspired by Presenting Lenore's Cat Tuesday, she instituted Weimaraner Wednesday, and posted adorable photos of her dog Wiki.
I found myself thinking (out loud, on her blog thread) about the possibility of Mutt Monday. Melanie replied that she enjoys Ella pictures any day of the week, no alliteration necessary. Which is good, because I tend to blog when the mood strikes me, not on carefully planned schedules.
It was a long rainy season
For those of you (this is highly unlikely) who know nothing about Ella, I got her from the Santa Maria Valley Humane Society in June of '06. She was only four months old. Oddly, on the day I met Ella, I headed south having no idea the SMVHS even existed. I was headed (I thought) for
This is a situation that's just popping up everywhere these days. I have fiercely strong opinions about it, and I just can't keep them to myself any longer. I don't know if I can do much to change it, but I'm going to speak my piece. If one author (big or small, indie or traditionally published) reads this and thinks twice before hitting "send" or "post," it will be worth it. If not, may these opinions be some small solace to besieged reviewers.
Recently I tweeted the following message. "Dear authors, Here's what you say to a negative review: NOTHING!"
I stand by that advice. In fact, I'd like to elaborate.
No one has a right to argue with anyone’s assessment of a book. There is nothing to
As some of you who follow me on Twitter and Facebook might know, I recently received an unexpected mailbag of spare copies of my books. It was sent by my YA editor at Knopf, because she was cleaning out her office. So, just extra. No charge. And the first words to come into my head were, "I feel a giveaway coming on."
Part of me wanted to wait until I finished the Pay It Forward advance reader's copy giveaway at the end of April. But when that giveaway is over, I'm just going to start a new one. I have at least six of those ARCs that I've decided to give away. So that's going to be going on all year. That one I'm calling a slow giveaway. I'm going to collect comments for about six weeks for each copy.
California poppiesAnybody besides me notice that the weather--which has been notoriously unpredictable as long as I've been alive to enjoy it--is getting even more unpredictable? Like...a lot more unpredictable?
Now, I love the rain. And it's a good thing I do, too, because my formerly drought-ridden California town has racked up an impressive 30 inches for the season. That's about half again our normal average.
Not a week ago, we were in full "winter" storm mode (the calendar said it was spring, bu
It started when I was walking Ella on the boardwalk of Moonstone Beach Drive one day. I looked up at the clouds, and they looked for all the world as though they'd been painted on. I could see the brush marks. And of course I didn't have my camera.
Clouds are changeable. By the time you get home on foot and grab the camera, they'll be something else entirely.
I had very recently started doing my "Daily Gratitudes." Rather than keeping a gratitude journal, as I've done intermittently in the
past, I began posting one thing I was grateful for, every day, on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. Why online?
Okay. Right up front. If you don't hike, and aren't much on the great outdoors, you'll probably think I'm insane. Or...maybe not. Maybe you have your own story about some article of clothing or gear that took on its own meaning over the years. If so, please do comment and tell me. I'll feel much better.
I finally broke down and bought a new pair of hiking boots to replace my old Birkenstock Rockfords. After nine years and what I very conservatively estimate to be 3,000 to 4,000 miles together. About the equivalent of lacing them up in New York City and walking home to the coast of California, only much more
You may have noticed that there's a new book cover on my Home page, and on my About Me page. And there's a brand new book page on the left-hand navigation bar.
The book is Don't Let Me Go, an adult novel scheduled for September 29th release from Transworld UK. US readers, I'll be making up some links, when available, to help you buy this book online. And please stay tuned to this site, because in the next couple of months you'll start seeing a whole new availability of these UK titles here in the US, starting with Second Hand Heart and When I Found You. We're working on it.
But Back to Don't Let Me Go.
Over 40 years ago, a public high school teacher named Lenny Horowitz changed my life completely by helping me believe I could write. And, since it was a change that was slow to grow fruit, I was never able to tell him. He was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease the following year, and died shortly after I left Buffalo.
So this morning I was rearranging the bookshelves a bit in my studio. For a happy reason. I have so many language translations now of my books, they don't all fit on the "foreign rights shelf." And I don't just mean Pay It Forward, either. Love in the Present Tense, Chasing Windmills, Second Hand Heart...all are being mailed to me in languages I don't speak. It's lovely.
I tend to archive at least one, hopefully two ARCs (advance reader's copies) of each book. But as I was arranging, I noticed I have many more for Pay It Forward. Many more. More like ten. I guess I thought I was saving them for posterity. Or...I don't know. Something. But they aren't doing the world much good on my shelf.
So. Want a signed advance reader's copy of Pay It Forward? Could be a collector's item
So, this is what I'm hearing, after the fact. I missed last week's YAlitchat, a Twitter chat for the book business. But it seems some feathers were ruffled. I confess I have not read the transcript, because I couldn't find one posted. I tried to access the Tweets, but, beyond a certain point in the chat, they were unavailable. So I'm going on blog wrap-ups of the issue by those who were there. If I get anything wrong, please feel free to let me know.
Apparently, a small handful of authors (I'm sure it was only a small handful, and I do not blame it on YAlitchat, which is generally awesome) expressed some unflattering thoughts
I wrote the first draft of the novel Jumpstart the World in 2003.
At the time I was writing it, I called Leslie, explained what I was working on, and asked for a specific permission.
I was writing a block of dialogue in which a fictional character made three references to real-life trans people and the prejudice they faced. One was Leslie, the other was Marsha P. Johnson, the third was Brandon Teena. I wanted the character to briefly quote something Leslie described in a published book. It's a thing that
If you haven't read the recent critical post about me, the following will make no sense to you. If you have, please know that any continued post I write about it, such as this one, is written not to add a shred of pain to the issue, for anyone involved. But this one sentence has kept me awake for large sections of three nights now, and needs to come up and out.
"Catherine Ryan Hyde was nowhere to be seen."
If you haven't read the recent critical post about me, the following will make no sense to you. If you have, please know that every story has two sides. Please read both sides and decide what feels right.
Nearly 20 years after Leslie left home, I initiated contact. For about two decades, we had what I felt was a loving relationship. Leslie and Minnie Bruce and I met in San Diego and enjoyed a trip to Tijuana, Mexico. We met here in my home town and drove up the coast to San Francisco together. I visited them in New York, and stayed in their apartment for several days.
I always have the same plan for getting off my butt and onto a high mountain trail. I make reservations at the Grand Canyon. Preferably Phantom Ranch, which is such a tough reservation to get. Then I know I have to get back in shape, and there's no way to really postpone it. Well...in this case I had to make my reservations a full year in advance. December '11. So I could postpone it. But, you know what? I never want to. I'm always so inspired by knowing I'm heading back to the Canyon that I fall in love with hiking all over again. This will be my fourth Canyon hike.
Marla Miller is an old friend and former colleague from the Santa Barbara Writer's Conference. She hosts a great site for "writers on the road" (meaning the figurative road to publication), and now I've joined with her to provide some curriculum to fellow writers.
My first contribution is a short video about the the virtual book tour. You can view it HERE. I enjoyed sharing my opinion (hint: it's a high opinion) of book bloggers, who I call the "new hand-sellers" in today's book market. If you're a writer, and feel intimidated by the online world, I hope you'll check out what I have to say, and I hope it makes getting started just a little easier.
Maybe it's just me. But this blew me away.
I was having a Twitter conversation with a reader and friend who was once on Sesame Street as a child. She even linked me to the video on YouTube.
It reminded me of the time I was on Romper Room School at age 4 or 5 (Romper Room School is infinitely less cool than Sesame Street, so I'm not comparing them in that regard--it just reminded me). And I dug into some old photo albums, sure I could find the photo. It was up on my bathroom wall maybe a decade or so ago.
