Writing From The Heart

It's been awhile since I posted and I miss it, so I hope to get back to my regular weekly blogging. This past weekend I joined workshop leader Lori Ries to help lead Writing From the Heart, a week-long writers retreat at the Highlights Foundation site in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. It's where Rich teaches a few times a year and close to where we used to live, so I always enjoy going back.

I really didn't know what to expect other than I would be critiquing novels and working one-on-one with the participants. I first did this at Chautauqua several years ago and really loved it.There's a tremendous amount of joy in connecting with other authors and helping them see their vision more clearly and watching break-throughs happen. It seems to elevate my work, too. Having support while you write, getting feedback and specific tools to strengthen and deepen your work is so crucial, and I'm lucky to get this from my husband, Rich, who thinks like an editor as well as an author. But I'd been working pretty intensely on revisions for my own YA novel and needed a break from it.

It turns out this week was more inspirational for me than I could have imagined. Lori filled our mornings with hour-long sessions about writing, along with valuable exercises. Her Aggie & Ben books for new readers are such fun and Lori's pure spirit shines through in all she does. Joelle, senior editor for Highlights for Children magazine, also made an appearance and was so popular with the group, she'll be helping out at the retreat next year. She's in between Lori and myself in the photo.
The afternoons were left for the group to write--a precious commodity for the participants, all having hectic lives that leave little room for quality writing time. The second day of the retreat I began meeting with each member of our group individually, critiquing their work and helping them shape their visions more concisely. The range of story-lines was vast and the voices were distinct. They definitely became even stronger by the end of the week. Here's a picture of our group, all passionate about their stories, from historical fiction, Appalachian tales, to Russian-inspired picture books.

I hope my daily meetings and feedback helped in some way to sharpen their writing and I'm excited to keep track of their progress. But what surprised me most was how lively my own imagination became. I thought it would take a week off and I'd focus solely on the participants and their work, but as I watched the fireflies at night outside my cabin, thoughts for new stories swirled around in my head so quickly I had to get a flashlight and write them all down. Picture books ideas and chapter book ideas kept bubbling up and I saw characters for the first time that I can't wait to get to know.

And since the week was also filled with evening supper guests to go along with our luscious meals, our group had the added bonus of meeting up with editors from Boyds Mills Press like Liz Van Doren, as well as author Susan Campbell Bartoletti.(I highly recommend Susan's Newbery-honor book, Hitler Youth for any library.)
Listening to Susan read her upcoming picture book,Naamah And the Arc At Night was magical, and the passion and enthusiasm, not to mention the work ethic she brings to her craft, makes we yearn to work even harder at what I do.

So while I gave as much as I could helping the talented writers in our group shape their stories, I feel I learned even more. I can't wait to be a part of this retreat next year and to keep writing!

Highlights Foundation Workshop

This weekend I had the chance to visit Honesdale, my former home in Pennsylvania. Rich was teaching a middle-grade workshop for the HIGHLIGHTS FOUNDATION.

I always like to come along to meet with old friends and enjoy the property. It's incredibly vast, with more than a thousand-plus acres stretching from a creek all the way toward Honesdale, with forests and moss-laden flagstone dotting the hills in between, that were once part of a sawmill and grist mill.

The ancestral home of the founders of the magazine, HIGHLIGHTS FOR CHILDREN, it's quite an incredible place to take a writing workshop.

The grounds are steeped in tradition with the original homestead providing a warm, cozy place to have the workshops. You gather in the living room filled with antiques and century-old books and paintings,listening to workshop leaders talk about subjects ranging from picture books to YA, editing and non-fiction, with plenty of individual attention.

Peppering the hill above the main house are the comfy cabins we all stay in that contribute to the peaceful atmosphere. At night, the stars are incredible and the spring peepers serenaded us to sleep.

I say I like to come here with Rich mostly for the solitude and to meet friends, but really, one of the biggest draws is the food. Chef Marcia Dunsmore is a pioneer of the slow foods movement in the area and co-ran a successful inn called the Settlers Inn, located in Hawley, before becoming head chef at the Highlights Foundation.


On any given day you can be served luscious apps like dukka-laden onion dip, baked kale with crab, and a bevy of local cheeses from the caves in a creamery just a few minutes away. Suppers can be cuban pork slow roasted all day while you write, and dabbed with mole sauce, feathered brussel sprouts,roasted garlic chicken, curried zucchini soup and for dessert, english toffee pudding.

Is your mouth watering yet? Mine always is the minute our car swivels into the driveway leading up to the property. In fact, Rich and I are so wild about Marcia's food we tend to write more about feasting in our novels now, and Rich and Marcia are giving a workshop in September at the foundation called FOOD AND FICTION. Taking place from September 8 -11th, FOOD AND FICTION is a celebration of food in literature with hands-on cooking demonstrations. Check out the website for more details.
http://www.highlightsfoundation.org/
The workshop will be part of the unveiling of the new conference center on the grounds, which was built into the stone foundation of the centuries-old dairy barn and has streaming rafters, peaked ceilings, a stone fireplace and of course, an amazing kitchen for Marcia where, in this workshop, you can do prep work too, while learning recipes related to great food lit.

On Sunday morning I took a quick trip to a new cafe that opened in Hawley called, COCOON. It's adorable. Set in the fireproof stone building that once housed the silk worms for the nearby silk mills more than a hundred years ago, the cafe has an earthy feel and serves great cherry scones, lattes and espresso coffees as well as fruit smoothies and sandwiches. Sitting in a comfy leather chair against the whitewashed stone walls, I just imagined what it must have been like in this airy building with it's vaulted ceilings housing thousands of silk worms, and how magical it must have been to watch cocoons being spun on the wooden racks lined up in this space.

Cocoon is open all week and is right off the highway leading into Hawley.

Book Fair Weekend An Amazing Experience

This past weekend my husband Rich and I were invited to be part of Random House's Annual Book Fair fundraiser for Carroll Community College, facilitated by the Random House Warehouse team.

But before we even got to the Fair, we arrived at the Sheppard Mansion in Hanover, PA, where we stayed for the weekend. This place is a little gem nestled in the heart of Snack Country. Think Utz's and Sturgis pretzels. The mansion was built in 1913 by the co-owner of the Hanover Shoe Company and has been meticulously preserved. The lavish Tiffany lamps, Persian rugs, beveled glass windows and spiraling staircases lead to 6 guest rooms, many with canopy beds and about the square footage of the first floor of our house!

The great granddaughters have transformed the home into a luxurious B & B. The added surprise was the restaurant, gaining credit in culinary circles for its indigenous selection of foods and turning Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine on its ear. For example, we had freshly made potato chips with truffle dipping sauce for an appetizer and sauerkraut ravioli. Not too far from Gettysburg, the mansion is certainly worth a stop.

The next day we met with the Random House warehouse staff at their massive distribution center in Westminster, Maryland. When I say massive, I'm talking about a million square feet of storage space which works out to about 26 football fields! The Center is so huge, we toured it on golf carts.

It takes a thousand people to keep the Center running smoothly. Not only do they know about the business of selling and shipping books,(telephone sales is also there), they really know about books! And it was a thrill to see LITTLE JOE on a shelf there, too.

The employees are voracious readers, so I can see why they are so involved in the Book Fair. From Customer Service to Operations and Packaging, we got the chance to meet most of them and chat about titles they're reading.

All the staff had on t-shirts with images of our book covers on them and we signed the backs of a lot of those tees. Not only were Rich and I featured authors, but LEAP INTO DARKNESS by Leo Bretholz,(I can't wait to read about his numerous escapes from the prison camps in Germany),Susan Fraser King's, QUEEN HEREAFTER, and Jennifer Arnold's THROUGH A DOG'S EYES, who even brought a companion dog, Butch Cassidy along.

This center churns out half a million books on any given day, shipping them anywhere in the country. Each picker alone selects and packages at least 400 books an hour and unlike them,I wouldn't last a day here as an employee. I'd be too distracted reading all the titles I'd be picking. And some of the employees are adept at using a machine akin to a forklift, soaring 6 stories into the air right along with it, to pick books from vertical slots. They also have on headsets where a women tells them which books to select. I'm already imagining who she is and have created a whole life for her, so you can see how I would fare in the warehouse.



The best part of the day, though, was at lunch, where the Customer Service team created exact likenesses of our book covers onto homemade cakes! LITTLE JOE's was chocolate chip and so was Rich's KICKERS. SPORTS CAMP was red velvet, my favorite. Yum! Leo Bretholz turned 90 that weekend, but his enthusiasm and spirit seems ageless. He had no problem blowing out the candles on the carrot cake made for him, and telling us jokes along the way.

And Finally, Saturday was the Book Fair. The annual event, in its fourteenth year, raises an average of 30 thousand dollars for Carroll Community College, which is in the same county as the Random House warehouse. We met with Dr. Faye Pappalardo, the College President at a lovely breakfast put on by Gypsy's Tearoom. Dr. Faye is someone you never forget. Her enthusiasm and quest to ensure higher learning for all in her community is so contagious, I found myself dreaming up new ways of making community colleges truly a part of their community, like Dr. Faye has done with Carroll Community College.

My presentation was the most well attended public event I'd ever spoken at, with a solid mix of eager-eyed kids, parents, librarians and community members. The College really knows how to promote their special day, and the community is eager to support it. And lunch at the college surpassed Ivy league food fare. We had slow roasted apple-laced pork with house baked potatoes, for starters. Not typical college cuisine, that's for sure.

The happy ending was the fact that we sold out of our books, signing them all. And the books stacked on rows of tables were moving fast too, which means the College was sure to have another banner year and able to award 10 scholarships with the proceeds. Rich and I were actually sad to leave this warm cocoon of a place, where reading is celebrated and cherished. We hope to be back in the very near future.

First School Visit on Dr. Seuss's Birthday

I couldn't think of a better event to celebrate Dr. Seuss's birthday than to participate in my first school visit! Rich and I spoke to the entire Wheelock Elementary School in Keene, New Hampshire. Librarian Eva Roeder had the library all set up for us to speak to the classes, from kindergarten through to fifth grade. It was so much fun!

I spoke about LITTLE JOE and read my favorite parts from the book. Rich read BALL HOGS, from Kickers -- the four-book soccer series -- and SPORTS CAMP. Most popular with the kids were the blown-up pictures of all the farm animals in LITTLE JOE, like Spider, the barn cat and Tater, Eli's dog, who's a lot like my dog, Lucy.

Rich's HIGHLIGHTS FOR CHILDREN magazine giveaway to all the kindergartners and first-graders was majorly huge. They rolled onto their stomachs and started coloring immediately. The group loved listening to Rich read THE TIMBERTOES (he writes them), and the fourth and fifth-graders enjoyed getting grossed-out hearing the ghost story from SPORTS CAMP.

But the number one element surprise came when I had a few of the students open up the show box to see what was inside. (Can't tell you or it would spoil your school visit!)

The biggest elements of surprise for me were all those intriguing questions the students asked, from if we were really married,(the answer is yes), to if Little Joe was in the show box and if I could bring him for our next visit.

Everyone took first place for their enthusiasm and went home with a blue ribbon, courtesy of LITTLE JOE. But Rich and I went home with lots more story ideas, glowing from the warmth of the great Wheelock welcome we received.Thanks so much Wheelock!!

BEST IN SHOW: Mason & his class for going the extra mile (just like the swim in SPORTS CAMP)and drawing me with LITTLE JOE and Rich with Big Joe, the snapping turtle in SPORTS CAMP.

RUNNER UP: Our third-grader who paints houses the color of flesh. How many illustrators can say that?

BEST QUESTION: Where do I keep Little Joe while I'm writing?

BEST IN CLASS OUTFIT: Tied: A fourth-grader Star Wars belt buckle-- super awesome!And his best friend's mohawk.

HONORABLE MENTION: Second-grader bejeweled tiaras, and the third-grader Pippi Longstocking's socks. Perfect for being a pirate, later on.

Little Joe Chosen For Agriculture In The Classroom

Writing realistic fiction involves plenty of research, especially if you're delving into a subject you may know very little about. The best compliment you can get is from the community you're writing about. That's why I'm so honored that LITTLE JOE has been chosen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a selection for its national reading program called, Agriculture In the Classroom. You can link to it below. And the Illinois Department of Agriculture actually created a great Companion Guide about LITTLE JOE for classroom study, that's entirely agriculture-themed and really fun.

http://www.agclassroom.org/directory/search_result_details.cfm?PID=3113

www.agintheclassroom.org/060605/New/LittleJoe.pdf

Immersing myself in the world of my characters is the only way the characters themselves can get developed further and become, "people." While I did plenty of reading before I wrote LITTLE JOE(Storey's Guide to Raising Beefe Cattle still fascinates me), the best kind of research, if possible, is to actually be in the environment you're writing about. These experiences often tell me where to go or not to go with my story.

I'd been living in farm country in northern Pennsylvania during the writing of the novel, where the cattle I talked about chewed their cud 20 feet from my office window. I saw how they reacted in a snow storm, what they did on a crispy autumn morning, and how different that was once they were transported into the heat and the frenzy of the fair. I'd had grandparents who were crops farmers, but I'd lived in urban environments for most of my life and had never been around many farm animals.

But the most valuable times were spent watching the kids at the fair. As their competition life and the relationships they had with their animals unfolded, I saw it all sitting in the bleachers or on a hay bale in the show barn. That's really where my novel took shape.

Some people have asked me what comes first, writing or research? I'd say both. I find if I do too much research before writing it can deaden any emotion or put too much thought into a conversation and make the writing clinical. When I do read something that excites me, I make a note of that and sometimes stop at that point and write. It's a constant flow between the two and I often write scenes that will find their way in the middle of my novel, as I don't write in chronological order.

Sometimes, I'll get the heat of a scene down fresh after observing it either in my head or in actuality, then later, flesh it out with accurate information in narration or lightly sprinkled into dialogue always asking myself, would my character really say that and in this way?

And of course, when the inability to write inevitably surfaces, and it always does, research is a great way to still make progress on your work.

When It Snows, Eat and Read

Well, I now officially feel like I live in an snow home. Being from Canada, my American friends often joke that I must've lived in one as a child, since I came from a community where we could ice-fish on one side of the lake and skate or toboggan on the other each winter. And we did make plenty of snow tunnels. The piles often reached as high as the rooflines.

Now, here in New England, Rich is shoveling snow off the roof every two hours and the gulleys in front of our cellar windows, which are barricaded by the icy mix. I'd never heard of roof rakes before, and we don't have one. Back home, we just let the snow drift over our gables like in Who-ville.

Jake, our now eight-year-old neighbour, was out before nine in his snowsuit uncovering the snow fort he'd built. But he told us it had animal pee in it, so he's going to have to build a new one. He doesn't think it's from his little brother Avery, because Avery can't unbutton his snowsuit with his mittens on.

Anyway, what I like best about New Englanders who get handed weekly dumpings of snow, is that they still go out and do things. They put on their bogs, and in my case, moon boots from Montreal, good for 30 below temperatures.

It was great to discover this when Rich and I had a signing at the Toadstool Bookshop in Peterborough last week. Nine people came to listen, decked out in hooded parkas and boots coated with snow up to their knees. Afterwards, many of us did what's often the best thing to do during a snow-crazed winter besides reading - we went to the Cafe and sipped on steaming bowls of soup.

I ate the best tasting mushroom barley soup at Aesop's Tables, the Cafe right inside the Toadstool Bookshop. Willard, the bookshop owner, and Allison, the Cafe meister, certainly have created a cozy, inviting atmosphere where you can curl up with a book and savour all those satifiying pages with a cup of delicious soup. Now all I have to do is remember to bundle up and pay them a visit when the next storm hits. From the kind of winter we're having so far, I'm betting I won't have to wait very long.

The Biggest Snowman

It's another snow day here in New Hampshire, and the neighbourhood kids have been playing in it since before nine o'clock this morning. Their favourite part is traipsing through other people's yards, seeing who can claim the first prints in the new snow. Our dog, Lucy, has been barking like crazy all day, policing the front and back lawns as best she can from the inside, making her rounds at each window perch and giving the panes new nose prints.

I finally venture out a just before noon, to make sure our mail man can make it safely onto our porch.

"Where have you been?" Dennis, the fourth grader, asks me. "The snow pile's gotta be twenty feet high by now." I hadn't seen him or the others for at least a week. That is, in person. And the snow plow pile is at the end of our cul-de-sac, rising up like a giant snow cone and sprinkled with purple and green sleds.

"Guess I've been stuck inside," I say to Dennis. "But I've kind of wanted to, working on my next novel."

"Is it about animals, too?"

"No. It's historical fiction."

"What does that mean?"

"It's a story inspired about things that happened sixty years ago, in an Arizona town I used to live near."

"So that's where you lived, sixty years ago?"

Great. Now the ring leader of the neighborhhod thinks I'm at least 60 when I'm not even nearly eligible for AARP, yet.

"No, I lived there 10 years ago. I'm not even close to sixty."

Dennis shrugs and walks up our porch with his snowboard and boots. They look like they might ahve crampons on them. "I know what's historical fiction," he says, poking at the statue. "Your duck. It still got his Santa suit on. And it's not even Christmas."

I decorate the metal duck my husband gave me as an anniversary present, and the kids always like to remind me if I've missed a holiday. Like say, Shrove Tuesday, or Dress Silly Day at school, or, if I've let a holiday linger for too long.

"Shouldn't you be making a snowman, or something?" I ask Dennis, taking off the duck's Santa suit and freezing my fingers.

"You mean you haven't seen it?" Dennis says, jumping off the porch and telling me I better follow. When we turn around the corner I can't believe what I see. It's a giant snowman, bigger than any kids have made before, at least around here. Soaring 8feet high with two tennis balls for eyes and a black plastic storage bin for a hat.

"My dad helped us."

No kidding. But still, pretty impressive.

"Looks like it'll last all winter."

Dennis frowns.

"Don't you want it to?" I ask.

"I don't know," he shrugs. "I wanna make a new one." He runs to the end of the street where the snow pile's got at least a half inch of new fluff to slide over.