Kidlitosphere Conference Meme

Jen tagged me for this meme, which originates from the fabulous, Kidlitosphere-conference-organizing MotherReader. How could I resist? Participating will help me feel a little like I'm not missing all the fun this year at the Third Annual Conference, although I can't exactly complain about being on vacation for a month. (And yes, I promise to post pictures!)

Read on to find out why--from my perspective, anyway--the conference was so awesome.

Why did you decide to attend the KidLitosphere Conference?

I'd been so bummed that I couldn't make the first annual conference, so I was practically jumping up and down to find out that the second one would be held so close to my neck to the woods that I had no excuse not to go. It had been such a cool experience to meet fellow bloggers Little Willow, Kelly Herold, Sara Lewis Holmes, Cynthia Leitich Smith, Kelly Fineman and Greg Pincus (among others--sorry if I forgot anyone!) at the Los Angeles SCBWI conference the year before--and Farida and Jackie during a random trip to visit friends in Seattle--that I was really eager to meet some of my other friends from the virtual world. It's been such a pleasure to put names to faces.

Who was most like their blog? Who was least like their blog? This is a tough one to give particulars on! What really struck me, though, was how much I felt like I knew people already--more about that in question 4, but I don't know that anybody seemed particularly unlike their blog. Having said that, Greg, Pam, and Jen seemed to be a lot like their blogs. Based on her blog, I expected to be a lot more intimidated by Colleen, but it felt like we'd known each other forever.

What surprised you at the conference? It was surprising how easy it was to fall into an in-person rapport with people, even bloggers with whom I wasn't familiar. It was enough to know and enjoy the same blogs or books, to be able to talk children's and YA lit and have a set of interests already in common. The quality of the panels and our general high level of organization as a group, even spontaneous organization, was impressive. And the extent to which we were all sort of equalized as bloggers, whether we were unpublished or published authors, illustrators, teachers, librarians, parents, or some combination of those things.

What will you always remember about the last conference? So memorable were the lunchtime, dinner, and other casual conversations with some lovely groups and individuals. There was the "lunch meeting" to talk about the Cybils and other group activities, with Jen, Pam, Colleen, Anastasia, Jackie, and Philip Lee. (I may have missed someone; if so, sorry!) Somehow I kept ending up at breakfast with Greg, and then soon we'd be joined in ones and twos by others filtering into the lounge area; that's how I got to talking to Mark Blevis and Lee Wind. During the evening Readergirlz reception in the lounge, I had some lovely conversations with Lorie Ann Grover, Holly Cupala, fellow Mills alum Dia Calhoun, Bridget Zinn, Laini Taylor and her husband Jim DeBartolo, Johanna Wright, April Henry, Betsy Bird and her zombie sock puppets...I talked late into the night (sort of) with Jen and her husband, with Farida and with Adrienne, who was another person who felt like a kindred soul. I'll also never forget how I was the only person at my dinner table who didn't win anything in the raffle, and so Farida gave me her copy of Long Live the Queen, which she'd read and I hadn't. I honestly just met so many lovely folks that I cannot list them all. I felt like I'd found my people!

Did you blog about the conference? Yes, I did, complete with photos and doodles: Part I, Part II, and Part III include some fun details and highlights that I haven't touched on here.

I'm truly at a loss to figure out who to tag who hasn't probably already been tagged...so let's just say that if you're reading this, and you haven't done this meme yet, you're it! I hope to reunite with many of you at the 2010 conference, if I can go.

Create Your Debut YA Cover

I have now officially begun praying that my debut YA cover (should I be blessed with one) does NOT look like this. On the other hand, if anybody would like to hire me for design services on the basis of this abominable creation, feel free to contact me. :)



I should note that my original book title was supposed to be "Whimper," which I quite liked, except no pictures came up with that tag. So I had to go with this one, which is of dubious appropriateness. Credit, blame, or random yelling people with pitchforks should go in the direction of 100 Scope Notes.

What will yours look like?

CREATE YOUR DEBUT YA COVER

1 – Go to "Fake Name Generator" or click http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/

The name that appears is your author name.

2 – Go to "Random Word Generator" or click http://www.websitestyle.com/parser/randomword.shtml

The word listed under "Random Verb" is your title.

3 – Go to "FlickrCC" or click http://flickrcc.bluemountains.net/index.php

Type your title into the search box. The first photo that contains a person is your cover.

4 – Use Photoshop, Picnik, or similar to put it all together. Be sure to crop and/or zoom in.

5 – Post it to your site along with this text.

A Writerly Meme-ish Thing.

I recently read an interview with Welsh author Rhys Hughes on a social network I belong to, and in the third part of his interview he decided to turn a few questions back onto the reading audience, as well as revealing a bit about himself in answering his own questions. I thought it might be appropriate and (hopefully) interesting to post my answers here. Check the link for the full text of the questions; some are rather long and I've only reprinted the relevant bits.

1. What is the most unusual (or memorable) profession that any of your known ancestors ever had?

I don't actually know a lot about my ancestors--there aren't a lot of records on my dad's side, and I only have records on my mom's side for the Czechoslovakian part of the family, and they had a number of less interesting professions like farming and steelworking and such. But my maternal great-grandmother, the one who was probably French Canadian, was a small-time serial scam artist. As kids, my grandmother and her siblings were routinely recruited as the agents of her and her husband's scams--selling stuff door-to-door, mainly, but also putting counterfeit coins into the money stream. They had to move around a lot. Also, I'm told the great-great-grandmother on that side was some kind of chorus girl, but that information is unconfirmed.

2. What unfashionable authors (if any) do you still champion?

This is a tough one...the only one I can think of, and I can't say he's totally unfashionable, is Michael Ondaatje. The English Patient was truly huge for a while, but now nobody seems to have heard of him. I haven't seen the movie but the book is one of my favorites. I think his writing is incredible, intelligent, and jaw-droppingly gorgeous.

3. What books do you own that you know you'll never read?

I have to admit that most of the books on my shelves that I know I'll never read were lent to me by other people, like Michael Crichton's State of Fear. Or, in cases like Anatomy of a Typeface by Alexander Lawson, they were given to me well-meaning by someone and are so low on the TBR pile that they are unlikely to be read, ever. Sorry.

4. Do you regularly read e-books or not?

No, I don't. However, I foresee a time that I might read more e-books--if e-book readers get less expensive, and the quality continues to improve, I will likely switch to e-books for some of my reading. I'm actually much more interested in the idea of e-magazines and e-newspapers. Also, will libraries ever lend out e-books? How would that work? Essentially, I feel that this is something I'm not quite ready to do yet, but from a conservationist standpoint, it's probably important. However, there will always, always be certain books that I will want to have on paper--there is a feel, a smell, to books, a tactile experience not present with e-books. And as someone who makes handmade artists' books, I feel very strongly about that, too.

5. The fact that writing is such a sedate occupation means I'm always fascinated by the attempts of certain authors to infuse physical vigour into their prose... What writers, if any, have made you take to the hills or the lakes or the moors, etc?

This is an odd one. I'm not sure how to answer. I guess either I don't think about books in the way that they make me feel about the outside environment, or I tend to read more books about the internal environment...but I have to say that any books set in the UK tend to inspire a longing for a return trip. Also, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance--you have to be rather hard of heart, I think, for that book to not inspire even the tiniest bit of longing to experience the solitude and thoughtfulness of the open road and the open sky (quite apart from the motorcycle bit--I am NOT a fan of riding motorcycles).

6. Has any work of fiction ever taught you a practical skill?

I love this question. It's just that I'm having trouble thinking of something. I have learned tons of information and facts from works of fiction. I know that my answer is yes, though. One thing I set out to learn to do because of fiction was bake bread (the yeast kind)--after reading Robin McKinley's Sunshine, in which the character is a baker, I got inspired.

So--if you decide to participate in the meme, post a link in the comments!