General Bonkers
>> Wednesday, May 30, 2007
From my Onion Page-a-Day calendar:
I had to put this on the blog, because I've kept it around my desk for weeks months, getting a laugh out of it every time I see it.
You wonder how long it would take if they DIDN'T use form letters...
My friend Genetta from the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators Midsouth Region recently got a form letter rejection in the mail from a publisher. Like most writers, I can sympathize. But Genetta's included this line:
"It is my sincere hope that use of this form letter will reduce our response time to as short a period as possible."
Which is funny, because she submitted the book one year and three months ago. Read more...
Samurai a Bank Street Best Book of the Year
>> Sunday, May 27, 2007
This just in from Editor Liz: Samurai Shortstop has been named one of the Best Children's Books of the Year by Bank Street College of Education. I'd offer a link to the list . . . but the list is published in book form, and thus not free on the internets. Here's a link instead to where they sell it. Thanks so much to the folks at Bank Street!
Read more...Tutorial: How to Bind a Quilt
>> Saturday, May 26, 2007
New note! I have a new website full of sewing and embroidery video tutorials - including a VIDEO VERSION of this tutorial on How to Bind a Quilt. Check it out!
Now back to my original post. . .
The subject of this month's Whiplash is miniature quilts and I really wanted to make one, but I've been on the road for work for three weeks this month and there's no way I can get even a mini quilt finished. So I decided instead to post a tutorial about how to bind a quilt - something I've been meaning to do forever. So here it is. . . How to Bind a Quilt.
First you need to cut your binding strip. Cut it 2 1/4" wide and long enough to go all the way around the quilt plus several inches to a foot. I usually go for an extra foot - you don't want to get all the way around and come up an inch short. Really. I've been there and done that and I never want to go there again. You'll probably need to join shorter strips together to get a strip that's long enough. Here's how.
Lay your strips at right angles to each other and stitch across the diagonal so that when you open it up it runs straight. 
Press the seam open and trim off the excess seam allowance. Your goal here is to minimize bulk. I used two different fabrics here so you could see the seams, but it's fun to use a variety of fabrics sometimes.
After you have constructed one long strip, fold it in half so that the pretty side is showing on both sides of the strip. Press it that way. Fold down one corner and press that too. You're making the starting point here.
Now trim the excess seam allowance off the folded point so you have a clean, folded edge and not too much extra fabric.
Fold your binding strip back in half and press it all really well. 
Lay it along the edge of your quilt so that all of the raw edges (edge of quilt and both raw edges of the binding strips) are lined up. Start stitching a few inches in from the leading point of your binding strip - using a 1/4" seam allowance - and stop when you get exactly 1/4" from the edge.
Backstitch and take the quilt out of the machine. Fold your binding straight back so you have a diagonal fold.
Hold that diagonal fold in place and fold your strip back down so that the back fold lines up with the back edge of your quilt.
Line your raw edges back up again and start stitching from the back edge of the quilt. 
Stitch until you are 1/4" from the next edge and repeat for all the corners.
When you get back to your starting place, tuck the end of your binding strip into the "finished" starting edge of your binding strip. This is why you didn't start stitching that binding down right from the start - you need that first few inches free for tucking and folding. Trim away as much excess fabric as you can and continue stitching down the binding strip until you meet your starting stitches. Backstitch and you're almost done.
I like to wait until I get my binding on before I trim away the excess batting and backing. Do that now using a straight edge and rotary cutter. Trim it right to your raw edges but be careful not to cut through the folded parts of your binding at the corners.
Now you have some hand-sewing to do. Put in a movie and enjoy it. Start in the middle of a side - not at a corner. Turn the folded edge of your binding strip to the back and stitch it down with small stitches. Don't take your needle all the way through the front - you don't want stitches showing on the front side. Just take it through the backing and batting.
When you turn those corners right-side-out they will make perfect mitered corners. If those corners are loose at all you can tack in a couple of stitches, but it's usually not necessary. I do usually take a few stitches into the bit where the start and end of the binding overlap.
Sign the back and you're done.
And the OSCAR goes to . . .
This past April I had the pleasure of speaking at Algood School in Cookeville, Tennessee. Apparently my visit made quite an impact, because this year Samurai Shortstop and I were nominated for three awards in their annual 7th grade OSCAR (Our Students Care About Reading) Awards ceremony last week. Says Carol Teeters, the Algood librarian,
All through the year they nominate books they are reading in categories such as Best Villain, Best Sci-Fi Character etc. At the end of the year after they have voted on the nominees they have a program with a red carpet, guest presenters such as Little Red Riding Hood, etc.
This year I received three nominations:
Most Outrageous Character: Futoshi
Best Historical Fiction Character: Toyo
Best Male Author: Me!
And the winner in each category - ME!
I'd just like to thank the Academy, my beautiful wife Wendi, my daughter Jo, my parents - oops, they're playing the "get-off-the-stage" music already.
Seriously, thanks to all the students at Algood School who read Samurai Shortstop and voted for it! You guys rock. Read more...
Book Blog Tour: Kerry Madden
>> Wednesday, May 23, 2007
I'm happy today to present a brief interview with Kerry Madden, the author of the brand new book Louisiana's Song. Louisiana's Song is the sequel to Gentle's Holler, which got starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, and was a finalist for the PEN USA Children's Literature Award in 2006.
I first met Kerry almost exactly a year ago in my hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee. We were both in town to sign and sell books at the Knoxville Festival of Reading on the former site of the 1982 World's Fair. She was gracious enough to join me and Wendi for a late lunch at The Sunspot, where we learned her connection to Knoxville: Kerry first came to our fair city as a teenager when her father was hired as a coach at the University of Tennessee under then Head Coach Johnny Majors, whose tumultuous tenure with the Vols I remember dominating the conversation at every Gratz family gathering for more than two decades. Kerry later attended the University of Tennessee, as did I, and like me still finds herself drawn in to the gravitational pull of East Tennessee even though she now lives in L.A. Given her connections to Tennessee football, I had to throw in a question about her first book, Offsides, even though she's moved on to even greater success with her "Maggie Valley Trilogy" . . .
GI: Give us the thirty-second blurb about your new book,
KM: Thirty seconds, Alan? I'm too long-winded with gaps, breaks, and
unfinished sentences. . . but here goes:
GI: That's all right. We forgive you. But points will be deducted from your overall score. Now, did you know when you were writing Gentle's Holler that you wanted this to be a three-part story, or did that come later at the request of the publisher?
KM: No, I didn't know it would be a trilogy. I thought I would write a book from each kid's point of view, but Livy Two is the family storyteller and I'm so glad she is the voice of the first three books. (Thank you, wise editors!) Of course, I still have more Weems' stories to tell, but these three books felt right as a Smoky Mountain Trilogy of Maggie Valley stories.
GI: What is the larger story being told by this trilogy?
KM: I think the larger story is family and imagination and longing - I wanted a big messy family who loved art and music and yet had regular squabbles and longed for adventures.
GI: How do you balance telling a larger, three-part story with the need to make each book work as a stand-alone volume?
KM: Well, I picked three characters I wanted to focus on in each of the books. In Gentle's Holler, the character of Gentle is a huge part of the plot - her eyes - blindness - and the introduction of Uncle Hazard, the dog, who becomes her loyal friend and guide. In
GI: Okay, I can't resist, because I know your connection to UT football. Your first novel, Offsides, was well-reviewed when it came out more than ten years ago. Can you tell us where that story came from, and what happened with that novel?
KM: People have noted Offsides was a lot like The Great Santini, only from the girl's point of view with a football instead of a military backdrop. It was a New York Library Pick for the Teen Age in 1997. The story came from my own life growing up on the gridiron in the world college football, dressing in orange and white, blue and gold, purple and white - and considering myself a Cyclone, Wildcat, Demon Deacon, Volunteer - wherever my dad happened to be coaching. Offsides is the metaphor because Liz Donegal, my alter-ego, is perpetually "offsides" in the world of high-haired coaches wives, locker rooms, Catholic Schools, and constantly moving around from the North to the South to the
Offsides also went through the
My agent is currently submitting Offsides as a YA novel because it was never published YA, so maybe it will have a new life. (Frankly, I think it needs cutting.)
GI: I hope it finds a second life then! Now, I know that your father's occupational wanderings when you were a child eventually led you to
KM: You're right, Alan. They won't let me go. And I never ever planned for that to happen. I left
GI: Thanks Kerry - we hope you come back to stay. In the meantime, everyone here at Gratz Industries wishes you the best of success with Louisiana's Song!
Books: Guide to Natural Bowling
>> Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Browsing a local used book shop, I came across this gem: Guide to Natural Bowling by Victor Kalman, the Bowling Editor of Sports Illustrated (circa 1961). As opposed, I suppose, to a guide to UNnatural bowling, as practiced by vampires and werebowlers.
Kalman's opus features advice from "a board of 55 famous bowling experts," all of whom are listed on four pages at the beginning of the book, along with their credits. A highlight:
Olga Gloor, Chicago, Illinois. 1959 World's Invitational Match Game Champion. Member of 1954 WIBC Team Champions. "Queen of Chicago Bowlers," 1956.
The front cover promises a money-back guarantee, and inside we learn, "The publishers of this book guarantee results! After thoroughly practicing the methods in this book for three months, if you do not raise your average score by 20 pins, we will return your purchase price." An address is listed, and then we're told, "On receipt we'll return your 35c. NO QUESTIONS ASKED."
Come on - a thirty-five cent investment, with the promise of your money back if you don't raise
your average by 20 pins!? I had to buy this book. Of course, it cost me a dollar, not 35 cents, so I'm not sure I'll get the full return on my investment if the methods don't work for me. I'm also going to have to find a bowling alley in these parts. Seeing as there's still a roller rink, you'd think that would be easy - but I haven't seen an alley in my travels.The line illustrations inside this book are really what sold me. Unfortunately I can't scan those in, as laying the book on the scanner would break the spine of this little beauty, and I'm not about to do that. You'll just have to look for a copy of your own... Read more...
How not to design a home
>> Friday, May 18, 2007
As documented before, we've moved to the high country of Western North Carolina to successively take over both the publishing and crafting industries. To do that, we'll need a new Gratz Industries World Headquarters, and the mobile home in which we're temporarily stationed is not the answer.
After the chaos of moving in, we quickly assembled our New Headquarters Planning Committee, which is essentially the same as our Samurai Shortstop Marketing Committee, Website Redesign Committee, and Child-Rearing Committee. (What can we say? We're a small non-profit. We have to multi-task.) The New Headquarters Planning Committee put together a fabulous proposal with a building that featured large, two-story, screened-in patios, twenty-foot ceilings, a second-story catwalk library, double staircases, a fancy hanging fireplace, and separate space for guests and board game playing. But for all the unique things we planned in the house, we also designed it to be simply built. It was, essentially, a large rectangle, with a smallish second level (with that awesome library/catwalk) and a large, open floor plan. That was, we assumed, how we were going to be able to afford such a tricked-out place.
Excited about the prospects of a new corporate flagship building, we took our designs to a local builder and anxiously awaited the call that would tell us how close we were to being able to afford our new digs.
Wendi got the call while I was away.
"Guess how much the house would cost us to build?" she asked me.
I took what I thought was a liberal stab at it. "One hundred thousand dollars."
"More."
"One hundred and fifty thousand?" I asked - seeing our dreams of having this home built within the year evaporating before my eyes.
"More," said Wendi.
I frowned. "Two hundred thousand dollars?" That meant we weren't close to affording it.
"More," said Wendi.
I gave up the game, and Wendi laid the hammer down.
Three hundred and seventy thousand dollars. That's what our dream home would cost us to build. Now, that was with all the bells and whistles - the bathrooms installed, the kitchen cabinets and appliances installed, the drywall hung, the floors finished - everything. We had told the builder that we could do much of the finish work ourselves, but he just wanted to give us the pie-in-the-sky, all-told final cost of the project if we had him do everything. Take everything out but the floors and the walls, he told us - with no coverings on either one, just studs and supports - and the basic structure would still cost us $160,000. Worse, that price was about $50 per square foot - which, for those familiar with home-building prices, is extraordinarily reasonable.
But we don't have $370,000. And we don't have $160,000. Hell, we don't even have $100,000.
We felt very ill for a few days.
Then we called up the New Headquarters Planning Committee and told them to go back to the drawing board, and this time to use a smaller drawing board. So back to work they went, and we're happy to present the new version of the Gratz Industries World Headquarters today to our shareholders. Please note, the builder has yet to come back with numbers on this plan, so a similar crushing blow may yet be dealt. But we hope that we've been able to address some of the issues that led to the wacked out price above:
Here we see the new and improved first floor. One of the things that adds to a home's cost is the size of its "footprint," or the actual square-footage of the entire ground floor. The smaller the footprint, the lower the cost. It is always cheaper to go up than out, they say in the home-building trade. (Or at least I think they do.) So here now, rather than the somewhat insane 3,248 square foot original effort (not counting the significant patios on either end), this home has a footprint of 1,024 square feet - and that includes the first floor patio. (Total square footage, including the patios and all floors, is now just 2,560.)
As you can see (or we hope you can see - click the image above to see a larger view) the first floor is home to the kitchen, living room, and library. After getting outside and laying down stakes and trying to orient the house toward our view, we're rethinking the locations of the living room and library, with the thought of switching them around. We had originally placed the living room right next to the kitchen, as we like to have the TV on while cooking/eating is happening, but the back, northerly corner is more appropriate for the library, as that wall will have very few windows - accounting of course for the cold winds and lack of sunlight we'll get from that direction in the winter. Swapping the living room for the library in the plan will also put the view out the windows of the living room, which, admittedly, is where we spend most of our leisure time. (And it turns out that the living room isn't that far away from the kitchen after all now, considering how small the actual first floor will be.)
You can also see that we have a substantial chunk of the ground floor plotted out as a patio. Imagine each floor as four 16' x 16' quadrants. The idea here is to have one entire quadrant on the ground floor be a screened-in porch with attachable windows, so that space can be used year-round, in warm weather or cold. Both connecting walls to the house will have large glass garage doors, much like the big back door we loved so much on our Atlanta loft. Opening these two doors up will give us the full use of the "footprint" as living space almost year 'round.
Heading up the stairs to the second level . . .
We find the level that belongs mostly to Wendi's design studio and to Jo. The two bottom quadrants - the large space at the bottom of the image - are half crafting area for Wendi, half play area for Jo. Those two quadrants connect to a third, which is Jo's bedroom. Putting her bedroom on a different level from ours will give us all the privacy that we need now and that she will want later - like when Jo is a teenager. (Oh holy crap.) By then, her "play area" can become an extended area for teen pursuits like laying around on bean bags and watching Monty Python movies. (And that will of course be separate from the TV room downstairs where her totally uncool parents will be laying around on couches watching Monty Python movies.) The top left quadrant is open - creating a two-story ceiling for one quadrant of the first floor - what we think will now be the library/dining room. That means we get double-tall bookshelves with a ladder! Yay! Almost as good as the catwalk library. (But not quite.)
Okay, now we move on to our latest innovation - the THIRD floor . . .
Yes - a third floor. Genius! We have a good view, and getting one more story up on it will be delightful. (And, we hope, save the money the larger footprint of a two-story house would require.) The third floor houses Alan's office, the master bedroom, and a second porch - this one to be eventually outfitted with a hot tub. Oh yeah. (Hot tub in picture not shown to scale, by the way.) Both this porch and the lower porch will aim at our view, and we hope create a nice panorama from either the porches or inside the house - in this case, our bedroom. And there is no permanent wall between our bedroom and my office, but we plan on lining that with bookshelves/wardrobes to create a non-permanent walled space. I may even convince Wendi to let me build one of the moving walls I've been pitching to her - a wall with lockable wheels. The walls hold art on them, and can be moved to create new room spaces within the house as needed. My office won't take nearly that whole quadrant, allowing us room for bureaus and wardrobes in the master bedroom. (We detest the wasted space of built-in closets.)
One of the four quadrants - the one in the lower right - is empty, again creating another two-story ceiling - this one in Wendi's design studio. We're hoping that with a windowed patio upstairs and multiple windows throughout the house that we get both trickle-down ambient light, and can create a nice tunnel of breeze during the summer. Because no - we're NOT going to install air conditioning. Both for environmental/financial reasons, and because we think we can achieve a cool house using passive cooling strategies like channeling the wind and having strategically-planted trees outside. (Plus it's cooler up here in the high country - which is part of the reason we chose to move here.)
So there it is, all capped off with a "shed roof," which we understand is the term for a slanted roof that does not reach a peak, but instead runs from a higher wall to a lower wall. (Like half of a traditional peaked roof.) We've asked that this be pointed toward our most southerly exposure, with the dream of one day covering it with the new thin-film solar panel laminate we've read about.
I'm excited just writing about this. Now we just have to wait for the builder to burst our bubble . . .
Now at a Gallery Near You: Me!
>> Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Alan's certainly been a busy blogger lately - I know it looks like I haven't done anything, but that's just because I've been on the road for work almost nonstop and it doesn't really work to take my sewing machine with me (yes - I have tried it but hotel rooms are not laid out for sewing). Anyway - I have been working and I do have news.
Drum roll please. . .
Grovewood Gallery - only the BEST gallery in Asheville, NC - is carrying my work! That's right folks. They took the red Wonky Squares that will appear in Simple Contemporary Quilts (coming soon from Lark Books), Sprinkles (to show a customer who may want it in a larger size), and they want one more - so that's one more wonderful thing on my to do list. I'm auditioning some of the colors we talked about here.
Speaking of my to do list - I have finished two of the Ten-Quilt-Project. I call them Build a Quilt squares. These are small (17" x 17") quilts stretched on wooden frames and designed to stand alone or play well with others. Please ignore the incredibly ugly trim in the picture - this is just a temporary house. We keep repeating that over and over. . .
Finally, I've sold a couple more small projects to Lark Books that have to stay secret because they want them to be new when the book comes out. So no pictures but they will be very cute. I promise.
See? I've been working. Just not very good about sharing.
Book Blog Tour: Ruth McNally Barshaw
>> Friday, May 11, 2007
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome Ruth McNally Barshaw to the Gratz Industries auditorium!
GI: First, give us the thirty second sales pitch on your first children's book, Ellie McDoodle: Have Pen, Will Travel.
RMB: Ellie's a kid who goes camping with relatives she can't stand and she keeps a sketch diary of it all. It has games, pranks, observations, nature facts, survival skills -- everything but the kitchen sink. Actually, there IS a kitchen sink in it, a camper's sink, which Ellie throws at her cousin. But because it's a kid story, it ends happy. (20 seconds)
GI: Your sketchbooks, many pages of which are posted on your web site at www.ruthexpress.com , are fantastic. Tell us more about them. How long have you been keeping sketchbooks? What sorts of things do you sketch? Do you worry about correcting your art as you work in your sketchbooks?
RMB: Thank you! I've been keeping a regular sketchbook-diary off and on since high school. One of the first is from my trip to Mexico at age 15. My mom made me take slide film for the camera, no print film. So when I wanted to view my photos from the trip it wasn't easy. I was so glad I had the sketchbook, to relive all the cool things that happened.
I sketch all sorts of things. The hardest thing to sketch was a soccer game. Running horses are really hard, too. The saddest thing is funerals; I think I've done 6. Happiest was the birth of my grandson. I started sketching with a pen 17 years ago. My grandpa was in poor health and I started writing him every few days, mostly cartoons of the funny things my kids were doing. Eventually it became cumbersome to sketch in pencil and redraw in ink. It was expedient to just sketch in pen. Scary, but expedient. I still make lots of mistakes. The perfectionist in me sometimes screams in pain at the mistakes. But few artists sketch in ink, and I feel it's a valuable skill, so I keep at it.
GI: Tell us about your experiences sketchbooking at the SCBWI Winter Conference, and how that led to you selling Ellie McDoodle.
RMB: I went to the 2005 conference not knowing where I was going to stay. I was flat broke, took out a loan to get there. I had a strong sense that something important would happen there. But even though Cecilia Yung, Penguin AD and SCBWI Advisory Board member, kept saying to the audience, "If you are great, we will find you," nobody seemed to find me. I sketched it all -- my angst and despair, and also all the many cool things that happened. When I got home I put it all on my website, all 180 pages.
Within days there was a huge buzz: Hundreds of emails arrived, many exhorting me to do a kids' book in that style. It took a while to convince me. I felt my work was not strong enough, or someone would have "found me." But I started the book, and an agent emailed me, all within a week of coming home from the conference. I finished the book as quickly as I could, the agent and I signed together, and she sold my book to Bloomsbury. From conference to sale was 6 months. Almost overnight, my life changed completely.
GI: Tell us about your other cartoon and illustration work. Did you go to school to be an artist? Was illustrating your job before you sold your first children's book? Where has your work appeared?
RMB: I went to Michigan State University to study advertising. I took 2 art courses but felt I didn't fit in with the studio artists so I took other art-like classes in landscape architecture, value engineering and mechanical drawing. I didn't fit in there, either, nor in advertising. I got a job at the newspaper doing comics and ads, then fell into a job with the university doing all kinds of fun promotional stuff. I quit to work out of my home when my (then-) youngest was 3. (She's now 18.) There I bounced around, looking for the right niche. It was an astoundingly frustrating time, mitigated by winning some big money in essay contests with little books.
My work has appeared in all sorts of things related to MSU; stadium cups, apparel, pizza boxes. I've designed a thousand t-shirts, drew caricatures at events, created a few comic strips. Most of my art stayed local, but if you visited a Marriott in California or the Washington DC area, maybe you saw my tourist maps.
A children's cookbook for a hospital was the first job in my life where I went to bed excited from working on it all day and woke up excited to get back to it again. I should have taken that as a clue: Get into kids' books. But, no. It took another 7 years. In the meantime I self-published lots of little books for family and friends. Uncle Charlie's Tasteless Booger Jokes is one of my favorites.
GI: I love your sketches of famous children's authors and illustrators! Have you ever shared your pictures with the writers and artists? If so, what's the best reaction you've ever gotten?
RMB: Thank you! I have shared my pictures with almost all of the writers and artists. They were all gracious and kind, except one who was somewhat dismissive. Maybe I didn't do a good job on that drawing.
The best reaction was Richard Peck, 16 years ago. I drew him at a school district awards luncheon for young writers (I was there because my kid won). He was delighted and promptly gave me his editor's name at Dial, saying I should contact her. I was far too scared and eventually lost the name. How I wish I'd contacted her. And how I wish I still had that drawing. It's around here somewhere. Someday I will meet him again and thank him for his confidence in me at a time when I had none.
Thanks Ruth! The book looks great - good luck with it!
You can follow Ruth's Book Blog Tour on Dotti Enderle's blog, Elizabeth Dulemba's blog, Karen Lee's blog, and Kim Norman's blog.
Read more...
You can follow Ruth's Book Blog Tour on Dotti Enderle's blog, Elizabeth Dulemba's blog, Karen Lee's blog, and Kim Norman's blog.
Books: Overclocked, Eastern Standard Tribe, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
>> Wednesday, May 9, 2007
I'm becoming a great fan of Cory Doctorow.
For those of you who frequent Boing Boing, as I do, you'll recognize Cory as one of the blog's four regular contributors. Boing Boing is my hands-down can't miss blog read every day, and it was through that site that I learned Cory Doctorow wrote fiction. Then last year, while I was visiting Florida schools, bookstores, and libraries to promote Samurai Shortstop, I picked up a copy of Cory's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and read it in various Sunshine State motel rooms. It seemed appropriate, as we were circling the land of Disney.
Long story short, I loved it.
So into the queue went another of Cory's books, Eastern Standard Tribe, which, to begin with, has a terrific title. It was great too.
So on a recent trip to Malaprop's in Asheville, they had Cory's latest book - a collection of short stories called Overclocked, and I nabbed it and read it. It was - you guessed it - fabulous.
Cory Doctorow is a writer of science fiction, and he really makes sure there is science in his fiction. Better put, you could say he is a writer of tech fiction, as his stories have the heavy hand of modern technology taken to near-future possibilities. Cory's stories are filled with 3-D printers (much like Star Trek's replicators) which can print on demand any item its user wishes, subcutaneous phones and PDAs which allow users to connect and share data in ways that seem just within our grasp, and - perhaps my favorite, and the advancement I ache for - the ability for humans to run "back-ups" and "download" their consciousnesses into new bodies as needed. Ah, immortality - I long for thee!
Doctorow also returns to favorite themes in his work, like the conflict between creative freedom and copyright, how the world will change when goods and services are so inexpensive that they're free, and changing attitudes toward community and government as we become more and more a world without physical borders. After reading both Down and Out and Eastern Standard Tribe, I worried that all his protagonists would be over-worked, paranoid, tech-zealots, but his short story collection reveals a much broader cast of characters and sensibilities - highlighted in the extreme by a sentient row boat in the Asimov-inspired tale I, Row-boat. (Seriously. And it's one of the best stories in the collection.)
Cory's got at least two more books out there that I know of that I haven't read. Yet. I will have all his books. Oh yes. I will have them. I'm so impressed by his plotting, his dialogue, his inventiveness, and of course his imagination. I'd love to be able to write with Doctorow's simultaneously breezy, funny, and erudite style, and it's one of my great regrets that I was unable to apply for this year's Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop where Cory will be teaching for a week. Attending Clarion is on my wish list of Things to Do to Become a Better Writer, but this wasn't the year I could do it.
I did read that Cory Doctorow is developing a young adult series (for Tor?) and I anxiously await those books as well. If you like really inventive, fun, and intelligent science fiction, give him a read - you won't be disappointed.
Shakespearean Soccer
>> Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Just ran across a great blog post in which the kids at DCenters - a blog that follows the ups and downs of DC United soccer - fill out a soccer line-up with characters from Shakespeare. Check out some of the players on their All Shakespeare Starting XI:
GK Brutus (Julius Caesar) – Your keeper should be cool, unflappable, like Brutus, who won't take a night off even if his wife kills herself by swallowing fire.
CF Macbeth – He can strike and finish, but plays withdrawn constantly checking back for the ball and looking for players ghosting out on runs. Occasionally overconfident, when he scores it's a dagger to the opposition.
ST Othello – Charges headlong on whatever Iago sends him to chase, occasionally acts too quickly for his own good, but that's what you want in a striker.
(Bench) M Hamlet -- Transfer listed, he never seems to have settled in and lacks confidence in his decision making. May have been affected by the death of his father, it is hoped that a transfer back to Elsinore FC where he'll be closer to mother and girlfriend (Bianca.... er, Ophelia) will provide him the comfort level to flourish.
(Bench) M Ariel (The Tempest) – Sometimes you need a bit of magic on the ball, and Ariel is a great choice. Excellent at winning midfield headers, like most Elemental Internationals.
(Injured Reserve) M Richard III – Leg and back problems plaguing this potential star, rumors of a bad attitude also surround him.
Too funny. Click here to see the entire line-up. (via Deadspin) Read more...
On the road again - and again - and again
>> Tuesday, May 1, 2007
No sooner did we move into our new place in North Carolina than I turned right back around and hit the road. First it was back to Atlanta to visit the Teen Group at the Grayson Branch of the Gwinnett County Public Library. The turnout and reception were great - and I have pictures!
Thanks so much to Leigh Skowronski for the invitation, and for the great pictures! (I always forget to bring my camera...)
Next up was West High School, back in my hometown of Knoxville. West, in fact, is a cross-town rival of my old high school. (A fact I kept mum about.) Librarian Martha Emrey rolled out the red carpet for me, and I met with high schoolers all day, talking about Samurai Shortstop, empirical storytelling, and modern Japanese history.
That same week I drove up the road to Cookeville, Tennessee, where I spent a half-day at Algood Middle School highlighted (for me, at least!) by a great pizza lunch with two very enthusiastic groups of student readers.
I continued my visit to Cookeville on Saturday, speaking at the Tennessee Tech-International Reading Association bi-annual Children's Lit Conference, where I got to see book event buddy Susan Vaught (author of Trigger and Stormwitch) and got to meet Marcia Thornton Jones, the author of dozens of books, including the fabulously successful Bailey School Kids books. All weekend long I got to stay at the wonderful cabin of a writer friend, and while I did get some work done, I also raided their exhaustive and eclectic video and DVD collection to watch Wilde and Topsy Turvy, two movies that have languished in my NetFlix queue for a long time.
On Sunday I was off to Huntsville, Alabama, where I spent a delightful afternoon talking turkey with local SCBWI members. I'm just sorry I couldn't stay longer!
After a brief respite back at our new mountainside home, I hit the road again to read at a book event sponsored by my favorite indie bookstore, Carpe Librum - and then managed to catch a Tennessee Smokies baseball game in Sevierville with my dad before heading to Maryville the next day for another school visit. The kids at Eagleton Middle were very excited to have me there, and the Maryville Times sent a reporter and a photographer to cover the day.
And now, after a very hectic few weeks, I am home again, home again, jiggety-jig - just in time for Wendi to fly to New York for a sales conference!
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