Me, podcasted

In which I am interviewed on the Reading and Writing Podcast.

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Flashes of War

My friend Katey Schultz has a book of flash fiction stories about the recent and on-going wars in the Middle East coming out soon, and I took time recently to ask her a few questions about it:

1) Why flash fiction? How does the form fit the material?

Flash fiction stories are typically 1-3 pages long. They are very short snapshots or moments captured on the page, often showing characters in response to a situation that out-sizes them. (Here’s a recording of one example, titled “Poo Mission.”) At first, I began writing about war using the flash fiction form because I knew very little about how we were actually, physically fighting the wars and how civilians in the Middle East were interpreting our actions. So the size of the story represented my limited knowledge, because I couldn’t imagine much more than a scene or two at a time with much accuracy.

The more I learned, the more I was able to refine my word choice in these stories, and really build momentum and energy on the page. At that point, I still stuck with the flash fiction form because intense, dramatic, or traumatic situations are often remembered only in snapshots—so that seemed right and realistic to me. It was only a year and a half or so into my work writing about war that I had amassed enough information and confidence to begin writing full-length short stories on this topic.

2) How did you research the experience of the soldiers before, during, and after the war in the Middle East to be able to write so well about it?

It all started by making lists of words. I was very interested in the language of warfare and the Global War on Terror in particular. Giving a writer a new word is like giving a painter a new shade of green. I really wanted to play around with things and see what I could do. It felt empowering…but I also knew I needed to be careful with these words, because they came with certain contexts that I had to become familiar with. The stakes felt very high, and that made me even more diligent in my research and also my precise imagining. If I wrote something and it didn’t “feel” true…if I couldn’t put my heart behind it…I deleted it. There was a lot of back and forth of my cursor across the screen, at least initially. Eventually, I found my way in.

To extend my research beyond using the right words, I read twenty or so nonfiction books about 21^st Century warfare and our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was in early 2010, so there weren’t nearly as many contemporary fiction authors publishing about Iraq and Afghanistan as there are today; and that was fine. I wanted to start with the facts. I watched countless DVDs (mostly documentaries) and clips of head-cam footage on YouTube from soldiers in ambushes or civilians in daily life. I really only interviewed 2 soldiers in my research—one, to discuss the day-to-day operations of life on a Forward Operating Base, and another, to talk about the process for enlisting in the Army. Information from the former helped me write “The Ghost of Sanchez,” and information from the latter helped me write “Deuce Out.”

Finally, I looked at many, many photographs using Google Images searches. I printed these and hung them on my walls, or downloaded the images and used them as a screen saver. In other words, I surrounded myself with the words, images, and sounds of war as much as I possibly could without going there…then I began to write.

3) You not only tell stories about Americans, but about people of Afghanistan/Iraq. How did you learn about their experiences enough to be able to write about them?

It took a healthy balance of research and imagination. I didn’t speak to any Afghan or Iraqi civilians while researching the book, though I would have liked to. I did, however, spend three weeks on a self-made writing retreat with former foreign war correspondent Karen Button. Her advice and knowledge were crucial as I began my first forays into writing from a completely different cultural perspective. I think that watching the DVDs and documentaries was also helpful to me here—they enabled me to study gesture, tone of voice, clothing, physical setting, and gendered interactions that I could then bring to life in my stories. Typically, I saturated my mind with information until the only thing left to do was start putting things together and inventing characters that could move around and react within the imagined spaces I was creating in my head.

There are still so many perspectives and viewpoints that I was not able to write. For instance, one of the stories that I chose not to publish in the collection was written from the perspective of a suicide bomber. Try as I might, I just never felt I could bring that piece up to par. It was too far for my mind to go and I didn’t believe my own words as I wrote them. So I cut the story out.

4) You often write about children. Is there a children's book writer inside you trying to get out? ;-)

This has honestly never occurred to me. Wow. I do this? I suppose it takes a strong YA author such as yourself to notice! Thank you! In another life, I was a teacher for five years, so I’m sure that has trickled into my writing some (as well as my work as a waitress). I will say that I find the appearance of children in short stories to be a great source of relief, and when you’re writing about war, it’s only natural to want relief from that. For example, when I wrote “Into Pure Bronze” about two, young Afghan boys playing soccer in downtown Kabul, I was trying to write my way out of the wars. I had been researching and writing about war for two years at that point, maybe longer. I needed to believe my stories would have an end…and that the wars would, also. So I specifically wrote about “the next generation” of Afghan children and tried to imagine what their impressions of their own country and of America would be, given all that has taken place in their lifetimes thus far.

5) You say in your epilogue that you chose to write about war--and this war specifically--because you wanted to understand it better. To get to know what it was like from the inside out. What did writing Flashes of War teach you? What answers did you find?

For me, every story begins with an unanswered question. Why else would I want to write it? Because of this, I did learn a lot while writing Flashes of War. Personally, I changed my views on the military’s recruitment practices, on why an individual may or may not choose to enlist, on our nation’s obligation to our troops while they serve and once they come home, as well as on the use of force in general. There was a time when I didn’t understand why anyone would sign up to serve in the U.S. Military. There was also a time when I believed that problems could be solved without military action. But the more I looked at these wars, the more I understood and became open to the diversity of reasons for serving. I also became supportive of the U.S.’s initial—very early—acts of war in Afghanistan. (Doug Stanton’s incredible book, Horse Soldiers, played no small part in informing and persuading me of this.)

In the end, however, writing Flashes of War was never about who was for or against anything. I felt genuinely interested in examining what those of us alive today could do to help relieve the suffering and bring awareness to the myriad impacts of war. Winning or losing, Republican or Democrat, Sunni or Shiite, Taliban or U.S. soldier—our tax dollars are still funding everything from Taco Bell deliveries on base, to drone strikes, to the rebuilding of schools for Afghan girls, to destroying weapons caches, to providing prosthetic limbs to any one of more than 50,000 U.S. soldiers who are now amputees. As Americans and as citizens of the world, I think that’s worth looking at and responding to. Flashes of War is my response.

Thanks, Katey!

Flashes of War officially pubs on May 27th, but pre-orders begin today. Click here to learn more about pre-ordering the book.

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Interview: Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire

Check out my interview over at Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire, in which we discuss Horatio Wilkes, comedy, fear, and social media, among other things.

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My Favorite Summer Day Trip

I was asked to write a short piece about a favorite North Carolina summer day trip for Artful Living, a regular newsletter from the North Carolina Arts Council. I picked something right in my back yard: Penland School of Crafts! Check out my suggestion and more from other NC artists here.

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Baseball Through the Looking Glass

This week I'm interviewed by Tina LoTufo over at Chapter 16, the Humanities Tennessee blog. (I'm originally from Knoxville, for the two or three of you out there who don't know that already.) Tina and I discuss life, death, and Tom Sawyer in Fantasy Baseball. Here's the link.

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I'm interviewed at From the Mixed-Up Files...of Middle Grade Authors

Head over to the "From the Mixed-Up Files..." blog to read an interview with me about Fantasy Baseball, writing middle-grade fiction, and my former life as a play-by-play basketball announcer...

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Join me for A Book and a Chat tonight at 6:30 p.m. EST!

Just a quick post to let you know I'll be appearing on A Book and a Chat tonight at 6:30 p.m. with Barry Eva as a part of his "Male YA Author Month." I think you can even dial in to ask questions! If you miss the chat and want to give a listen, the interview will also be available to listen to afterward online and as an MP3 download at Blog Talk Radio.

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Cynsations interviews Sara Pennypacker

There's a great interview up right now at Cynsations, where Cynthia Leitich Smith (Eternal, Tantalize, Blessed) asks Sara Pennypacker (Clementine series) great questions about her work and the world of kidlit. My favorite exchange:

Looking back, what was the single best decision you made in terms of advancing your craft as a writer?

Several years ago, I had an experience that profoundly changed the way I thought about writing for children. I just happened to hear someone quote Carl Jung - apparently Jung was asked during an interview why there was evil in the world. His answer was, "Young man, there is evil in the world because people can't tell their stories."

That resonated with me, and I started to think about it a lot in terms of children.

I realized it takes four things to tell one's story: a strong voice, language skills, a platform and an audience. Most children don't possess those things, but I am lucky enough to have all four.

Since then, I have tried to write for children a different way--as though I am telling their stories, because I can when they can't. I like to imagine my readers holding up my books to their adults and saying, "This is how I feel. This is what it's like for me."

I think it's given me a better voice, and better things to say.

Read the whole interview here.

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All about Something Rotten and my name at TeachingBooks.net

TeachingBooks.net, an online multimedia resource for libraries and schools, recently interviewed me over the phone for a series of audio recordings they offer for free in addition to their other subscription content. I had a lot of fun talking about the origins of Horatio and Something Rotten, but even better was the chance to talk about my name--how to pronounce "Gratz," and how I escaped being named "Bubba."

Original reading and introduction to SOMETHING ROTTEN

Alan Gratz Name Pronunciation

TeachingBooks.net offers all of their author name pronunciations for free, and many of them are a lot of fun to hear. Click here if you've ever wondered where Avi got that name, or how to pronounce Jon Scieszka.

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Nine Authors, Twelve Baseball Questions

Another interview I participated in, which was posted while I was off teaching and traveling in Japan: The Happy Nappy Bookseller's fantastic series of questions for me and eight other authors of baseball books for kids. Here's my answer to the question, "What playoff loss make your stomach churn the most?"

In 1999 I was living in Cincinnati, and had been following the Reds pretty religiously, getting down to the ballpark whenever I could. They were really great that season. Not a great team like 1927 Yankees great, just a lot of fun, with really terrific chemistry and a knack for coming back late in games and never giving up. Jack McKeon was the manager that year, a crusty old veteran who knew how to get the most out of limited talent, and the team had great years from Mike Cameron, Pokey Reese, Sean Casey, Barry Larkin, Aaron Boone, Dmitri Young, Scott Williamson, and Danny Graves. Not superstars, most of them, but guys with a lot of heart and big hits and pitches at the right moments.

At the end of that season, they finished in a tie with the New York Mets for the Wild Card spot in the playoffs, and there was a one-game tie-breaker played at Riverfront in Cincinnati. After a season of heroics and all-out play, the Reds just didn't have anything left in the tank, losing 5-0 to the Mets at home. It was devastating, but there was the hope that next year, the team might really be something special. Then, in the off-season, the Reds traded half their team to the Seattle Mariners to get Ken Griffey, Jr., and while it was always exciting to see Ken Griffey, Jr. play after that, it felt like the team lost all its chemistry from the year before. Griffey got hurt early and often, the team lost it's heart, and that was really the beginning of the end of Cincinnati's competitiveness for the last decade. But it was that playoff loss that really broke my heart.

You can read the rest of the questions and answers starting with this post. Thanks, Happy Nappy Bookseller! 

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Memories of Playtimes Past at Paper Tigers

While I was in Japan, I was asked to write up a brief nostalgia piece for papertigers.org about what playtime was like when I was a young boy. That piece is now online, along with the memories of a number of other authors from around the world--including our friend Tanita Davis. (Hey, Tanita!)

Here's a brief passage from mine, which is mostly about how I and my best friend next door invented our own country, called West Columbia:

West Columbia endured, and for years the fantasy expanded and grew as we added more territory, made more declarations, became a proper republic, and even weathered a minor war with a rival nation of kids down the street (South Washington!) who had the ultimate kid weapon in their arsenal: a high-powered BB gun.

You can read the rest at Memories of Playtimes Past.

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Interview with Holly Keller of Chez Beeper Bebe

Here at Gratz Industries we've decided to start interviewing some of the amazing creative people whom we've previously only stalked admired from afar. And I'm so thrilled that Holly Keller of Beeper Bebe has agreed to be my first interviewee! So let's get down to it, shall we?

Where do you find your inspiration?
My primary sources of inspiration are vintage toys, nature, fine artists (love Miro, Caulder, and Girard), and my biggest influence is, perhaps, the creative interests of my son.

For a couple of years now he has been coloring everything using every crayon in the box, nothing reflects reality—everything is rainbow-hued in his world (I like to describe it as coloring like a rainbow threw-up on it)—and this has definitely inspired my recent design aesthetic—the color wheel-like effect you see in my Rainbow Sunshine Plushie, as well as My Counting Bean Bags and fabrics I chose for those.

How do you balance your making with your family?
I forgo a whole lot of sleep. But aside from that, I have the great fortune of being married to someone who wholly supports what I do and does more than his share around our home so I can have time to design and support my little business. I did recently move to a part-time schedule at work too—cut back from full time to a 3-day work schedule—so I now have more time I can devote to the Beeper Bebe space, as well as to my son. And I have to admit, that has been the most glorious change in my world—I could break into a triumphant song and dance just talking about that change. I mean, Virginia Woolf talks about the need to have a room of one’s own, but you also need to have the dedicated time of one’s own—especially as a mother. While I did plenty of work on Beeper Bebe prior to going part-time, I always felt guilty for it and like I was short-changing everyone in my family (including me). But now that I have this dedicated time every week that is just for me to create—time that was freed up with the explicit intent of allowing me more time to devote to Beeper Bebe, well, I am liberated from my guilt for those hours. And that alone has been inspiring—not to mention crazy-happy–making for me personally.

Can we peek into your work space? Show us where the magic happens!My work space is a work in progress.

I actually did some significant re-organization on it last year, and now want to redo the whole color and feel of the little space I have—make it lighter, less crowded with supplies, more unity in its feel. The space I have is a what I suppose was intended to be a small bedroom in our 1920’s era home—so it is upstairs—but the best feature is the little balcony off the room—so I have my own door I can open to the outdoors when I am in there during any time other than winter (which is 1/3 of the year in Minnesota, but no matter…).

There are trees just outside, so during the summer I can hear the birds singing, smell the lilacs when they are in bloom below, sometimes I get squirrels on the balcony chattering away, or I can listen to the happy laughter of my husband and my son playing outside in the back yard.

I love that you list vintage Fisher Price Little People as one of your loves. I love them too! Have they ever directly influenced your work?
I have given my son several vintage Little People sets as gifts (you know, the sort of gift that is for him, but is really for you). I just find the 70’s era design from Fisher Price to be so damn cool. It was really plugged into the American Dream of the time—the A-Frame House, the jeep with the pop-up camper, the airport. They were mini-versions of the 70’s era family-dream. I don’t feel like any big toy maker is well tapped into today’s American dream. I mean, there are some toy makers who have some lovely, modern designs, but no big mainstream makers are doing anything really modern that is also affordable, like the stuff Fisher Price made. I wish Fisher Price would hire me to redesign their Little People for today. And I suppose there is part of me that wants to design my own Beeper Bebe version of that…watch this space?

What about other vintage toys? What were your favorite toys as a child? Do you still have them? Does your son have a favorite toy?
Aside from my own Little People, my other favorite toys as a child were the dolls and plushies my mum made for me, and anything that was an art supply. I loved to create and draw my own monsters when I was little. I actually grew up in poverty, so I did not have a lot of toys when I was little, really. But I cannot say I was ever bored because I lived so much in my imagination. Dime store trinkets were very loved by me—something I got for a nickel out of a gumball machining was as a good as something more substantial from a store—and I do still love little trinket-y toys to this day. And yes, I do still have some of my toys—certainly, all the dolls and plushies my mum made for me, and a few other things in an old toy chest. I also have a few toys that belonged to my grandma as a child, and a doll that was my dad’s. As for Beeper, my son, well his favorite toys, hands down, are his super hero figures, and his HUNDREDS of little plastic animals that he likes to sort by reptile, mammal, amphibian, sea creature, or whatever new category he creates. We pick up the little plastic animals at the thrift store—they seem to self-proliferate there. Personally, I love to buy him beautifully designed European toys, stuff that will endure—like the Shapemaker set from Miller Goodman or AutomoBlox - but he still plays with the plastic-y toys the most.

I'm completely in love with the Beeper Bebe in a Box. The details are just wonderful. Can you tell me how that evolved?

This is kind of a funny and sad story. I had this little doll when I was about 6 that is called a Pee Wee doll—it is about 4 inches tall and had its own little clothing. It was cheap and probably came from the local dime store but I loved that little doll. I kept her in a little plastic zip pouch, along with some other little trinkets that I guess were my accessories for her—so it was like a little play set of my own assembly. Anyway, one day while I was waiting for the school bus, for some reason I do not recall, another little girl got mad at me and punched me so hard in the stomach it literally knocked the wind from me and I fell down (I probably said something smart-alecky to her). Anyway, I must have dropped my Pee Wee doll because it was forever lost after that—and I was devastated. I never forgot that little doll and her pouch of stuff—and I think the Bitty Bebe is my version of it now. I have since made a little Bitty Birdie version of it—which people are way more nuts about—but I, personally, still love the little doll version best.

What's your favorite thing you've ever made?
I love my Kindie Garden Plush dolls that are designed after a drawing I made in kindergarten.

I also loved my little Chicken Coco doll I made—it was this little chicken made from a recycled tweed suit coat, with a little dress and matching pillbox hat with feathers.

I do love chickens—especially ones with style.

Is there something you made that you would love to sell but it would cost a fortune? Like a $600 teddy bear?
I have always had this idea about making a nature-inspired doll, with nature inspired wardrobe—things like a kilt that looks like it is made from leaves, a simple dress made from vintage linen that would have teeny wildflowers and herbs embroidered on it, and bear-like fur wrap she could wear around her. I think I will make it at some point—but with the amount of labor that will go into it, who knows what it would need to be priced at…

What inspired you to add drawings to your product photography - like the stem on the new Rainbow Sunshine Plushie? And the backgrounds for the Kindie-Garden dolls?
Really, it was just an inspired moment that occurred in the middle of photographing the first set of Kindie Garden plush dolls I ever made. I mean, they are made from childhood drawings, so it seemed natural to incorporate child-like drawings as background to their photos.

What are your favorite materials to work with?
Recycled, reclaimed, thrifted. Still. There is no better inspiration than just finding something spontaneously at the thrift store that you know could be redesigned into something else entirely. I love old wool tweed suit coats in particular, but I also thrift and use wool sweaters (that I later felt), cashmere sweaters, towels, sheets, fleece and vintage sewing notions.

I recently began collecting stripey cotton tees and I am still not sure exactly what I am going to do with them, but I know there is a plushie in there somewhere. Of course, I also feel good about the fact that I am making something new from something already out there—using what is available rather than buying more.

Can you tell us about your day job?
I do have a day job—the one I am now working part-time at. My day job is completely disparate from what I do with Beeper Bebe. I work for one of those ginormous companies with businesses in almost every country in the world—I am an organizational development consultant for them. What this means is that I advise leaders on how to more effectively run their businesses so they are better aligned, their employees will be more engaged, and they will ultimately deliver better business results. I recognize how weirdly different it is. And honestly, I sometimes cannot believe that any of these big shots in suits listen to me—often inside I feel like, Really? You want to pay attention to what I have to say? Because I am just a girl who likes to make toys and drink whiskey—what do I really know about how you should execute your strategy? But I do get to travel the world for my job, and tell men in suits what to do, so there is no denying that it is intellectually interesting work

What are your goals for Beeper Bebe? Are you trying to grow your business? What steps are you taking to make your goals a reality?

Sure, I work deliberately to build Beeper Bebe. Mostly because I want to be able to afford to spend more time making and designing stuff. I mean, I would love to do nothing but design toys and projects for kids all day long. It is what I am most passionate about. I do use my blog as an instrument to engage people who like my work, and to broaden that group—but at the end of the day, I blog because I love to create and it is a way to journal that process—what I am making, how I am making it, and what is inspiring to me. And it is so, so good to connect with a community of people who appreciate this sort of thing—because I think most of my friends could give a rip that I designed an itty bitty chicken plushie.

That said, my biggest thing I have done to date to make my goals a reality was to cut back to part time at my day job—which meant some serious and intense and emotional negotiations with my manager and company, and also meant we had to scale back our lifestyle to accommodate 40% less income from me. 40% less income though in exchange for what feels like 100% more life seems well worth the exchange. You just cannot beat all that unfettered time to plan, design, create and to do things like spend the morning with your son’s kindergarten class—now that is inspiring.

Who are your favorite makers?

Here are a few:

Clive and Sunshine

Tamar Mogendorff

Lyndie Dourthe

Cathy Cullis

And everything Sarah of The Small Object makes has my adoration

My new favorite blog is Made by Joel. Could he be more brilliant? Maybe Fisher Price should hire him to redesign the Little People because he would do a bang-up job.

I am also inspired by the Habit blog - the photography is lovely and real and I find the text so authentic and poignant.

What are your favorite children's books? Either your favorites as a child or your current favorites to read with your child - or both.
We all love books at our house—there are stacks and shelves of them all over. I think they are the source for so much imagination—the jumping off point for creative play and your own artistic creations. My favorite books as a child were One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr Seuss—because all the creatures in that book were so cool. I wanted them all as pets.

We do have loads of children’s books—and I definitely have my favorite authors, like Mo Willems, Leo Lionni, Eric Carle, of course. And I love the Toot and Puddle characters, as well as Charlie and Lola. Skippyjon Jones is a big favorite with Beeper—and so are the Harry Potter books. We have been reading our way through them—we are just finishing up The Order of the Phoenix. Honestly, I believe the Harry Potter books are some of the best books being written today. The characters are so well developed and have a lot of emotional complexity. Plus, I totally have a secret fantasy about being a student at Hogwarts. Seriously.

You sell patterns as well as finished items. I do that too - and I've gotten a lot of questions about why I do it. So why do YOU do it?
Well, I get a lot of inquiries on many of my designs from people who would like to make their own. At first I was of the same mind as those you mention—well, why would I do that? Over time though I have realized, making a given plushie design runs its course for me, and it becomes less inspiring and fun to make after a while…and also, making plushies is pretty labor intensive without a very high financial return for all the hours it takes to make one well.

So, while I love to make the toys, I also recognize that in order to run a business that is lucrative in any way, I need to offset my actual plushie-making with a few things that are less labor intensive—the great thing about patterns is once you put in the time to assemble it, it is DONE and then all you have to do is keep mailing out pdf’s when someone purchases one. Easy. Also, I understand the desire to make your own—and especially the desire to do it without ripping off the artist, even though I am sure you could figure out how to make some of my plushies without my pattern.

Now that I have designed a pattern, and have been doing more tutorials on my blog, well, I just really like being able to share that with others. I like that when you give someone a pattern they will modify it and make it totally their own—cool.

Any advice to other makers out there?
As Henry David Thoreau said, Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence. That is what it is all about—finding your own path, your own passion, and going on that journey with it. Do that above all other things. It is the source of true happiness, which in turn will flow to other people and areas of your life. Do what you love, people.

Thanks so much Holly! It was great getting to know you better.

Now that you've met her I know you'll want to stalk her too! You can find Holly online here. . .
blog: Chez Beeper Bebe
shop: Beeper Bebe
Flickr: Beeper Bebe

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Book Blog Tour: Kerry Madden

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, Louisiana's Song, and its place in your Maggie Valley trilogy.

KM: Thirty seconds, Alan? I'm too long-winded with gaps, breaks, and unfinished sentences. . . but here goes: Louisiana's Song is a story of art, auditory hallucinations, music, and family. When Daddy comes home from the Rip Van Winkle Rest Home dramatically different than the daddy the children knew, the kids band together to bring him back to them through murals, flashcards, fairy hunts, and songs. Louisiana "Louise" is the hero despite her terrible shyness - and the story is set against the backdrop of Ghost Town in the Sky, Maggie Valley, and the turbulent history of 1963. (I bet that's longer than 30 seconds.)

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 Louisiana's Song, I wanted to explore the life of a very tall girl and shy artist who finds her courage and her father, who is lost in his own recovery from the accident. And in Jesse's Mountain, we go back to the 1940s through Mama's diary, her love of birds, and we see the girl she was and how she came to have ten children. So even though Livy Two is our narrator and eavesdropper and plotter, I focused each book on one particular character in the Weems' family. Now I have to decide whether to write more Livy Two stories or write from the point of view of say, Gentle or Caroline or Cyrus or even Jitters - Jitters, though, does get her chance to shine in Jesse's Mountain.

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 Midwest - she is swept up in her father's search for the opportunity to win some football games!

Offsides also went through the Hollywood mill, optioned by Jim Henson Productions with Diane Keaton and Bill Robinson of Blue Relief attached to produce and direct. We had meetings in Hollywood for four years - I'm not kidding. It was tossed around as a feature film, a one hour pilot (LIFETIME for a minute), a half-hour sitcom - you name it. We had meetings at Working Title, Jim Henson, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox Family, Lifetime, UPN, WB . . . every incarnation: can the coach be African American? Could it be the Thursday Night Wives Club? Could it focus on Mom and Dad instead of the kid? Diane Keaton did send me chocolate football - a regular football of solid chocolate - and she came for dinner. Here is an essay about her coming to dinner called "Toys in the Crawlspace" from LA Weekly.

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 Knoxville, Tennessee, my hometown, and that you attended the University of Tennessee. Your own travels have taken you to Europe and Asia, and you now live on the West Coast. What is it about the mountains of East Tennessee/Western North Carolina that won't let you go? Was it love at first sight, or did the mountains have to win you over?

KM: You're right, Alan. They won't let me go. And I never ever planned for that to happen. I left Knoxville never dreaming I'd look back, and I've spent two decades looking back in one form or another. When I got my driver's license on my sixteenth birthday in Knoxville, my mother handed me the keys and said, "Congratulations. Now go pick up your brothers from football practice." From that day on, I drove everywhere, and when friends would come to town, I would drive them to the mountains. Friends were always stunned by the beauty, and I began to feel proud of the mountains - a tiny claim to them - after an itinerant childhood. I was always searching for home with moving so much and being the new kid. We go back every year - we even found Maggie Valley on a road trip when the kids were tiny. When I began to write Gentle's Holler, I picked the most beautiful place I could think of - the Smoky Mountains. My dream is to live there again and teach at a university and write my novels. I have never felt really like Los Angeles is home - I love our friends and our lives, but it's not home.

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!

And hey, we're just the third stop on Kerry's Book Blog Tour this week. Check in on her previous installments at Elizabeth Dulemba's blog and Dotti Enderle's blog, then later this week on Kim Norman's blog on Thursday, and Ruth McNally Barshaw's blog on Saturday. And go pick up copies of Gentle's Holler and Louisiana's Song! Kerry needs bus fare back to Knoxville . . .

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Book Blog Tour: Ruth McNally Barshaw

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.

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Book Blog Tour: Joe Kulka

Here at Gratz Industries, we're happy to be part of a Book Blog Tour for a number of authors this summer, beginning with Joe Kulka (left), the author/illustrator of Wolf's Coming. Here are five questions with the wolfman:

GI: Give us the twenty-second blurb about Wolf's Crossing.

JK: I think the good folks at Lerner did a fine job summing it up on their website so I'll cheat and paste in their description here:
As a distant howl echoes through the forest, animals quickly stop what they're doing and run for home. Look out - Wolf's coming! As the shadowy figure gets closer and closer and the day draws to a close, the animals shut the door, pull the shades, and turn out the lights. Soon the wolf's glowing eyes appear at the window and the front door opens . . . But things are not as they seem in this suspenseful, clever story, and it's the reader who's in for the biggest surprise of all!

GI: Wolf's Coming! is the first picture book you've written and illustrated, but you've illustrated many more books by other authors. Can you tell us more about the collaborative process with authors?

JK: It does vary but most of the time it's pretty much a solo effort. A lot depends on the publisher. Some don't want any direct interaction between author and illustrator. I enjoy initially seeing the manuscript with little to no illustration notes. I like to be able to interpret and, ideally, enhance the text. I think that is the job of the illustrator - to bring a second view point to the story and help tell the story. If I happen to come up with a unorthodox way of looking at the story - and honestly that is what I strive for - I will run the idea by the editor and art director with a request that they let the author know what I'm planning. I never want to have an author hate what I do with their story. It's always nice to know that the author likes what is being done.

GI: As an author now of picture books, do you find you think about your story first visually or verbally? Did you have scenes and illustrations in mind and build bridges to them with story, or work from strictly from a pre-written manuscript?

JK: Both. There are times I will be sketching and I like the way something looks - a character, or a setting, that I think would make for interesting elements of a story. But when it's time to get the story going I sit down and start writing. I usually keep going until I have a rough version completed. I may let it sit for a while if I'm not too happy with it and then start sketching again. Sometimes those sketches will spur a different direction or new idea. Then I'll go back and revise the story. It's usually at this point that I'll make a very, very rough dummy. Essentially a 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper with 32 squares on it that I'll put some scribbles on. This gives me a quick overall feel of the breakdown of the story as it would appear in book form. Then I can see where I may need to adjust the pacing or maybe be able to tell some/more of the story just through the illustrations. By now I have pretty decent grasp on the story and work on fine tuning the text. Last step would be putting together a full dummy with fairly clear sketches and sending it out for consideration.

GI: Tell us about the choices you made for Wolf's Coming! As an author/illustrator, you were in the enviable position of choosing thesubject matter you'd be illustrating. Why forest animals? Why that setting?

JK: The story evolved from a game I used to play with my 6 year old son when he was 2. I'd take him fishing with me and when it was time to go he'd usually be lagging. So being the good father that I am, I decide to scare the bejesus out of him and tell him there's a wolf in the woods so we'd better run back to the car. Don't worry, it was always done in fun. He loved it. We used to hide in his bed and pretend the wolf was outside his bedroom door.

So using that as a starting point I came up the story for Wolf's Coming!

I briefly played around with the idea of there being human children in the story but it just seemed to make more sense for them all to be animals. Since they were all animals I wanted to keep the setting in the woods but still give them an anthropomorphic feel.

I've always been a huge fan of the old Warner Brothers/Tex Avery cartoons so of course I had to put Wolf in a suit and tie. It also serves as a clue that maybe since he is so dressed up that just perhaps Wolf is well aware of the surprise planned.

GI: If you could steal any other illustrator's career, whose would it be?

JK: That's a tough question. There are so many illustrator's careers that I want to steal or at least be able to steal their drawing ability. J.C. Leyendecker would be my top choice I guess. Nobody could draw like that man and he was pretty darn successful for many decades. N.C. Wyeth would be a close second. Of living illustrators, I wouldn't mind having David Wiesner's career, or William Joyce's or Chris Van Allsburg's.

Thanks Joe! Good luck with Wolf's Coming!

You can follow Joe's Book Blog Tour on Elizabeth O. Dulemba's blog, Ruth McNally Barshaw's blog, and later this week on John Nez's blog (Thursday) and Dotti Enderle's blog (Friday).

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