squeetus

Cream soup

That subject line doesn't have anything to do with anything. I just like creamy soup. Crab and corn chowder--mmmm.

I've been working overtime, trying to finish this draft of rapunzel's revenge in one week, which has been especially hard as Dean's been super busy at work. We're just so fond of this story, we want it to be brilliant! And I just can't wait to see what Nathan the Illustrator will do with it.

I'll be leaving for Chicago on Sunday. I'm speaking (yikes!) at the annual International Reading Assocation conference, and I'll be doing some school visits while I'm in the area. The only thing I'm doing that's really open to the public is a stock signing at Bookstall on Tuesday, so stop by the store if you're around.

Re: my last post, it seems as though most people are just not as bugged as I am by the paucity of female characters in animated shows. I wonder, now that I've brought to your attention if it'll start to bug you too? Or maybe I'm just an oddball that gets bugged over nothing. I'm rooting for Option A--I don't feel like that much of an oddball. (please don't verify that with my husband)

Mild feminist rant

Since Max has been old enough to watch movies, we'll watch half a movie on a Friday or Saturday night. It's been a fun movie night, occassionally spiced up with a bowl of popcorn. And we've had a chance to see some of the fun and amazing animated movies that are out there. Which leads me to the question...

"WHERE ARE ALL THE GIRLS?"

It's safe to say that about 50% of the world's populations of humans and animals are female. So, why on cartoons do they make up less than 10%? I understand that TV cartoons are getting better with this, but the movies are ridiculous. Think of the major animated movies of the last few years: Shrek, Toy Story, Madagascar, Ice Age, Veggie Tales, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, Shark Tale, Cars...they have one token female, maybe two if you're lucky. Can you imagine that many movies with almost entirely female casts? Bug's Life and The Incredibles were a little more evenly weighted, there are exceptions, thank goodness. But the majority are No Girls Allowed. I have to wonder what movie makers are thinking. Do they think mass audiences don't want female main characters...or any females at all? Irk.

Now I grew up on Winnie-the-Pooh (Kanga). This sort of setup is familiar to all of us. But aren't we tired of it? Can't the little girls have female characters to cheer for? Can't the little boys grow up believing that girls can be heroes, too? I don't think of myself as a rampaging feminist, but this is really starting to bother me.

It was refreshing to watch March of the Penguins and finally see a show where about half of the characters were female.

Three projects (or...eight)

Yesterday, I:

1. Sent diary of a lady's maid to my editor for the first time (hooray! yikes!)
2. Went through the copy editor's second proofing pass notes on river secrets
3. Received my editor's comments on the most recent draft of rapunzel's revenge

I'm certainly juggling my share of projects! Surprisingly, I'm really enjoying it. I love having a project waiting for me the moment I'm done with a draft of another. I need to be working on something while I'm waiting for feedback on another. I don't like down days. Not to say that occassionally (or almost always) I wouldn't rather eat Doritos and watch brain-dead television rather than write. It's soo much easier and often sounds tempting. But I'm so obsessive, I don't feel good about myself if I don't do my daily writing. And besides, I feel icky after watching too much television, or any television in the daytime. An hour or less at night is all I can take.

(Not to say that I'd turn down Doritos. Ever. I know they're gross and fatty and processed and full of fake stuff. I can't help myself.)

This schedule won't slow down for some time. After I send off the final draft of rapunzel, I'll start in on Austenland/Ostensibly Jane, then go back to diary, and work back and forth on both of those all summer. This year Dean and I will also start another graphic novel. After that I have another adult book under contract (I have a kind of groovy idea that I'm digging) and two more young adult books (under contract as of this week). I'm kind of goofy about secrecy at first, but I can tell you that one of the YA books is a new Bayern book.

So many projects! But right now all my thoughts and energy are focused on rapunzel's revenge. This is our last big draft! And it must be perfect! But how, but how?

Also, we bought Max a harmonica yesterday. He carries it with him everywhere. It's about the cutest thing ever.

Four important things

1. My two-year-old son is wearing four-year-old socks. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. His papa wears a shoe size 15.
2. The smell of cooking bacon is stronger than the odor of poopy diaper. This is something you may never had a chance to know unless you're a mother of a toddler, so I thought I should share that.
3. If you ever put a toddler in a nice white shirt, just think of it as a blank piece of paper that's waiting to be colored on. It'll have breakfast dribble down it before anyone sees him. It's the law of the universe.
4. I got a galley of river secrets! It's the Advance Reading Copy (ARC) that publishers bind up to send to booksellers, reviewers, librarians, so they can read a book in advance of publication. The cover is beautiful. I'm so happy with it. Dean, Max and I were playing out front when I saw it on the doorstep, and I just had to stand in the garage and appreciate it for several minutes. So fun to see those words in the official font, the chapter titles and initial caps. I can't wait for everyone to read it. I'm just so fond of that Razo.

Author vs. publisher

I get a lot of questions about this, so I thought it might be interesting to some to see what parts of a book I as the author control and what the publisher decides. This is according to my own experience and understanding, so it's probably not 100% accurate in all cases.

Author

• The words in the book. People often ask if I'm bothered by having an editor tell me what to write and what to change. She doesn't. She gives me great feedback and I make the changes I want to make. If a book's lousy, you can't blame the editor. Even after the copy editor looks over a manuscript and makes changes to misspelled words and misplaced commas, I still get to okay those suggested changes.
• The title. I choose my own title and a publisher can't change it without my permission. We will consult together on the best title, though. Now, for translated books, they can change the title.

Publisher

• All the business stuff with the book, such as the price, the release dates, when or if it's published in hardcover or paperback, number of copies printed, how it's marketed and publicized, shipping the book, doing returns, and a million other behind-the-scenes stuff I'm not even aware of. Some of these items might be negotiated in the author's contract (such as if there's a hardcover release or it goes straight to trade paperback), but mostly this is the publisher's world.
• The look of the book from cover art and jacket design to the font used inside the pages. Often a publisher will submit these choices to the author for consultation or approval (I get to see the stuff), but usually these decisions are soley the publisher's.

Ramblings

Readers of my  entry Mirror of True Womanhood may be relieved to hear that after some debate and much consideration, a couple of scores have been altered. Dean raised my Order in the Home from a 5 to a 7, and I raised his Discipline from a 4 to a 6. Whew! Now you can rest easy.

Working on draft 3 of diary of a lady's maid. I'm really liking it. I know, this is a bad sign, my husband would say. The calm before the storm. The pride before the fall. The sanity before the madness. I just like the main character and I'm going places I've never gone before, which is so fun for me as a writer. Literally, the landscape is much different from my other novels. Technically, writing first person and in diary format is quite a variation for me. It's interesting, but the switch to first person feels very smooth, quite natural. It's the diary format that's a bigger change.

I met my daily writing goal already, and yet I'm going to go work on it again. I know, I know, it's amazing.

Spackman discovered!

I was in 4th grade when I first decided I wanted to be a writer. Mrs. Spackman was my teacher, and she encouraged us to think creatively and to write for fun. We did poetry, wrote short stories. I went crazy with the loveliness of writing and started four books that year.

Ever since my childhood fantasy actually came true (I still sometimes can't believe it), I've been dying to find Mrs. Spackman and thank her. She retired the year after I had her, so it was a daunting task. I wasn't even sure if she was still with us. When I bumped into my first grade teacher, she was able to get me her address, so I happily wrote a letter and sent her a couple of my books. Then the other day my doorbell rang, and I opened it to a brilliantly lovely, white-haired woman. Here she was!

I had her pose with the goose girl painting because she was one of those who inspired me to write it, and also because the color of her sweater looked so nice (both points very important). She was a wonderful teacher for thirty years. I asked her, somewhat dreading the answer, "Have you received many thank you letters from former students?"

"Besides yours," she said, "I've had one."

Poor teachers! How do they even put up with us? We're so ungrateful for their hard work, and we certainly don't compensate them financially. With that in mind (*ahem*) let me give another little plug to the Reading Teacher Award. I've had an embarrassingly small number of entries. Read the article about it in the last issue of the Squeeter Pig, and note that I'm pushing back the deadline with the hope of getting more entries.

And thank you, teachers, for being so patient with us! We really do love you!

O-town...with photos!

Warning: vacation photos follow.

Here's that adorable Max with his favorite fella, Pluto. He wasn't afraid at all.

He turned right around and gave him a "love."

We're waiting for the ferry to take us to the Magic Kingdom. The dock and lake were beautiful. The Wilderness Lodge is in the background. So much nicer than a bus stop!

Dean at the Hundred Acre Wood playground, appropriately seated beneath "Eeyore's Gloomy Spot." He's so not a fan of amusement parks, and he was such a good sport. All for the kid.

At the Scholastic shoot. As you can see, only under great duress was I willing to put on the princess gown and tiara. See how my great beauty tamed that savage beast? Er...something like that.

O-town

Back from Orlando. It was so great! Five hours on a plane with a toddler is always cause for alarm. There was a throw-up incident and a couple of contained breakdowns, but considering, Max did beautifully. And he loved the Magic Kingdom. I'd heard that little kids are scared of the characters, so when we saw Pluto, we held back and just pointed him out to Max, but Max rushed to him and gave him a love. He loves Pluto the most, because he's a dog, of course.

We took it easy, not going on anything with long lines, and heading back to the hotel for a nap before long. He loved all the rides, just staring with unblinking eyes, his head moving back and forth, trying to take it all in, occassionally pointing and saying, "Ooh. Ooh." His surprise favorite was Aladdin's Magic Carpet ride. As soon as we started to spin and go up and down, he screeched and laughed. He'd never been on anything like that before. I think for a toddler, one day with a nap in the middle was just perfect.

The next day I went and shot that Scholastic book fair video. I told the producer of the video in an email that I'm not camera shy and am game for anything. And they took me up on that offer. I was such a goofball, but I figure you may as well have fun and not worry what people will think. I put on a velvet gown and pranced down a long, red carpeted staircase, among other feats. We filmed it in this crazy store, an interior design store for ridiculously rich people. It was filled with marble statues, carved canopy beds, water fountains, nothing with price tags because if you need to know the price you shouldn't shop there. In one segment, I illustrated the tips for becoming a princess around a bedroom set covered in 24-karat gold. It was especially nice because durning breaks, I was able to do some furniture shopping for our new house. (Pretend that I wrote that last sentence on April 1st.)