Jennifer C. Minichiello greeted me with a giant table of books to sign, and as the day progressed, the piles grew taller. I think there were even more than at Mitchell, but I managed to get them all signed over the day!
The cafetorium was big enough to hold half the 5th grade students at a time, so I did two back to back 45 minute presentations in the morning. Kudos to Jennifer who was able to get the students in and out so efficiently.
The middle of the day was a combo of book signings and having lunch with students (one of my favorite things to do!)
In the afternoon, it was time for 6th grade students, again, in two 45 minute sessions, back to back.
Here are the students who came up to the front to ask questions — and they were GREAT!
Tuesday October 17th was the day for my Dolly Vogel visit. Librarian Michelle Thomas expertly organized two assemblies and lunch visits with students, and I also got to do my all-time favorite thing, which was to give a writers’ workshop. The students in the workshop were FANTASTIC! Wonderful brainstorming session, followed by a very brief time to write, but every single participating student wrote up a storm and every student shared their writing with me. In fact, nearly all of the students read their works aloud to everyone in the workshop, which can be daunting, seeing as they were selected from all different classes. Here are some pics from the assemblies.
Teresa Kenney of Village Books invited me to give a public after-school presentation and I was delighted to do so. Independent bookstores are THE biggest supporters of authors. Teresa READS books and I saw her in action, recommending with expertise. Independent bookstores can order in and sleuth around for their customers.
I was so excited to finally have this visit happen. MaryEllen Bryant, librarian-extraordinaire, and I have been corresponding since the fall of 2019. There was a trip in place way back then for me to visit 5 Conroe ISD schools in the spring of 2020. Who knew in the fall of 2019 that such plans were for naught?
MaryEllen warned me that there would be a LOT of books to sign, so I made sure to have several of my favorite sharpies on hand. She was not kidding! First picture is for posterity. Second is us goofing it up.
All of the 5th grade students came in for an assembly in the morning — 600! And in the afternoon, 600 6th grade students came in. I always save lots of time for Q&A and with big groups, ask for educators to select a number of students to come up to the front to ask those questions. Here are some of the questioners:
There were also a number of Ukrainian students at the school, and so they came forward so I could meet them:
Best moment? The group hug:
In the middle of the day there was time for autographing all those books, plus lunch, with selected students cycling through.
The school day ended and I still had two giant cases of books to sign, so MaryEllen grabbed one case and I took the other and we loaded them into the trunk of my rental car. I was seeing her again on Wednesday night for dinner and that would give me time to get them all autographed up.
I dreamed of writing books ever since I was a little kid, but the first “book” that was published wasn’t a book at all. On behalf of the University Women’s Club of Brantford, I helped create a directory of women and work in Brant county. Sounds hokey, now, I know, but in 1989 this sort of booklet was needed to show girls that they could dream as wide as boys.
Congratulations on being such an avid reader and writer. That’s wonderful! As to the process of having a book published, it is a long and complicated thing. If you google how to get a book published you will encounter all sorts of scammers who just want to steal your money with the end result that your book might get printed, but that’s not the same as getting published. The difference is this: anyone can write a story and get the story printed and bound into book form, but the only people who would ever read that are the people you give it to. When a book is published, the writer crafts a unique story with wide appeal that a publisher (which is a category of business) buys and the publisher has the author work with editors to make the story even better. That part of the process alone can take several months. The publisher also works with marketing people and designers etc etc, and then gets a printing company to do the actual manufacturing of the book. The publisher also sends out advance review copies of the book to reviewers across the country. They read the book and then give it a rating and they write a review of it and those reviews get published in various places and readers read those reviews and it makes them decide whether they want to buy the book or not. The author doesn’t pay for any of that to happen and they’re really not involved in the business end of it. The author gets paid. How much? On a $10 book, an author would be paid $1. So the way to have an income as an author is to write a book that a ton of people will buy. Publishers are very picky about the books they publish because it’s such a complicated and expensive process for them. In fact, a publisher might get thousands of people sending them book manuscripts in a year and they only publish one out of maybe 10,000.
To put it another way, what if you were interested in being a veterinarian? No matter how gifted you were in science, you still wouldn’t do surgery on a dog, right? You still need all the training. It’s the same thing for being an author. There are lots of people who are talented in writing, but they still need the training.
My advice to you is to take your time and learn about the craft of writing now, rather than trying to get published right off the bat. A good way to prepare yourself to be an author is to read widely, which I know you’re already doing. Set yourself a goal of reading 1000 books in the same genre as what you’d like to write. I know that sounds daunting, but reading widely is the way to expose yourself to all sorts of story techniques and give yourself ideas of what may work for you. It’s a pathway for you to develop your own unique writing voice. People who haven’t read widely risk sounding like the last author they read.
The other thing to do is to write every day, which I suspect you’re also already doing. Keep up the good work! Just like a marathon runner trains for a race by running, an aspiring author trains by writing.
If you get your whole book written, the next thing to do is join a critique group where others who are writing books give you feedback on your story and that helps improve it. Writers need to be humble and to realize that they can always improve. It’s a hard profession.
I knew I wanted to be a writer since I was in 4th grade and I wrote my first novel in 8th grade but my first book wasn’t published until I was 42 years old. I did have other stuff published before that though. For example, I was the editor for the school yearbook in 8th grade and wrote for the high school newspaper and was a freelance writer for newspapers and magazines before writing books. I also went to college and did a bachelor’s degree in English Literature and a master’s degree of Library Science. When publishers look at manuscript submissions, they also look at the writer’s background. They are more likely to be interested in a story written by someone who has been published before and who takes their writing so seriously that they study in college to improve themselves, so taking these steps at the beginning can lead to long time success.
Step one: lightly sketch outline in pencil, then cover up with hot wax everything you want to remain white.
Step two: soak egg in your next lightest colour of dye (yellow is a classic second colour).
Step three: cover up with hot wax everything you want to remain yellow.
Step four: soak in the next next lightest colour — in this case pink — then cover up with wax everything that you want to remain pink.
Step five: soak in your darkest colour.
Step six isn’t shown, but I use raw eggs with the guts still inside because the egg settles into the dye jar better. I remove the guts once all the dying is complete. I dribble hot wax onto the spot where I make my one hole so that the egg guts doesn’t disturb the dye and then I blow air with a syringe, followed by water with the syringe. I ensure the opening is free of filament (ie, if the hole is plugged, the egg will explode in the next step).
Step seven: put a soft buffing cloth on the tray of your microwave. Set your hollowed egg on top. Zap for 10 seconds. Immediately remove and buff with a clean soft cloth. Done! Finished egg above is the one on the far right.
It’s a dream come true to finally have one of my novels translated into Ukrainian and published in Ukraine. The translator is the brilliant Yulia Lyubka and the publisher is Books XXI. Stolen Child (Stolen Girl) holds a special place in my heart because it was written at the urging of my late mother-in-law, Lidia Skrypuch, who was a kid during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine and half of her classmates were victims of the Lebensborn program. That this translation is coming out now is sadly appropriate because the new Nazis, aka Putin’s Z army, are doing Lebensborn all over again: kidnapping Ukrainian kids, brainwashing them and placing them in Russian homes. My mother-in-law used to say that there was little difference between the Nazis and the Moskali: both were genocidal killers and thieves, but the Nazis had better boots.
This is a photo of my mother in law as a baby, before anyone in their family had an inkling of what the future would hold.
Over the past months, educators from across the continent have been facilitating artwork with kids who have fled war in Ukraine, not only as a way for kids to express their emotions, but also as a way to share those feelings with others. As time went on, a core group of artists from St. Sophia School in Mississauga became the primary contributors. I was so moved by their insight and wowed by their art that I wanted to meet them in person. To honour each of them and to thank them. As a token of thanks, I brought them each a couple of books: Adrift at Sea, which I wrote with Tuan Ho, phenomenal artwork by Brian Deines, about a Vietnamese boy who fled war, and also my novel Making Bombs for Hitler. Here’s a photo of that core group of artists.Ola Holyk, teacher-librarian extraordinaire, and the engine behind the artists at St. Sophia.I had brought some books for the library as well, but Rostyslav had his eye on Last Airlift. He was fascinated with the book and kept on asking about it. How can an author resist such enthusiasm? I gave it to him, and its sequel, One Step at a Time. He was very excited. Since I basically gave him the copy that I was donating to the school, I’ll be sending copies to the school as well.the whole classartists with educatorsThe whole class with Ms Holyk, teacher-librarian extraordinaire.One of our very gifted artists.
