Summer 2011~ Is It Really Over?

I just now sent pdfs of the FINAL art to my editor in San Diego before shipping the art off to New York. It is a good thing I live in the middle of the country where I can easily communicate with both coasts. My summer was spent painting the illustrations for a story written by Mem Fox which will be published next fall with Beach Lane Books. You will hear more about it as that time draws near...

I also spent the summer painting large sets for Circus Juventas' summer show, "GRIMM, Happily Ever After". From castles to cottages, gypsy wagons to tree stumps; all were needed to transport performers and audience into a magical, fairytale world and my brushstroke is apparent on almost every wall. I also write the script for the show and my son Cooper performs with the other amazing kids who dangle and swing from the air or leap 30 feet onto the shoulders of another waiting below. Truly it astounds me, which is why I keep doing it every year. I am already beginning on the script for next summer's show!

With a literary theme like the Brothers Grimm, I was able to link up Circus Juventas with our wonderful local bookshop, The Red Balloon for a Circus Event. For the first time in the store's history there were contortionists, jugglers, unicyclists, and chair-stackers performing, and of course Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm to lead the way. Whenever I do an event at the Red Balloon Bookshop, I get the honor of painting their window. This summer's image was a hats off to GRIMM and was inspired by the circus paintings of some of my favorite artists. Look closely and you will see references to Picasso, Chagall, and Seurat.

Like fellow Potato, David LaRochelle, I was honored to be "Author of the Day" at the Alphabet Forest~ a wonderful haven for literacy created by the author, Debra Frasier, at the Minnesota State Fair. Celebrating my book, FOLD ME A POEM, written by Kristine O'Connell George, I spent 8 hours folding origami animals with Fair visitors- and since everything at the fair is on a stick, we put our origami on a stick, which made for some very fun puppet shows!

And one of my favorite memories of this past summer was a gathering of six of us potatoes in Maryland for a SCBWI conference that kept us all busy sharing our experiences and creative spirits with attendees as well as with each other. I was fortunate to travel with both David LaRochelle and John Coy to and from Maryland and let me tell you... if you ever need help getting through the red-tape and chaos of an airport in bad weather, bring John Coy along~ what a master communicator!

It hardly feels like summer is truly over, though I hear we are supposed to go below freezing tonight, thus I better cover my tomatoes! Yes... I found time to garden too, though the weeds have more energy than me!

My Summer Vacation

For me, summers tend to be the busiest time of year, filled mostly with sailing adventures and interacting with our son while he is home on summer vacation. We did a lot of both this year, along with moving into a new home in August. It was fun, and also a bit hectic at times.

One of the highlights was encountering a pod of whales while we were sailing Rosario Strait in the San Juan Islands. Other highlights included a "battle cruise" on the Lady Washington, and discovering a new flavor (lemon meringue pie) at the Friday Harbor Ice Cream Company!

I tend to take summers off from writing projects, to recharge my batteries, but I still managed to do a lot of reading, thinking, and note-writing. Now that school is back in session and the weather is starting to turn cooler, I am ready to resume my usual daily writing schedule. I have a few projects I hope to complete this fall, and I’m excited to see what happens!

Peace

I'm writing a day early, as today was such a peaceful one. The air was cool this morning, the birds were chirping in the trees, and a distant train was huffing its way over the tracks. It was the perfect time for remembering, for being grateful for life, and for praying for those whose lives have been changed forever by violence. The line, "Peace be with you," kept playing through my mind. Peace be with you all.

This summer was filled with revisions of two books, the waiting for illustrations for the third book, and the dreaming up of a fourth book. In other words, it was productive, yet it was still a little lonely. It's been awhile since I've attended a conference and I miss the interaction. It has made me resolve to do more SCBWI events this next year and become more social. I want to feel the magic again, and that means connections, even though I'm more comfortable on the sidelines.

My Querencia

This has been a summer packed with family gatherings and concerns, writing-related SCBWI business (which brought together 6 of our One Potato...Ten spuds), and the realization of a dream. Although I didn't manage much actual writing time, other than revising my first picture book manuscript, I did finally move into my long-awaited writing cabin.

The construction began last winter and continued sporadically through spring and into mid-summer. We hired a team of good-humored men to build the frame of what they teasingly called my "play house."

Then my husband did all of the interior finishing work. (I helped paint :>)


The exterior staining of the wood and painting of the door is still to come before winter sets in, and the bookcase may end up being my Christmas present, but the essence of my "querencia" is here for me to savor.


Just this past week, I traveled to North Carolina for four school visits. At Jacobs Fork Middle School (near Hickory), I led the students through a writing exercise in which they wrote about their querencias. I was amazed at some of the results after only a short 15-minute writing time!

In Spanish, querencia describes a place where one feels safe, a place from which one's strength of character is drawn, a place where one feels at home, where "whenever you return to it, your soul releases an inner sigh of recognition and relaxation."

This is mine.
Where is yours?

What a Summer!

For a long time Portland, Oregon didn't really have any summer. It was cold and rainy. But I had decided to dedicate June and July to writing and that I did! I wrote that novel that I have been talking about for so long, Late She Came to Know.

Then the sun came out, brilliant and warm. It brought a baby! My second grandson, Parker Raymond Kelly, was born August 31st. He's glorious!(See profile photo)

With him came other good news. My Alicia Alonso:Prima Ballerina got starred reviews from Booklist and Publisher's Weekly.

What next? A biography of Salvador Dalí. I did the preliminary research this summer, and I'm ready to start writing!

What I Did Over Summer Vacation...

Like Christy, I was busy with work most of the summer (though I did have a marvelous week in Lake Tahoe to relax, so I won't complain!). My summer projects included getting ready for the publication of my latest picture book, The Haunted Hamburger and Other Ghostly Stories. The photograph is from the publication party at the Red Balloon Bookstore in Saint Paul last month, where kids came in homemade masks to enter the Scary Face Contest.

I read stories and drew pictures to a trolley full of pajama-clad kids in two separate events sponsored by local bookstores.

Just last week I was author-of-the-day in the Alphabet Forest at the Minnesota State Fair, a project masterminded by the amazing Debra Frasier. Kids came and took part in fun, creative, literacy-based, free activities. For my day, I had kids create their own "Hidden Alphabet" bookmarks with rubber stamps (don't you love the wild "Fair Hair" of those two girls?).

And throughout the summer I've been working on a revised dummy for the first book I'll be both author and illustrator, Art Attack. The sketches are going well, but I could easily fill another summer with finalizing the drawings.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the wonderful weekend in Maryland presenting at Edie's SCBWI conference. At the conference I got to present with my editor from Sterling, Meredith Mundy, which was the first time I met her in person, and was a real treat.

Yes, it was a very full, and very fine summer!

Oh! and if you saw a flock of pigs soaring through the clouds, that's because I finally succumbed and signed up for Facebook.

Vacation, who me?

Today was my radio debut on KQED public radio. Listen to my Perspective and leave a comment. I'm archived at http://www.kqed.org/a/perspectives/R201109060735/. You can still hear the piece streamed live tonight at 11:30 pm (Pacific time) or in a more extensive program of 9/11 Perspectives on Sunday, September 11, at 7:37 am.

Much of this summer I've been finishing art for a picture book for Philip Lee, a publisher familiar to many of us. I began art direction and design work with Philip back in 1991, working on Lee & Low's first list. One of my projects a few year later was John Coy's book Strong to the Hoop. I went on to illustrate books for Lee & Low (including three by Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen). More recently my authorial debut with the company originated with an aside Philip made in 2002, about wishing he had a picture book about Isamu Noguchi. Philip left Lee & Low before my Noguchi book published. I'm excited to work with him again in his new venture, Readers to Eaters (http://www.readerstoeaters.com/).

Readers to Eaters mission is to promote food literacy from the ground up, so children and families become active participants in their local food culture.
They do so in three ways:
1) Retail books about food, featuring newly published and classic titles, popular as well as undiscovered staff picks
2) Publish books about food for children and their families, as well as teachers and librarians, whom are essential in the food dialogue
3) Develop programs and events about our food system by partnering with farmers, gardeners, chefs, teachers, librarians, parents, organizations and communities

Our School Garden! kicks off the Readers to Eaters publishing program and I am the illustrator and designer. Here are a couple of pages for a sneak preview.