ALWAYS OCTOBER with Bruce Coville

left to right (Jen McVeity, Chris Eboch, Bruce Coville, Millie Little, Carolee Dean  (me), and Kimberley Griffiths Little)

October first I had dinner with Bruce Coville, Jen McVeity, and a host of SCBWI friends. It was the perfect start to October, one of my all time favorite months. We then followed Bruce to Bookworks on Rio Grande where he was promoting his new book, Always October, the world where monsters come from.  Bruce said he always wanted to write the perfect book to read on Halloween and now he believes he's done it.

"October is the month when magic stalks the world. The light comes in sideways," said Bruce. "October is the best of all possible months, when it seems anything can happen."

It's certainly a magical month in Albuquerque, New Mexico with our International Balloon Fiesta and the aroma of roasting green chiles in the air.

Bruce also talked about the newly released Amber Brown Horses Around and his friendship with the late Paula Danziger, creator of the Amber Brown series. He described how years ago they kept each other on track with their writing goals by calling and asking  if the other had finished their three pages for the day. Three pages was the goal. He was quick to say they didn't have to be good pages, they just had to exist.

Bruce was approached by the publisher, Putnam, to write the new Amber Brown book and decided the only way he could pull it off was if he worked on the project with Elizabeth Levy, another long time friend of Paula's.

Rather than reading from either of these books, Bruce performed a one-man reenactment from the first chapter of one of his earlier novels, The Monster's Ring. The audience at Bookworks was captivated by his storytelling skills. He said this is the way he opens all of his school visits.

Wow! What a treat for kids.

Bruce told us about a quote by author Paul O'Neill that he likes to keep on his wall for inspiration. "Always grab the reader by the throat in the first paragraph, sink your thumbs into his windpipe with the second paragraph, then shove him against the wall and hold him there until the tag line."

Bruce ended the evening with a list of weird writing tips.

1.  Marry rich - For most of us, including Bruce, it was already too late for that tip, but he received the advice from Natalie Babbitt, author of Tuck Everlasting, so he thought it was worth sharing.
2.  Take acting lessons - The actor's tools are the writer's tools.  An actor's job is to enter a character and that is also the writer's job. Acting lessons are part of the reason Bruce is such a great storyteller.
3.  Take singing lessons- This trains you to use your voice properly so you don't strain it.
4.  Don't take yourself too seriously.  Take the art seriously, but not yourself.
5.  Scare yourself - You should always be working on the edge. If you get too comfortable doing what you're doing, you can become artistically dead.  No jump, no wings!

Bruce was accompanied to Albuquerque by Australian author, Jen McVeity, whose Seven Steps to Writing Success is transforming education in the Land Down Under.  They were meeting our former SCBWI regional advisor, Chris Eboch, for a hiking adventure in Southern New Mexico.

It was truly a magical October night!

First Stop on the Laini Taylor Tour for DREAMS OF GODS AND MONSTERS

Tuesday, 4/8/14, was Launch Day for Dreams of Gods and Monsters and author Laini Taylor was right here in Albuquerque, NM at Bookworks. Albuquerque was the first stop on her book tour! DOGAM is the third book in her Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy. Below are samples of fan art sent to Laini by readers from all over the world.

Laini gave the audience some great insights into her writing process. She said deadlines really help her. She always writes most of the book at the end.  While working on DOGAM she went to a hotel for 6 days and wrote 20,000 words. The hard part was that it took her six months to write the first 20,000 words.

She encouraged young writers not to get discouraged. Sometimes young writers assume they aren't any good because the process is so difficult. She said, the truth is that writing is just hard work and you have to learn to be tough.

Laini likes to give herself a word count for the day, usually around 1,000 words. If she makes it, she puts a sticker on her calendar. It may sound silly, but it works!

The book signing was a great event. There was cake and henna tattoos and Laini even brought along some colorful wigs. I'm the one in Blue:)

Lois Lowry at UNM in Albuquerque

It was a Friday afternoon. It was rush hour. It was raining. I had just gotten a hot crystal massage and had oil in my hair. I spent the day sitting through inservice presentations at school and hadn't been home since 7:00a.m. I was supposed to meet my husband at 7:00p.m. for dinner at a restaurant near the Aux Dog Theater on Central where we were joining friends to see "The Haunting of Hill House" and I was thinking it might be a good idea to go home first and take a hot shower.

But Lois Lowry was speaking about her new book, Son, at the UNM continuing education building at 6:00 p.m. at an event sponsored by Bookworks, one of our local independents. I'd been talking about The Giver with some of my students earlier that week who were reading it in class and had encouraged them to attend the event.

It was 5:15p.m. I stood in front of the mirror at the massage place, assessing the state of my hair and figured, what the heck, this is one of the reasons why I cut it all off (note: current blog photo is a little old. My current hair style requires no brushing, spraying, or blow drying). So I wet it down and off I went.

As soon as I arrived I found my friend, Rio Rancho city librarian Rebecca Donnelly, and sat next to her, apologizing profusely ahead of time that I was going to have to leave early to make my 7:00p.m. dinner date with my husband.

Lois Lowry is one of very few authors to win the Newbery twice for The Giver and Number the Stars. Son is the fourth and final book in The Giver Quartet and just received a fabulous NYTimes review.

She shared her inspirations for her books. Number the Stars was based upon the stories told to her by a friend who had grown up in Denmark.

The Giver was strongly influenced by the importance of memories. Lowry said she thought a lot about human memory as she saw her father's memory slipping away. She told the audience that memories are very personal. We all have our own memories. Even people experiencing the same event remember the details of that event differently. These ideas are what inspired her to create a Community that could manipulate memory. Building upon that concept, she then created the main character, Jonas. Lowry likes characters ages 12-13 because they are still children but entering adulthood and trying to figure out their identity.

Son, the fourth book in The Giver Quartet, continues the story of Gabe, the child Jonas saves at the end of The Giver. Here is the description from amazon:

They called her Water Claire. When she washed up on their shore, no one knew that she came from a society where emotions and colors didn’t exist. That she had become a Vessel at age thirteen. That she had carried a Product at age fourteen. That it had been stolen from her body. Claire had a son. But what became of him she never knew. What was his name? Was he even alive? She was supposed to forget him, but that was impossible. Now Claire will stop at nothing to find her child, even if it means making an unimaginable sacrifice.

I get chills just reading the description.

And now I'm off to rearrange the stack of books on my bedside table. So many fabulous books came out this October, and Son is right on top!