You are currently browsing Tara Lazar’s articles.
If you’re an un-agented writer, you might be thinking—do I even NEED a blog? What content should it contain? How often should I post? What SHOULDN’T I blog about?
Well, relax. Deep, cleansing breaths. I asked a few agents what they thought of writerly blogs. Their responses may surprise you.
Erin Murphy, Erin Murphy Literary Agency:
“I don’t have any strict rules or do’s and don’ts. I find blogs are perhaps less useful than they used to be, with the exception of those with large followings. Mostly I go to them, when considering signing someone new, to get a sense of their personality and how they present themselves (whether to fellow kidlit folks, gatekeepers or kids).”
Ammi-Joan Paquette, Erin Murphy Literary Agency:
“A writer’s blog wouldn’t be a deal-breaker for me unless it was wildly unprofessional. First and foremost, when I’m looking at a potential client, it’s all about the writing. But beyond that, a blog or website gives a sense of who that person is, how our tastes and interests might mesh, etc. So make sure your web presence reflects who you are, and that it looks clean and tight and polished. I don’t think they’re essential, but it is nice to put a face and background to the voice I’m reading on the screen.”
Jennifer Laughran, Andrea Brown Literary Agency:
“I don’t care if an author has a blog or not. But if they DO have a blog, I hope it is lively, interesting, informative, fun to read, and gives a sense of their “voice” and a glimpse into their lives.
Turnoffs: Lots of word-count posts. Constant self-promotion. Complaining about blogging, complaining about the publishing industry, complaining about specific people (your agent or editor, for example)—or “Humblebragging.” Overly political or “sexy” posts (unless you are a political or sexy writer).
If an author HATES blogging and is struggling to find the time or energy…if it is taking away from their work or making them miserable…then they should absolutely not do it. An unused blog, or a blog that is just complaints or self-PR, is so much worse than no blog at all.”
Teresa Kietlinski, Prospect Agency:
“Blogs are absolutely important in my decision making. When submissions come in, I tend to visit blogs first because they give me a taste of the writer’s (and illustrator’s) personality, voice and interests. It also lets me see how dedicated they are to the craft of writing or illustrating. Do they post frequently? Do they talk about topics of interest in the children’s book world? Are they honing his/her skills? What books is he/she reading? Would I like to join him/her for lunch or tea? (the last question for me is the most important). If I do not instantly connect with a blog, chances are I will not connect with the blog’s writer.
My goal as an agent is to work with clients who I like working with. Clients who are funny, interesting, and interpret the mundane stuff in a surprising way. Blogs can give me insight on these qualities. And while websites are important, especially for seasoned authors, they are not always personal.
I would suggest not limiting your blog to “kids stuff only.” Talk about what interests you—but keep it professional in tone. Readers are looking to connect with your personality. Who are you?
Do remember that anyone can read your posts so keep them professional in tone. Do update your blog regularly.”
So it’s clear: if an agent is interested in your work, they WILL Google you. So avoid posting:
- Samples of works in progress (they might be considered “published”)
- A tally of submissions/rejections
- Complaints about rejections, the industry or specific professionals
- Long, rambling posts
- Overly political, religious or controversial topics (unless that is the focus of your professional writing)
Before you start a blog, realize there’s millions of them out there already. What are you bringing to the table? Do you have a unique perspective? Just like thinking of the hook before you write the book, you might want to think of the hook for your blog before you launch into it. (Relatively-newish blogs with compelling hooks: Literary Friendships by Audrey Vernick and Design of the Picture Book by Carter Higgins.)
Or, you can just go for it and post whatever you like. After a few dozen posts, you might discover your niche. Check your blog stats and determine which posts bring in the most visitors. Work in that direction.
And remember, the story’s the thing. No blog will snag you a book deal if your submission is sub-par. So get the manuscript right first, then worry about blogging later…
Or, maybe, not at all.
I am ridiculously far behind in picking winners. So without further ado, here they are!
WINNER of CRASHING EDEN by Michael Sussman:
MIKE ALLEGRA! (heylookawriterfellow)
WINNER of THE MONSTER WHO LOST HIS MEAN by Tiffany Strelitz Haber:
LESLIE G!
Congratulations, guys! I’ll be emailing you shortly.
I’m sorry if you didn’t win, but everyone’s leaving with a consolation prize. No, not a lifetime supply of Turtle Wax. (Do they even make Turtle Wax anymore? If you ever won a lifetime supply on Let’s Make a Deal you’d be ripped off.) Instead, it’s a piece of picture book writing advice:
Think BIG and carry a SMALL manuscript.
One of my favorite quirky picture books is OTTO GROWS DOWN by Michael Sussman, so you can imagine how thrilled I was to learn that Michael has a new YA novel, CRASHING EDEN. Well, Michael is crashing my blog today and he’s leaving behind a paperback copy just for you.
“Dr. Suss” (as I like to call him) is a prolific, versatile writer who has published books in diverse genres. So I asked him how he shifts gears to different formats and what obstacles he faces in doing so.
TL: Michael, you’ve written medical books, picture books, and now a young adult novel. How did you adjust from writing one genre to another?
MS: The toughest shift was from writing nonfiction professional books on psychotherapy to writing fiction. About 20 years ago I first tried my hand at a novel. Looking back at that manuscript, I cringe at how stiff and wooden my writing was—especially the dialogue. Thanks to practice and critiques from writer’s groups, my next novel was considerably better, although it too went unpublished.
After reading hundreds of picture books to my son, I decided to start writing for children. That transition was a breeze. Writing for kids totally freed my imagination and allowed me to be much more playful and fantasy-based. The result was OTTO GROWS DOWN, a story about a boy who becomes trapped in backwards time.
In writing for young adults, I benefited from having already spent years honing my novel-writing skills. There were, however, two major differences. It was a stretch to write with the voice of a teenager, and that took a great deal of revising to get right. Secondly, I had to revisit my own adolescence, and that was no picnic!
TL: Which genre is your comfort zone?
MS: When it comes to writing, I’m such a perfectionist that I’m not sure I have a comfort zone.
Writing picture books is probably easiest for me, since the sky’s the limit when it comes to letting your imagination run wild. In terms of novels, I think I feel most comfortable writing thillers and mysteries, especially with a comic edge.
TL: How did you get the idea for CRASHING EDEN? What made you decide to tackle the YA genre?
I started trying my hand at fiction about twenty years ago. I wrote a psychological thriller and a comic mystery novel, neither of which were published. I developed severe writer’s block, which was immediately relieved when I began writing for young children. Looking back, I think I was working out unresolved issues from my own childhood. Next I turned to writing for young adults. Consciously, I chose YA because the market was hot! But unconsciously, I believe I realized that it would give me the chance to work on issues from my mostly miserable adolescence.
The genesis of CRASHING EDEN began with the title, which had floated around in my mind for nearly a decade. I’d been interested in world mythology for many years, and especially intrigued by the widespread myths suggesting that humans have degenerated from an ancient state of grace, symbolized by Paradise or the Golden Age.
I began to wonder what might happen if we were somehow able to recapture the state of mind supposedly experienced by people before the Fall. What if a device could be built that altered our brains in such a way that we felt like we were back in the Garden of Eden?
This led to speculating about how the God of the Old Testament might react to trespassers in his Garden. That’s where the story takes a controversial turn.
TL: What an intriguing premise! So, what YA reads have really stuck with you? To which books would you compare your style?
MS: My favorite YA novels are Phillip Pullman’s trilogy, FEED by M.T. Anderson, UNWIND by Neal Shusterman, and MARCELO IN THE REAL WORLD by Francis X. Stork.
I’d like to think my style is unique, although I’d say it’s strongly influenced by two of my favorite novelists: Tom Robbins and Christopher Moore.
TL: How do you hope readers will react to your book?
MS: My ideal reader loved OTTO and is curious about the title of my novel. She’s intrigued by the notion that the widespread myths of a Golden Age were based on something real, and by the idea of returning to Edenic consciousness. She feels empathy for my troubled protagonist and gets caught up in his many dilemmas. She enjoys the humor and suspense of the story and finishes the book in one sitting. Then she recommends the novel to all her friends, posts glowing reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, and sends a copy of the book to her uncle, the filmmaker!
TL: Ha, ha! Don’t we all wish! So, with all those genres floating around in your head, do you ever experience writer’s block? If so, how do you overcome it?
Yes, I’ve definitely had periods when I couldn’t write a thing and couldn’t come up with a single idea. It feels awful. With other types of work you can just phone it in, but not with writing.
With mild writer’s block, I can overcome it by exercising, being in nature, taking a hot bath, meditating, or simply taking a break from writing. With more serious cases, it takes some psychological/emotional exploration. The blockage may be due to depression. It may stem from avoiding something that you need to write about. In one case, my writer’s block evaporated when I shifted from writing for adults to writing for children!
TL: I love that. Writing for children definitely frees the imagination and lets you go places adult fiction doesn’t.
Thanks to Dr. Suss for offering a paperback copy for me to give away! Just leave a comment to enter. You get one entry for your comment plus an extra entry for each share on social media, just let me know in a separate comment! A winner will be selected in one week. Good luck!
Want it now? Crashing Eden is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords.
And visit “Dr. Suss” online because he’s hilarious and talented (and a good friend)!
OK, so you know that I love monsters. Can’t get enough of them. Well, my friend Tiffany Strelitz Haber is here today with a monster of a story—her debut picture book, THE MONSTER WHO LOST HIS MEAN!
Some of you may know Tiffany as one of the two rhyming geniuses behind The Meter Maids (with Corey Rosen Schwartz). If you don’t, you have to check out her site, which is all about writing in rhyme. Don’t make me slap you with a citation!
Before we get riffing with Tiffing (yeah I can call her that, it rhymes), you MUST take a look at the extraordinary trailer for her new book. The Danny-Elfman-like original music, the animation—it’s all so monstrous and so much fun!
TL: THE MONSTER WHO LOST HIS MEAN is about a monster who loses his ‘M’. You know I host Picture Book Idea Month every November so I’m obsessed with the origin of ideas. Where did this idea come from?
TSH: I have always been a very visual person when it comes to words. Even as a kid, I loved the concept of homonyms, acrostics, acronyms, spelling words backwards, and even looking at them upside down. One day I started thinking about the letters in the word MONSTER, and what they might actually stand for if the word MONSTER was an acronym. From there the concept just grew and evolved, and “The Onster” was born!
TL: We’re also all about characters names on this blog. Did “The Onster” have a name before he lost his M?
TSH: Ya know…that’s a great question. I like to think that he only really found any identity at all after he lost his M. Before that he was just…well… generic, nameless, and not nearly as cool—Monster. Bleh.
TL: The Onster cooks brunch at one point in the book. I’m a foodie like you, so what’s your favorite brunch food?
TSH: Hmm…for me, picking a favorite food is kind of like bending a spoon into a perfect figure eight using just my toes (almost impossible). But in the interest of quasi-decisiveness…I’ll go with a tie. EITHER: Perfectly toasted onion bagels slathered in whipped cream cheese, lox and just a few rounds of raw, red onion…OR…a dim sum extravaganza.
So…What’s YOUR favorite brunch food? Tell us and be entered to win a signed ARC of THE MONSTER WHO LOST HIS MEAN!
You get one entry for commenting and then one entry for every place you share—blog, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. Just let us know where you ONSTER’ed!
Tiffany Strelitz Haber is the author of two rhyming picture books: THE MONSTER WHO LOST HIS MEAN (Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, July 17, 2012) and OLLIE AND CLAIRE (Philomel/Penguin, 2013). She will eat any food she is served, be it fried witchetty grubs on a stick or calf’s brain ravioli, and loves to be high in the air or deep in the sea. Tiffany lives in NJ with her two little monsters, Jack Dalton and Travis Hawk. Like her on Facebook. If you don’t, Tara will sic the monsters on you.
STORYTELLER: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl by Donald Sturrock cannot be missed, yet for two years I missed it. What is wrong with me? (Eh-hem, this is a rhetorical question, thankyouverymuch.)
Roald Dahl remains one of the most iconic children’s authors of all time, yet he began his career writing macabre short stories based upon his experience in the Royal Air Force during World War II. Just how did he evolve into the fantastical children’s author we all love?
Sheila St. Lawrence, Dahl’s literary agent at the Watkins Agency, is to thank. She realized “the ease in which Dahl could enter a child’s mind,” clearly apparent in his short story “The Wish”. In the tale, a young boy dares to walk across a carpet by stepping only on its yellow portions. Should his foot slip onto another color, he thought he would “disappear into a black void or be killed by venomous snakes.” This story was the only adult Dahl piece to feature a child protagonist to date, and it could not escape St. Lawrence’s attention.
After a disastrous two-year foray into playwriting, St. Lawrence implored Dahl to turn his literary aspirations elsewhere. Yet he ignored her kidlit suggestion, wrote stories that got turned down by The New Yorker, and instead got placed in the far less desirable (but still paying) Playboy.
Dahl’s publisher Alfred Knopf expressed interest in a children’s book, but then dropped a collection of adult stories called “Kiss Kiss” from Knopf’s 1959 list. Dahl spouted some choice words in response, threatening that Knopf would never squeeze a children’s book out of him.
Dahl once again became focused on writing for actors, as he wished to develop vehicles for his wife at the time, screen star Patricia Neal. After all, if Neal was working steadily, her income afforded him more time to write what he wanted to write. There were shows for Hitchcock and a drama series for TV based upon classic ghost stories, produced by Alfred Knopf’s half brother. But when the pilot episode encountered a controversy, the series got permanently shelved and Dahl was forced to return to the idea that evolved into JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH.
I will say “and the rest is history” here, although STORYTELLER is only halfway through Dahl’s life story at this point. So like Sheila St. Lawrence, I implore you to turn your literary aspirations toward it.
But before I go, it would be a shame not to share with you Dahl’s advice to children’s writers, as told to Helen Edwards in an interview for Bedtime Stories exactly 42 years ago:
What makes a good children’s writer? The writer must have a genuine and powerful wish not only to entertain children, but to teach them the habit of reading…[He or she] must be a jokey sort of fellow…[and] must like simple tricks and jokes and riddles and other childish things. He must be unconventional and inventive. He must have a really first-class plot. He must know what enthralls children and what bores them. They love being spooked. They love ghosts. They love the finding of treasure. The love chocolates and toys and money. They love magic. They love being made to giggle. They love seeing the villain meet a grisly death. They love a hero and they love the hero to be a winner. But they hate descriptive passages and flowery prose. They hate long descriptions of any sort. Many of them are sensitive to good writing and can spot a clumsy sentence. They like stories that contain a threat. “D’you know what I feel like?” said the big crocodile to the smaller one. “I feel like having a nice plump juicy child for my lunch.” They love that sort of thing. What else do they love? New inventions. Unorthodox methods. Eccentricity. Secret information. The list is long. But above all, when you write a story for them, bear in mind that they do not possess the same power of concentration as an adult, and they become very easily bored or diverted. Your story, therefore, must tantalize and titillate them on every page and all the time that you are writing you must be saying to yourself, “Is this too slow? Is it too dull? Will they stop reading?” To those questions, you must answer yes more often than you answer no. [If not] you must cross it out and start again.
For me, these are words to write by. Funny that he should utter them within days of my birth! (Wait a second, did I just reveal my age?! Eh-hem, this is a rhetorical question, thankyouverymuch.)
UPDATE: Whoopsie. I looked at the wrong footnote. The quote above is from a letter Dahl wrote to “The Writer” Magazine in October, 1975: “A Note on Writing Books for Children”.
Allow me to reveal the cover of THE MONSTORE, my June 2013 picture book illustrated by James Burks!
It’s so fabulous I spend hours staring at it as if I’m a 7th grade dork in love with a 1981 poster of Rick Springfield.
Forget about wishing to be Jessie’s girl, I’d rather be James’s girl, ’cause the dude seriously knows how to whiz-bang-kaPOW a picture book cover. ( Oh, Rick, please don’t take it personally.)
That’s main character Zack front-and-center with his pesky little sister Gracie popping into the frame. The hulking orange guy is Manfred, the flying monster is Mookie, and that’s Mojo with the striped, wiggling arms and crooked horns. Peeper is the little eyeball perched on the Monstore sign, although he isn’t named in the book. He’s James’s invention!
That leaves the red broom guy. And guess what? He doesn’t have a name. Well, he does because James names all the character he draws, but this monster never gets mentioned in the story.
So here’s a monster of a contest for ya: try to guess the name James gave him! If you do, you’ll win an original, autographed monster sketch by the talented Mr. Burks. If no one guesses his correct name, or if there’s more than one correct answer, the ultimate winner will be decided by Random.org. UPDATE: We’re now giving away TWO sketches because y’all have come up with such great names. One to the person who guesses the name and one random winner chosen from the rest of the entries.
You get one entry for commenting and then one additional entry for each place you share THE MONSTORE cover—blog, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. Just leave a comment letting us know! The contest closes one week from today, so get those monsterly names in!
Hope you love the cover.
And if Rick Springfield is out there, how about playing my book launch party?
Have your people call my monsters.
Last week I said if someone invented another social media site my head might explode.
Well…KA-BLOOIE!!!!
Yes, we bibliophiles have a new social domain: 
!
Named after the sound book pages make when thumbed, Riffle has been dubbed “the Pinterest of book discovery” by Publisher’s Weekly. Could it potentially change the way we learn about great new reads? Absolutely! Could your head also detonate? Let’s put it this way—if you ever wanted to sport a mushroom cloud, you’re in luck.
The Publisher’s Weekly article didn’t reveal much, featuring jargon-heavy quotes by Riffle founder Neil Baptista, like this beaut: “We’re going to focus on bringing the audience to the table and curating the information. There’s a ton of online expertise, and we want people to push their content through Riffle.”
So what the heck does this all mean? How will Riffle work?
Well, yours truly worked in high-tech market research for a decade (from 1993 to 2003), so I called upon one of my smartest digerati buddies to give it to us straight.
Chris Rechtsteiner is the founder and chief strategist of blueloop concepts, a boutique research and advisory firm focused on the mobile and digital media market. Chris has worked on many publishing projects, so he’s very knowledgeable about the intersection of books and digital applications.
Here’s what Riffle may be:
- The idea is to build a truly Facebook-connected social reading group/platform. How this isn’t GoodReads is a mystery, but apparently the need to build a GoodReads 2.0 is there.
- The company behind Riffle, Odyl, already has templated/socially-integrated foundations for bringing content about books to consumers, so they have a fast and easy starting point.
- The core objective is to really bring forward the content being created/discussed about a book (that’s what the curation reference hits). When Tweets, Facebook posts, blog posts, etc. are posted about a title, they’ll all be “magically” brought together to give you a complete look at the “conversation” and “group” around a book. (Again, GoodReads, but with MORE noise.)
- Odyl isn’t a novice at this stuff as they’ve been able to do a really good job of building publisher relationships, so they’ll have the “blessing” of the publishers to do this right out of the gate. (Translation: they’ll have books featured with deep, rich content day one and it will grow from there.)
And here’s how they may do it:
- Supposedly the “curated” information (e.g. people scanning blogs, reviews, Twitter, etc.) is going to be done by experts, so there won’t be “noise” (per se) but only the best information on a particular title.
- This means you’re going to have to have HUNDREDS of “experts” there to sift through everything in order to have any volume of books at all… which means scale is a serious issue because the books that get the Riffle treatment will be “selected” … and likely tied to the publisher relationships (read: publisher financed through marketing budgets/author marketing dollars). While that last part might not be true, it wouldn’t be surprising, as no one has yet deeply tapped the publishers’ book marketing dollars online like the brick-and-mortar booksellers and traditional media have.
(I applied for more information on Odyl, and I was asked, as an author, how much money I planned to spend on book marketing this year, so Rechtsteiner’s ideas sound spot on.)
If you had to bet your money, right now, on what Riffle ultimately does or becomes, you’re going to see a GoodReads that is a series of lists or collections of books that have a narrative by an expert. This is how the expert would really play. The question is how many people they employ (or allow?) to be experts as to how rapidly these narratives and book lists are created. And who will these “experts” be? How will they be vetted? Will they be Riffle employees, contractors (like About.com guides), or volunteers (like Wikipedia writers/editors)? All this remains to be seen.
So is anyone on Riffle now? Yes. What did we hear about it? “Pinterest for books sounds really interesting, until you realize that people don’t repin books on Pinterest today.” (True dat. The most repins I get are for recipes, home decor and fashion. Did I just say true dat?!)
So…only time will tell. But as Chris Rechtsteiner told me, Riffle is needed and welcomed. “While there are no shortage of book discovery tools and platforms coming to market today (Riffle, Jellybooks, etc.), it’s hard to argue with anyone’s efforts to make reading more prominent. I have some doubts regarding how social book reading really is (in the web’s definition of social), but one thing will remain constant and true for a while: there are simply too many titles to choose from and finding the next, best one to read [online] will remain a challenge for a long time.”
If you’d like a Riffle invitation, this link is your ticket.
Many thanks to Andy J. Smith, illustrator extraordinaire, and Chris Rechsteiner of blueloop concepts for helping me pull this blog post together while I tried to stuff gray matter back into my skull.
*Photo Credit: WENN.com
“Tara Lazar’s LITTLE RED GLIDING HOOD, with an icy twist on the familiar fairy tale, where Little Red is desperately searching for a partner in the upcoming pairs skating competition, to Heidi Kilgras at Random House Children’s, by Ammi-Joan Paquette at Erin Murphy Literary Agency (World).”
Thanks for making my announcement, Ryan. *blush*
It couldn’t have come on a better day!
This was a deal that required a lot of perseverance. It proved to me that writers should never give up on a story.
And I must say that I am thrilled beyond all beyond (is that even an idiom?) to be working with Heidi Kilgras, who has edited titles of industry legends such as Jane Yolen. WOWZA.
From the very beginning, Heidi had a particular illustrator in mind for this project. I hope to share that news with you soon because it’s pretty darn awesome!
Congratulations to all the writers and illustrators featured in PM today! In picture book news, Marilyn Sadler sold ALICE FROM DALLAS to Abrams Children’s and Susan Reagan sold PINGO AND PUFF to Hyperion Children’s.
And now, it’s time to PAR-TAY!
Photo Credit: Martha Payne
Thanks to new fan and friend John Evans, I just learned about NeverSeconds, a blog written by a nine-year-old Scottish schoolgirl named Martha Payne (a.k.a. “VEG”) who was tired of her awful school dinners. So Martha decided to photograph her meals, rate them (she counts the number of hairs included at no extra cost), and share them with the world.
A clever kid! But this story gets even better.
Once VEG’s school council got word of the blog, they banned her from taking photographs of her meals. But Jamie Oliver, the celebrity chef who has been campaigning for healthier school meals worldwide, launched a social media support crusade via Twitter. After millions of blog hits and public outcry, Roddy McCuish, the leader of the Argyll and Bute Council in West Scotland, lifted the blog ban. McCuish claimed preventing the photos from being posted was a form of censorship. So VEG is online once again.
Not only is she still posting her meals, she’s receiving photos from children and educators around the world. Plus, Martha is raising money for Mary’s Meals, headquartered in Scotland and right here in New Jersey! This non-profit organization’s mission is to feed children in the most impoverished nations.
I have a passion for healthy eating, so I just had to blog about this young girl’s chutzpah! I hope you’ll support her over at NeverSeconds and maybe submit your own school lunch! If she posts your picture, VEG will even tell you how long she took to find your location on the globe. It’s a good food and geography lesson all at once!
So…just for fun…I wrote a song parody for Martha/VEG. Sung to the tune of Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name”, this is “School Gives LUNCH a Bad Name”. Enjoy and mangia!
School Gives Lunch a Bad Name
Your meal’s a la carte
But it’s still lame.
Martha,
School gives lunch a bad name. (Bad name.)
A “balanced” meal is what they sell
They promise you chicken but give you dry spelt.
A plain white tray with no mashies,
And globs of brown stuff that stink like bad cheese.
Oh, it’s a load of yuck!
Oh, they told you don’t blog
But Jamie told Twitter,
“You’re righteous, photog!”
Your meal’s a la carte
But it’s still lame.
Martha,
School gives lunch a bad name. (Bad name.)
We read your grade; it’s a four you claim.
Martha,
School gives lunch a bad name. (Bad name.)
School gives lunch, oh!
Bring the fork to your lips,
Pull out hair with your fingertips.
Your school cooks bad, we don’t know why.
It’s not too hard to make fresh veggie stir-fry.
Oh, it’s a load of yuck!
Oh, they told you don’t blog
But Jamie told Twitter,
“You’re righteous, photog!”
Your meal’s a la carte
But it’s still lame.
Martha,
School gives lunch a bad name. (Bad name.)
We read your grade; it’s a four you claim.
Martha,
School gives lunch a bad name. (Bad name.)
School gives lunch, oh!
I just got back from a FABULOUS 1st grade school visit! I was so excited about it that I immediately had to vlog.
While this isn’t my first vlog (that was for EMU’s Debuts), it is the debut vlog for this blog.
If you want to start doing school visits as a pre-published author, I explain the way to go about it. I think. *Warning: DO NOT APPEAR AS CRAZY AS I DO IN THIS VIDEO.*
Apologies for the ethereal lighting. I was sitting in my breakfast nook with the blinds opened. But I rather prefer the Cybill Shepherd “Moonlighting” look, don’t you, dahlings? (What, you don’t know what that means? Oh, you young whipper-snapper, go Google it.)
More apologies for the mirror writing. If I knew how to flip a video, I would. Anyone know? Help?!
And hey, wanna know more about my school visits? I’m going old-school with a CLICK HERE. (Really. Click there.)
And please remember to leave me a comment about what we should name “vlogs” instead of “vvlawwwgz”. It’s an ugly word for an exciting medium.
Writing for Kids (While Raising Them) 