New book trailer + how to be calm + a writing tip + some gift ideas
New book trailer + how to be calm + a writing tip + some gift ideas
I dressed my dogs in Wizard of Oz costumes and brought them inside my kids' school to try to approximate the play that gets staged during the fourth Two Dogs in a Trench Coat book. Enjoy this book trailer!
It's all okay
On Monday of this week, I was supposed to go to Chicago and Milwaukee to meet with students with the My Very Own Library program. I was going to go out a little early, meet up with Celia Pérez, and then do two days of school visits with Jess Keating, Christina Soontornvat, and Kelly Greenawalt.
But then we got snow, and then my flight was delayed, and delayed more, until it was cancelled. BOO.
Which stinks.
But Monday morning (before all the flight delays) I did a meditation which talked about not sweating the small stuff, and how you should try to remain calm and not make everything into a catastrophe, because honestly, not everything is a catastrophe.
Yes, my flight was cancelled, and I didn't get to meet with students or see my writer friends and travel to new places. But also my house is cozy and warm and I was stranded at home, which is much better than being stranded in an airport (although in April I got stranded in an airport, and I got an airport manicure and the first California Pizza Kitchen pizza I'd had in decades, and read a book, and I'm convinced my calm is what ultimately got me one of the last seats on a flight out).
Also, on Small Business Saturday (the Saturday after Thanksgiving here in the U.S.), I went to my favorite local independent bookstore, Print, to be a guest bookseller for a few hours. I dropped my kids off in downtown Portland (Maine) so they could do some holiday shopping. Well, most of my kids. The kid in the photo above, Zuzu, refused to be dropped off with her siblings and came with me instead. At first I was annoyed. I was supposed to be there as an author! A guest bookseller! Not as a mom! But really it was fine. Who am I to tell one of my own children that she must be dropped off without adult supervision in the city downtown?
I guess what I'm saying is: a lot of potentially stressful things will happen this holiday season, maybe, and I know it's not that easy to just NOT LET THEM STRESS YOU OUT, but maybe consider that not everything needs to be a huge deal. Let's come up with a mantra or something, like "this won't be a bit deal six months from now" or "it's all going to be okay" (or, if you're a millennial/Gen Z: "it's all going to be kk").
Bonus Writing Tips
I CANNOT stop thinking about this Twitter thread by literary agent John M. Cusick, about adding specific details and layers of conflict to your stories. I really think this is the key to fixing many a story, especially a story that's feeling blah.
It's about making your story interesting and unique. And yes, there will certainly be generalities that apply (it's a friendship story / a tragedy / a love story / an identity story), but you have to make sure it's much more than that, in order to get people to be interested. So is your pitch:
A girl moves to a new town, only to find she's not sure if her old identity as a nice person and a good student fits her so well anymore.
or is it
A girl, Natalie, moves from Houston, Texas to Portland, Maine, and has to figure out if there's a place for her amid all the plaid flannel and Bean boots. But when she wanders in to the local arcade, she remembers her cousin who died, the one who could fix any of the Ms. Pac-Man machines in their town. And of course there were only Ms. Pac-Man machines in their town. Natalie has never heard of an X-Box. But she's really good at Ms. Pac-Man.
I just made both of those up, but you can see how specifics and interesting twists make a story pitch sound much more interesting.
RELATEDLY, I love this post from AI Weirdness, where artificial intelligence came up with the first line of a novel. Of course they're weird, but that's why they're so good. I mean, if I opened a book and the first line was "The purple-haired woman came to the clearing in the plain, and without looking up from her book, said, 'It’s too late to be thinking about baby names.'" you'd better believe I'd keep reading. The most interesting ones are strange, and specific, and full of mystery, and I think this absolutely relates to the idea of a conflict-heavy and detailed pitch that John Cusick was talking about in his Twitter thread.
In short: add very specific details! Layer in those specifics! Be weird! Be mysterious (at least in the beginning). Make your readers HAVE to read your book, because it sounds so interesting and wonderful and strange.
Bonus Gift Ideas
I keep meaning to post on social media about some things that have made my life easier the last few months. I did post about the presentation remote (see below) but keep forgetting to post about anything else, so I'm going to post the things here in this email, special for you.
If you have a writer in your life, here are some gift ideas! If you are a writer, here are some things to ask for!
Look at that gorgeous thing there! You know what that is, kids? It's the Logitech R500 Laser Presentation Remote! If you ever do school visits (or presentations), and you don't have your own presentation remote (aka "slide clicker alonger thingie"), then you (like me!) were forced to say, "Ok, next slide" to the teacher or student who was sitting at the computer, finger poised over the Page Down button. NO MORE. This thing isn't exactly cheap (it's $60), but it's worth every penny. You can click forward and back however you want, and it has a laser pointer so you can point to a specific part of your slide rather than pointing generally toward the top and saying, "See that thing up there?" Amazing.
This was the year I finally upgraded my luggage, after getting delayed in an airport last summer schlepping a ratty old duffel bag. I got an eBags 21" Mother Lode Mini Wheeled Carry-on, which I adore. I can pack so many outfits in it and still have room for bookmarks and books. And then I got this bag, the Sherpani Camden, as my "personal bag" or whatever the airlines call it. Here's what I love about it: lots of pockets, one of those slide-through pockets so I can slide it onto my rolling bag, and it has straps to work as a crossbody, a tote, and a backpack. I brought this with me to the Brooklyn Book Festival, stuffed it with books, and it was incredibly comfortable to carry around. I looked at all the people with serious cases of Overfull Tote Bag Shoulder and knew I'd made the right choice.
So this last item is a little random but has for sure changed my life. For years we've had a regular bath mat. You know what I mean. A rug thing. And now that more of my children are showering (PHEW), there was a problem. Someone, I don't know who (all of them?), apparently has no control over shower water. And even with my repeated urging to keep shower water in the shower, the bath mat would be SOAKED, daily. So soaked that there was no way for it to dry during the day, even if I remembered to hang it up. So I bought a whole stack of bath mats and was throwing them in the laundry every single day.
But then somehow I heard about a Diatomaceous Earth Bath Mat, which sounds like a made-up thing from the future, and if it is, then the future is now, my friends, because this thing is magic. You can step onto it with extremely wet feet, and, within a minute, all of the water is...gone? GONE. Where does it go? I don't know. All I know is that I am no longer washing loads of bath mats, and I don't worry about my bathroom smelling wet and gross. This weird hard rectangle of...diatoms? dirt? has saved me so much time and angst each week.
A bath mat is probably a terrible gift unless you suffer from this same particular "someone is getting water all over the bathroom" problem, in which case it's the best gift.
You have only a few weeks left to preorder Two Dogs in a Trench Coat Enter Stage Left and get the special preorder present, an annotated copy of the play they put on in the book, The Wizard of Dogz. More information is here.
This book is very silly and draws on all of the plays I was in when I was in school. I really think you'll like it. It's worth getting just for the ridiculous acting teacher. AND it was just named a Best Book of the Month by Amazon!
I'll be at the great Print Bookstore this Sunday, December 8 for their 3rd Annual Children's Holiday Mingle. It's a fun event where a bunch of children's book authors and illustrators hang our to chat with you and sign books. Come say hi and get signed books!