In Which I Discuss Vanity Searches and Traditions

Hello again!Here I am with my trusty scribe Julie. Coming at ya straight from her casa. My husband, Daniel, suggested we make a new "tradition" of meeting every Friday night. He and Reo play Rock Band. Julie and I blog. Funny thing is, Daniel isn't really a "tradition" kind of guy. During our first year of marriage, whenever I mentioned starting traditions, he kind of brushed off the idea. Now he's all for starting a Rock Band/blogging tradition so maybe it will stick. Julie and I tried to take a quality mid Rock Band pic but it was not to be. If you know Dan and Reo you will have to use your imagination. Even if you don't, you will have to use your imagination.

On an unrelated note, for business reasons I Googled myself today. I tried this a couple of times before my book was published to see if I was getting any advanced "buzz". However, it was depressing because every time I typed in my name, Google asked me "Did you mean Emily KING Smith?" Finally, I actually did look up Emily King Smith, and she only had three hits. How can I be less popular than someone who only has three hits? Anyway, today I had to try again to see if The Way He Lived has garnered any praise I'm unaware of. By and large, it hasn't. So, if anyone has ways to promote my book, by all means let me know.

I did find out some interesting tidbits. For instance, my literary agency, Dystel & Goderich, represents not only me but also Yeardley Smith, voice of Lisa Simpson. Apparently she is also the author of a soon to be released novel for young readers. Note: I have not read this book and cannot vouch for its contents. But still, Lisa Simpson? That's cool.

It just now struck me how strange it is for a writer to have a scribe. I guess that's life--or at least my life. Have a good weekend everyone!

Happy Valentine's Day, One and All!

Sorry that I never update this blog. Some of you may know I type slower than an untrained ape. So my sister is typing this for me. Thanks, Julie!This has been an exciting week for Em-Dawg. First off, I finished a very rough draft of my newest YA novel. Which is good because I was supposed to turn it in last month. It still needs some polishing before it is fit for my editor but it's almost there. Woo hoo! Second, I've been substituting for a special needs class in the mornings. Emma, a fifth grader with Down Syndrome, did my hair twice--each time it looked way better than usual. On Saturday, I went to a book signing with tons of Utah authors and carpooled with my friends Anne Bowen and Sara Zarr. In the car, Sara mentioned how fulfilling it must be to teach those with special needs and asked if it reminded me of my own childhood as a special needs student. Note: I was not a special needs student. Sara claims this was not a rude comment. Anne and I disagree. As payback, I am going to steal a picture from her blog and post it here. (From left to right Isa, owner of the Purple Cow bookstore in Tooele; me; Anne). If by chance anyone reading this lives in or frequents Tooele, Grantsville, Lakeside, Stockton, Stansbury Park, or any of Tooele's "bedroom communities," I highly recommend stopping at the Purple Cow. In fact, I insist upon it. The Purple Cow rocks! And they treat their guest authors like royalty. Tonight, I am hanging out with my awesome sister Julie as well as my brother-in-law Reo, who long ago lamented my lack of mentioning him on this blog. In this I am remiss. I even took a photo of him at one point intending to post it. Alas, I don't know how to. So maybe Julie has one. Let's check. Note: the small hand in this photo belongs to Julie and Reo's baby, Holden. Reo does not have a freak arm. All in all, awesome time was had by all. Hope your Valentine's rocked!

New Year, New Trailer

As an official welcome to 2009, I am actually posting!  And what a post it is! Please watch and enjoy this quality video trailer I made for THE WAY HE LIVED (mainly by myself, but with some help from my husband).

Watch and enjoy!  And get others to watch and enjoy.  And if this doesn't inspire you to read my book, I don't know what will.  Because this is one awesome trailer.  If I do say so myself.

Posting Again Cause I'm Consistent Like That

So, I kept telling myself I'd blog on Friday, because although I missed last Friday, I remembered that my last entry was titled "Good News Friday."  Hence, I thought I had posted it on Friday.  Posting on Friday was going to become my new thing.  I'd post every Friday.  I'd (for once) have some tiny semblance of consistency in one minor aspect of my life.  Then, I realized my Good News Friday entry had been posted on Monday. There goes the consistency idea.

Anyway, I can't blog on Monday because I will be in San Antonio at the ALAN Conference, meeting tons of authors, educators and librarians...and my new editor!  Yes, I've sold my second YA novel to Julie Strauss-Gabel at Dutton (a Penguin imprint), and now I'll actually get to meet her in person.  Just thinking about it makes me feel Good News Friday all over.

Speaking of which, another good news:  Publishers Weekly gave The Way He Lived a starred review!  Reviews of my book are always hit or miss, because my book, well...it is a little different.  But as Arby's used to say back in the day, "Different is good"  Or at least Publishers Weekly and I think it is.

Meanwhile, I have to go admire my beautiful clean fridge.  Seriously, the fridge was disgusting.  There were crumbs on the shelves from the leftover cake after my release party, the jars of various condiments kept sticking when you tried to take them out, and there was this gross residue on the vegetable crisper that had to be literally submerged in cleanser.  When I showed our now-sanitary fridge to my husband, he was pleased, but I was expecting him to be more pleased.  When I inquired about his lackluster response (I know, I am setting myself up, expecting him to go ga-ga over a fridge) he said: "Well, I just didn't know it was dirty, is all."

He didn't know it was dirty.  Wow.  Kind of liberating to know we could live in complete squalor and as long as he had his MacBook, he probably wouldn't notice.

So I'm off to do the admiring for both of us.

Good News on Friday

So, now that my book is officially out there, I definitely need to be more diligent about posting.   Especially if great Fridays like last Friday become a trend! Thanks to the5randoms, YA authors and super-bloggers, for posting this interview with me on Friday.

Meanwhile, this review was published in Salt Lake newspaper City Weekly.  I was so surprised and so pleased not just by the fact they reviewed the book, but by the way the reviewer totally and completely "got" The Way He Lived.

As soon as I learn to type faster than 30 wpm, I will be posting long, beautiful posts everyday.  Until then, all I can promise is that I'll post more often than I have in the past few months.

Have a great week!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

So, my birthday was on Tuesday, and can I just say how much it rocked? I seriously loved this birthday. Besides getting a ton of cool gifts (including but not limited to this) I also got my author copies of THE WAY HE LIVED. Not only did this mean I could revel in the book's shiny-covered, new-book-smell glory, it also meant my friends who pre-ordered their copies from Amazon could do this, too (although they might not have. Which is totally fine).

Other good things have happened for my book lately:

--Publishers Weekly likes my cover! True, I had very little to do with it, but still cool.

--I got a totally awesome agent, Michael Bourret at Dystel and Goderich Literary Management. He is very hip and has an iPhone, but he is not so hip as to scorn un-hip people like me. For this I am in awe. This and more, in fact! Even though he didn't sell THE WAY HE LIVED, he's serious about making sure it gets some attention. I want to make an "I heart Michael" shirt, but I think if I do that I really will be scorned.

And

--This is so unbelievable I can’t find the words.

Thanks for the birthday gifts, one and all!

A DAWSON GIRL

It’s that time again: The fourth season of Dawson’s Creek is on TBS.

It’s always been my favorite season of Dawson’s Creek. For me, that year was the show’s Golden Age.

Everything came together that year—the writing was quick, the soundtrack was awesome, the characters were at their best-looking. Not to mention the gorgeous shots of Wilmington, North Carolina (aka Capeside, Mass.). Yes, the Creek was at its finest, then.

I once read an essay by the all-around-writer-extraordinaire Anna Quidlen, in which she referred to herself as “a Paul Girl.” She was one of those early-1960’s tweens whose favorite Beatle was Paul McCartney, and the decision defined her.

The girls who first gravitated toward Avril Lavigne? In 1964, they would have been John girls. Girls who would today be considered emo went for George. The Ringo girls? Well, you can’t put a label on the Ringo girls—at least I can’t. But Paul girls? In Quindlen’s words: “Paul got the little ladies…He was for girls who were traditional, predictable, who played by the rules.”

By the time my adolescence rolled around, the Beatles were cool, but vintage. We had ways of defining ourselves, sure, but not by identifying with men now older than our parents. Enter Dawson’s Creek.

Dawson’s fans went one of two ways: pro-Dawson or pro-Pacey. There was no middle ground. You either wanted the beautiful, sharp-tongued Joey Potter to end up with soul-mate-and-best-friend-forever Dawson, or charming-and-classic-screw-up Pacey. (Please note: Nobody wanted her to end up with Tom Cruise).

I was a Dawson girl.

After all, the series was called Dawson’s Creek for a reason. Besides that, though, it was obvious that Joey and Dawson belonged together. They’d been together from the beginning, and Pacey? He just wanted her once Dawson decided he wanted her, too. Pacey was every worst trait rolled into one. He wanted what he couldn’t have. He got it and treated it like trash. His communication style was sub-par, if not downright caveman. And he messed up. Not once, but all the time.

Joey’s with Pacey in the fourth season, which may be why the Dawson girl in me loves it so much. We Dawson girls watch patiently as Joey and Pacey lie to each other, fight with each other, and generally self-destruct. We know at the end of the day Dawson will be there, window and arms wide open. So what if the chemistry between Pacey and Joey is undeniable?

I watch this generation of girls take sides, too—we have Edward girls, we have Jacob girls (though to be fair, I have never actually met a teenage Jacob girl). I myself am neither an Edward nor a Jacob girl, and maybe my lack of taking sides defines me, as well. I haven’t read Breaking Dawn, either, so I don’t know how it all ends up.

My hope is that it turns out better than it did for Dawson.

Oops: Betsy Tacy

Thank you to reviewer, blogger, and all-around book brainiac Little Willow for alerting me to this issue and getting me the permission to repost this piece from Lorie Ann Grover (I wanted to the same thing with Little Willow’s name that she did with Lori Anne’s—you know, where you click on it and it links to her website? But I am an idiot, and I don’t know how.)

Anyway, as a huge Betsy-Tacy fan, I had to spread the word:

We will make it our aim at readergirlz to draw your attention to books that are sadly going out of print (OOP). If we all rant and copy and repost the blogs as we are able, maybe we'll tug the ears of the publishers. When Nancy informed us that the Betsy-Tacy series was going out of print, you should have heard the divas groan! I'm sad to say, we have our first OOPS! entry.

In 1940 Maud Hart Lovelace published her first novel Betsy-Tacy of the future series. The original works were illustrated brilliantly by Lois Lenski.

At the start, we meet five-year-old Betsy and her new friend, Tacy. Set in Deep Valley, Minnesota (Mankato, Minnesota, the author's town) in 1898, the girls' adventures abound. From everyday life to extraordinary fantasy, the duo is inseparable. Whether going to school for the first time or riding a feather above their homes, the girls discover the world.

Rereading Betsy-Tacy, I was struck by the history contained in the thin volume. I found American cultural history our girls should be exposed to today. What's a hitching block, or a pussy hood, and how do starched petticoats button to muslin underwaists? At the same time universal timeless themes are touched upon that our girls will still connect to personally. Shyness, siblings, imaginations, and death are a few of the concepts explored.

The entire series follows the girls as they mature. The first four titles focus on the girls from ages 5 to 10. Heaven to Betsy takes the characters to high school. Each work shows the characters age about a year until marriage in Betsy's Wedding.

Betsy-Tacy (1940) Betsy-Tacy and Tib (1941) Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill (1942) Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown (1943) Heaven to Betsy (1945) Betsy in Spite of Herself (1946) Betsy Was a Junior (1947) Betsy and Joe (1948) Betsy and the Great World (1952) Betsy's Wedding (1955)

More from Lorie Ann: I was so happy to discover the Betsy-Tacy Society. Here's an excerpt from their homepage:

The Betsy-Tacy Society was founded in 1990 by a group of 12 Mankato-area admirers of Maud Hart Lovelace's life and writing; it now numbers more than 1500 members. The goals of the BTS are:

* To promote and maintain the availability of Mrs. Lovelace's work; * To advocate for the reissue of any titles not currently in print; * To preserve existing landmarks and sites associated with the real people and places portrayed in the Betsy-Tacy books; and * To sustain interest in the lifestyle of the period, with special emphasis on family and women's history.

Let's speak up to keep Maud's dream alive. As she begins Betsy~Tacy:

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparell'd in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream... - William Wordsworth

Give a shout out to the Betsy-Tacy series through the kidlitosphere.

HarperCollins, don't make this collection of true American girls go OOPS!

- Lorie Ann Grover, rgz diva/author

Notes from Little Willow:

I too enjoyed the Betsy-Tacy books. As a child, I checked them out from the public library. I remember learning that the author had based all of the characters on her own friends and family members and thinking, "That's like Little House!" Now, as an adult, I continue to recommend both series to young readers.

I love it when young writers ask me, "Is it okay to write stories that are kind of like what really happened to me?" "By all means," I reply, and we talk about books inspired by real lives.

The Betsy-Tacy books are classics. They represent and depict the society and the writing style of the times. They also value friendship and show the characters grow up. I have used this series as a kind of stepping-stone to the Anne of Green Gables series, which I adore. I also give it to All-of-a-Kind-Family fans, and vice-versa.

I hope that Betsy-Tacy comes back into print so that their stories may live on as they deserve.

More Quality Signage

So, even though I live in a nice, new, very suburban development (I should probably hate how all the houses look the same, but I can't--I just love the neat-and-tidy feel to the neighborhood) we live down the street from a "commercial district" of sorts.  This means that I have to travel six miles to the nearest grocery store, but that the HQ for a major trucking company is just a hopskipjump away.

For as long as I've lived here (one year, eight months) Fox Valley Leather Co. has alternated between only two messages:  Short-cuff welding gloves 11.50 and Massive Glove Sale.

And now, one-year and eight months into my life, the building's been torn down.

I guess not enough people needed massive gloves.

American Graffiti--Hawaii Style

What better way to celebrate both Marquee Monday and my recent family vacation than with a nod to our 50th state?

On the Big Island of Hawaii, fields of black lava rock fringe the "highway" (often a two-lane road with max speeds of 35 mph). To shake up this sometimes barren landscape, people will write messages in the lava rock with white coral (see above). The messages are typical minor-league vandalism--names or initials, religious shout-outs (i.e, ACCEPT JESUS), roadside memorials, links to MySpace pages.

You know, the usual.