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We are asked many things in this writing life, and sometimes we just plain don't have answers. But when young Turkeybird pulled out his notepad and stared up at me, I gave him everything I had. Answers to questions like:
How do you talk to someone when there's a big wall in the way?
If you were seven what would you read next?
Swings or Slides?
Crayons or Markers?
The entire conversation (and a book giveaway) can be found
here, on the site of the utterly lovable super Mom/agent/writer/blogger/friend Danielle Smith of There's a Book. I love many things about Danielle, but love in particular how she's found a way to make her life so whole—her passion for books becoming a passion her children share. Danielle includes her children in the work she does. And there is joy in quantum quantities.
And there's another blogger I'd like to thank today — the very great The Book Swarm, who made room for a brief essay I'd written about those East Berlin escapees who did indeed make it over the wall. That can be found
right here, on this deservedly popular blog. Thank you, so much, The Book Swarm!
A few days ago, Lynn Rosen, the editorial director of the Publishing Business Group, wrote to ask me about those end-of year lists we see so often in the book business. What are they? What do they mean? How are they created? How do they affect us? She asked, and I (with my always limited knowledge) answered. Our conversation is
here.
This morning, while I was waiting for an unexpected visitor to leave the house (okay, so it was the pest control guy, and, all right, if you must know, I was not precisely prepared for the visit, and since you won't stop asking, no, my hair was not combed and my eyes were raccooned), I was scrolling through my blog log and saw that my good friend Danielle Smith of There's a Book had written something about pausing.
I need pause right now, I thought, and so pressed on the link, only to discover that Danielle had included me in her glorious post. You'll see what I mean,
here.Oh my gosh, new insertion. Here is Sarah Laurence being uber kind to Small Damages at year's end. So how do I feel about being included in some of these phenomenal lists, mentions, citations, possibilities? I feel blessed, pure and simple. I feel outrageously lucky. I have been writing books for a long time. I have published many. I was an outsider from the get-go, but I don't feel so outside anymore. I feel like I am part of a community. I feel like there is reason to go on searching for stories and words.
I want to write.
The heat was aggressive today. It knocked the civility out of drivers. It was implicated in the four accidents I saw and drove the bugs into my ears. Soupy, swampy, angry, it would not rest until it had exploded (it was quite the sight, it really was) the bottle of Dr. Pepper I had carried with me to the car. Pssssshhhhh Bang Splat fiiiiizzzzzzzzzzz. Too bad they don't make interior windshield wipers.
Such sweet things happened, nonetheless. They may not seem related, but they are. My friend Heather's baby boy, Ryder, was born at 4:44 PM, a good omen of some sort, I'm sure. Ryder's going to be loved something fierce by all of us who love Heather, and by Heather herself, so full of love. Heather's been asking Ryder to come out and play for some time now, and forever now, he will.
All across the country, meanwhile, another mother, this one named Danielle, was tending to her two—taking care, listening, watching them tangle and grow. Danielle, too, is a very special woman, a person whose priorities in life (and gentleness, and dreams) have so much to teach. Danielle gives everything—to her family, to this book world, to people like me—and the next day she gets up, and somehow does it all again.
Today I was a recipient of Danielle's exceptional gifts. I was, and I don't know what to say.
When I say that I don't know what to say, I really mean that. I don't. Kindnesses like hers cannot be answered.
Simply, then, with gratitude, I share her words
here, which I found at just the right time of this tumultuous and yet still beautiful day.
I am sending my love to these two mothers right now. In a world this hot, in a summer this thick with heat, they teach us how to carry on with dignity and grace.
Best of the year, best of the genre, best of right now lists proliferate at this time of year. I love seeing what others have loved, what they will not forget but carry forward. I myself am rather incapable of such sorting. So much moves me. So much matters. So much registers within me as special.
But today a different kind of list made its way to me, thanks to the keen eye of the ever-dear
Serena Agusto-Cox. It's a list that was fashioned by the one and only Danielle of
There's a Book. It's an invitation I would most definitely accept, if I only lived 3,000 miles closer. It is, indeed, a most gracious tendering.
Thanksgiving, indeed.
Because you may in fact have grown weary of listening to me go on about the
You Are My Only Treasure Hunt, I introduce this final clues installment with pictures of puppies. Everyone still loves puppies, right? And especially ones with hats.
In any case, here we go. The fifth and final guest post telling the story behind the story of
You Are My Only has now gone live out there in the blogosphere. This one appears on a blogger site that I find visually fascinating and deeply textured, like the best designed Project Runway dress (I'm thinking Mondo crossed with Anya). This blogger (who is herself a fine writer) describes herself as a pain in the you know what (but I rather love her), has a close relationship to Hicklebee's (she's the resident blogger), wears tiaras, and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. I do not know if she dances.
Post 5 begins like this:
If you’ve been following these blog posts, then you understand already that I don’t write my books in some preordained sequential fashion. I don’t outline a plot; I don’t consult the trends; I don’t go with the fashions. I write about what will not let me sleep, and over time, and through countless drafts, the separate aspects of my obsessions knit themselves into a story.
One of the things that was keeping me awake at night while I was working on this book was the stories I kept reading about urban explorers—those fascinating souls who explore abandoned buildings, often illegally, and create entire underworlds within them. For many years, a northeast Philadelphia asylum known to many as Byberry was a favorite haunting ground for these folks. This gigantic structure had been left to rot after being shut down in the 1990s, and the urban explorers (or “cavers” as they are sometimes known) had taken over—held rave parties there, ridden their motorcycles through connective tunnels, dug through the patient records and film reels and all the wild and disturbing “stuff” that had been so haphazardly left behind.
Your job is to find this post and to also find the four other posts that very kind bloggers have lodged on their blogs. If you do that—find all five posts, put the links on your own blog, and send me proof of your cross linking in any comment box
by October 24—you will be entered into a drawing. The two randomly chosen winners will each win a signed copy of
You Are My Only as well as an opportunity to have 2,000 words from a work in progress be critiqued by yours truly. For the full details go
here. Winners will be announced October 25, the day that
You Are My Only launches.
Here, again, are the clues.
Post 4 is housed at the psychodelically-hued (we know that isn't a real term) home of a certain chick who loves lit. I met this wonderful person at the BEA this past summer. She was part of the awesome gang of many who surprised me with a YAMO blast a month or so again. The post you are looking for begins like this:
Those who know me know that I’m only intermittently good at devising titles.
Undercover was called Come Back to Me, for example, until Laura Geringer asked me to please think again on that one. Still Love in Strange Places was named by my son moments b
By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 9/8/2011
Blog:
Beth Kephart Books
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I woke up yesterday thinking the day would be like most others—a scramble of corporate work, some exercise, laundry folded on the fly, an hour or two spent with a novel-in-progress, some texting with my son, Wednesday night salsa at MIXX. It started out that way, that's for sure, but the pattern got broken mid-way through. Things started to show up on my Facebook wall.
You-better-take-a-look-at....-emails were coming through.
What's going on? people were asking.
I don't know, I said. Because for a long time I didn't.
I'm still mystified, to be honest, by
all the kindness that came my way during the course of yesterday—all the kindness that exists in this world. I'm mystified, and I'm eternally grateful. I am also feeling desperately inadequate because I have failed to capture it all. I had planned, yesterday, to thank some very special people who have been supporting me and my work for years. In the shuffle and shift and bewilderment of my day, I did not do that.
Today is the day that I stop and thank the readers and writers who have quietly written to me of their support. Today is the day I thank those who read this book early and posted their thoughts. I never want this blog to be all about me. It is my privilege, here, to write about others, their books, their dreams; to write about my city; to write about people doing good. In cross posting these early blogger reviews of
You Are My Only, I am celebrating those who took the time—those who care. I am telling them what I hope they already feel and know: That I am hugely grateful. If I have not captured your voice here, it is only because I don't know. Because years ago I stopped googling my own name—the only solution for one as naturally obsessive and easily worried as me.
And so then please find below the excerpts from some recent blog posts that I hope you will read in their entirety. Posts from bloggers whom you should visit daily. Caribousmom is here—that exquistely smart reviewer with whom I first connected over
The Elegance of the Hedgehog and whom I later met in person in New York; I've loved her ever since. Becca of Bookstack, an indelible presence and so-smart reviewer and long time blog world friend is here. There's a Book and My Friend Amy are here—their support so entirely unspeakable. Hippies Beauty and Books. Oh my, is here, as is The Reading Zone. These join the rocking surprise gonzo
You Are My Only promotion featured here, on
Chick Loves Lit and on
Bookalicious, the equally stealthy and gonzo Melissa Sarno of This Too
giveaway, Florinda,
Kay's Bookshelf, and
Books, Thoughts, and a Few Adventures. Thank you. All. I'm about to start reading a new book called
Child Wonder. I hope to write of that soon here—to return to the universe some of the what has been sent my way.
2 Comments on You Are My Only—the kindness of bloggers continues, last added: 9/8/2011
There will, inevitably, be mistakes in this post. That is because I am literally shaking. My hands are numb. My throat is tight. Don't call me, because I'll start crying.
I am the girl in that picture, here. Wearing funky pants and silly hairy, my whole self just a little bit blurry.
I haven't changed much. I still have my self-doubts, my disappointments, my too-big dreams. I can still get cranky from time to time, I can never get my hair right, and I can still write sentences that (upon waking to them the next day) shame me. We writers out here — we are just writers. And sometimes things go well and sometimes they don't, and if we had to do it all alone—if
I had to do it all alone—well, I am pretty darned sure that my career would have stopped long ago. I wouldn't have stopped writing. But I might not have books in lovely covers to share.
I owe everything—
everything—to the good hearts out here who have looked up from their own projects, their own days, their own children, their own blogs and said,
You have a place with us here.Today my world broke open that much wider. Today—yesterday—the day before—the days before that—readers—
friends!— reached in and turned on a light. I have so many to thank. It's just so inadequate, that phrase, thank you.
In a day or two, there will be a treasure hunt, a series of blog posts, distributed across the net, that I wrote to help tell the story of the story behind
You Are My Only. I will announce the details of that in time.
But all this time that I have been working with the dear hearts on this treasure hunt, those dear hearts took the party so much wider—very sneakily preparing what has become one gigantic early party for this book. These party planners know that I never google my own name, and so perhaps that set them free. Still, I have no idea how they did this much without me even guessing that anything more was afoot.
To attend this party, you must first visit the master schemer, the beautiful heart, the lovely lady behind
There's a Book, the one and only
1st Daughter. You must at the exact same time visit the one and only, ever invincible, always dear and wise and stunning, always surprising
My Friend Amy. Soon, when I stop shaking, I will share those links that have been sent my way. Every single one of which means the world to me.
Please don't think that I am kidding about my shaking over here. And what I just wrote in a comment box to the 1st Daughter is true: The first thing that happened when I saw all of this is just now is that I said to myself,
Beth, You have to call Mom. But Mom's in heaven, and she's looking down. She sends her love to all of you.
I strive, always, to give as much space as I can on this blog to the work of others; it's a community out here, and I'm privileged to share in it, don't ever want this blog to be too much about me.
But for this moment, on this day before I head off to the BEA, I revel in the generosity of There's A Book, which has called
You Are My Only one of the most anticipated books of 2011, along with some other fine titles.
Check in later in the week at There's a Book for a YAMO giveaway.
And picture me dancing. Don't let any writer tell you any different: We
do care, enormously, what our readers think, especially readers who have been as generous to our work as 1st Daughter has always been to mine.
I have been anticipating the release of YOU ARE MY ONLY for what seems like a very long time (only because I was writing and rewriting the book for what felt like a long but deeply wonderful time). But I did not anticipate having two of my favorite bloggers take such early notice of it. Has anyone figured out how to send hugs long distance, yet?
For being there for me, and for my books, I am today thanking 1st Daughter at
There's a Book and Amy, at
My Friend Amy. I would love to have you both to a party of cherished readers someday.
Oh, and may I just add a note of appreciation here for my dear cousin (we are going to call ourselves cousin, even if some second something is involved) Kelsey Coons for letting me know about There's a Book? If you saw or met Kelsey, you'd want to claim first-blood relation status, too.
These waters are blue rearranged by pink, the colors of sea and sky, and I thought of this image when I learned this morning of all the very kind things book blogger 1st Daughter has done and said about my books this year. She is one very special and cherished reader.
In her
year-end wrap-up of her blog, There's a Book, 1st Daughter named
Dangerous Neighbors one of the top four books of the year as well as the most beautifully written book of the year, named me her favorite newly discovered author, and listed
The Heart Is Not a Size as the book that had the greatest impact on her in the year. This is high, high praise from a blogger named Best KidLit Book Blogger by the BBAW of 2010 (congratulations to 1st Daughter for that!!).
I am deeply privileged, and very blessed. Thank you.
I am grateful this morning for the extraordinarily
generous words about
Heart posted yesterday on
There's a Book. This is a reader who knows Juarez well, and who shares her own interesting perspective. Thank you, 1st daughter.
I like this discussion because I wonder, a lot, about these lists and what 'best' means. And I love that a book and writer (and person) I love so much is considered 'best'.
Writing more is the best reaction! I'm eager to read more too. You've made my best YA of 2012 list on my blog today.
You are so wonderful to me Beth. I'm so happy I could share what you've done with everyone.
I've thought about all the best of lists and I have to agree with Melissa, my favorite ones are from the bloggers/authors/bookish people I know. It's wonderful.
And I have to say, I love how things have gone for you recently. It's wonderful and couldn't have happened to a better person. xo
The best of it is that you want to write.