How to use this Page

Our house goes on sale tomorrow & I've been too crazy busy to write anything more than the occasional blurt on Twitter. So here's stuff from/about other people:

Virginia friend & author Mollie Bryan is Off to Denver. Tomorrow we'll meet up with a big group at the Literary Ladies Luncheon. On Saturday afternoon I'll be at Wen Chocolates, where Mollie's going to spread "a little more of that pie love" in an event for her 2nd book, MRS ROWE'S LITTLE BOOK OF SOUTHERN PIES (Ten Speed). With FREE PIE!

In NYC, BP101 alum Matthew Cody met kids from the Thalia Book Club at Random House and signed galleys of his forthcoming YA novel, POWERLESS. Read about it on the Symphony Space blog.

Woohoo! Book Promotion 101 workshop alum Kelly McMasters just informed me that her book, WELCOME TO SHIRLEY: A Memoir of an Atomic Town, tops the Oprah Book Club list of Addictive True Stories.

Kelly is the co-director of the KGB Nonfiction Reading Series, and teaches writing at Columbia and mediabistro.

I got all choked up reading this piece in today's LA Times by YA author Kerry Madden, who's spoken at my workshops:

My one and only child was born at 12:26pm on May 23, 1989. He was due on May 13, but--setting a pattern for later life--arrived in his own time, well after I was completely exasperated. (That's him at left, age 5, styled by himself, down to the sticker on his right shin.)

Those last 10 days were the longest in my life. I lay like a beached whale, reading a one-volume collection of Jane Austen, interrupted by phone calls from family and friends to see whether I'd given birth yet. I got so fed up that I started responding, "Yeah, I had the baby and didn't tell you," or "I decided not to have the baby, and just stay pregnant forever."

I went into labor around 6:00am on May 22. It felt like mild menstrual cramps. Wow, I thought, this is going to be easy! How wrong I was. After 30 hours of fruitless and often agonizing labor, I had a caesarean section, and the Boy Wonder was pulled squalling into the world. At 9 lbs, 12 oz, he was 50% bigger than the next-largest baby of the 6 in the nursery at Wayne County General Hospital, in Honesdale, PA (best known as the home of Highlights for Children). Those 10 extra days in utero gave him a roll of fat at the back of his neck as thick as my pinky, huge round cheeks and a crease in his chubby chin. The discharging doctor called him "Moose."

That was the last time the Boy Wonder was fat. As I've often joked over the years, my plump little dumpling stretched out to be a long piece of spaghetti. More like capellini, as he's now 6'4" and 132 lbs. I call him "the human hummingbird," because he has to eat his weight daily to stay alive. Well, almost: 4 meals, plus big snacks. When he was with the Obama campaign, he managed to lose weight while having 2 super-sized Big Macs and a milkshake for lunch, plus an equally big breakfast and dinner.

Now my little baby is an Economics major. Today I was working in the garden, dressed in the Carhartt men's overalls (women's pants are never long enough) I bought as my first maternity outfit. And tonight I'll continue rereading Pride and Prejudice, from the same volume I read in what was truly a lifetime ago.

The Boy Wonder at Obama's acceptance speech in Denver (detail of photo that ran in NYT 8/30/08).

Last week, I detailed consulting client & workshop alum Christine Fletcher's outreach efforts to YA bloggers in It's an Honor (and a bunch of work) Just to be Nominated.

When I opened my email this morning, I found this euphoric message from her:

Just had to tell you...Ten Cents a Dance was just named one of the 2009 Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults!

TOP freakin' TEN!!

I'm so glad to have events scheduled in Chicago next month!

Effort begets awards...especially when the book is as good as Ten Cents a Dance!

Carleen Brice's Black Book Welcome Lady video led to an opinion piece in Sunday's Washington Post: Reading Too Much Into Race. NB: Books by African-American authors make great gifts!

My favorite webmaster (and all-around nice guy), Steve Bennett of Authorbytes, gets top billing; and Carol Fitzgerald, founder of the Bookreporter.com empire, gets the best quote in a Publishers Weekly piece: Finding Value in Author Web Sites. (In my day at PW, we wouldn't have mislabeled bestselling novelist Chris Bohjalian as a "journalist." Hmpf!)

Author Marianne Mancusi shares excellent book party tips at Agent Kristin's Pub Rants. Be sure to read the comments for even more pointers.

Client Alison Larkin's debut novel, THE ENGLISH AMERICAN (which makes a great gift!), has been optioned by ABC TV for a half-hour series, with the Mark Gordon Company ("Grey’s Anatomy") attached to produce. Woo hoo!

Book Promotion 101 alums Jennifer Kaufman & Karen Mack just got a deal with Bantam Dell, who published their first two novels (which make great gifts!), for their third. FREUD'S MISTRESS is described as a "what-if" novel exploring the potential affair between Sigmund Freud and his sister-in-law, and looks at his complicated (ya think???) personal life and family relationships. I wonder if there'll be any cigar jokes...

The Pit Bulls of New Orleans calendar, a pet project of author Ken Foster, is on sale. (Hint: It makes a great gift!)

Proof that good things happen in threes:

Among the five nominees for the American Library Association's new YA debut award for books that "illuminate the teen experience and enrich the lives of its readers through its excellence" is MADAPPLE, by Christina Meldrum. The winner will be announced January 29.

WOOT!!!

Barbara Carellas, author of URBAN TANTRA: Sacred Sex for the Twenty-first Century has relaunched her UrbanTantra.org(asm!) website with a new design, fabu headshot (left) and a big announcement:

"Beginning this week—16 October to be exact—my very own radio show will premiere on Hay House Radio. It’s called Sex... with Barbara Carrellas (yes, we all love that double entendre). It will air every other Thursday at 9 am Pacific time and 12 noon Eastern time. If you miss the live show, you can listen to it in the archives by joining Hay House’s Wisdom community. This show is really a dream come true for me. Not only do I have a radio show where I can have intelligent and enlightening conversations about sex, it’s also on my dear friend Louise’s radio station. I am thrilled and proud to be part of this amazing community."

Photo: Barbara Nitke

Attendees at Barack Obama's acceptance speech at the DNC in Denver. That's my little boy at center. Photo by Kevin Moloney for the New York Times.

It was a good thing I'd finished my morning tub o' tea when I opened today's New York Times national edition to the politics pages, else I'd have spewed it when I got to the story at the top of page 20: Political Realities May Pose a Test to Obama’s Appeal to Young Voters.

Because the young man holding a flag front and center is none other than my own son, the Boy Wonder. In case you're wondering why he looks so much taller than everyone around him, it's because he is so much taller: 6'4". Thinner too: 130 lbs, despite eating four square meals a day, and then some. Hence his choice of T-shirt, whose logo can't be made out in the photo: "Giraffes United Against Ceiling Fans." (See it here at Threadless T-Shirts.)

The photo was on the NYT home page when the BW saw it late last night. Too bad he didn't get a screen shot, as it's since been replaced. But at least he had his 15 minutes of (anonymous) fame, and I'm sure the folks at Threadless are thrilled.

Kudos to these Book Promotion 101 clients:

• Karen Quinn's first novel, THE IVY CHRONICLES, has been picked up by Warner Bros., who's talking to Sarah Jessica Parker about starring after Catherine Zeta Jones bowed out. Jerry Weintraub, of "Ocean's Eleven" fame, is set to produce. Karen's third novel, HOLLY WOULD DREAM, came out in June.
• Doreen Orion's travel memoir, QUEEN OF THE ROAD, which debuted in early June, just went into its 5th printing.
• Carleen Brice's first novel, ORANGE MINT AND HONEY, was optioned by Lifetime TV for a movie, to be produced by Damon Lee ("Undercover Brother"--rent it now; it's a total hoot!).