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This is the first in a planned series of articles about the “Image Effect.” Over the past 20+ years Image Comics has grown from a vanity publisher for the top talents of the 90s into a trendsetter and home to a diverse range of popular titles and creators. How did they accomplish that? Image’s well-known […]

Charlie Chaplin Lines

हर दिल अजीज चार्ली चेप्लिन के जन्म के 125 वे वर्ष पर उनके फ़िल्मी जीवन में व्यंग्य की कथा के साथ-साथ उनकी स्क्रीन पर उपस्थिति का 100 वां वर्ष मनाने के लिए ये साल यानि 2015 चार्ली चैपलिन वर्ष के रूप में मना रहा है. हास्य रेखाओं के रचनाकारों ने उन्हें श्रद्धांजलि देने के लिए कार्टून और हास्य चित्र बनाए हैं।इनमें से लगभग 200 कार्टून एक विशेष पुस्तक में शामिल किए गए हैं.चार्ली चैपलिन लाइन्स’ के रूप में सबसे पहले भारत में चार्ली चैपलिन वर्ष समारोह 25-27 जून , NCPA मुंबई में कार्टून/करिकेचर प्रदर्शनी आयोजित की जा रही है।

खुशी की बात ये भी हैं कि इसमे मेरे बनाए चार्ली चैपलिन भी शामिल हैं …. Charlie Chaplin Lines 

vintage everyday: Rarely Seen Candid Photos of Charlie Chaplin While Filming on Venice Beach, California, ca. 1914

These rarely seen photographs may be from on-site at the shooting of 1914 silent film Kid Auto Races at Venice (also known as The Pest) on Venice Beach, California.

This is an Essanay Studios film starring Charlie Chaplin in which his “Little Tramp” character makes his first appearance in a film exhibited before the public. See more…

The post Charlie Chaplin Lines appeared first on Monica Gupta.

One WordPress.com staffer challenged the others to a month-long blogging challenge... and you'll never guess what happened next! (Spoiler: we blogged a lot.)

No matter where you are in the world, you’ll find people working on WordPress.com: Developers deploying lines of code. Designers tinkering with themes. Engineers working one-on-one with users to help make their websites just so. (Want to join in? We’re hiring.)

One cool thing about Automatticians? We care about WordPress.com so much that we’re always thinking about ways to make it better, online and off. Here’s a glimpse at the 230 Automatticians around the globe — and things we’re working on and thinking about right now.

We blog about WordPress (naturally!)

At Automattic, we’re constantly communicating, breaking and fixing, and iterating and improving. Communication tools like the P2 theme, Skype, and IRC channels allow ideas and conversations to flow at all times, while our own blogs are spaces to reflect on and share the things we’ve learned.

In Moscow, Code Wrangler Konstantin Kovshenin works on the Dot Org Team, writing themes and plugins and contributing to WordPress Core. On his personal blog, he shares tips, code snippets, and even videos of his talks at WordCamps, like WordCamp Sofia 2013 in Bulgaria.

Meta Engineer Nikolay Bachiyski chatting with others. (Image by Sheri Bigelow.)

Colorado-based Automattician Greg Brown works on search, natural language processing, and machine learning; his team wrangles data (and launched the Related Posts feature last November). On Greg’s blog, you can follow his recent posts on Elasticsearch, indexing, and the future:

Humans express their dreams, opinions, and ideas in hundreds of languages. Bridging that gap between humans and computers — and ultimately between humans — is a noble endeavor that will subtly shape the next century. I’d like to see Elasticsearch be a force in democratizing the use of natural language processing and machine learning.

We blog about the web and technology

At Unencumbered By Facts, Code Wrangler (and Linux Geek) Jason Munro muses on a mix of topics, from programming to data, and even on moving from Wall Street to WordPress.

Over in Taipei, Taiwan, Growth Engineer Ben Thompson focuses on attracting new users to WordPress.com, and improving their experience, on Team Triton. Ben actively writes about technology from a strategic perspective at Stratechery, like his recent thoughts on messaging on mobile, and his follow-up piece on this week’s Facebook and WhatsApp deal.

On ebeab (or eight beats equals a byte), Marcus Kazmierczak publishes newsletters about trends around open source, web development, Linux, and more. Located in the San Francisco Bay Area, Marcus works on Team Tinker — a team focused on creating new products — and covers more than just your usual technology news: his latest edition dives into the world of crypto-currency and Dogecoin, and past editions focus on productivity and hacking and security.

Theme Wranglers Kirk Wight and Michelle Langston. (Image by Sheri Bigelow.)

Over on the east coast of the US, Sheri Bigelow (who snapped the images you see in this post) is a New York-based photographer and designer who strives to make the WordPress.com theme and customization experience the best it can be, and shares techniques and ideas on her site, Design Simply. We especially like her tips on photography workflows and themes.

Theme Team Lead Ian Stewart. (Image by Sheri Bigelow.)

Likewise, it’s cool to read design ideas from Theme Team Lead Ian Stewart from Winnipeg, Manitoba, whose crew of wranglers launches the new themes you see in the Theme Showcase.

This week, Ian ponders the principles of good design, but he also writes on general best practices and other interests, like writing. If you’ve not seen it, Ian’s talk at WordCamp San Francisco 2013 resonates as an inspiring, big-picture, yet personal talk on themes and web design.

We blog about other stuff, too

Automatticians write about all sorts of topics — from tread desking to fatherhood to musings on love and life to gaming to reading and writing. And even if we’re not working on WordPress.com, we bring the same curiosity and motivation to our other passions — and find that much of what we do and enjoy here overlaps in side projects.

Isaac Keyet, a Product Designer living in Sweden and working on the Data Team, writes on a variety of subjects. In his recent post on light, color, work, and sleep, he talks about the types of light that affect our sleep/wake patterns (and recommends f.lux, an app that changes your screen temperature to best fit your location).

Tokyo-based Automattician Naoko Takano, from Team Global, engineering happiness. (Image by Sheri Bigelow.)

Karen Arnold, who lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and works on the Happiness Team, started a blogging class as an experiment for a homeschooling group. (Karen also led a workshop last fall at the Digital Family Summit to teach kids and their families how to get started blogging on WordPress.com.)

Further north in Quebec, Canada, Kathryn Presner, a member of the Theme Team, recaps her experience mentoring students at Ladies Learning Code. Being a Happiness Engineer and WordCamp speaker, educating others is nothing new to Kathryn — it’s a perfect example of open source education in action, and how the skills and passions of Automatticians aren’t restricted to “the workplace.”

Are you interested in working alongside these and many other talented folks? We’re hiring for numerous positions — consider applying!

Every once in a while, we sit down with an Automattician to help you get to know the people who work behind the scenes to build new features, keep Automattic’s wheels turning, and make WordPress.com the best it can be. In this installment, we’re delighted to introduce you to music …

Welcome to a new feature on WordPress.com News. Every couple weeks, we’ll sit down with an Automattician to help you get to know the people who work behind the scenes to build new features, keep Automattic’s wheels turning, and make WordPress.com the best it can be. Mr. Tim Moore suggested this new feature and so we thought it only fitting that he should be first. Everybody, say hey to Tim!

What’s your role at Automattic?

Tim Moore

At Automattic, I’m a member of Team Social. We handle projects like Publicize, Post by Email, Sharing, the new WordPress.com comments UI, and Gravatar, among others.

I also do a lot of work on Automattic’s Jetpack plugin. I have a toe in each part of Jetpack; I started out doing mostly development, though now I help with support, maintenance, and any aspect of the plugin that needs work.

What sort of work have you done in the past? What did you learn from it?

For development work, I maintained virtual machines. Usually, beyond the basic web server software (LAMP or similar), I didn’t get involved in other software packages that could be run (email, for example). I used to do this, but haven’t in a long time.

In light of some of the recent privacy policy rigamarole that has been going around in the tech world, I decided to brush up on my skills to see what I could do. I ended up setting up my own email server to handle email for several of my domains that, until then, I had piped into a Google Apps account. Because they’re low volume email accounts, I don’t need Google’s vast data centers. I ended up with a functional email server and I learned that email, a thing we take for granted, is a complicated beast.

If you have an interest in how something works, take the time to learn about it. It’s going to be frustrating (My email server certainly frustrated me!), and you’ll probably feel like you’d be better off leaving it to someone else (I felt like that too).

When you’re done, you’ll have learned something new, you’ll understand a service you’ve (maybe) taken for granted in the past, and you’ll have a new appreciation for how hard folks work to make these things available.

What do you love most about working at Automattic?

I love having instant access to some of the best brilliant minds in the field. I’m an autodidact* and love to learn; there’s nothing better than being able to jump on IRC or Skype to ask a question or have a discussion about something I don’t understand and coming away having learned something new.

I also like that my commute to my office can be different each day. Not just in, “Let’s take a different route to the office today,” but in that I can stay in bed and open the laptop, I can work in my home office, I can go to the café or restaurant. My commute can be different each night, too, if I choose to work at night.

What should the people know about you, Tim?

In my spare time (hah!), I write fiction (speculative fiction or science fiction or fantasy) and read just about anything that captures my interest. I currently have a novel and several short stories in progress and I usually read about one book a week (this week I’ve knocked off Gun Machine by Warren Ellis, the B-Team by John Scalzi, and am working on the Wool Omnibus by Hugh Howey).

I’m also a family person. I like to spend as much time with my wife, Caroline (also an Automattician!), and two daughters (ages four and one) as I can. One of the things I like to do with them, to relax after work, is cook dinner for the family.

*Fun fact: Leonardo da Vinci is one of the world’s best known autodidacts.

Did you know that Automattic is hiring? We want people who are willing to work hard, share their ideas, learn from their colleagues, take initiative to get things done without being told, and those who aren’t afraid to ask questions. Think you fit the bill? Work with us.

Merry band of comrades seeks nice, hard-working, diligent, motivated, fun-loving people to join their mission: to democratize publishing and make WordPress.com the best it can be. Work with us.

Last year at Automattic (WordPress.com’s parent company) we hired 48 people:

• 19 developers/systems folk — those who write code and make sure servers are running.
• 14 Happiness Engineers — those who support our users in the forums and answer requests for help.
• 6 themers and designers who create beautiful themes and sites.
• 8 in business and operations — those who work internally with Automatticians and with our VIPs.
• 2 in editorial curating Freshly Pressed, and inspiring bloggers to keep on blogging.

We expect to hire 60 new Automatticians in 2013. We’re a distributed company: Automatticians work from home, their local coffee shop, co-working spaces — the location in the world where they’re most comfortable and productive. Our hiring pool is planet Earth.

We need developers, designers, themers, support folks, and more. Are you a mobile developer? Apply. Are you smart about WordPress, incisive, and compassionate? You might be an awesome Happiness Engineer.

What qualities do we seek? We look for people who are willing to work hard, share their ideas, learn from their colleagues, take initiative to get things done without being told, and those who aren’t afraid to ask questions.

To help you get to know your future colleagues a little better and learn about the awesome people who fuel Automattic, we’re starting a new series here at WordPress.com News called “Five Minutes with an Automattician.” First up, on Monday, January 21st, Mr. Tim Moore.

Think you’ve got the right stuff? Work with us.

Swag

• Standard Definition: plunder, booty; money, valuables.
• Recent Definition: confidence, style, carriage; related to swagger.

There's a saying going around the internet that “swag doesn’t pay the bills.” In Children’s Marketing, that is patently not true.  Swag totally pays the bills—or, at least it helps sell books, which is what keeps the lights (and air conditioning) on in this funky-shaped building. [Note: Much of Macmillan is housed in New York City’s Flatiron Building, an angular architectural wonder that is on the National Register of Historic Places and has a perfect five-star rating on Yelp. Swag.]

Kids book swag is kind of like a party favor—if your book had a birthday bash or a wedding, it would thank you for coming and hand you a little gift on your way out that looked like one of the following:

Bookmarks: Classic swag! A bookmark doesn’t stray too far from the world of ink and paper. Almost anything can be a bookmark, including smaller books—but do this too much and you get a Matryoshka doll effect with a couple of broken bindings. Better to pick up the real deal!

Poster: When you’re not reading your book, it can still beautify your world. A children’s book poster usually consists of a spread from the book with a tagline that is funny, telling or inspiring. Since they are often displayed in libraries and bookstores, these posters may have messages which encourage you to read. Consider yourself warned.

Class Activities: Sometimes class activities are on the back of a poster; sometimes they’re on their own. You can check out book pages on the Macmillan website to see if there are bonus activities! Is this type of swag a little like the carrot sticks that one of your neighbors gives out on Halloween instead of candy? Maybe. Did that person know what was best for you? Definitely. Some of these activities were created by interns, specifically this intern, and they are FUN—and good for you.

Buttons, Tote Bags, Pencils: This genre of swag is my favorite, as it’s a killer combination of practical and expressive. Plus, sometimes tote bags contain… more swag. And books.

Alternative Swag: Here’s where things get really creative. Did you know that Shadow and Bone has its own nail polish? And that the upcoming Crewel has its own swanky purple wristband? 52 Reasons to Hate My Father had a giveaway that included heiress sunglasses like the one in the book. Step aside, Duane Reade, because Mackids has this covered. These novelty items are a ton of fun to come up with in marketing meetings—it’s an interesting challenge to design a small object that both conveys something about a whole book and is useful or cool on its own.

Now you might be asking yourself: Where can I get my hands on some swag? Easy! To get a party favor, go to a party. Check out author signings and book festivals. Buddy up with your local librarian. Consider working in publishing! The whole floor may or may not have sampled custom Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group cookies to make sure they were OK for ALA. (They were, but it’s always good to check.) Turn your swag on, and happy reading!

 -Katherine

Trends in Children’s Literature (and some suggested variations)

Interning at MacKids has given me the opportunity to check out a lot of children’s books, and a few patterns have emerged. Here are some thoughts on what’s in! - Katherine Damm

Trend: Bears

Suggested Reading: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?; Bear Has A Story To Tell (September 2012); The Bear in the Book (October 2012) 

What is it about bears that make them such lovable children’s book characters? Is it their adorably awkward gait, fuzzy exterior, or just that “bear” rhymes with a lot of words? Whatever it is, I am a fan of this theme. I want to live in a world where bears are not dangerous wild animals, but are instead cuddly creatures who like to hang out with their forest friends—friends that they definitely don’t want to eat.

Variations I’d like to see: huggable sharks, whimsical scorpions, mischievous man o’ wars.

Trend: Bedtime

Suggested Reading: Bedtime for Monsters (July 2012), Lucy Can’t Sleep (August 2012)

This totally makes sense. Bedtime is contagious, like yawns. If a child sees a well-behaved peer getting down with sleepytimes, they’re much more likely to go to bed without a fuss. But books aren’t just for bedtime. They’re for all day, every day! That’s why I propose…

Variation I’d like to see: Wake up, surprise story-time! (This is best done between the hours of 12am and 4am.)

Trend: Grandparents

Suggested Reading: Grandpa Green, Grammy Lamby and the Secret Handshake

There are some great picture books about children and grandparents. The kids are sweet, the grandparents are role-models, and nobody ever says anything that has become politically incorrect within the past twenty years just a little too loudly for comfort while you’re out and about.

Variation I’d like to see: A picture book about my grandmother specifically. We call her Mimi, and she is a witty southern lady who pointedly compliments my “lingerie” when I wear shirts without sleeves.

Trend: Dystopian Fiction

Suggested Reading: Struck, Monument 14, Birthmarked, After the Snow, and more…

This tren

Hello, all! My name is Katherine and I’m the Marketing intern at Mackids for the summer. A bit about me: I’m entering my senior year at college. I like writing and singing and comedy, and I major in the wonderfully dense discipline of Comparative Literature. Sometimes when I talk about what I study, I see people’s eyes glaze over and I know all they’re hearing is, “Blah, blah, blah.” Other times, I meet someone who is excited to discuss literary theory with me in an intelligent manner. Unfortunately, when that happens, my eyes tend to glaze over and all I hear is “Blah, blah, blah.” Theory is funny like that.

So enough about that…. Let’s talk about books!

I was delighted the other day to read the super-talented Lane Smith’s It’s A Book, which shows a conversation between a bibliophile monkey and a techie jackass. The monkey explains again and again that what he’s reading is a book while the jackass bombards him with questions: does it have Wi-Fi? Can it text? Tweet?

Sadly, I found myself identifying with the jackass. As a Comp Lit student, you’d think I’d spend more time with books than I do — but I often use websites and printouts, photocopies and sometimes even audiobooks (set to 3x speed so I feel like I’m being serenaded by chipmunks).

When you do use a book in college, you get the least expensive version you can find. (If you’re lucky, you pick up a used copy from a slacker. Those are always in perfect condition.) Then you spend the money you saved on pizza and deodorant. The truth is, schoolbooks are often a means to an end. You get the information in whatever form is cheapest and easiest, because you cover it up in your own highlights and annotations anyway. (My annotations are usually along the lines of “?????”)

So one of the things I’ve loved most about this internship is getting back to real, honest-to-goodness books. And if there’s one type of book that is lovely and cannot be photocopied or texted or tweeted or annotated, it’s a children’s book. Here’s a secret I learned this summer that they don’t teach you in school: books without pictures are overrated. Here, I’m surrounded by children’s books with gorgeous artwork. There are some for an older crowd over at the graphic novel imprint, First Second, too. They’re the kind of books that make you want to read and keep and display them, and then find a kid so you can show them what’s up. If you ever forget why you love books, see if you can get your hands on a really beautiful one. (Don’t get me wrong, though—books without pictures are also great. And we have those, too!)

So that’s something of me and what I’m interested in! (You know, the objectified book as it fits into modern materialist theory and the complications which Derrida brings up regarding blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…) See you next week!

I was introduced to this fabulous resource today - my perfect pitch created by author Brian Grove, hosts an up-to-date list of approximately 1000 book publishers (worldwide) which are currently accepting submissions. They're all sorted out for you by their various genres, with handy-dandy links to the publishers submission guidelines page on their own website . . . a great site to bookmark for future reference.

Best of luck with your submissions!

In response to a recent Times article author Tommy Greenwald read, he drummed up a little fodder for our blog:

Patricia O’Brien had five novels to her name when her agent, Esther Newberg, set out to shop her sixth one, “The Dressmaker”… A cascade of painful rejections began… Just when Ms. O’Brien began to fear that “The Dressmaker” would be relegated to a bottom desk drawer like so many rejected novels, Ms. Newberg came up with a different proposal: Try to sell it under a pen name.

Written by Kate Alcott, the pseudonym Ms. O’Brien dreamed up, it sold in three days.

            -THE NEW YORK TIMES, FEBRUARY 23, 2012

Dear Readers:

I sympathize with Ms. O’Brien completely. The publishing world is a jungle, and I’ve never been particularly fond of jungles, what with the mosquitoes and humidity. So when it came time to publish my modestly successful children’s book, CHARLIE JOE JACKSON’S GUIDE TO NOT READING, I too decided to use a nom de plume (which is French for “unlisted number”).

I went with Tommy Greenwald because I thought it had a nice ring to it, plus it’s a name that makes you think of a kind, humble, extremely handsome person.

But if I’m not Tommy Greenwald, who am I really?

I’m not quite prepared to tell you.

I will, however, give you a hint: My actual identity is one of the following five people. Please examine the following choices carefully, then decide for yourself who you think I am. You may well be right. And if you’re not right, please be at least assured in the knowledge that you’re wrong.

Here are the possibilities:

MITT ROMNEY – I had to change my name because no one would believe I would spend time on something that would yield so little income.

JEREMY LIN – I had to change my name because people would expect a better vocabulary from someone who went to Harvard.

THE GUY WHO STARS IN “THE ARTIST” – I had to change my name because people think I can’t form actual words.

BARBARA KELLERMAN – I had to change my name -- even though you don’t know who I am -- because I’m Tommy’s mother, and I’m so desperate for him to be successful, I wrote the book in his name.

J.K. ROWLING – I didn’t have to change my name – I don’t have to do anything for anyone, as you well know – but I’m tired of people telling me how bloody brilliant I am all the time, and if I had to go on one more publicity tour (you know I love you, Oprah, but enough is enough), I may well have clobbered someone.

So those are your choices. What do you think? Who am I? And perhaps more importantly… did I really write this Op-ed piece?

Come to think of it, this would make a great mystery! Someone should write a book about it.

When it comes to our book trailers, sometimes it takes a village!While author/illustrator Tom Lichtenheld came up with the concept, and co-author Joan Holub fine tuned the script with her strong background in math and education, we in Marketing had a ton of fun putting it together ~ we used our very own in-house talent (voices!!) and we think we nailed a 10! That's a 1 with a 0 next to it...)

Enjoy the ZERO THE HERO book trailer!

by Nick Bruel

A Bad Kitty Christmas caused me to break three promises I had made to myself.

First, I had promised myself that I would NEVER create another Bad Kitty picture book. It’s not that I didn’t like making them or that I wasn’t proud of the first two: Bad Kitty and Poor Puppy. It’s just that the multiple alphabet format was just too daunting to continue. It’s one reason I came up with the idea to adapt Kitty into a chapter book character. I knew there was much more for this character to do, and having her grow up along with her reader seemed like both a good idea and the perfect escape from the picture book format for her.

The second promise I broke wasn’t so much of a promise as a mindful warning I had made to myself after I completed Little Red Bird. Rhyming books are hard to write. Make that INCREDIBLY hard to write. Make that incredibly FRUSTRATING to write. Plus, all too often authors have been known to rhyme their text because the text itself was not strong enough to hold up on its own as a picture book. Or at least that is the perception by many. After Little Red Bird, which I am quite proud of, I decided that it would a very long time before I even considered writing another rhyming book again.

But the third promise I broke was absolutely the one I thought I would take with me to the grave. I never wanted to do a holiday book.

Not that I had anything against holiday books. Some of the most classic works in the history of children’s books are, of course, holiday books like How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Polar Express. But so many more have come in time for one holiday season and disappeared forever by the time the next holiday season comes around. Having worked for so many years in a children’s bookstore I had seen first hand how publishers would collectively carpet bomb our shelves with brand new Christmas books, and how all of those books that had done so well for us just one year beforehand would become all but completely forgotten. Knowing how difficult it was for me to dedicate as much as nine months of my life to giving birth to each of my books, knowing they would see the light of day on bookstore shelves for only a couple of months at most was just too much to bear.

But break my promises I did, and I broke all three of them at the same time.

Neal Porter and Simon Boughton were both insistent that I still had it in me to create another Bad Kitty picture book. Clearly they had more confidence in my abilities than I did. They also tried to convince me that it was unnecessary for me to maintain the multiple alphabet format, knowing how difficult it was for me. But how could I not? If I had used it for the first two books, it would feel disloyal for me not to do it again for future books. The best I could promise them would be that I would go home and think about it. And I did.

The truth is, I had already given serious consideration to making a Bad Kitty Christmas book. My original concept, one I had contemplated several years ago would be that Kitty would run away from home, bitter that she had not received the presents she wanted, and while wandering through the neighborhood would look through the

by Craig Moodie, author of Into the Trap

SKIFF: (Old Ger. Skif) Any open boat that is propelled by oars, sail, or motor and used for any purpose.

Boats of all kinds play important roles in Into the Trap, almost becoming a class of character (although they have no dialogue).

You might have heard of the term “character boat” which is typically used to describe a boat with as many quirks as ribs.

The skiff Eddie takes out to Greenhead Island is one such character boat, complete with leaks and a recalcitrant Evinrude outboard. Just like Eddie’s skiffs, the skiffs I’ve known over the years have all had some number of defining peculiarities (not unlike the people I’ve known).

The clam boat I helped my old friend Chris Green and his dad Joe build was one big peculiarity. About twelve feet or so, it was essentially a box built out of sheets of plywood whose only nod to marine design was its slanted scow-style bow. It resembled the Higgins boats used for ship-to-shore transport in World War II. We painted it olive drab, too, probably because Joe picked up the paint on the cheap.

As rudimentary as it was, it floated, and we kept it moored in Round Cove in East Harwich and now and then took it fishing in Pleasant Bay out past Great Island.

Mostly we used it for quahogging. I spent many days puttering out of the cove and then opening up the throttle of the outboard to plow along to where the clam beds were in the open bay, and there to spend the day among the other quahoggers raking clams from their skiffs. The boat was no speedboat, and it was tender, meaning that if you moved, it moved with you. Taking a long trip in it wasn’t something I had the stomach for.

But it made a serviceable floating platform from which to put your long-handled aluminum bullrake over the rail, work the teeth of the rake into the unseen sand and mud below, and scrape up the blue-gray nuggets of littlenecks, cherrystones, and chowder clams in the rake’s basket, and then to empty the basket on the culling board.

You just had to remember to bail out the water that constantly leaked in before you put the rake back over again, or your boots would be ankle-deep in seawater before you knew it.

(Both photos are courtesy of NOAA. That’s not the skiff I used, but it’s certainly a character boat with a couple of characters quahogging.)

On October 29th, Helen Frost traveled to the Central Library in downtown Indianapolis to accept the The Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award in the Regional category. This award seeks to recognize the contributions of Indiana authors to the literary landscape in Indiana and across the nation.

In recognition of her entire body of work, Helen received $7,500, and in addition, the Glick Foundation made a $2,500 donation to a library of her choice. Helen named the Children's and Young Adult departments of the Allen County Public Library to be so honored. Helen is the author of Diamond Willow, Crossing Stones, The Braid, Spinning Through the Universe, and Keesha’s House, a 2004 Printz Honor Book. Her most recent title, Hidden, was released this past May.

Here is Helen's response to the award ceremony:

At my table at the awards banquet, I’m surrounded by friends and family, and we relax in the light of the white floating candle on our table. The conversation is gentle, easy, quietly celebratory.

When my name is called, I step up onto the stage to receive the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award, one of three that will be given on this elegant evening. I look out at the banquet hall, holding in my hand a small paper with my notes of people to thank, a few remarks on what this means to me, maybe a small joke.

But the podium is dark. I can’t read my notes, and I am dazzled, as the lights of all the candles shine up at me from the round white tables in this room which is not usually a banquet hall, it is a library--the old, beautifully modernized, Central Indianapolis Library. The moment has such deep presence: the presence of these three hundred people who have come together out of a shared love of books, who write books and read them and care deeply about them. And there’s the surrounding presence of the books on the library shelves, and all the people who have written and read them, all the librarians who have helped make connections between writers and readers.

I am surprised to discover that I am completely at ease among all these friends, known and unknown. I have no anxiety about saying the wrong thing, or forgetting to say the right thing. I find word

by author Caragh M. O’Brien
November 8, 2011

Nancy Mercado and I talk to each other rarely.  We’ve had fewer than a dozen phone calls over the past three years, and we’ve met in person three times total.  In a way, I know my editor most vividly as a disembodied voice in the margin of my manuscripts, and yet, because of the focused nature of our relationship, Nan has surprised me countless times by how completely she gets how my mind works.  It’s almost uncanny, really.  We laugh a lot, too, but almost never in the same room, at the same time.

When we revise a draft together, certain ongoing exchanges take on a life of their own.  We’ve recently worked on “Tortured,” a short story we plan to use as an experimental tie-in to The Birthmarked Trilogy.  Here’s a screenshot showing our Track Changes comments around a particular revision.  You can figure out who’s talking even when she jumps in my red box with her caps.

I ended up taking her advice on that one.  I usually take her advice, frankly, or pull my brains out trying to figure out why I shouldn’t.

As much as I value the small-scale editing, however, what I really cherish is the way Nan pushes me deeper into my own mind with her questions during large revisions, and how she supports when I need to take a risk.  Prized brings up a sensitive issue, the sort of topic that can divide my extended family and set tempers flaring.  A character’s unwanted pregnancy had been hovering at the edge of my story through eight drafts before I finally said to Nan, I don’t know what to do with this.  I thought she might advise me to drop it, which I could have done, but instead, she suggested I bring it forward.  Face it.  See what happened.

Until that point, I had not realized how much I’d been censoring myself.  I was afraid to write something that might make people, especially people I loved, upset with me.  I didn’t think I could write well enough to be fair or true.  Over the next weeks, grappling with the novel also involved discovering what responsibilities I had as a person and a writer, especially a writer for teens.  Nan patiently waited me out, postponing deadlines, nudging with her questions while I hewed away, rewriting and revising, rippling the consequences of my decisions through the rest of the story.  I trusted Nan would support me regardless of what I wrote, as long as I wrote honestly.  The final novel feels right to me; hard but right.

I know I would not have developed Prized the way I did, nor stretched who I am quite this way, without Nan’s support, and so when it came time to pick a person to dedicate Prized to, Nan was my only choice.  I put her name in the manuscript just before the copy edits stage and sent it in.  When she wrote back to ask if I was sure, I was caught in a funny, awkward moment.  She modestly said that writers usually pick family members, and I thought, Oh, no.  She’s declining.  I couldn’t exactly write back and say Nan’s like family to me.  She isn’t.  Nan’s like my editor to me.

In the end

By Eugene Yelchin, author of Breaking Stalin's Nose

Before immigrating to the US, I lived in the former Soviet Union. Once in the early 1980s, an official from the KGB called me in for an “informal” chat. A typical Soviet secret policeman, he locked the door of his office, put the key in his pocket, and invited me to discuss the political views of my coworkers. His goal was to recruit me as an informer. I had no idea what would happen to my family or to me were I to refuse, but I suspected bad things. The KGB terrified everyone, and I was afraid. But I could never become a snitch, either. For two straight hours, I played dumb, evading questions and pretending I didn’t understand him. He got bored, unlocked the door, and finally let me go. I felt insulted and humiliated, but I was not harmed. Had that happened some years earlier, when the ruthless dictator Joseph Stalin ruled Russia, I would not have gotten out of that office alive.

During his reign, from 1923 to 1953, Joseph Stalin ensured his absolute power by waging was against the Russian people. Stalin’s State security executed, imprisoned, or exiled over twenty million people. Not a single person, be it a government official, war hero, worker, teacher, or homemaker, could be certain he or she would not be arrested.

To arrest so many innocent people, crimes had to be invented. Stalin’s propaganda machine deceived ordinary people into believing that countless spies and terrorists threatened their security. Tormented by fear, Soviet citizens clung to Stalin for guidance and protection, and soon his popularity reached cult status. “The father of all Soviet children” smiled and waved at his supporters during parades and celebrations, while at night, in his Kremlin office, he was signing orders for innocent people to be shot without trial.

Paradoxically, when I was growing up in the Soviet Union, few people of my generation were aware of what had transpired under Stalin. During his lifetime, the crimes had been carried out in absolute secrecy. After his death, the secrecy continued: All evidence was classified or destroyed. Older generations, either still terrified or responsible for the crimes, kept silent.

But Stalin could not simply disappear; his legacy endured in the Russian people. They had lived in fear for so long that fear had become an integral part of their very beings. Unchecked, fear was passed on from generation to generation. It has been passed on to me, as well.

My book Breaking Stalin’s Nose is my attempt to expose and confront that fear. Like my main character, I wanted to be a Young Pioneer. My family shared a communal apartment. My father was a devoted Communist. And like my main character, I too, had to make a choice. My choice was about whether to leave the country of my birth.

I set the story in the past, but the main issue in it transcends time and place. To this day, there are places in the world where innocent people face persecution and death for making a choice about what they believe to be right.

—Los Angeles, California

By Charise Mericle Harper (@ChariseHarper)

The title of this book is Henry’s Heart, but really it could be Luther’s Heart. Luther is my seven-year-old son, and I made this book for him, because of him, and with him—and three hundred of his classmates at school. I love my boy and want him to be healthy and happy, but it’s not always easy being a parent. There are many noes involved, and this is my least favorite part.

“No, chocolate cake is not a healthy snack.”
“No, not today. No potato chips for lunch.”  
“No, you can’t have a brownie for breakfast.”  

It's exhausting.  

My son doesn’t always believe what I say, but words on a page, well that’s different—he loves a good book. Maybe a story could help him understand that being healthy is necessary and important, and that the mean gatekeeper of the unhealthy snacks is really a kind and compassionate mommy. This is how Henry’s Heart was born.

Every year I offer my children’s elementary school a free author visit. It’s something I started when my daughter, Ivy, was in kindergarten. It’s fun to meet the kids, and I enjoy demystifying the whole “Oooh that person is an author” thing. I’m just Ivy’s mom, and I happen to write books. If a regular mom can do it, how hard can it be? Maybe that in itself will inspire some future writers.

Two years ago I was speaking with the school librarian, and she asked if I would be up for my yearly author visit. I had just finished the manuscript for Henry’s Heart, and was about to start on the illustrations. For some reason, standing in front of the kids and making them listen to another one of my author speeches just didn’t sound appealing, so without even thinking, I blurted out a different suggestion: What if I illustrate Henry’s Heart right here at the school? Then the kids could be part of the process and really see how it's done.

By Nancy Mercado, Editor (@editorgurl)

Working on a second book in a trilogy can be terrifying, especially when the first book was so warmly embraced. Will the second book live up to fan’s expectations? Will it stand on its own? Will it be a satisfying bridge to the third and final book?

These were the questions that author Caragh O’Brien and I asked ourselves when we sat down to edit Prized, the second book in the Birthmarked trilogy. In Birthmarked readers met 16-year-old midwife Gaia Stone for the first time. Gaia was battling against the repressive regime of the Enclave, all the while dealing with such personal loss. Now, in Prized, Gaia has fled from the Enclave and now must fight for her baby sister’s survival in the new and matriarchal society of Sylum.

Scary as second books can be, I knew that Caragh would get there with Prized, mostly because I deeply trust her writing process. She has this brave way of putting her characters in perilous positions and then watching patiently as they figure their way out. In Prized she allows Gaia to be in some very tough situations and she encourages her readers to contemplate the nuances of this new society that is, while appealing at first to Gaia, inherently unfair. Caragh is also not afraid of tackling controversial topics that might make people uncomfortable, and she does so with such delicate and thoughtful attention that I’m never concerned that we’ve crossed a line.  

We started working on Prized in early 2010 and in my editorial letters to Caragh, I used phrases like “unfolding” and “uncovering” to describe our process together, and that’s truly what it felt like. Caragh would send me a draft and I would ask her questions and we’d probe deeper into what the book was really all about. I hope you enjoy the unfolding of Prized and that you find it to be a satisfying second book in the trilogy.  

Trailer time! Check out the hilariously appropriate Wonkenstein trailer Jackie Jou put together for Obert Skye's latest book!

You can download a chapter excerpt on our site, and learn more about the series here, too!

By Tracy Dockray, author and illustrator

The origins of The Lost and Found Pony came from a long time dream that many girls my age had, the dream of owning a horse. After time, I realized that my pony dreams were to remain, just that, dreams. BUT I could create a horse of my own, I could write a book about a horse and his girl.  During the writing process, my wonderful editor encouraged me to revise my story and that is how the lovely circular ending came to be. The writing and rewriting was the most difficult part. It's the illustrations that are my favorite part of creating a book. But on this project the revisions were fun because then I got to draw even more horses! 

By Tracy Dockray, author and illustrator

The origins of The Lost and Found Pony came from a long time dream that many girls my age had, the dream of owning a horse. After time, I realized that my pony dreams were to remain, just that, dreams. BUT I could create a horse of my own, I could write a book about a horse and his girl.  During the writing process, my wonderful editor encouraged me to revise my story and that is how the lovely circular ending came to be. The writing and rewriting was the most difficult part. It's the illustrations that are my favorite part of creating a book. But on this project the revisions were fun because then I got to draw even more horses!  

Yesterday was my little Tyler's first birthday. It felt as much of a celebration of us making it safely through one year of parenthood, as it did a celebration for him.

Although I started writing and illustrating children's books well before I had my own child, I can see why so many people are inspired by their own children to start creating. To be honest, part of me had felt (and feared) my creative life would be over once our baby arrived — due to time constraints as a mum — but now I feel I'm actually being refueled and inspired as I watch him grow and develop, as he takes each new step in his life journey, and exhibits his funny little quirks. And don't even get me started on the cuteness of his round head and chubby feet.

The journey as a parent is a fascinating one, full of highs and lows, laughs and frustrations and exhaustion. I created this video for Tyler, for us, and for family and friends near and far, to mark his first year. He has watched it about 20 times already as he dances along, and each time it ends, points to the computer and demands "a-deh!" ("again!").

I hope you enjoy meeting my little bunny rabbit...

Sometimes you doodle
and it turns into a sketch
and it turns into a little character that you want to know a bit better
because you're sure they have a story to tell you.