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The Battle of the Books team at Rockford Elementary (Thank you for that great welcome sign!)

Rockford Elementary kids waiting for the presentation

Copeland Battle of the Books team

Dobson Battle of the Books team

Mountain Park Battle of the Books team

Rockford Battle of the Books team

(l to r) Tonya Fletcher, me, Sonia Dickerson. Thank you, ladies, for making this wonderful author visit possible.

Kids filing in to Franklin Elementary

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Art by Tad Carpenter

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Greetings from Nowhere

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Students at McDonald Green Elementary School in Lancaster, South Carolina, are participating in a competition called the Living Literature Project.

 

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I've been making book trailers for 4 years now.

Mine are simple.

No bells or whistles.

Just photos, music, and script.

My first one was Greetings from Nowhere:




Then The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis:






Then The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester:






I'm currently working on one for my October release of On the Road to Mr. Mineo's.

Here are the steps to a VERY basic book trailer:

1. Find photos. I use iStock Photo. They always have great photos that fit my story. I download the small size. Each photo costs a certain number of "credits." The credits needed for this trailer cost about $180.  I also sometimes use this site.

2. Find music. This is fun. You want the music, of course, to fit the tone of the book. I use Premium Beat because they have a good variety and are inexpensive. I bought the music for $30.

3. For this trailer, I also added one short video clip, purchased from iStock Photo for $20. 

4. Write the "script."

5. I use iMovie. Easy peasy. Literally drag the photos and music into the project. Add transitions, etc.

6. I spent 5432 hours tweaking it. 


7. Try to keep it to no more than 2 minutes.


8. Publish to YouTube, Teacher Tube and/or Vimeo.


9. Spread the word online.


DONE

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Tonight I am Skyping with the International School in Bangkok, Thailand.

Isn't it amazing to be talking to students in another part of the world while sitting at home in my jammies? (Okay, I might not have my jammies on.)

Here is the librarian's blog.

And this is what the teacher wrote to me:



Here is some background info about our class and our reading of Greetings From Nowhere:

Our class of 21 fifth graders represents 8 nationalities. Eight children are new to our school this year in Bangkok. I chose to read Greetings From Nowhere aloud to the class as it is such a great lead-in to our reading unit on "Characters", where we ask the question, "How can the people in stories be like me?"

We are discovering that characters, like real people, are complex and can change. As readers, we are talking about how we develop empathy for and connections to the characters in the story.

The class LOVED the story, start to finish, and they were quite disappointed to find out that it was NOT part of a series! I am continually amazed at how my groups of internationally diverse students relate to the small world of the Sleepy Time Motel.

I think they have discovered big life lessons in that small world. One boy said last week, "I can make a connection with Aggie, because I know that it is painful to leave a home that is familiar."

I love that!!

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A lovely review of Greetings from Nowhere from a teacher (my heroes) blog: Driven to Read.

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Greetings from Nowhere has been recommended for the Massachusetts Book Award, presented by the Massachusetts Center for the Book.

Woo

Hoo


Thanks to the ever vigilant Mitali Perkins for the heads-up on this!

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A student at a school in Rhode Island wrote part of a screenplay for Greetings from Nowhere!

Check it out!

Camera (close up on Aggie's hands, going through the mail and all the bad bills).

Aggie: Plumbing bill, electric bill, got to get that wasp's nest out from underneath the porch. I have to fill that pool with water. Oh, and that heating bill I forgot to pay. How can I get all that money? Should I sell the motel? No, I could never sell it. Harold would be so mad.

Screen goes black.

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Greetings from Nowhere is a Georgia Children's Book Award nominee for 2009-2010.

I love those Southerners!

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I was delighted to hear from a number of teachers regarding my post about dead matter.

Some of them wanted to share this part of the writing process with their students, which I think is a great idea.

So I thought it might also be helpful to clarify, for those students or anyone else not familiar with the book-making process, the difference between the job of the editor and the job of the copyeditor.

That stack of papers in the photo of that blog post represents manuscript pages that came w-a-a-a-y into the process of creating that book - long after the initial story first came to life.

To fast forward through the first stages of creating a book:
1. I get a brilliant idea for a story.
2. I write the first draft of that story.
3. I read it 4,583 times, each time changing words, adding words, moving words, fixing words.
4. Another draft, another draft, another draft.
5. I finally get it "right" and send it to my publishing company.

The first person at the publishing company to get her mitts on the manuscript is the editor.

The editor is the person who helps me with the story.

She questions the characters' motivations for their actions.

She tells me the parts that don't make sense or are confusing.

She wonders if I really need a particular scene.

She helps me clarify my vision of the story and then helps that story become the one I envisioned.

(And she manages to do this without hurting my feelings, making me cry, or causing me to eat large quantities of Oreo cookies.)

A big job.

Here's an example that comes to mind while working on Greetings from Nowhere:

I knew I wanted to write a multiple viewpoint story. And I wanted to write some of the same scenes as seen through the eyes of different characters.

It worked for a while.

But about halfway through the manuscript, there was a scene that involved Willow and Loretta washing lawn chairs at the motel.

I wrote that scene twice - thru the eyes of two different characters.

My editor told me that when she got to that scene the second time, she felt frustrated. She felt like she had already "been there/done that" - that I was simply repeating the same thing.

She felt that this slowed the story down.

She wanted the story to keep moving forward instead of spinning in the same place.

I was disappointed.

I felt like I had failed in some way.

But......she was right.

That second version of the same scene was unnecessary. It did slow the story down.

It just didn't work.

I got rid of it....

....and the story moved forward and was stronger and better.

That's what editors do - they see the forest. (They care about the trees, of course, but the forest is the focus initially.)

After the story becomes as right as we can make it, it moves along through the process until it eventually gets to the copyeditor.

The copyeditor is the one who sees the trees - the little things, like I pointed out in the dead matter post.

The shoe had one hole on page 91 and two holes on page 189.

I used the word "little" three times in one paragraph.

Shouldn't I try to think of other ways to say "every now and then"?

They see the trees.

Some folks look at the forest.

Some folks look at the trees.

It takes a village to make a book.

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When Lisa Graff at FSG asked me if I wanted the dead matter for Greetings from Nowhere, I said yes.

Then I wondered why.

Why did I want more paper to add to all the boxes of other paper in my office?

(And don't you just hate that term "dead matter" anyway? It sounds so, well, um, dead.)

But after I received it, I sat down and took a look at it and realized that it's kind of a learning experience -

to read through past revisions and notes -

to see what a big difference little changes make -

and to wonder "what was I thinking?".

Here are some of the changes found in that dead matter:

1. Aggie shook her head. Harold would have fixed that old spotlight. He would have opened up his rusty toolbox [out back in the shed] and found just the right tool and gone straight out there and fixed it.

[We took out the phrase "out back in the shed." It wasn't necessary and it tightened the sentence. Fewer words = tighter sentence]

2. rose-covered envelope changed to rose-bordered envelope

[Just made more sense, really...]

3. her mother squinted her eyes and tilted her chin up ...was changed to... her mother narrowed her eyes

[Squinted? Eeeeyew. What was I thinking?]

4. a heart-shaped box lined with red velvet...was changed to... a heart-shaped box made of red velvet

[I have no earthly idea why I made that change. I think maybe it was because the character hadn't opened the box yet, so wouldn't know it was lined with red velvet. ??]

5. Now, this seems to be my personal writing boogie-man - the use of the word "of" following the word "off." [Geez, those copyeditors are so irritating.]

• she couldn't take her eyes off [of] all those things.
• couldn't take her eyes off [of] the photograph [on same page!]- This was changed to She stared down at the photograph.
• took the lid off [of] the heart-shaped box
• Burla's box off [of] the floor
• wiped mud off [of] it

6. Willow looked down at her shoes. The pink plastic sandals that Dorothy had bought. They were getting too small. They were starting to hurt her feet [a little]. But Willow didn't care. She loved wearing them, anyway.

Then a little further down on the same page:

Her father turned the radio on. That little vein twitched again.

[So I had two "littles" too close together. But I really didn't even need the first one. I mean, her shoes hurt. It doesn't really matter if they hurt "a little," right? So I took out the first "little."]

7. Now here's an example of one of those changes suggested by a copyeditor that is right, but that loses the rhythm of the writing for me - so I had to figure out a compromise:

Original version: Willow stared glumly out the window. She was a long, long way from Hailey, North Carolina.

The copyeditor pointed out that the characters are still in North Carolina, so we should delete "North Carolina." She's right, of course. (She's always right. SO irritating.) That would leave us with She was a long, long way from Hailey, which didn't have the rhythm I wanted.

Revised version: She was a long, long way from her little brick house in Hailey.

That seems like a picky thing, but those are the kinds of phrases and wording that is important to me.

8. Another one of my writing boogie men is the use of the phrase "every now and then".

I had to come up with various alternatives, such as "every few minutes" and "every once in a while."

9. On p. 91: Willow looked down at Aggie's canvas sneakers. They were wet and muddy. One of them had a frayed hole in the side and Aggie's little toe poked out.

The copyeditor wrote in the margin: See p. 189

On p. 189: Then she put on her canvas sneakers with the holes in the side and grabbed a hat.

The copyeditor wrote in the margin: See p 91; only one hole

She catches that little thang NINETY-EIGHT pages later!!!

I told you she was irritating, um, I mean amazing.

By the way, I changed the second one to " Then she put on her old canvas sneakers and grabbed a hat."

10. Changed dingy white wall to dingy gray wall - because can there be such a thing as dingy white?

11. "Echoes" drive me nuts. An "echo" is the repetition of words and/or words that sound alike):

He watched his mother march across the parking lot and disappear up the side of the road. When he went outside, the sun was just appearing over the top of the mountains. The air was cool and damp. He could hear the eighteen wheelers roaring up the interstate on the other side of the ridge behind the motel.

The echoes here are disappear and appearing; and side of; outside; and side

The copyeditor puts a little red check mark over those words.

This was changed to: He watched his mother march across the parking lot and disappear up the road. When he went outside, the sun was just peeking over the top of the mountains. The air was cool and damp. He could hear the eighteen wheelers roaring up the interstate on the other side of the ridge behind the motel.

12. I include this last one just because it seemed funny to me looking back at it:

For "Shut your trap" in pig Latin, I originally had rap-tay for "trap." The copyeditor corrected it to ap-tray.

And so, there you have it.

Lessons from dead matter.

Little things mean a lot, don't they?



P.S. I just realized that the subject heading of this post is similar to Lessons from a Dead Girl by Jo Knowles - so I'm sending her a shout-out.

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Greetings from Nowhere by Barbara O'Connor

If you’re in the mood for the type of book that just gives you the “feel-goods,” Greetings from Nowhere may be what you’re looking for.

Aggie, an elderly woman hesitantly puts the motel she’s run with her husband, now deceased, for years up for sale. She doesn’t want to but sees no other way.

Loretta, a young girl receives an anonymous package containing the only worldly possessions of her birth mother who has recently died. The package contains clues as to places the birth mother may have visited during her lifetime, and the girl’s loving adoptive parents set upon a trip to visit some of the places.

Kirby, a young boy in much need of love is on the way to reform school when his mother’s car breaks down.

Willow, a lonely and heartbroken young girl whose mother suddenly left her and her father is surprised when her father decides to buy the motel and start a new life.

In Greetings from Nowhere, these four people’s lives connect at the Sleepy Time Motel, forming a heartwarming story that provides a bit of elixir to the soul.

Barbara O’Conner does an exceptional job with getting inside the head of four very believable and likeable characters. What is most impressive is that fact that in one short book, she was able to tell the story of these four characters from their own points of view AND connect them through their loneliness and need for love.

It’s a story of hope, a story of healing, and a story about finding friendship when you need it the most and least expect it.

Highly recommended.


What Other Bloggers Are Saying:

Carol's Corner: "GREETINGS FROM NOWHERE is also a story of hope and redemption- of people who need and find and care for each other. I know so, so, so many kids who need books like that too. " (read more...)

Abby (the) Librarian: "And the setting is another thing I loved about this book. I could see the mountains, the dried-up swimming pool, the weedy parking lot, the musty rooms, the tomato garden... it all really came alive for me." (read more...)

Eva's Book Addiction: "...thanks to some wonderfully understated writing and a keen knowledge of how people think and talk, it all comes together in a satisfying package. " (read more...)

More info:

• Reading level: Ages 9-12
  
• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR) (March 18, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374399379
• ISBN-13: 978-0374399375
• Source: Library
  

More by Barbara O'Connor:

• How to Steal a Dog
• Moonpie and Ivy
• Me and Rupert Goody
• Fame and Glory in Freedom, Georgia
  

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The end of October, I'll be visiting schools in the Iowa City Community School District as part of their Community Reading Month.

One of the sponsors (Hills Bank) designed a logo based on Greetings from Nowhere to be used on T-shirts and other promotional materials.

Pretty cool, huh?

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My friend, writer Leslie Guccione, is an eBay junkie like me.

She gave me these fantastic vintage handkerchieves in honor of Dorothy from Greetings From Nowhere.

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One job of a writer is to relate information to the reader as seamlessly as possible. (Good ole "show, don't tell.")

But that is sometimes tricky and takes a lot more effort than a non-writer might realize.

Making that skill all the more difficult is the fact that you, the writer, know information that the reader does not - so it's sometimes hard to gauge what to leave to the reader to find out as she reads along vs. what to go ahead and give her right away.

One of the most valuable "tools" for a writer is a pair (or two) of fresh eyes, i.e., a cold reader.

A cold reader can tell you what she doesn't understand, what she needs to know sooner, etc.

Let me give you two examples from personal experience:

I recently had a teacher relate to me that her students liked the way I didn't tell them who Ugly was in the opening scene of Greetings from Nowhere - that they had to read another paragraph or two to find out.

"Harold would have known what to do," Aggie said to Ugly. She tossed the unopened envelope into the junk drawer on top of the batteries and rubber bands, old keys and more unopened envelopes. "Let's go sit and ponder" Aggie said.

So, the reader doesn't know who Ugly is.

If I had gone on much longer, however, young readers would probably have gotten frustrated. I needed to get the information in there soon - but as seamlessly as possible.

She scooped up the little black cat and shuffled across the dirty orange carpet.

There - now we know.

I kept the reader waiting just long enough to make them curious - but not frustrated.

But in my current work-in-progress, I wasn't as successful:

When the BB hit Henry square in the eye, she had screamed bloody murder and carried on so much that when Velma came running out of the house to see what all the fuss was about, she had thought it was Charlene who’d been shot in the eye.

It wasn't until another page and a half that I identified Velma as his grandmother.

Initially, it just felt too telling to insert "his grandmother" in front of Velma.

I knew who Velma was - so it was hard for me to gauge whether or not the reader really needed to know this right away.

Apparently the reader did need to know.

Two topnotch editors - reading with fresh eyes - wrote "Who is Velma?" in the margin.

I'll be honest with you - I didn't really want to insert "his grandmother" - and it felt not-very-seamless to me - but I knew I had to do it.

Sometimes, you just have to listen.

I heard an agent speak at a conference years ago and I will never forget her "formula" for a good children's book: Make 'em laugh; make 'em cry; and make 'em wait.

I realize the "make 'em wait" part applies primarily to plot - but I also think it should apply to "smaller" elements of the story, as well.

But this can be one of the trickier elements of writing for children - how long to make 'em wait for information.

I think the answer comes from a combination of instinct, experience, and the value of cold readers.

(I realize that I've imparted zero information in this supposed "tip" - but sometimes food for thought is as good as a tip. At least, that's my story and I'm stickin' to it.)

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A few words from kids about Greetings from Nowhere:

Greetings from [name of town]! I really love your books, but I think that Greetings from Nowhere was your best yet! My most favorite part of the book was when Loretta got all her mother’s earthly possessions. I liked that part because it was sad for her but good at the same time! Thank you for being an awesome author and thanks for all your hard work.
Love, your biggest fan E

Ello-hay. My favorite part is when they got at the bottom of the pool and talked Pig Latin.
A

My favorite part in Greetings from Nowhere was when Aggie, who used to own the motel, was told by Willow, the daughter of Mr. Dover who now owns the motel, that she could stay at the motel. That’s my favorite part.
C


I really liked Greetings from Nowhere. It was fantastic! My favorite parts were when Kirby finally admitted that he had the poodle dog pin of Loretta’s and the part about Dorothy believing that if you walked into a cobweb that you’d get a letter from somebody that you loved. I could go on and on about this, but I can’t.
A


Greetings from Nowhere is by far my favorite of your books. The character I liked best was Loretta. I am like her because I am peppy and hyper too, and if I was wearing a charm bracelet, I’d jingle it all the time too. Which character do you most relate to? Can’t wait ‘til your next book comes out!
Your friend,
A

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Two nice blog reviews of Greetings from Nowhere:

A Year of Reading

and

Read, Read, Read

and another one at

the Christian Science Monitor.

Yippy skippy!

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A very nice review of Greetings from Nowhere in the Christian Science Monitor.

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Reviews are trickling in. (This is the worst part of this process for me.)

Phew! I survived!

From Kirkus:

The lives of four families change when they intersect at a run-down motel in the middle of nowhere. For years Aggie and her late husband operated the Sleepy Time Motel in the Great Smoky Mountains. Alone now and facing a drawer of unpaid bills and endless repairs on the dilapidated motel, Aggie reluctantly puts a “For Sale” ad in the paper. Eager for a new life since his wife left, Clyde makes an offer on the motel and uproots his lonely daughter Willow to the Sleepy Time. A troubled kid, Kirby and his mom are en route to a special boys’ school when their car breaks down and they show up at the motel. Filled with questions about her birth mother who has recently died, Loretta and her adoptive parents arrive at the Sleepy Time on a family vacation. As these unlikely folks come together in Aggie’s tumbledown motel, they find something they need through the friendships that form.

O’Connor artfully weaves together the hopes, fears, disappointments, sorrows and joys of her multi-generational cast to produce a warm and satisfying conclusion. (Fiction. 10-14)

From School Library Journal:

O'Connor's knack for well-deveoped characters and feisty protagonists is evident, as is her signature Southern charm."

From Booklist:

"The plainspoken text is clean, direct, and honest in its portrayal of pain and hope. Another satisfying novel with a southern setting and original characters from the author of Moonpie and Ivy and Taking Care of Moses."

From the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books:

"O'Connor fans...won't be disappointed."

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Tomorrow (Feb 29) is the deadline for the Greetings from Nowhere drawing.

Win a signed copy!

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This is fabuloso author Kimberley Little's entry for the Greetings from Nowhere drawing:

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Here's the entry for the Greetings from Nowhere drawing for author Annette Gulati. The Taj Mahal in Agra, India, is one of her favorite places.

Deadline is Feb. 29!

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