Astronaut Mark Kelly has inked a deal with with Paula Wiseman Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, for a picture book called Mousetronaut. Publication is set for October 9th.
Artist C. F. Payne will illustrate the book. Publisher Paula Wiseman will edit the book. Executive vice president Jon Anderson negotiated the deal with Williams & Connolly LLP attorney Robert B. Barnett.
Here’s more from the release: “Mousetronaut tells the story of a small mouse that wants nothing more than to travel to outer space. The little mouse works as hard as the bigger mice to show readiness for the mission . . . and is chosen for the flight! While in space, the astronauts are busy with their mission when only the smallest member of the crew can save the day.”
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Jeffrey Zaslow, a longtime writer for the Wall Street Journal and co-author of the 2008 best-seller The Last Lecture (with Randy Pausch), has died at the age of 53. In 2011, he published Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope, a collaboration with congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly. Zaslow died in a car accident in Michigan following an appearance to promote his most recent book, The Magic Room: A Story About the Love We Wish for Our Daughters, a nonfiction narrative of a small-town bridal shop.
: A Story About the Love We Wish for Our Daughters
Jeffrey Zaslow, a longtime writer for the Wall Street Journal and co-author of the 2008 best-seller The Last Lecture (with Randy Pausch), has died at the age of 53. In 2011, he published Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope, a collaboration with congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly. Zaslow died in a car accident in Michigan following an appearance to promote his most recent book, The Magic Room: A Story About the Love We Wish for Our Daughters, a nonfiction narrative of a small-town bridal shop.
: A Story About the Love We Wish for Our Daughters
Author Jeffrey Zaslow died in a tragic car accident this morning. He was 53 years old.
He was the author of The Magic Room and co-author of The Last Lecture, Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope and Highest Duty. He also wrote as a columnist for the Wall Street Journal.
Zaslow was married to Detroit FOX 2 anchor Sherry Margolis. Share your memories in the comments section–we’ve collected some online tributes to his work below.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Today Scribner announced a November 15 publication date for Gabrielle Giffords’ and Mark Kelly’s new memoir, Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope.
Wall Street Journal columnist and The Last Lecture co-author Jeffrey Zaslow also worked on the book. The cover for the memoir is embedded above.
Here’s more from the release: “Gabby will be a deeply personal account of Gabrielle Giffords’ and Mark Kelly’s lives together, recounting their courtship, Ms. Giffords’ rise in U.S. politics, and the tragic January 8th shooting in Arizona which killed six people and gravely wounded Representative Giffords and twelve others. The book will also tell the story of her recovery process and will trace Mark Kelly’s career from decorated Desert Storm combat pilot to his recent mission as the commander of Space Shuttle Endeavour’s final flight.”
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
After attending the Philadelphia Writers’ Conference (PWC) from June 11-13, I am now filled with new ideas and motivation to write, market my writing, and write some more!
The conference offered many different workshops and lectures on fiction, nonfiction and poetry writing, guest speakers like Jeffrey Zaslow and Larry Kane, and a Q&A session with a panel of agents and editors.
Self-Marketing
One of the most helpful sessions for me was a panel led by PWC board member Don Lafferty, entitled “Sell Yourself and Your Writing.” I found it most helpful probably because selling myself is the area of the writing business I struggle with most. Although I have confidence in both myself and my writing, I still find it difficult to toot my own horn. I also don’t always know at whom I should be tooting.
The panelists gave great advice on how to begin marketing yourself, both before and after your book is published. One panelist said that for three months prior to her book release, she spends eight hours a day doing nothing but marketing. During that time, she does things like create postcards to hand out and leave at various locations, hone in on the social networking community with particular interest in the topic of her book, send press releases and build an e-mail list of potential buyers of your books.
The one bit of information that all of the speakers, lecturers and panelists throughout the conference kept emphasizing over and over is that writers need to be more proactive than ever with their self-marketing efforts and they need to start marketing and building a platform long before that first book is released.
Reinforcement of the Essentials of Writing
Many of the PWC workshops were geared towards writers with little experience, therefore much of the information was a review for writers who went to school specifically for creative writing or have been actively writing and publishing for a few years. It is helpful, however, to re-hear some of those fundamental parts of writing, like the power of quirky characters, how to show – don’t tell, and the importance of being part of a writing community. Other hidden gems of information crept into the conference, too, so you had to be alert at all times not to miss anything.
Have you attended a writing conference lately? Did you find they were geared towards beginning or intermediate level writers? What did you learn from the conference that you never knew before? We’d love to hear about your writing conference experiences!
Visit Anne Greenawalt’s blog for an additional review of the PWC.
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