Speeches, School Visits, and Special People….plus cupcakes

May20 by kamikinard

Last week was a whirlwind in the best of ways. I gave a speech, visited three schools, attended two book signing parties, and wound up the weekend with the South Carolina Book Festival. The best part of it all was that I ran into so many friends along the way!

First stop: Speaking at the Georgia Young Authors Awards in Clarkesville Georgia! Georgia Young Authors is a wonderful program that recognizes young authors from kindergarten through twelfth grade. I was able to stay with my University of Georgia college roommate, Joy Purcell, while visiting — a fabulous perk.

Next stop: Level Grove Elementary where I talked about the ideas behind my books and answered questions for a select group of girls who had read and enjoyed THE BOY PROJECT. One of those girls recommended that we visit her mom’s cupcake shop, Sugartopia, since THE BOY PROBLEM has a cupcake theme. (We couldn’t resist, and I’m glad! We had the best key lime cupcakes ever there.)

An hour later I was speaking to kindergarten through fifth graders at Hazel Grove Elementary. With the younger students, we discussed how authors use details to create character. Luckily, I had some willing models for my discussion. (Could this little girl be any cuter? I let her keep the clown nose, not thinking it a good idea to have different kids putting something on their noses. Then noticed immediately after the presentation that kids were lining up to try on the nose from her. Oh well!)

The next morning it was off to Greenville, SC, where my family and I lived for four happy years, and to Stone Academy where my own children used to go to school! It isn’t uncommon for students to ask about author pay. I usually answer with an example using tens, without, of course, speaking to the actual dollar amount I have earned with my books. So I said something like “If an a book costs ten dollars, and the author gets ten percent of that amount, how much money does he or she earn after 10,000 books are sold?” To which someone shouted “A hundred thousand dollars!” All I could think to say was, “How I wish your calculations were correct.” 🙂 This entrepreneurial group also wanted to know how big my house was, if I am famous enough to be recognized in stores by strangers (no!), and if, since I wouldn’t tell them the actual amount I have earned, if I could at least share the amount of my BIGGEST check.

I got other great questions from them too, but they aren’t as entertaining to share!

From there I headed to my former neighbor and Nerdy Chick Nancy Kennedy’s house to ice red velvet cupcakes for the book signing parties. I must be getting pretty good at icing cupcakes because someone at the first event, held at the best-titled bookstore around (Fiction Addiction) asked me if the cupcakes were real.

He blends in, but yes, there is a dog there.

I remember once hearing New York Times Best Selling author Bret Lott say that he didn’t like book signings. He told a story about a time his publisher flew him around the country, and even then sometimes no one came to the signings, and once he was even asked to hold someone’s dog. So when our former pediatrician came in with her dog, I had to pose with it in the hopes that holding a dog in a bookstore at a book signing event might bring me one step closer to Bret Lott’s success.

At this point both my camera and phone batteries were dead, so I go NO pics of the wine and cheese party hosted by Nancy later that night that many of my good friends from my Greenville days attended. But it was so much fun! Nancy even found Red Velvet (Cupcake brand) wine to go with the red velvet cupcakes.

When I woke up the next morning it was Thursday. Where had the time gone? So I packed up, stopped to visit a few more friends, and headed to Camden SC where, after dinner with my brother and his family, I prepared for The South Carolina Book Festival. But it looks like that will have to be a separate blog post! Too much information to share at once.

Takeaway from last week: Visiting schools always introduces me to new perspectives that make me happy! Visiting with long-time friends makes me happy! So being an author makes me happy! Great week!

Learning from Launches

May6 by kamikinard

Last week I celebrated the book birthday of THE BOY PROBLEM: NOTES AND PREDICTIONS OF TABITHA REDDY with a Virtual Launch Party. You can still check out the links which include an interview, a trailer, an essay written by me, and a podcast! Then the launch parties hit the road as I took those instant images I talked about in THIS POST to several SC bookstores. So today I thought I’d share a little of my travels with you and tell you how it went, and what I learned about book launch parties.

First, have a cupcake! My friend Lisa made these to go along with the cupcake theme in the book!

So, with the cupcake theme in place, the refreshment decision was easy! But still… I just couldn’t resist buying mustache shaped cookie cutters, so of course we had to stay up late the night before the first party making chocolate mustache cookies. ‘Cause who needs sleep the night before a book launch? (Hint:You!)

Since Tabbi, the main character of THE BOY PROBLEM tries to predict who the right guy for her will be, I had a great time stocking up on kid-friendly prediction objects for party attenders to play around with. Of course there were fortune cookies, those red fortune telling fish, and even fortune telling bacon!

Kids make their own paper fortune tellers and check out a variety of 8 balls Including the one from Glee that occasionally sings, "You cant t always get what you want."

Kids make their own paper fortune tellers and check out a variety of Magic 8 balls Including the one from Glee that occasionally sings, “You cant t always get what you want.”

My daughter sports her Johnny Cupcake shirt like the ones from the book.

The first party was at Artworks in Beaufort. It was great to see friends, meet people, and sign books! And I haven’t even gotten to the fake mustaches, finger mustache tattoos, and the book bling…. tattoos, bookmarks, and bracelets. But I was so exhausted after the happy event, and we had so much going on, that I decided to streamline the next event, a book signing party at Books on Broad in Camden SC: I decided not to make another batch of mustache cookies. Luckily, we didn’t need them. My first grade teacher made brownies and brought peanuts, a dear family friend, my sister-in-law and my mother made a fresh batch of cupcakes, and Books on Broad set up the cutest lemonade stand. Love the mustache cups!

Love the mustache cups and the cute table cloth.

If you ever want to visit a GORGEOUS independent bookstore, you need to check out Books on Broad.

This event was made even more special when my friend of ten years, author Kathryn Erskine arrived about half-way through. When I planned the party, I didn’t know Kathy would be in town, but vacation brought her to SC, and I was so excited to be able to sign books with her! I put Kathy’s National Book Award winning skills to work, by making her haul all of that junk I’ve been talking about out to the car while I joked around taking pictures with the giant mustaches Books on Broad used to decorate.

Kathy Erskine and my mom make trips back and forth to the car with my book party junk.

Clearly there were better things to do than to pack up.

Next stop, Hartsville SC and Burry Bookstore where Kathy and I signed books together for an hour and a half. I consolidated even more this time. Kathy appreciated having to make fewer trips to the car while I was setting up.

Signing at Burry Bookstore

Last week was a whirlwind! But in the best ways. So what I learned about book launch parties…

1.It doesn’t matter how many great, creative, ideas you have to help celebrate the arrival of a new book… just act on a few. You only want to make so many trips back and forth hauling all those good ideas from the car. My next book launch party will be a little more simple, but just as much fun!

2. Friends and family make hosting the parties easier, and better in every way!

3. Independent bookstore owners are the best.

4. I loved signing every book. But the absolute best ones to sign were those of students who read my first book and were excited about getting the second one!

The best of the best. Signing for Megan who read The Boy Project.

THE BOY PROBLEM is officially launched! Hooray!

The Boy Problem: Virtual Launch Party!

Apr29 by kamikinard

It’s here! It’s here! It’s finally here! After writing, revising, and planning for the future I am ready to send my baby out into the world. (Funny how when your real baby — your high school senior — graduates and launches into the world you ‘re not nearly as ready. Mine graduates in May!)

Anyway, what I mean is… it’s book launch day!

In celebration of the release of THE BOY PROBLEM, there are several cool things going on across the web. I’m super excited about the SHARPREAD, WATCH. CONNECT. READ., and NERDY BOOK CLUB Trifecta. Check it out! Then go download my first ever podcast over at Matthew Winner’s LET”S GET BUSY!

Click on links below!

HERE I answer questions with 5, 4, 3, 2,1 sentences on Colby Sharp’s blog.

Then head over HERE to NERDY BOOK CLUB to check out my essay The Art of Unprofessional Art.

And HERE you can see a trailer and WIN a copy of THE BOY PROBLEM at Watch. Read. Connect. Mr. Schu’s blog.

Many thanks to librarians Colby Sharp and John Schu for hosting me in a Sharp-Schu Trifecta!

Seen it all? Now you can hear it! Go download the Let’s Get Busy Podcast HERE. You might even hear a trace of my southern accent as I talk writing, books, and Sudipta with librarian Matthew Winner!

Thanks Matthew!

I’ll be celebrating the release of THE BOY PROBLEM throughout the day and onward. In a few weeks we’ll host a special super-fun Boy Problem themed giveaway too. Hooray!

Confessions of a Chronic Doodler

Mar12 by kamikinard

It’s HERE! The trailer for THE BOY PROBLEM, created almost entirely from my doodles. My confessions follow, but first, watch the trailer! And stick around for the GIVEAWAY at the end of the post!

Now for true confessions:

I’ve never been good at taking notes. I probably shouldn’t admit this while I still have children in school, but often when I’m listening to someone talk, my mind starts wandering. And when this happens, my pen starts wandering too. I confess.

Ever been on the phone with me? You know those times when you were talking and there were long periods of silence on my end? I was probably doodling. I confess.

Add to my list of confessions that I doodle on paper menus when dining at restaurants, church bulletins during church, programs when at performances, and in notebooks I take to conferences. I even doodle when I’m listening to my own internal voice. Doodles are crammed in between the words of all of my revision notebooks. If you could stretch out the pen marks from all of my doodles into one continuous line it would probably wrap around the world a few times. Times ten.

Here’s another confession for you. I often curse the fact that my artistic skills are limited to doodling. My mother is a real artist, capable of rendering realistic landscapes and still-life paintings. My fourteen year old daughter is becoming an excellent media artist and has even started a little business creating drawings from photos of pets.

But me? I seemed destined only to doodle. And yet….

My doodling skills help me communicate visually. So when I turned in my manuscript for my first novel, THE BOY PROJECT, I included some doodles along with a note explaining that these were just to illustrate my ideas, and a publisher could hire a real artist to do the actual art. The manuscript sold! And some of my actual doodles were used in it, along with others that they altered a little.

For my second book, THE BOY PROBLEM, forthcoming from Scholastic in April, everyone understood that I’d include some doodles, but that another artist would probably do the work for the book. But my own doodles ended up being the ones that grace the pages. And then, when I hired someone to make the trailer for THE BOY PROBLEM, she built the whole thing out of my doodles.

I have to admit, I’m a little shocked by this. I’ve never thought of my artistic skills as good enough for publication. But the book turned out really well! And the trailer is so cute! Empowered by this, I used my doodling skills to create the 8 ball and mustache for these new promotional bookmarks.

Book designer Whitney Lyle created the doodles for this cover.

The bottom line here is that I’ve been selling myself short. And I think that as women, a lot of us do this. It’s important for us not to think in terms of what we CAN’T do, but in terms of what we CAN. I will never be able to sell an watercolor painting masterpiece. I’m not likely to create a digital rendering of your pet iguana either. But I can create one heck of a doodle! Go Me!

Oh yeah. There’s another bottom line here. I wanted to introduce my new book trailer to our readers! Did you watch it? See that guy’s head at 0.18. I had to doodle it about sixteen times to get it right. That’s how good I am. Hey, it’s not about the first fifteen times I couldn’t draw a decent circle. It’s about the one time I did. 🙂

GIVEAWAY INFO:

To celebrate the release of THE BOY PROBLEM trailer, and the arrival of the new bookmarks, I am giving away class sets of bookmarks to teachers, librarians, and bookstores. If you are an individual who wants just one or two you can get some too. I’ll mail these to the first fifteen people to fill out the form below. If you leave a comment too, I’ll throw in a BOY PROBLEM bracelet when they arrive. This Giveaway ends on St. Patrick’s Day, 2014.

What’s Your Theme Song?

Feb1 by sudiptabq

Earlier this week, we posted about things to tell the tweens in your life. That post was very well received, and we got lots of messages from readers who told us what things resonated with them. One of the most common comments had to do with the theme song suggestion. Said one Facebook commenter, “I love the theme song thing! I need a theme song!”

In light of this, we thought it would be nice to look at the theme songs of some Nerdy Chicks. Maybe that will help you on your own theme song quest?

Kathy Erskine belts out Sister Sledge’s “We are Family.” Her favorite line:

“Here’s what we call our golden rule: have faith in you and the things you do!”

I can totally see how that empowers Kathy.

When Mary Zisk was 24 and a coworker died suddenly, she vowed to see and do everything she wanted and to never wait for “some day.” Her selection is Bon Jovi’s “It’s My Life. She says the line

“I just want to live while I’m alive”

has been her attitude ever since, and is fueling her current drive to write. “Also,” says Mary, “the lyric ‘Like Frankie said I did it my way’ cracks me up — so Jersey!”

I’m a Jersey girl, too, and that line cracks me up as well!

Tameka Fryer Brown’s theme song is Michael Jackson’s “Man In the Mirror.” What a great song. Tameka is touched by these lyrics:

“I’m starting with the man in the mirror, I’m asking him to change his ways”

“if you want to make the world a better place take a look at yourself and then make a change”

Great, great choice.

Kami Kinard’s theme song is “Some Nights” by Fun. “I somehow feel empowered by all of their music,” she says, “because it makes me feel like we’re all in this together.”

Kami’s favorite lyric is:

“What do I stand for? What do I stand for? Most nights, I don’t know. Anymore.”

I love this song as well.

In my last post, I used Saving Jane’s Supergirl as an example of a theme song. And, yes, that has totally been a song that I have identified with many times in my life. But now I have to make a confession — I don’t just have one theme song. I have many, each one fitting a different aspect of my life. But the song that I sing to myself in the quiet moments of doubt that never fails at empowering me to go back to work at my goals is probably Pink’s “Perfect.” The whole song works for me. It was very hard just to choose a snippet of the lyrics. But in the end, here’s what I want to share with you:

“It’s enough, I’ve done all I could think of, chased down all my demons — I’d see you do the same”

Pink fans will notice that I’ve changed the last few words from “I’ve seen you do the same” to my own version, asking the other person to change as I have. That might seem like cheating, but, to me, that’s the beauty of music — that it is a deeply personal experience and we each take away what we need from it. Those lines from the song make me let go of my frustrations toward other people, toward the things in life that are out of my control. They remind me that I’ve done all I could, and that that is all we can do in this life.