Unchain yourself

The American Independent Business Alliance urges you to "unchain yourself" on Saturday, November 21st by shopping at local independent businesses instead of big chains.  


You could, for instance, go to your local bookstore and buy a book. Then you could go to your local health food store and buy some organic cookies and tea. Hmm... Then you could go home and curl up on the couch with your snack and your new book. Perfect.

First Novels Club goes Big Time

Just a plug for my friends over at the First Novels Club blog, one of the best blogs I read.

For the first time (and certainly not the last), they've been mentioned in Publishers Weekly thanks to Frankie's excellent note-taking during a young-adult author event at Books of Wonder in NYC. Sounds awesome. Wish I coulda been there.

Click on over and check it out.

Almost halfway through NaNoWriMo

How's it going, all you NaNoWriMo and NaNoRevisMo participants?

And even those of you writing new picture books or trying to come up with new ideas or spending November sending out manuscripts (because it's wise to get them to the editors before Thanksgiving)? Well, here's some inspiration for you:

My older son, a 22-yr-old full-time college student -- and oh yeah, he happens to be a cancer patient currently going through chemo -- signed up for NaNoWriMo. He's writing a fantasy novel.

Woo hoo, Eric!

Gem of the Week

Since the holidays are just around the corner, think about buying this book as a gift for someone special. Here's my latest Gem of the Week:

Season of Gifts by Richard Peck (Dial Books for Young Readers, published Sept 2009, perfect for ages 8 to 12).

Richard Peck, the first children’s author to have been awarded a National Humanities Medal, gives us a wonderful gift: a Christmas story to make us smile.

The hilarious Grandma Dowdel returns in this sequel to the award-winning novels, A Year Down Yonder and A Long Way From Chicago. It's 1958 and a new pastor and his family move in next door to the eccentric Mrs. Dowdel.

The first one in the family to get to know her is the pastor’s 12-year-old son, Bob. She saves him from an embarrassing predicament involving some bullies, an outhouse and a reel of fishing line.

In her gruff way, Mrs. Dowdel ends up helping every member of the family. By the time Christmas arrives, they realize they need to find the perfect way to say thanks and give her a gift in return.

November 7th is National Bookstore Day!

Yes, that's right. Saturday November 7th is National Bookstore Day (according to Publishers Weekly).

This means you should run right down to your local bookstore and buy something. Anything. Support your local bookstore or before long you won't have a local bookstore.

Elephants are Dancing

No, that's not the title of my 27th attempt at writing a picture book (although, come to think of it, that's a great idea. Hmm.

Sort of a cross between Giraffes Can't Dance and Hilda Must Be Dancing... only with elephants).


And it has nothing to do with a Republican winning the governor's race in New Jersey.


No. It's actually a snippet of a quote from Michael Powell of Powell's Books, as quoted in The Oregonian (and quoted again in Shelf Awareness on Oct 26, 2009).

The full quote: "It's nice to find a high perch when elephants are dancing."

That's by far the most creative way I've heard of describing the book price war between Walmart, Amazon, Target and Sears, and how bookstores should cope. You can read more about that craziness here.

Will this be the nail in the coffin for independent bookstores and chains alike? I don't think so. Those big-box stores are deep-discounting only bestsellers, and only online. Bookstores can offer so much more than that. And I expect this pricing war will be temporary. Bookstores will survive. What do you think?

Happy Writing

Good luck to all those brave souls participating in NaNoWriMo.

Personally, I plan to use the time to FINISH a children's middle grade novel I started a long time ago and which stalled out after 30 pages. Wish me luck. Not as difficult as writing 50,000 words from scratch, right? Ha. You don't know me.

What about all you writers out there? Participating? Revising an existing novel? (INTERN has a great post about this.) Or just getting your head in gear to even think about writing a novel? It's a daunting task.