Settling down

Please pardon the radio silence as I get unpacked in our new home (again). This time we're settling for awhile an it feels great. Most of our place is still in boxes, but the living room is shaping up nicely. The house we're renting feels like a little mountain lodge.

This is the view from the living room window:

And a little fellow my husband caught the other day:

The place is brimming with wildlife; there are hummingbirds, dragonflies, frogs, chipmunks, and deer all over the place (I'm told bears as well, though we haven't seen any yet). The woods are full of edible mushrooms, my husband had some for lunch today that looked like this:

It's been a really nice change from city life, and a big sigh of relief to unpack things that have been in storage for more than a year. I realized pretty quickly as we started sifting through boxes that the vast majority of my things fall into one of three categories: books (of course), art supplies, and angsty drawings from college like this one:

I'd love to purge and lighten our load but I find each of those things very hard to get rid of, for different reasons. The books because I want to remember them and reread them and use them for inspiring new stories. The art supplies because of all the projects I might need them for. And the drawings because the more time that passes since art school the more I forget where I started on the journey to becoming an author and illustrator. And it's good to remember that beginning and how much has changed since then.

Remembering 9/11/01

I was trying to avoid reading or watching too much yesterday, because I knew it would be upsetting to relive 9/11/01, but of course it was hard to avoid, and some of the things I encountered were so lovely and touching I wanted to share them here. I was living in Boston ten years ago. I did not lose anyone close to me that day, but of course it was an event of such mind-boggling horror and evil and tragedy; ten years later I still can't think about it without getting emotional.

StoryCorps is doing a series of 9/11Animated Short Stories that had me sobbing--the stories are so touching and personal. Here are three:







Author and editor David Levithan talked about his 9/11 book Love is the Higher Law and the importance of remembering and telling stories here.

Author Meg Cabot shares both hope-filled and heartbreaking stories here.

Author Maureen Johnson writes about her experience ten years ago here. Her impetus for writing  and the comments from teens who were too young to understand what happened that day are eye-opening.

Patrick McDonnell's MUTTS comic for yesterday was simple and lovely.

a pacy in the pocket

 

After finishing my novel, I really needed to  let out some steam and do something completely  silly and fun. My trip to France was in a couple days so there was just enough time to do an extra small project. With some leftover material from our our cupcake decorations I decided to make some Pocket Pacys!

They say you always leave a bit of yourself behind when you travel. Well, I going to leave a little me! Ha ha!

I plan to leave one somewhere every day while we're are in France. I hope that someone else finds it and brings a little cheer in their day. And, if I'm lucky the person will carry it to a new location, take a photo and send it to me which I can post here.  Maybe these Pocket Pacys will travel all over the world!

In the photos, the Pocket Pacys might not look that neatly painted. That is because they are so small! see, shorter than a battery:

Though, honestly, the hardest part was trying to get the website url in it. First I tried to write it by hand, but the it wasn't very legible. And I need people to be able to read the url so that they can find the site! So, I finally made stickers which I am just crossing my fingers will stay affixed.

But, I've made eight Pocket Pacys ready for their new home in France. They travel by cardboard box, first class.

Where will they all end up?

All ages

On some Scottish islands when it's sunny all day they call it "a given day," and I was lucky enough to be given several, all in a row. The best way to convey the beauty of these places would be to hand you my laptop and let you look at the slideshows -- but since I can't do that, I'll add more pictures to this post later, and write now about other things.

I had expected that my last week would be a kind of retreat, but instead, every evening people on the island invited me to things and the last one was on an island even more remote than the one I was on (5 hours by the once-a-day ferry from Oban to reach B., where I was staying, then a long drive across a causeway to V. The causeway was built after a bull drowned while being swum to pasture for the summer on V.).

The town council had thoughtfully hired a bus, to leave from the main square of B. and then drive people home. The family who had invited me had said we were going to a "concert" -- I had asked hopefully if it would be a ceilidh, but they said no. However, on the bus, some young teenagers -- talking in that excited way teenagers talk before a party -- were making jokes about "having some tea at the ceilidh" and giggling, so I began to hope.

We arrived in a long hall: tables with bottles and people of all ages, literally -- from babies held in their parents' arms to people who were at least eighty, and everything in-between. As soon as the band -- THE VATERSAY BOYS (listen here -- and to get an idea of what they played that night, skip the first two songs!) -- started, people JUMPED up and danced. I wish you could see the two girls at the top of the set more clearly -- but even in my blurry picture, their energy (the way they're kicking up their feet!) shows.


And they danced until midnight -- old dances, with sets and patterns and steps (swinging your partners, dancing forwards and backwards and sideways a certain number of steps, clapping in certain places): "Strip the Willow," "The Grand Old Duke of York," "Canadian Barn Dance," I wanted and wanted to dance, but I did NOT want to be the clueless American messing up the steps, so I joined in only to the hokey-pokey, which they did differently than we do....but I could at least do it.

Alas! My pictures are dark and blurry like this, but maybe they convey something of the energy and enthusiasm with which the dancers threw themselves into the sets. The older girls helped the younger children by shoving them in the right direction, or holding out the proper arm with which to grab a partner.






People danced until midnight, getting more and more into it -- even the children didn't flag. The short girl in the dark dress (the one at the top of the set in the first picture, the daughter of one of the band members), in fact, stood on the stage, clapping her hands over her head, making all her friends do it too, urging everyone on -- and then danced more herself. Another band member told me later that at another event, she had a very badly hurt foot,but didn't tell her parents until afterwards because she didn't want to miss the dancing.

The bus was supposed to drop us off at the main square, but instead he drove everyone home, right to their doors -- refusing tips and also telling us we'd never seen him do it. Two men on the bus were really, really drunk; the children were polite to them.
"I'm fine," one of the men said belligerently.
"You seem fine," a student said, smiling in a friendly way.
(Later, he told me that living in Glasgow had taught him how to deal with drunks.
"How?" I said.
"Agree with everything they say and don't look them in the eye.")
Before passing out, the man had given a glass of whisky to a young girl to hold. When she reached her stop, she woke him up and said politely,
"Here's your glass back -- thank you."

When our group got off, and we were discussing the evening, and those two (who were staggering to their door within sight) someone said:
"Only two in the whole crowd -- that's not bad," and her sister added,
"And they were from Glasgow."

Walking home -- I hadn't wanted to be last on the bus with the two men, so I got off with the family who'd invited me and they walked me the rest of the way-- there were more stars than I've ever seen. In bed, I looked out the window for a long time, thinking about how much I love it there,--including spending an evening with people of all ages DOING something together. I want my writing to be for all ages, too; and hope I can capture something of the intense joy and energy and courage of the people I met, and the stories they told me, too.

The next day, there was time for one last long walk -- believe it or not,this is across the road from the airport; behind this field is another beach --



and then I got on the plane (it only lands and leaves at low tide, so the water is way in the background). I will be back: in my mind, in my writing, and I hope, in real life.

It's the end of the world as we know it (soon)

I was looking for an article I read recently about how the mass market format is dying, and instead I came across this rather depressing article, "Are books dead, and can authors survive?"

The author claims, due to the digital revolution, that the paper book will most definitely disappear in 25 years time, and he also claims that this will mean that "writing, as a profession, will cease to exist."

Eek.

As rather damning evidence, he outlines the demise of many other industries, including porn, music, home videos, photography, newspapers, and more, mainly due to technological changes, free content, and piracy.

He also talked about the "long tail", a term I hadn't heard before, although the description is familiar. (The article links to this lecture for an explanation of what long tail means.):

In simple terms, the long tail derives its name from graphs of sales against number of products. Whereas throughout the 20th century publishers concentrated on selling only a few heavily promoted "hits" or "bestsellers" in bulk, digital shopping has meant that what was originally a tail-off in sales, has now become increasingly profitable. Rather than selling, say, 13m copies of one Harry Potter book, a long tail provider can make the same profits by selling 13m different "obscure", "failed'" and "niche" books.

The long tail is Amazon and iTunes, Netflix, LoveFilm and eBay. It is, arguably, between 40% to 60% of the market, which was hidden and/or simply unavailable before the advent of online shopping.

As more consumers come online and chose to select content for themselves, the long tail gets longer. It also starts to demolish the old mainstream system of pre-selection, mass marketing and limited shelf space for "bestsellers". Amazon is a successful long-tail industry: it has forced publishers into selling their books at 60% discount and driven bookshops out of business. As the long tail grows, the mainstream mass market shrinks and becomes more conservative. The long tail has created this effect in all of the other industries that have gone digital.

 
What this means is that even if the book publishing market is increasing, the money that each individual author makes is probably decreasing. Although, with books having the ability to stay in print indefinitely via Print on Demand and eBooks, maybe this means that authors (and publishers) with deep backlists will continue to be successful. The article does end on a more hopeful note, saying:

There is no simple solution. All that is clear is that for authors and publishers to abandon each other only accelerates the race towards free content.

Authors must respect and demand the work of good editors and support the publishing industry, precisely by resisting the temptation to "go it alone" in the long tail. In return, publishing houses must take the risk on the long term; supporting writers over years and books, it is only then that books of the standard we have seen in the last half-century can continue to come into being.

In a way, this gives me hope for children's publishing in general, because I do feel that we tend to commit to authors in the long term more than our adult counterparts, and children's publishing also relies on backlist sales more than adult publishing.

At any rate, sorry to be such a downer on a Monday.

By the way, here's also that mass market article I mentioned at the beginning: "The Dog-Eared Paperback, Newly Endangered in an E-Book Age."

***

On a more upbeat note, I leave you with Reese Witherspoon's acceptance of the "Generation Award" at the MTV Movie Awards.

"I just want to say to all the girls out there. I know it's cool to be bad. I get it, but it's also possible to make it in Hollywood without a reality show...it's possible to be a good girl. I'm gonna try to make it cool."

Movie News - Reese Witherspoon Accepts the Generation Award - 2011 MTV Movie Awards

Yes! Let's hear it for the good girls!

Happy Labor Day, all.

from the BRG archives: Turnover in the children's book publishing industry

The following question was posted anonymously in the comment section of my personal blog, but since it seemed more appropriate for this blog, I'm answering it here:

Eds, art directors, marketers, etc. move around a lot in the publishing biz. What is it like for you to be at a house for a while and to have people coming and going all the time? It seems as though inefficiency would be rampant. Do you find you have to get new folks up to speed often as you usher a ms through to publication? Why do you think people in the biz move around so much?

For the first three years I was at my house, I think only 2 or 3 people in all of the children's division left the company. Of course, at that time we were based in Boston, where publishing jobs were fewer and far between, so people tended to stay at their jobs forever. When the division was moved to NY 4 1/2 years ago, everything changed. First of all, we lost our entire Marketing and Publicity group, our entire Production Department, and all but one Designer. As I wrote about here, it was a tough transition period--and all of the turnover after that was a piece of cake--kinda. I think for me, it wasn't just the regular amount of turnover, but also the fact that we were growing. Boston's editorial department of ten people is now fourteen. Four designers have doubled into eight. The five-person marketing/publicity department is now nine. And yes, we've also had quite a bit of turnover, which I think is natural during transition periods. I got very used to seeing new faces in the office, and sadly, also saying goodbye.

I will say that sometimes as the one "left behind" it does make me wonder if I'm missing out by staying in the same place, or maybe missing the reason why people tend to leave all at once. I had a conversation with at least two other coworkers this year about whether we felt weird staying when everyone else was leaving, if it made us want to leave, too. And I also see people moving up more quickly than me, or people with less experience in higher positions in other companies. But then you remember how much you love your job, your coworkers who aren't leaving, the books you work on, and you know you're doing the right thing for you. As I think I may have mentioned in the past, I "follow my compass, not my clock." And if you look at the reasons why people left this year, out of the five people who left, only one left to go to the competition. One moved to France, one moved to Hawaii, one went back to school, and one moved to PA and is now a professor. Why would I leave my dream job?

I don't think inefficiency is rampant at all. In fact, just the opposite. The people who remain pick up the slack and are forced to work either more efficiently and/or longer hours than before to make up for being short-staffed, or taking time to train new employees. Sure, there are tough transition periods, and I can't say that some books didn't suffer due to staff changes. But everyone was committed to getting the books on our list published in the best possible way. And there are positives that come out of turnover, too: new staff brought a welcome fresh perspective to our company and made us even stronger, made the other employees more invigorated. As with anything, it's good to mix things up a bit every now and then so you don't get too set in your ways.

On the other hand, I think we have a nice balance of old and new. Three of us in editorial: me, one of our editorial directors, and our publisher, have been with the company since we were editorial assistants (I think over seven, ten, and fifteen years respectively), and we bring with us the knowledge of our backlist and how things used to be done, and how so much of our procedures are more streamlined and effective now.

I've certainly done my fair share of getting new staff trained and up-to-speed, but even new employees had much to contribute, and could perhaps take over more duties from me that they could dive into right way, such as manuscript reading for example, while I got them up to speed on other procedures and responsibilities.

And finally, why do I think people in the biz move around so much? Do they, really? I've never worked in any other industry aside from retail at B&N, and certainly there was more turnover there than in publishing. People move around in every industry for the same reasons--to get a higher position, more pay, change departments, change industries, get married, have kids, because of problems with their bosses or problems with their coworkers. I don't think people move around in children's book publishing more so than in other industries.

If in fact there IS more turnover in children's book publishing than in other industries, perhaps it can be attributed to the fact that so many of the staff are young and female. This has been discussed on several other blogs, and I posted my response to the issue here. I think women are perhaps more likely than men to move for their spouses who most likely make more money, or leave if they decide to start a family. The low pay is also a factor--people may be eager to either move up more quickly into higher-paying positions, and sometimes the only way to do that is to move companies.

Anyway, I know I may be naive and overly optimistic sometimes, but when I look at our staff today, I think we're probably the best, most stable we've ever had, and it seems to me that most everyone is really happy there doing what they do. Of course there will be changes in the future, but I hope we stay this way for a little while.


Originally published December 10th, 2006

c'est finis!

The Sasquatch baked me a blueberry pie in honor of finishing my novel revisions! Yes, the novel is done (for now). I have to ship it off to my editor and await her comments and revise again, of course, but right now I get to take a breather and eat pie!

And just in time, too. There's a little trip the Sasquatch and I have been planning...and also this other blog I occasionally participate in, The Enchanted Inkpot asked me (and the other members) to sum up their current work-in-progress. Here is my summary/teaser for the new novel:

A companion book to "Where the Mountain Meets the Moon," "The Starry River of the Sky" (title still TBD) is also interwoven with Chinese mythology and folktales, this time following an angry chore boy with an unknown past who believes only he has noticed that the moon is missing.

I hope you are intrigued!!

BALTO FILM

I've been working on this for months!!!! Finally, part one is done. I'm relieved. Now I can move on with my life.

Don't forget the Moon Festival!

Thanking the Moon, my book about the Moon Festival!

Before I forget,  I wanted to mention that the Moon Festival is coming. This year the holiday will be celebrated on September 12th!

Don't forget to make some time to celebrate this very special holiday. Buy some mooncakes, make a bunny lantern and eat some tea eggs. And read my book, Thanking the Moon!

ambition and my new six

my scrawled notes!

Writing this newest novel has been a rather intensive process. Yesterday,  I told the Sasquatch that I felt like this novel was "squeezing the juice out of me," and I really meant it! Perhaps because it was just the memorial and this book is a companion to Where the Mountain Meets the Moon which meant so much to me, I've been feeling this overpowering desire to make this book "really good."

Which is how I try to be with all my books, of course. The difference with this book is, as I mentioned before, I'm afraid that my ambitions might be greater than my abilities.  But if dogged determination and will power can do it, I might have a shot. I've been in a state of overwhelming, constant, concentration, scrawling notes in my notebook wherever I am--the subway, the bathroom, the grocery line--if I'm not at the computer. When I can't sleep at night, I tell myself if the book is bad, at least it won't be from lack of effort!

One of the things I've been thinking about is my new six, the six things that are important for me to write about in this book. Now, they are:

PEACE
HARMONY
BALANCE
FORGIVENESS
ACCEPTANCE
EMPATHY

Interesting to see how they changed from my original six and I wonder what they'll end up being when the book is done!

A lovely review of Greta from School Library Journal

I hope everyone stayed safe and dry during the hurricane this weekend! We were very fortunate here in Northampton, for the most part the town kept power, though some of the surrounding areas were not so lucky.

Tomorrow is moving day for us, so my post is brief, just a review that recently came in for A Photo for Greta. Thanks SLJ!

"A bunny misses her photographer father when he’s gone on assignments. Sometimes she wishes she were the subject of his photo shoots. When he covers the circus, Greta imagines she is a circus performer. Then he photographs a country singer, and she plays the part in cowboy boots. When she aspires to have an important job like his, her father assures her that she already has the most important job–being his Greta. The short, sweet text offers young children reassurance as it follows the rabbit’s thoughts while she dreams of ways to be close to her dad. The acrylic paintings of an anthropomorphic rabbit family are reminiscent of those in Margaret Wise Brown’s Good Night Moon (HarperCollins, 1947) and verify the warmth of the narrative . . ."

–Carolyn Janssen, Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, OH

Booklist Interview

Monica Schroder did an interview with me that you can read here:

BOOKLIST INTERVIEW

This is a sample:

BKL: You started as a fiction writer before you switched to creating nonfiction. Why the switch?

McCarthy: For years, I have worked in a bookstore. When I first started there, I noticed a hole in the market. Each day, we’d get boxes of new fiction titles but few nonfiction ones. I remember how my excitement turned to disappointment when the book chain put my first fiction book on the “returns list” in three months; my fiction books were getting lost among hundreds of other fiction titles. But I didn’t start making nonfiction just to stand out. I wanted to make books that would interest kids who struggle in school like I did. There’s so much boring material out there that’s supposed to teach kids something, but how can it teach anything if the material doesn’t sink in? I wanted to give kids some less boring educational options and make learning fun, because I know that it can be.

BKL: Your nonfiction books cover a wide variety of subjects. How do you choose your topics?

McCarthy: There are a lot of ways that I choose my subjects, but most often they choose me. I’ll stumble upon something interesting on the Internet, or I’ll watch an interesting program on public television. That’s usually the way things happen. Sometimes, though, I deliberately look for subject matter, and one search will lead to another and to another. That’s how I arrived at the idea to write Strong Man, about Charles Atlas. I was doing a search about circuses, which led to information about sideshows, and that’s how I found Atlas. He was in a sideshow when he was young.

================

Read the rest at the above link...

Hurricane Irene

Hi all,

No real post today from me, as I was in a house with no electricity for most of yesterday. My boyfriend and I decided to leave our apartment in Brooklyn and flee to a friend's house in Westchester before the hurricane arrived. The good news is that we're in a nice, stocked house with strong windows, two dogs, one kid, and friendly neighbors. The bad news is now Metro-North is still down while the subways are running, and we lost electricity here, while all accounts seem to indicate that Brooklyn was relatively fine (aside from fallen trees in Prospect Park). Ah, well. We're much more comfortable up here, but will try to make it back home at some point today. I hope our cats are okay!

Hope all of you stayed safe! Any hurricane stories to share?

Poetry in Baby Pictures



No poetry this week--just more baby pictures from a proud and baby crazy new grandmother. I've been spending a lot of time visiting with my daughter, son-in-law, and my nearly three-weeks-old granddaughter Julia Anna. I've been having a grand time!

Here are some pictures that I took this week:

Bath Time

A Young Red Sox Fan

Four Generations

L to R: My mother, my daughter Sara, me and Julia

**********

At Wild Rose Reader, I have an original memoir poem titled Summer Ritual.

Irene Latham has the Poetry Friday Roundup at Live. Love. Explore!

A house in the woods

It's been a busy month with sadly not much writing or drawing going on. We are packing up for a move once again, this time to a little house in the country:

It's been a long time since I've lived in the woods, twenty years I guess? Since leaving home as a teenager I've lived in Richmond, Virginia, Providence, Boston, San Francisco, and most recently Northampton, Massachusetts. Lately though I've been feeling the strong urge to live in a remote, beautiful, quiet place. Maybe the work of taking care of a baby has become enough stimulation and I need more of a calm, relaxing environment. Or maybe I've just come full circle and want to raise Tilda in a place similar to where I grew up. Either way, I'm excited to see where the change of environment takes me personally and creatively.

More soon once we settle in!

Teaching Readers?

This past weekend I had the luxury of uninterrupted reading time, so I took advantage and devoured the book Okay for Now by Gary Schmidt. I soooo enjoyed it, and it moved me so much that I found myself basically crying throughout the whole novel--and you know I'm a sucker for books that make me cry. It was such a pleasure to immerse myself in the story and with the characters. I've been in a bit of a reading slump lately, as I've been trying to slog through another novel that just isn't keeping my interest

Reading Okay for Now reminded me of two articles I've read over the last two weeks. The first was the recent essay by Robert Lipsyte, "Boys and Reading: Is There Any Hope?" He says:

If we’re to counter this tendency and encourage reading among boys who may collectively resist it, boys need to be approached individually with books about their fears, choices, possibilities and relationships — the kind of reading that will prick their dormant empathy, involve them with fictional characters and lead them into deeper engagement with their own lives. This is what turns boys into readers.

Okay for Now is definitely the type of book I think boy readers would enjoy. It features a great male narrator, sports, brother-brother and father-son relationship issues, and the drama of a tough home life. But there's also horseshoes, Broadway, Audubon, art, and romance. Something for everyone.

The second was an article linked to from Shelf Awareness with the provocative title "We Can't Teach Students to Love Reading."

Personally, I think just reading this long, rather dry article would turn someone off reading. (In fact, it infuriated my friend who has been in education for over a decade and is also a student of history.) One of the article's main points:

The extreme reader, to coin a phrase, is a rare bird indeed. ("I have done what people do, my life makes a reasonable showing," Lynne Sharon Schwartz writes. "Can I go back to my books now?") Such people are born, not made, I think; or mostly born and only a little made.

I think extreme readers are made every day--how many of us have heard people (children, mainly) say that they never liked reading until they read XX book, or that after they had this teacher or read that book, they forever acquired a love of reading?

But this part gave me pause:

I don't know whether an adult who has never practiced deep attention—who has never seriously read for information or for understanding, or even for delight—can learn how.

I wonder. How many people have made it to adulthood without the love of reading, only to acquire it later? Do any of you have any real-life examples?