Weekly Note: I Will Always Be a Writer
Plus banned book week, a festival, and hitting a word count milestone
If you read Kidlit Survival Guide you’ll know I had a tough week last week. I feel better now after talking to my agent, friends, and other members of the book community. I’m feeling hopeful for the future and living by my wise words from the post:
“… I remember there is only one thing that I can control. My writing. Publishers may come and go, a book may die on sub, editors might change jobs mid-edit, a series might get canceled, but I’ll always have my words, my stories, my worlds, and my characters. So that’s where I point my energy when publishing gets me down. No matter what, I will always be a writer.”
I had fun at Linden Tree Books at their annual Educator Evening. I loved meeting teachers, librarians, and catching up with friends. Plus, don’t you just love our fancy author sashes?
Me and Vicky Fang with a table full of our books at Linden Tree Bookstore Tomorrow I’ll be at Fairyland in Oakland to participate in their Children’s Book Festival with 30+ other awesome book creators. Books on B will be selling books and it’s sure to be a fun day out if you’re local. My meet and greet is at 11.20am.
2024 Children’s Book Festival at Children’s Fairyland in Oakland This week I finished Lies and Weddings, then tore through Finlay Donovan is Killing It by Elle Cosimano which I loved! I highly recommend it and I’m excited to read the next one. I’m currently reading Jasmine Warga’s newest middle grade, A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall and I’m listening to Richard Osman’s newest book, We Solve Murders. I feel like I’ve got back in my reading groove.
I hit 20,000 words on my middle grade novel which feels huge! Please send high-fives my way.
Next week is Banned Book Week. There are lots of ways you can take part including joining Authors Against Book Bans and getting involved with your local chapter. The California chapter has lots of events planned from postcard-writing to library events. If you’d like some ideas on how to get involved, feel free to email me or leave a comment and I can point you in the right direction.
If you’re reading this newsletter, you’re probably a fan of kids’ books. But you may feel like you can’t support every creator by buying ALLLL their books. So I love these tips from Audrey Perrott about how to support your favorite creators for free. If you’d like to support me, you can review my books on Goodreads, request them from your library (many libraries have a form where you can ask them to order books that they don’t carry), preorder my next book (more on that soon!), share my books and news on social media (share this newsletter with your network, too), and recommend my books to your friends and colleagues.
I mentioned last week about the drop in reading among our middle-grade readers. Here’s a post from
about the situation and how we can react. We’ve cut back on screens in our house just this past week and I am already seeing some improvements in the amount of reading time, particularly for my ten-year-old.“Because of the price point issue, I believe more than ever that we should all be pushing for simultaneous hardcover/paperback releases. If you have an agent, I suggest talking to them about that possibility right up front. I’m even willing to go so far as to endorse paperback originals. In the middle grade space, hardcovers are great for libraries, but that gap can be filled by library bindings/limited hardcover originals, and possibly shorter timelines between hard and softcover releases.” - Janet Fox
Speaking of encouraging kids to read, what do you think of this strategy (NYT gift link)? The writer paid her daughter $100 to read a book!
That’s it from me this week, I’d love to hear from you so reply to the email or leave a comment to let me know what you’re reading, how you’re marking banned books week, or would you pay your kids to read?
Happy reading and writing,
Christine xo
20k! Woo-hoo!! Double High-Five!
Thanks so much for the mention, Christine! And sending a high-five for the word count!