Joy Preble's Blog, page 42

Okay, so I wasn't literally in my back yard. But I was at the Champions Forest Barnes and Noble in Houston, which is pretty close. Banff School asked me back to be their guest author for their book fair and it was a great afternoon chatting and signing Dreaming Anastasia and Haunted. Talked with Banff students, my own readers, customers who popped over to the signing table... Later the Banff team (aka my friends Deb and Wanda) and I and the husbands had dinner. Food, friends, wine - a winning combination all the way around. Even had some of my own students stop by to get a book, which is something that gets me happily sentimental and thankful. A huge thanks to CRM Lillian, who arranged such a lovely table and signage and who is always a true pleasure to work with. She is made of awesome. Plus I adore this particular B&N; it's an older one story store with all the benefits of the chain but the more intimate feel of a smaller indie. Truly - if you're in Houston, head to this store on 1960 West. You will be glad you did.
Here's me and Banff team below CRM Lillian and me
My very own students saying hi!

Okay, so first let me explain - the only way to pack for a cruise and THEN a book tour is to bring multiple, but slightly different, white t shirts that I can wear with jeans, Converse (red or black) and a black sweater and roll those up in a corner of the suitcase that's already packed with vacation stuff. So yeah, yeah - it looks like I never changed clothes. Get. Over. It.

LA was wonderful! Huntington Beach, Glendale, Pilgrim School, Taft HS - it was a grand tour and I had such a blast meeting everyone. After six days away, I need to get back into the real world, but it was fun while it lasted. (Btw, if you've never cruised - this whole 24 hour room service thing was a revelation. PB&J sandwiches on demand. Seriously? I'm in heaven. And something called chocolate melting cake... but i digress.

Thank you!! to the CRM's at the Glendale and Huntington Beach Barnes and Nobles. Your stores are fabulous. And the students and staff and especially teacher/librarian Kathleen Sheppard (who should get a medal for her wonderfulness) at Taft HS in Woodland Hills - you guys all rock! Best school visit ever. We talked books and fairy tales and life journeys and writing and even did some Haunted t shirt giveaways. Literacy and reading are alive and well in sunny So Cal! Everyone reading this should go hug their teachers and librarians and booksellers. The world is a better place because they're in it.

And Glendale B&N was especially fun because I got to be there with my intrepid cowgirl agent, Jen Rofe, who was my escort for the day and who took me to Portos Cuban bakery where I ate my weight in potato balls and chicken empanadas; and authors Lauren Strasnick and Ken Min, who stopped by for the fun. Plus Lauren's dad Kenny Stras, and Jen's parents and their friends. And even the delightful Kelsey - who was part of the bachelorette cruise and came to hang with the writers for a night.

Plus I got to drive another Kia and I am now a veteran of LA traffic. The 405, the 101, the 5, the 134? I've been on them all. And lived to tell the tale. Even squeezed in an hour at the Getty museum. Do you know that you park and then take a tram up a beautiful mountain? I didn't want to leave.

Next up - Salt Lake City at the end of the month.

Me with my sign at Glendale B&N
The amazingly wonderful students at Taft HS

My Spirit Club helpers plus friends at Taft


The only pic I took at Pilgrim, but you have to love a school that has this as you walk in the building



in Huntington Beach B&N

Getting ready to hit the road again on and off for a few weeks. It's a bit hectic, but I am very much looking forward to all these events. Last year at this time I was headed into the unknown of thyroid cancer surgery. That I am here and writing and currently cancer free is its own reward. That Sourcebooks is sending me hither and yon to meet readers and bloggers and assorted passersby is icing on the cake. So when the balancing act gets tough, I take a breath and remember this.

Here's the rest of the HAUNTED tour!
Hope to see you!!
First stop - the west coast. California, here I come!

Monday, March 14, 7 PM
B&N Huntington Beach, CA
7881 Edinger Ave.

Tuesday March 15, 7PM
B&N Glendale, CA
The Americana at Brand

Saturday, March 26, 2-4 PM
B&N Champions Forest at 1960
Houston, TX

Thursday, March 31, 7PM
King's English Bookstore, Salt Lake City, UT

Friday, April 1, 6:30PM
B&N Layton, UT

Saturday, April 9, 10-4 PM
Houston Teen Book Con
Alief Taylor High School
Houston, TX

Thursday and Friday April 14, 15 (TBA)
signing at Texas Library Association
Austin, TX

Sarwat Chadda entertains the crowd with Templar Knight tales and Billi SanGreal's story
Rachel Hawkins reading a chapter from DemonGlass and Sophie Mercer's further adventures

Mundie Mom Kathy and me.


As my Borders signing for this weekend was postponed (yes, not cancelled but postponed while my local Borders waits for the banks to finish doing whatever needs doing before they can order books for bigger events again), had some time to pop by my favorite Houston indie Blue Willow, where I not only got to say hi to Valerie and Cathy (who have asked me to be part of Houston Teen Book Con!!) but stayed for the reading/signing of the dynamic touring duo - my pal Sarwat Chadda (Devil's Kiss and Dark Goddess) and Rachel Hawkins (Hex Hall and Demonglass), both being toured by Disney Hyperion.

I loved hearing both of their author journey stories - had not known that Rachel used to be an English teacher until it began to suck her soul (teaching has a way of doing that...) Plus she's funny. Really funny, actually. As is Hex Hall, which I've just started reading and am totally enjoying! And Sarwat hinted to us about his recent trip to Hollywood...big doings coming for this deserving chap, methinks.
Let's just say that a good time was had by all and that I also got to meet and chat with various booksellers and bloggers, including Mundie Mom Kathy and cariblogs - who introduced me to Cynthia from A Blog about Nothing and Lena from Addicted to Novels and others! This is my favorite part of book events - talking with people who love books, support authors and books, write about books... well you get the picture!! Books rock. And book bloggers - you rock even more!! Thank you Cathy Berner for graciously introducing me as a Teen Book Con author.
Okay. Must write now. Really.
Til next time...

Thank you, Phoenix, for an absolutely phenomenal first leg of the HAUNTED mini tour!
Weather couldn't have been better; the city and suburbs were filled with baseball fans for the start of Spring Training, and I met readers and teachers and booksellers and librarians who are all totally and wonderfully committed to literacy, reading, and supporting authors and books. Librarian Greg Kinder, the teen event coordinator at the Velma Teague Library in Glendale is passionate about kids and books. Tracy Weaver, whose AP English class I visited at Mountain View HS in Mesa has a happy room filled with posters and books and absolutely wonderful, brilliant students, well-versed in literature, folklore and mythology! And the people, esp. Robyn, at Changing Hands in Tempe (where I'm at my signing table above) run the best indie in the city! You guys all rocked my world! That and happy hour at BLT in Paradise Valley - where I ate a popover as big as my head with butter and sea salt - made for a wonderful trip. Plus did you know that my KIA rental car had roll down windows? :)


Here I am below with Robyn at Changing Hands

Below is me and Tracy Weaver in her classroom at Mountain View HS in Mesa. I even got my
very own AP English t-shirt







Below is me at Velma Teague Library in Glendale, with Greg Kinder. Thank you to all the teens and college students and also adults, who came to listen to me read and to the wonderful bookseller from Barnes and Noble who supplied books for the event!

The contest hat has spoken!! Christina! You and your comment about the Claw and Sparkly colored bowling balls - the contest hat has picked you for the prize of an autographed copy of Crystal Allen's debut How Lamar's Bad Prank won a Bubba Sized Trophy!!
So if you could email me at joy at joypreble dot com and let me know your snail mail, I will arrange for the book!!
And congrats to Crystal again!!
Plus cheers to everyone who told their "why bowling is cool" stories.
Til next time...

(Want to win a copy? Read to end of post!!)


Crystal Allen rocks! As you may know, we share not only an agent - the fabulous Jen Rofe - but also a city - Houston - and a love of breakfast food. Crystal says I always out order her. I say it's a rough competitive world. PW gave her a starred review. I'm entitled to my pretty breakfast quesadilla at Empire Cafe. We also share a release month; Haunted came out on 2/1 and Crystal's much anticipated debut MG novel, How Lamar's Bad Prank Won a Bubba-Sized Trophy is due out on 2/22, from Balzer Bray, a division of Harper Collins. It is getting all sorts of well-deserved buzz. Plus it has bowling. Which is totally cool. Yes, Crystal makes bowling cool! In fact it is entirely possible that I will have to make Ethan take Anne bowling in the final book of the Dreaming Anastasia trilogy. Maybe Baba Yaga, too. Seriously! A witch with detachable hands bowling? It boggles the mind.

Here's wha that fabu PW review had to say about Lamar:

"Cocky, sharp-tongued, and a known prankster, 13-year-old Lamar Washington is a protagonist readers won't soon forget… Debut author Allen gives Lamar a singular (and often comically misguided) way with words …Under all the braggadocio is a boy with a big heart, and from the first sentence Lamar will have readers hooked."

I asked Crystal to stop by and talk about what it's like to write a character as strong-voiced as Lamar. Here's what she had to say. (And at the end, a CONTEST!!)

Lamar has a dominating personality. He demands attention, and he began his quest for it while I was focused on an intense episode of CSI. He just popped up in my head, fully dressed in jeans, Michael Jordan sneakers and a T-shirt, and began strutting around my brain like he lived there. At that time, I had no idea who he was and immediately thought I needed some serious medication. I was so outdone by Lamar's presence and even tried to figure out if he was someone from my past or someone I had recently met, and why all of a sudden he was so strong in my thoughts.

His face wasn't nearly as clear as his actions at the time, but I knew he wanted to take me somewhere. In the middle of my freak-out, I got a visual of a small town street. Lamar rhythm-walked down that street toward a bowling alley, opened the door and went inside. The sounds the smells, the music inside the bowling alley were vivid. It was then that I realized I was hanging out with Lamar.

See, months earlier, I'd developed a storyline with a bowling alley as a secondary gathering spot for a group of multicultural elementary school characters. That story included Lamar, but the story wasn't told from his perspective. It was actually in third person at the time. So, for him to step out of the crowd and man up in such a big way, surprised me. :)

Lamar has taken me through an emotional beat down. I've laughed at him, cried with him, hollered at him, turned off the computer on him, told him "No! I'm not writing that!" and then wrote it anyway, and had many, many conversations with him about his life and how he was choosing to live it.

As a mother of two boys, it was difficult to watch Lamar make decisions that make mothers cringe. But, I had to allow him to make those mistakes and keep my own inhibitions in check.
Now that How Lamar's Bad Prank Won A Bubba-Sized Trophy is finished, I've had problems getting Lamar out of my head. As I've attempted to write stories about other male characters, Lamar's voice rings in my ears, calling my new characters 'weak' or 'chumps' or saying something only Lamar would say. I've had to work extra hard to shut him down! :) But, I believe over time, I'll take the mental duct tape off of his mouth, and write another story about my most favorite character; especially since that's what he's trying to make me do anyway!

Thanks for such an engaging post, Crystal!
Until 2/22 when you can read Lamar yourself, you can find out more about Crystal at her website: http://www.crystalallenbooks.com/

CONTEST: Want to win an autographed copy of Lamar? Comment on this post and tell me and Crystal why you think bowling is cool. Best responses will go into the contest hat! May the best bowling commentator win! Contest is open until 2/22.

Above is a cover we didn't use for Dreaming Anastasia, which uses the matryoshka metaphor
Happy Valentine's all! My creative writing class wrote love poems today using candy conversation hearts. I LOVE doing that on Valentine's Day. Plus we get candy. Although, don't tell anyone, but those conversation hearts taste like chalk. One step down from those orange circus peanuts...
But today's topic is Russian folklore. Lots of it in the Dreaming Anastasia series: Baba Yaga, the witch with iron teeth and removable hands, who lives in a hut that runs around on chicken legs; rusalkas - who play a pivotal role in Haunted, and are malevolent mermaids who died in or near a body of water and are doomed to haunt it and often - like a Siren - tempt men to drown; the fairy tale of Vasilisa the Brave - who's sent into Baba Yaga's forest to get fire and who's helped by her enchanted matryoshka doll her mother gave her; and a dude named Koschei the Deathless who very much pre-dates Harry Potter's Voldemort, but who has also hidden his life force away and thus can't die. (the concept of a soul jar is a very, very old one, btw!)
In Haunted, the rusalka tells Anne what Baba Yaga has already told her before - that nothing is as it seems. "Stories within stories. Secrets within secrets." It is one of the controlling metaphors for the novels. Matryoshka dolls are nesting dolls - the figure repeats itself, smaller and smaller, each doll (as you can see in the cover for DA above that we didn't use) tucked inside the other. Supposedly, the doll maker say a little spell of enchantment on the littlest doll - enabling it to hear and keep the secrets of the child who receives the doll as a gift. In Vasilisa the Brave - which I use in DA as Anastasia's story - Vasilisa's mother gives her a doll (it's not specified as a matryoshka in the folklore but I chose to make it so in my stories) and tells her the doll will keep her safe. And indeed it does; it tells her how to satisfy Baba Yaga's requests. She lives and returns home with fire and does indeed live happily ever after. Like Vasilisa, Anastasia's doll talks to her; or rather, she talks to the doll and hears it talk to her. It's the doll that Anne uses to help send her back in the end... but if you haven't read, I won't say any more about that.
Let's just say that I'm not done with these nesting dolls quite yet. Secrets within secrets within secrets.
And you know what? Two different people gave me matryoshka dolls in the past week: a former student - who gifted me with a traditional doll wearing a babushka - and my husband, who found nesting dolls of the Romanov family! Seriously cool Valentine's gift for a geek girl like me.til next time...when we talk to Crystal Allen

Various contests up and about with HAUNTED giveaways, thanks to bloggers, author/bloggers and other kind souls.

Want to win a copy of HAUNTED?

Author Janet Fox (Faithful and the Forthcoming Forgiven) has an interview with me and a contest!
http://kidswriterjfox.blogspot.com/2011/02/voices-you-should-hear-joy-preble.html

And Blogger Book Whisperer does, too!

http://book-whisperer.blogspot.com/2011/02/book-tour-haunted-by-joy-preble-and.html

Very cool!

Now for the Sunday seven:

1. tomorrow's blog post will be about matryoshka dolls, which play a huge role in the Dreaming Anastasia series. (Yes this will be my Valentine's post. Yes, there's a reason!)
And later this week, Crystal Allen!

2. Finally watched EasyA last night. Very very funny. Even a tad poignant.

3. Can't decide if I want to watch Waiting for Superman when it comes out next week. I'm not a fan of those who claim that they have THE ANSWER to our educational woes. Cause you know what? They don't. It's never that simple. Okay, actually it is. You want to know the secret to good schools? Here it is: a.Highly educated teachers who are masters of their subject matter. (ie - Don't hire an English teacher who hasn't read Shakespeare and who couldn't step in and competently teach any grade level. Or a math teacher who can't teach more than algebra. Just don't do it.) B. Parents who care and who take the time to follow their kids' progress. Really follow it. Who know what they're learning. Who value learning. And who make it a priority to pass that value on to their kids. Those two would be a good start. Want to sort the good teachers from the weaker ones? Stick your candidates in a room with just a student textbook (no internet or teacher's guide) and paper and pen. Tell them okay - you're going to be teaching a unit on short stories next week. Create it and the activities and assessments that go with it. If they can't do it, don't hire them. End. Of. Story.

4. Bethenney Frankel has a new series coming up. Bethenney - you are like crack to me. I even watched you on Skating with the Stars. I will be there, girlfriend!

5. Brooding Aiden's bitey, bloody, obsessive love affair with the new vamp on Being Human - gross but addictively watchable.

6. Does anyone else notice that Vampire Diaries sometimes recycles Buffy plots? Like next week's ep where Stefan relives his past victims. Didn't Angel do this in Season 3 on the Buffy Christmas episode? Plus others?

7. It is clear that for a woman who teaches six classes, is writing a book that's due in July and attempting to promote the new one PLUS prepare for her son's wedding (got a dress!!! I found a dress!!), that I watch entirely too much tv.

til next time...

Vasilisa the Brave peeks at Baba Yaga's chicken leg hut
Excited about some upcoming posts: so excited that I'm doing this little teaser!
I love, love, love the Russian folklore that I use in the Dreaming Anastasisa series. So for the next couple of weeks, I'll be doing posts about the various fairy tales, folklore, and folk art that play such important roles in DA and HAUNTED. Going to be doing at least one contest while I'm at it.
So buckle up! We're going to dive into the world of Baba Yaga and her magic forest and her hut that stands on chicken legs, of rusalkas and matroyshka dolls and lacquer boxes, Vasilisa the Brave and Koschei the Deathless!