Cynthia Lord's Blog, page 78

Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone

Milo's girl went back to college today. 

Hiking In New Hampshire

Julia and I went hiking yesterday in the mountains of New Hampshire.  My main character in my new book goes hiking, so I wanted to take photos and write details in my notebook as we walked.

I chose a trail that wouldn't be too difficult, but when we arrived at the parking lot for the trailhead, that trail was closed.

   So we took another, which ended up being much harder.  In fact, I had to climb some of the rocks near the summit on my hands and knees.


The Presidentials

But oh, what a view.


The sharp dip in the medium-blue mountains on the far right is Crawford Notch

Wordless Wednesday

 

White Mountains, New Hampshire

It's a Book Baby!

 Congratulations! It's a bouncing book-baby!

Name: Stargazer, Volume 2

Weight: 122 pages

Proud Parents: Von Allan( vonandmoggy )

Godparents: Von Allan Studio

On A Walk

Julia and I had planned to go mountain climbing yesterday, but the weather report wasn't favorable, so we just went for a walk instead. It was nice to spend some quiet time with her before she leaves for college again on Friday.

On our walk. . .



We saw fuzzy caterpillars

   and lots of frogs

  and even a pair of. . .



wild turkeys.


Helloooooooo.

I see turkeys a lot where I live. But mostly, I see them quickly as we pass each other. Usually they're ambling along on the grassy edge of the highway, or they're clustered around someone's rural bird feeder.  Or I'm trying to avoid hitting them with my car as a single-file line of turkeys darts out of the woods and across the back roads. 

Sometimes it's fun to turn a corner and suddenly be surprised by something ordinary--and find that really, it's not ordinary at all.

Children's Book Fair By The Sea

Yesterday I drove to gorgeous Camden, Maine for the Children's Book Fair by the Sea.



My daughter spent the day with my son so my husband could come with me.  He isn't able to go to many of my events, so it was a special treat to have him join me.  We went to Camden early so we could walk around together and have lunch there.



I started with haddock chowder. Then it was off to the Camden Library.



The library is lovely.  When they needed to expand in the 90s, they didn't want to change the character of the old library.



So they built the new addition underground.



The library has beautiful gardens. And do you see the benches in the background?  They are designed to look like books underneath.



And all the books are Maine books.



John went upstairs to the magazine area and saw his cover for Maine Homes, Boats, and Harbors (third shelf down, all the way on the right).  He's too modest to take a full-on photo of it, but it was so exciting to see his cover at the library.



And how cool is the children's area?  The lighthouse really lights up and the rowboat is for reading.



I sold quite a few books and each author or illustrator went out to the rotunda to do a reading or activity over the course of the book fair.  I was signing books for most of the presentations, but I did catch parts of a few them.  Here's Melissa Sweet.  She gave each of the kids a little sketchbook and had them try some fun drawing techniques.



As an author, it's very hard to follow illustrators!

Since I have two different audiences for my books, I brought materials for both my novels and my Hamster crowd and decided I would make a choice after I saw which audience I had.



Jacob helped me decide.  He told me he had read Hot Rod Hamster "lots of times," and in fact, he had read it that morning to get ready to meet me.



So I read Hot Rod Hamster for Jacob, and I dangled some of the words out there for him to fill in for the audience.

Me:  "'Hmm,' dog says. 'But something's still missing'. . . What is it, Jacob?"

Jacob:  "FLAMES!"

His mom bought him Happy Birthday, Hamster, too!



It was great to see so many of my Maine author friends all in one place!  One of the fun parts of doing book fairs is being able to catch up with each other.


Toni Buzzeo, Jeannie Brett, Connie and Peter Roop, Melissa Sweet, Jennifer Berne, me.
Amy Hand (Camden Children's Librarian), Chris Van Dusen, and Stephen Costanza

Puppy Dreams

Yesterday while I was working, Milo whimpered and then started yapping in his sleep.






I woke him up and he was all upset and wanted to be in my lap. I wonder what dogs have for nightmares?






Maybe in his dream, the mailman didn't stop at the mailbox. . . maybe SHE CAME INTO THE YARD!

Five Things on a Friday

Me taking photos for my next book

1.  My husband and I climbed a little mountain in Maine this week. I asked him if he'd come with me to answer photography questions for my next book ("Looking at this scene, what would make a good photograph?").  He's a big help to me and I love how he sees the world around him.

On Sunday my daughter and I are climbing a bigger mountain in New Hampshire.  It'll be slow going, because every so often I have to stop and take notes.

2.  There was a lovely blog mention of Happy Birthday, Hamster on Buckeye Bookworm.  Hot Rod Hamster is on the Buckeye Children's Book Award list in Ohio for this year.

3.  For my September visit to Tennessee, the coordinator told me that they always have a special cake made for the author's library event.  She said it would either be the book cover for Happy Birthday, Hamster or she'd ask the cake person to create a replica of Hamster's cake from the book.  How FUN! 



4.  At our house, we've never succeeded in growing pumpkins. But this year, we have two started!  Grow pumpkins, grow!

5.  Tomorrow afternoon, I'll be in Camden, Maine at the 6th Annual Children's Book Fair By the Sea. Camden is a beautiful place to spend the afternoon. I'm looking forward to being there! 

Lake Sounds

In the novel I'm writing now, there's a lake and a family of loons.  I grew up on a lake in New Hampshire, and I took the weird music of loons for granted. But I didn't know much about them.  One of the nice things about writing is it brings me a greater understanding of my own world.

Poor Milo, though.  At first, he was quite upset with the strange wails and tremolos coming from my laptop.  Now, he sleeps right through them.

Here's a view of loons you don't usually see. This video was taken by a scuba diver in Minnesota.

 

And in this video you hear the tremolo call:

Wordless Wednesday

Portland Head Light, Maine. Taken last night by my husband, John