Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 116

spring recital 2010

My piano teacher called and asked me if I wanted to have a trophy for doing my practicing every day for the last five months, since she was getting one for the other students (who are all children). I told her no thanks, that I didn't need a trophy for practicing. I have a lot of race medals around the house and honestly do not know what to do with them anymore. I don't want to give them up (I'm too selfish still), but I can't really display them everywhere because then all the walls would...

this weekend

Thank you to everyone who came to signings last week at B&N on Wed and at the Provo Book Festival on Saturday. Whoo, that was crowded! I'm not sure how much I like the idea of the authors being in a different room than their books. On the one hand, it made it easier for people who were bringing books in that they hadn't bought there to get signed. On the other hand, it made it easier for people to have no idea who anyone was.

I spent the last couple of days of last week at a writing retrea...

what revisions matter?

Please, please come to the Layton Barnes and Noble tonight from 6-8! I have NEVER done a solo book signing before and am terrified I will be there all alone for two hours while the book staff stare at me pityingly. I will bring fabulous snowflake cookies to go with the Snowbird on the cover that is also fabulous. And also, I bake well.

I am thinking about a friend who asked me how much a book changes after it is accepted for publication, but before it is printed. My first response to her w...

layers

My novel is like an ogre. Or like an onion. Or a parfait. It has layers.

This is often true for me. I write first drafts that aren't completely shitty. Well, no, they are. But since I expect them to be horrible, I am often surprised that there are parts that are wonderful. And parts that just have to be deleted, for one reason or another. And then vast, gaping holes that I have to fill in and have no idea why I didn't notice during the first draft that they were there. It's like I'm sh...

Mother's Day

I have been in the situation a few years where I found Mother's Day to be incredibly painful, when I wanted to be a mother and was trying and couldn't. And for years after that, I hated the talks on perfect mothers because I was jealous that I didn't have such a mother, and that I wasn't going to be such a mother myself. I was annoyed at various church groups that gave out treats or prizes of different kinds to moms.

This year, it was just--pleasant. I got up and made breakfast for the kids...

Be brave

14 found out last night that she didn't make it to the finals of a local talent competition. She was devastated, of course. This is the second year running, and last year one of the finalists was her music-nemesis--now friend--from Orchestra. The one who seems not to really care about his violin playing at all.

As I sat trying to comfort her, I remembered so strongly those years before I was published. Of course, now I know that I was published, and so that eventually all that work paid of...

missing Shakespeares

"Think of all the geniuses you must be missing!" says Cordelia in BARRAYAR (now CORDELIA'S HONOR).

I wonder sometimes how many Shakespeares we are missing as a society, with the current system we have in place for publication. I tend to believe that systems exist for a reason, because they are quite useful in the main. When I was trying to break into publication, I always told people that I believed firmly that I just had to become good enough that an editor couldn't turn me down. I didn't ...

May signings

OK, two self-promotion posts in one day. That has to be a record for me.

I will be signing May 13 from 6-8 at the Layton B&N, my most local bookstore.

I will be signing and speaking at the Provo Children's Book Festival May 15 from 2-5 (at the Provo Library at Academy Square).

I will be signing books and speaking on panels at CONduit at the Radisson Hotel in Salt Lake City May 28-29.

Hope to see people there! For those who come, I will take names and email addresses to send to those who would l...

Booklist Review

A great review of THE PRINCESS AND THE SNOWBIRD from Booklist came out this week:

Pulling themes and even characters from The Princess and the Hound (2007) and The Princess and the Bear (2009), Harrison offers another satisfying, stand-alone fantasy, framed in folklore, that explores the archetypal divisions
between good and evil, life and death, and human and animal. Liva, the daughter of a hound and a bear, possesses
strong, nurturing magic, including the ability to shape-shift into animal fo...

Teacher Appreciation Day

This is a little late, but I have been reading other posts about great teachers and wanted to add my own thanks.

Thanks to my fourth grade math teacher whose name I do not remember. But that's OK, because he always thought I was a boy anyway. I still remember how you allowed students who wanted to, to do all the book assignments as their own pace and then you had those files and files of "fun" math projects we could do in the back. I loved designing my own garden and figuring out exactly ho...