Lyn Miller-Lachmann's Blog, page 2

Sexy Next Book

Yesterday morning I received a lovely thank-you from Michael Guarneiri, the English teacher who invited Fatima Shaik and me to Arts & Media Prep high school on Monday for a fun and inspiring panel with 13 young writers. Mr. G's note read: 

Thank you so very much for visiting AMP yesterday! The students—and I, of course—appreciated the opportunity to meet with such accomplished professionals. I found the round table discussion engaging, informative, and encouraging; I heard students, throughout the day, bragging about the event to their peers (“sexy next book” is the new chic phrase among discussion participants). I hope this sets a standard for future PEN/AMP events.

Again (because it cannot be said enough), I am very grateful for your time and energy. I hope you will return in the future if the opportunity presents itself.

The line about "sexy next book" came from a student's question (and the expression is not mine; I borrowed it from Heather Sellers's advice book for writers Chapter By Chapter). The student said that she tended to start her novels with great enthusiasm but somewhere around the middle, the novel bogged down and she got a great idea for a new novel. So she abandoned the old one and worked on the new one until it bogged down and another idea for a novel came to her.

Why Do You Write?

I have just returned from a fun and inspiring afternoon at Arts & Media Prep High School in Brooklyn, New York, where author Fatima Shaik and I spoke to a group of 13 students, mostly ninth graders. Their teacher, Michael Guarneiri, had prepared them well. Their questions were interesting and addressed many of the problems experienced writers continue to face: "How do you start a book to get the reader's attention?" "How do you keep the story developing beyond the first chapter?"--and everyone's favorite--"What happens when you're in the middle of writing something and you get a great new idea?"

When we went around the room to answer Fatima's question of "When did you begin writing?" we found out that most of the students started around sixth grade. They speculated on their reasons--that was when they left the cozy elementary school and met a lot of new people, they began to understand more of their world and gained the skills to write down their thoughts and stories, they were inspired by a book they read.

Rogue Launch Day!

The people of Little Brick Township celebrate the launch of Rogue with a new billboard in the entertainment district.

And as Launch Day turns to night, the people of Little Brick Township gather for a party and dance to the music of SlikMoovs. Thank you all for a wonderful book birthday!

Guest Blogging for Launch Day

Tomorrow is the launch day for Rogue, and I've been busy writing guest blog posts and answering interview questions to get the word out. Last week, Janet Fox featured my post on humor in novels with character who have disabilities on her blog, Through the Wardrobe: http://kidswriterjfox.blogspot.com/2013/05/guest-post-by-lyn-miller-lachmann-whats.html.

Nancy Bo Flood interviewed me as part of her review of Rogue for The Pirate Tree a couple of weeks ago: http://www.thepiratetree.com/2013/04/25/rogue/

The Albany Times-Union did a wonderful piece on Rogue that incorporated an interview with me (and I refer to one of the questions in my Through the Wardrobe guest post) last Sunday, just in time for my launch book signing later this week: http://www.timesunion.com/living/article/Echoes-of-real-life-4503381.php

Today is the first part of a two-part interview on El Space, a wonderful new blog about books and the writing life: http://lmarie7b.wordpress.com/2013/05/15/check-this-out-rogue-part-1/

The Review That Really Matters

So far, I haven't gotten any copies of reviews from the trade journals for Rogue, but I've had some nice blog reviews, including Mrs. Mac (no relation to the old friend of Kiara's family) from You Decide: Should I Read It or Not?, who writes: 

“Rogue” is a touching and honest look inside the mind of someone with Asperger’s, giving readers insight into their thought patterns and hidden feelings. As an Educator, I gained tips on how to help students who have Asperger’s and how to help others understand them a little better. It is a must read for educators and their students aged 9-14. It would also work well in middle and elementary school book clubs, as having discussions while reading it will help students get “on the same page” with each other and lead to less bullying.

I also appreciate Nancy Bo Flood's review and interview of me for The Pirate Tree: http://www.thepiratetree.com/2013/04/25/rogue/

Most encouraging, however, was a note I received from a writer working at a bookstore in southern California, who wanted to let me know about a review that one of the teens in her reading group wrote. After a short summary of the novel, teenager Erika said: 

"This Is a Book That May Change Someone's Life"

The past week has been insanely busy because it's the end of the semester and the beginning of the book festival season. Two days ago, I had to hand in my final version of what turned out to be a 16-page story for my Portuguese class, and I had to give a presentation on it--in Portuguese--for up to an hour. Including Q & A, I took that hour, but that happened in large part because I speak slowly, and I kept going back and correcting myself. It was a bit disconcerting to see the professor write something in her notebook every time I misspoke or mispronounced something, but once I got to the half-page reading from my story, I pretty much stopped looking at her. Then things went a lot more smoothly.

Two days before the report was the Albany Children's Book Festival. I've had an author table for all five years that the festival has taken place, and once again I had a great time. I read the short first chapter of Rogue and talked a little about the experience that prompted the story's beginning. (You can read that chapter on Rogue's Amazon page, and everything there happened to me, up to the point when Kiara picked up the tray.) I also talked with the wonderful folks who stopped by my table.

Tag, I'm It!

I've been tagged by L. Marie at El Space! (Thank you, L. Marie!) The "Tag, you're it" is a way of getting to know the people behind various blogs. El sent me eleven cool questions to answer, and I am running really late answering them. If this were a real game of tag, it would be getting dark right now, and a chilly wind would be whipping up, so here I go:

What book inspires you the most?

The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño, which I've read in both English and Spanish. (I cheated by reading the English translation first.) I really do think this is his best book--amazing in both its small details and the overall story arc. It's a huge, complex story that's hard to describe, but I was totally drawn into it as someone who wishes I had that kind of life (and wishes I could write like that too!).

What is your favorite type of M & M?

Peanut.

If you could meet any living author, who would you choose? Why?

Well, it's too late for Roberto Bolaño, because he died in 2003 and according to Isabel Allende was a rather unpleasant person when he was alive. I really want to meet an author who's nice and whose work I appreciate, and I've been fortunate to have met some of the most talented and gracious authors around. (Julia Alvarez comes to mind, as I saw her for the second time at an event at Siena College a couple of weeks ago.) Of ones I haven't yet met, I think I'd pick Isabel Allende or Antonio Skármeta because I love their works for both adult and young readers and both of them influenced me in my writing of Gringolandia.

The Writer on the Road: Schenectady County Community College

On my dear departed MobileMe blog, I had an occasional series titled "The Writer on the Road," which featured reports of my various speaking engagements in high schools, colleges, public libraries, and community centers following the publication of Gringolandia. As the release date of Gringolandia moved farther back in history and I returned to school for my MFA, those speaking opportunities became less and less frequent. I truly missed them, however, because I never tire of talking about my first traditionally published YA novel, its long journey, and the events that inspired the writing of Gringolandia.

Despite my long publication "drought," I continued to appear each year at the Albany Academy Children's Book Festival (which is on Saturday, April 27 this year), and last year I met Judy Karmiohl, who teaches children's literature at Schenectady County Community College. She bought a copy of Gringolandia and decided to use it as one of the required readings in her class as an example of YA historical fiction. And today, I came to her class to speak to her students.

How's That Writing a Story in Portuguese Thing Working Out?

Apparently, a lot better than uploading my video progress report to this web site. In the end, I had to delete the videos and substitute a photo of my first page, with tabs for all the other pages that I've written out by hand, in pencil. In Portuguese.

The story had to be 4 pages long and include topics, vocabulary, and grammatical structures that we studied in the first and now the second semester of Portuguese. The professor gave us a prompt, a story in the style of a folktale, which she presented in present tense, and if we were to continue that story, we'd have to convert it into the simple preterite and imperfect forms of the past tense. We had the option of taking the story in a new direction with the same characters, or "killing off" the characters and creating new characters and a new plot line.

You may notice that this page has very small handwriting, and nine post-its, which are the other pages on which I've continued the story. I've been typing it in as I've gone along, and I'm now about a page or two away from the end. In my Word file, what I have already is 13 pages, double-spaced. I hope my professor will find the many extra pages worth the read from a storytelling standpoint, and not full of grammatical errors. The truth is, I like my characters and the way the story is going, and I'm considering continuing to write beyond the time the assignment is due and the class ends. Whether I continue to write the story in Portuguese or switch over to English is still in question, and I will write about that topic shortly on this blog.

Blog Index

Last week I was approved for an author account on Goodreads. One of the perks of this account is that the author's personal blog automatically transfers over to the Goodreads page. Goodreads also has a comments function, which this blog does not and which for security reasons I'm reluctant to add. However, the only entries that transferred over were the most recent ten, which means that all of my entries from my time in Lisbon aren't there.

In the interests of making my travel diary from last fall available to Goodreads members, and more accessible to readers of this blog, I've created an index with links to each post and a one-sentence summary. The posts are arranged chronologically.

1. A Real-Live Garret! I arrive in Lisbon and find the apartment quite conducive to a writer.

2. Settling In Pictures from our neighborhood.

3. Locked Out Abroad My husband left the keys in the apartment six days after we arrived, a common travel mishap.

4. Farmer's Market The Saturday Farmer's Market in our neighborhood, and meeting another Fulbright fellow, Rachel Burk, and her two daughters.