Month: August 2012

I am super excited to have Lucy on the blog today doing a guest post for us. So please help me welcome Lucy to the blog today.

Cindy, as always it is a pleasure to be here! Thank you so much for inviting me over to your blog today.

Writing with kids during summer

By Lucy Swing

Summer. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, kids laughter feels the air. But for writers, it may not be all beautiful and fun all the time.

During the summer of 2011 I decided I wanted to write a book. Yes, just like that. After reading the Twilight saga (hey you! Yes, you. I saw you roll your eyes at the mention of Twilight. Watch it! Hehe) I was addicted. I became a YA junkie.

I always had ideas for a book (don’t we all?) but never got any further than the first couple of pages before I gave up. Writing is a lot of work, and not everyone understands this. Anyway, I wrote the first draft of Feathermore during that summer. I really wanted this and needed to see it through, even if my MS would never see the light of day.

Having kids complicates the art of writing, especially over the summer. When I wrote Feathermore I was out all day playing the role of Mommy and then, would stay until the wee hours of the night, or morning however you want to see it, writing. This summer though, has been kicking my ass. I am not sure why, either. Maybe it’s because my kids are older and need different/more things to entertain themselves, or maybe I can’t juggle as much as I could last year, I don’t know. But the fact is, my writing has been almost non-existent.

I try to do the same schedule I did last year. Take the kids to the beach or the water park in the morning and then stay home in the afternoon (in Naples, FL by 2pm the clouds roll in and storms for the rest of the afternoon. I’m not kidding. It doesn’t fail.) But I am finding the kids and myself sleeping in late, so by the time we wake up we only have a few hours of sun. And everything seems to get pushed over, and by the time night comes, I am so beat up, all I can think is of sleep.

But! I was lucky enough that my mother took the kids for a few days last week and I was able to finish re-writing Fallenmore. I had become a ball of stress, and well, still am, but at least Fallenmore is now complete and out!

How do you do it? Do you have a routine or a way to make it all work and not work yourself to the ground? 

“What are you doing?” Blake’s voice came from somewhere in the staircase.

I froze a few feet away from the front door and turned, very slowly, to glare up at him. I extended my arm on my side and opened my hand. Like metal to a magnet, a pair of car keys came flying into the palm of my hand. Never once breaking eye contact, I responded, “To finish what I started.” Then I shot him a smile.

The front door swung open without me even touching it, but before I could reach it, Blake was before me; the door closing shut behind him. “No, you’re not.”

“Who—Do you—Think—You—Are?” My voice was low and guttural, something I had too, never experienced before. Then again, I was in uncharted territory now.

“You don’t want to do this. You’re not thinking clearly.” He lowered his voice, but I still heard what he said next. “I knew I should have kept the restraints on you.” His hand wound up on my shoulder, the act was a mixture of warning and threat all wrapped up in one and in a blur of fast movements, I had him with his back on the hardwood floor.

He wasn’t going to tell me what to do. I’ve gone along with people doing that for far too long, and it was time for it to stop. “Claire should be expecting what’s coming for her.” I let go of him with one last shove and opened the door. There, on the driveway, was a silver BMW. “Nice car.” I said over my shoulder as I walked away. But, where was my Dad’s truck? My truck?!

“You don’t want to fall, Jade. Trust me.” He yelled from inside the house, but I wasn’t stopping. Nothing could stop me now.

“Oh, but I already fell. Maybe not literally,” I said softly, knowing he could hear me just fine even from several feet away and I shrugged my shoulders, “but give me about an hour or so.” The car lights blinked twice and I heard the doors unlock.

“If you fall, it won’t be you anymore. He will own you and you have no idea what that is like. You will turn into someone completely different, and I’m sorry, but I can’t let you do it.”

He was suddenly right behind me with his arms around me, keeping my own arms at either side of my body. I wiggled in a futile attempt to get away from him, but it was no use, he wouldn’t budge. Unable to move away from him, I stilled, if he wanted a fight, he would get a fight. “You don’t want to do this, Jade. Not really.” That was all I heard before the darkness of the night that danced freely around us consumed me.”

**Check back later this morning for my review on Fallenmore.**

We are huge fans of Artie Bennett as you may recall we had Artie on the blog before promoting his picture book The Butt Book and out of all of the picture books Michael has this was the one he would read over and over again. He still giggles when he reads it. I even brought the book to school and read it to the kids in the library and they loved the book. They were laughing and giggling.

When I discovered that Artie was going to be at BEA promoting his newest picture book Poopendous I told Michael and this was one of the books he really wanted me to get. So I emailed Artie letting him know that I was going to be there and to expect me. Well the BEA karma gods had other plans for me and sadly by the time I got to the signing I was told that it was closed. Meaning there was no more books which I was bummed about and even asked if it was possible even to go and say Hi and that he was expecting me and I was told no sorry can’t do.

I walked away bummed but what can you do and it was only after the fact that I noticed an email from Artie letting me know that he missed me at the signing and aplogized but if I wanted a book there would be one at the booth well of course it was after BEA so I struck out again.

Thankfully Artie was super nice and he sent me a copy of the book signed for Michael. Thank you Artie for doing this for us.

Speaking with Artie he was very gracious and did a guest post for me which I am thrilled to share with you today. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoy sharing it with you.

Please help me welcome back Artie to Cindy’s Love of Books.

First of all, I’d like to express my bottomless gratitude to Cindy for giving me a forum to introduce my pooptacular new picture book to her legions of readers. You may know my first “mature” work, The Butt Book. It was showered with praise and won the coveted Reuben Award for Book Illustration.

Cindy herself reviewed it and enthused,

“The book is written with clean humor that the kids will get and laugh it. This is a great picture book, which I am sure will be a big hit amongst the boys, seeing as boys seem to think butts are funny. I enjoyed reading this book with my seven-year-old and being able to watch him laugh was one of the best feelings in the world.”

Thank you, Cindy.

While The Butt Book still has legs (and long ones at that), it was now time for my second act. I cast about for the perfect follow-up. What should it be? Should it be . . . naaaah. Or maybe . . . naaah. But then I had a brainstorm. Perhaps a children’s book in verse about poop would prove the ticket. After all, what more fertile topic could there be for one’s “number two” picture book. And there seemed to be a natural progression. When the word “poopendous” came to me out of the blue one day, that clinched it! I knew I not only had to write it, but I also had both the title and the final spread. So, just like with The Butt Book, I now sat down to write a memorable, stirring ending first before attempting any of the preceding verses.

I write in verse, and I love the challenge that this poses. But I’m also saddled with a perfectionist nature and therefore agonize over every single syllable. I tweak and revise endlessly until I get things just right. And then I tweak and revise some more. It’s important that my rhymes be strong and true. But perhaps even more important is that the cadence of the verses be musical. If the stress happens to fall on the wrong syllable, the verse will crash upon the ear. And since I’m going to be reading it aloud, I can’t have ungainly verses. They would catch in my throat. And that would be a sin.

It’s rare when a verse spontaneously emerges that I find fully satisfying. More typically, it will be the product of those endless rewrites, after many near misses. The reader doesn’t see the discards. On my website, ArtieBennett.com, I highlight a couple of my favorites in the Outtakes section. One outtake that I was particularly fond of went like this:

Babies poop. Adults do, too.

Even Winnie had to poo!

I was so fond of this verse, in fact, that I fought like the dickens to retain it. But it wasn’t meant to be, for reasons that I’m sure you—and Disney!—will deduce. I enjoy sharing my outtakes with children after my readings and asking them if they can puzzle out why this verse never made it off the cutting-room floor. I get the funniest answers.

I love to include a “chant” in each of my books. In Poopendous!, we have

Rabbit pellets, raccoon tubes,

Owl whitewash, and wombat cubes!

Can you see the cheerleaders leading this one during halftime? Now, had the wombat not been a prolific producer of cube-shaped poop, described as resembling rather pungent dice, I don’t know what I would’ve done. I would’ve been left with three-quarters of a great verse—and despondency.

I try also to slip in some internal rhymes when possible to enliven the verses. I was particularly pleased with:

Poop enriches soil that’s poor.

Grow umpteen beans and greens galore!

And I always strive for a strong, animated opening in my books, for I know how important first impressions are. Poopendous! begins:

Poop is yucky, poop is foul.

Step in poop and you will howl.

To read this book, you must be strong.

Just hold your nose and come along!

This sets the stage for much merriment to follow. But Poopendous! conveys much more than mere fun. Poopendous! is replete with fascinating nature lore. I happen to have a fairly large fund of information stored up in the recesses of my brain from years spent bird watching and botanizing. Yet I still needed to do extensive research for the book. Thankfully, though, it wasn’t necessary to do any fieldwork and collect samples. Besides, my wife would have changed the locks on me while I was out collecting.

Along with gently imparting a natural-history lesson in my work, I’ve also added a large dollop of fun. Children and their parents often dissolve into laughter at my readings. And bookstores, too, are not immune. I just received this heartening comment from the children’s book buyer of an independent bookstore in California in response to my telling her about my new book.

“Guess what?!? We already have Poopendous!, and I have even been known to give spontaneous in-store readings. What a delightful, hilarious, informative, fascinating book. Thank you for writing to us, and for writing such great books! Best of luck to you, and hip-poop-hooray!”

Poopendous! is beginning to get some very favorable attention, and not just from my relatives. A recent review of Poopendous! declared that I have “discovered the secret to get today’s kids to read books.” And a brand-new review in the Huffington Post proclaimed, “For anyone who loved The Butt Book, you must immediately go and buy Artie Bennett’s follow-up, Poopendous! It appears there is no topic Mr. Bennett can’t make funny and educational.”

It’s an absolute thrill to know that my books are playing their small part in getting children excited about books and reading, especially these days when there are so many coarser things commanding their attention. And to give the gift of laughter to youngsters is a blessing that transcends words, even words like “poopendous!”

About the author:
Artie Bennett is the executive copy editor for a children’s book publisher and he writes a little on the side (but not the backside!).

His itch to write gave us The Dinosaur Joke Book: A Compendium of Pre-Hysteric Puns (currently extinct) when he was a much younger man. The Butt Book, however, was his first “mature” work. The Butt Book was showered with praise and won the prestigious Reuben Award for Book Illustration. His “number two” picture book, fittingly, is entitled Poopendous! What more fertile topic could there be but poop!

Artie was the youngest (at about age thirteen) person to originate and sell a crossword puzzle to the New York Times. He went on to sell several dailies and two large Sunday puzzles to the Times before he began college. It’s been downhill ever since.

He and his wife, Leah, live deep in the bowels of Brooklyn, New York, where he spends his spare time moving his car to satisfy the rigorous demands of alternate-side-of-the-street parking.

He is pleased to share the visionary promise of Poopendous! with a wider audience.

Visit ArtieBennett.com before someone else does!

I want to send out a huge thank you to Artie for taking the time out to do this guest post for me and being so gracious with the comment you made and for the book. We love it.

Check back tomorrow for my review on the book.