Thursday, May 29, 2008

SCBWI Martha Weston Grant deadline approaching!

Nearly five years ago our wonderful friend Martha Weston died unexpectedly in her sleep. She was an illustrator with more than 60 books to her name. Shortly before her death, she'd written her first novel, Act I, Act II, Act Normal. To honor her memory, her family set up an annual grant of $1,500 to attend the national SCBWI conference.

Because Martha was really excited about her new writing career, the grant is awarded each year to a published author or illustrator in SCBWI who'd like to try a new genre within children/young adult publishing.

Applications must be postmarked by June 10th. Too good to be missed! Full details on the grant are available on the SCBWI website.

Above, Gary Hines, Martha and me looking very Three Musketeer-ish. Thanks to Anna Grossnickle Hines website where I swiped this photo!

New Mexico desert and my friend Dyanna Taylor

When I was at Ghost Ranch in the New Mexico desert for Kindling Words West I couldn't get over the sky and clouds. I keep leaving my little room where I was supposed to be writing to see what was happening in the wide open sky. Here's a few of the photos I took:


Day breaks full of light.


Cool quiet day smelling of wet, promising rain.



Day folding up.


Night comes, the desert at rest.

And after the wonderful sky-filled week, I went to visit my friend Dyanna who lives in the prickly cactus and tumble weeds of the desert outside Santa Fe in a house with windows that stretch floor to ceiling. She's a cinematographer (and excellent still photographer) and lives and breathes the desert light. She had just returned from a week-long shoot on Alzheimer's and was about to head out again, so I was lucky our times clicked.

Thursday, May 8, 2008

New Mexico desert

I have a new understanding of why artists move to the New Mexico desert to paint, draw, photograph, write, sculpt, whatever. There is such a magnificence here.

In a big bus driving to Ghost Ranch, the desert unfolded in front of us, and the colors of the dirt and craggy cliffs filled me up. I though, inexplicably, of Judy, my older sister Joan's childhood friend. Judy had a sturdy frame, and was tawny skinned with dark shiny hair, in a family of blondes. She had a realness I loved. When she grew up, she moved to the New Mexico desert on a sheep ranch down a long, long dirt road. She got pregnant, and had her baby at home. The baby died during the birthing, and was buried in the dark red desert dirt.

Judy would show up from time to time at my parents house to visit, her face and hands weathered to a dark mahogany, and I would look at her and wonder: does she wish she'd had her baby in a modern hospital? But I never asked. My parents went to visit, and came back with photographs of the small adobe house she'd built with her own hands. Kerosene lamps, kitchen tools hanging from the wall, strands of dried plants from the ceiling. I pored over those photos. Does she wish? Does she ever stand over the baby's grave and wonder?

But now, all these years later, I understand. The desert claims you. You become part of the desert and its vastness, the red dirt and the unending sky, and you and your babies live and die in harmony with the breathing and sighing, giving and taking, of the desert.

Friday, May 2, 2008

Kindling Words West, incredible illustrator

Want a look at an exquisite illustrator's site? Check out Catia Chien's website. Her colors will make you all swimmy inside. You will tumble into her illustrations. And the emotion she conveys! How does she do that? Thanks to Katherine Tillotson (another so-beautiful-you-tumble-in illustrator) for the link.

I'm getting ready to go off the Kindling Words West for a week of hanging out with other authors, getting inspired, looking at my writing in a whole new way (no pressure.) We start the retreat with a visit to Ten Thousand Waves for a communal public hot tub Japanese style, under the amazing New Mexico night sky. Then off for a week of encouraging, challenging talks by the funny and wonderful Tim Wynne Jones, and lots of time tucked away in our writing rooms at Ghost Ranch.