Manuscript into copy editor!!

It's a sheer pleasure to turn in a manuscript and have it go to copy editing. I know I've wrung every creative drop out of myself that I can, and it is someone else's turn to buff it up. Now I'm working on gathering photos with the designer. I just keep sending the amazing, wonderful photos I find, knowing he will be able to make sense of them, culling out the ones that aren't the best, alighting on ones I'd casually included, but thought were unimportant. (Note the theme here: someone else is hard at work on "my" book! This is actually true all the way along -- the editor has been hard at work, especially the last few months as we passed versions back and forth via email.)

I just had one of those lovely "ah-ha" moments where I discovered a great theme that I can weave into the book, mostly via the images. This makes me very excited. Because images can be so evocative, kids will get a feeling for this theme, a gut level reaction, and it will give them something to think/feel about. More on the details anon.

Meanwhile, I'm home with my cats, who want to lay across the keyboard, and be fed, not necessarily in that order. That's Coyote, un-creatively named for the coyote trap that caught her by the back leg and skinned off her fur when she was a barn cat long ago, before she was rescued by my sister, taken in by me, and mended by her own resilience. (The skin grew back, top to bottom, then the fur came in, top to bottom, except for a thin band around her ankle of shiny scar tissue where she just couldn't make fur anymore). She's a very sweet cat, big on eye contact with her tall, clumsy human companions, and not above an occasional swat at Blackberry, her neer-do-well son, whose tail you see above.

Welcome in the new year!

It sure feels like 2009. There is something about that first Monday after the first of the year. We had truly spectacular times with our family this year. Some of the best eating ever -- our boys had a bunch of their very best friends up to Mendocino (thirty, to be exact), and they spent the days collecting mussels from the Pacific and mushrooms from the woods and the last of the apples off the trees. We ate Candy Caps and Cauliflower mushrooms and even a lingering, hidden Boletus. The kitchen was a madhouse of cooks who made steamed mussels in broth and all kinds of mushrooms and apple pie. Lots of reading, resting, playing music by the fire, writing (last go-over on manuscript before editor pulls it from my hands and gets it to the copy editor) and watching the sun set over the ocean. Can you see the God's rays in this photo? Beautiful!

We finished off the celebrations with my husband's birthday party last night. Our son Will jumped in with both feet and showed us how to make a Vietnamese dinner. More madhouse chopping and sauteing and boiling and wrapping and then, finally, the delicious eating.

Couple of really cool articles to check out: Nina Lindsay is doing her mock Newbery discussion at the Oakland Library. This is a fantastic way to discuss books by the Newbery criteria. Nina has chaired the Newbery, is one really smart, well-read woman, and she writes incredible poetry as well. If you can't make it, at least try to check these books out from your library or pick up a copy at the book store. This is a compelling group of books.

Kerry Madden just got her first starred! review on her bio on Harper Lee and gave me a nice shout-out on her blog, Knoxville Girl.

And Roger, over at Read Roger flags a great article on the financial squeeze in the book biz. It's a fascinating, nail-biting-inducing article, Puttin' Off the Ritz: The New Austerity in Publishing in the New York Times.

That brings us back to 2009. Time to put on your work gloves. It may be an austere business, but it's our austere business.

Winter Gathering

Woke up to frost all around, sparkling and beautiful, on the grass and trees and glimmering on my strawberry plants.

Winter solstice here, once again. Had a holiday party Sunday night, with food and drink and caroling and lighting the menorah, all to drive back the dark, and glory in the cozy center in the depths of winter.

And before the cold could strike everything, we'd brought in the bounty of the back yard. The persimmons gathered, hung and drying, thanks to our son Felix. These ridiculously large squash, cut and stewed and pureed.





And flourishing in the garden, the sturdy, defiant Meyer's lemon tree, perseveres despite the cold.

Folk and blues singer Odetta dies

Last week, the astonishing folk singer Odetta died. There's a lovely review of her life in the New York Times... They title it "Odetta, voice of Civil Right Movement Dies at 77." Please scroll down on the NYT page to the video of a recent interview with her. She's already old, very old, for the interview, but when asked to sing, she closes her eyes, dips down her chin, and then, up with her chin and she sings... incredibly. Her voice is so percussive and rich. She is a big part of my family lore. When I was little, she came to visit us on the farm we lived on and my dad took astonishing photos of her. We often had her music playing.

As I've been writing books, she's been with me. A friend gave me a tape of her original recording at the Blue Angel in Sausalito. I worked my father's photo into my book on Woody Guthrie. And just two days ago, I wrote about her discovering Pete Seeger asleep in a big tent on the march they had both joined, Dr. King's Selma to Montgomery march for the vote in 1965.

There is lots of end-of-life joys and trials around me right now. My parents live about a mile away, and my mother is bed-bound, and on hospice. The great grace is that she is no pain. Our brother-in-law, Bernard, is very, very ill. He and my sister live with my parents. And in a separate apartment, our son Felix and his girlfriend live at the house. Felix gardens with my dad in the day (they have a ripping garden full of winter vegies and two huge, homemade greenhouses), and goes upstairs to check on my mom every evening, taking his guitar and singing songs to her. Today Felix called me from his cell phone. He and Sasha were just taking a walk in the Mountain View cemetery nearby, and he wanted to know where the family plot was.

Dying can involve a whole family, the sadness and hopeless waiting and caretaking and beautiful, unexpected moments of grace in it all.

NCTE photos

Run right over to Laurie Halse Anderson's blog for terrific photos of NCTE/ALAN authors. I knew I'd find good photos soon!

Thanks so much, Laurie!

NCTE San Antonio, financial melt down in publishing

Just back from San Antonio, and the exhilaration of NCTE, National Council of Teachers of English. I did a panel with some fantastic non-fiction children's writers: Marc Aronson, (very cool blog on School Library Journal) Tanya Bolden, and Tanya Stone. Great writers, highly opinionated. Fast-paced discussion about how we work, how to use our books in the classroom, all moderated by Teri Lesesne, who managed to keep us all on track!

Of course, the one thing I forgot to pack was my camera. So I don't have any pictures to show. But spirits were high as I rambled around the floor.

But I think everyone was wondering what NCTE would be like next year with the financial melt down that is going on. Want some info and ideas what you can do? Zip over to Editorial Ass today to check out her blog on what's happening in the publishing industry and how each of us can do one. small. random. act. of. kindness. to keep the kettle boiling. She's an amazing blogger, an editor who writes beautifully and with heart and lots of info. I always love her posts.

Selma Alabama and Obama's unsung heros

This week I've been in Alabama interviewing people who were children and young adults on the 1965 civil rights march for the vote. These people are some of the unsung heros Obama praised in his presidential acceptance speech ("and on a bridge in Selma..."). They marched and sang and were beaten and jailed. Released, they went out and marched again. Their courage provided the news coverage to outrage Americans and give President Johnson the power to get the Voting Rights Act through Congress.

On Tuesday November 4th I was in Selma. It was a historic day to be waiting to hear the outcome of our election. People excited, anxious, hopeful.

Getting out the vote, in the original get-out-the-vote town.

At eight pm I joined a silent candlelit vigil walking across the Pettus Bridge. Faces beautiful in the flickering candlelight. We gathered at the foot of the bridge in a circle, moving in together as Amelia Boynton, in her 90's, walked to the center to share her memories. On the original Bloody Sunday march in 1965 she was struck down by the sheriff's posse and lay by the side of the road in a swirling mist of tear gas.

Check out this wonderful photo taken by Rene Johnston of the Toronto Star:

http://www.thestar.com/fpLarge/photo/530676

We listened, quiet and hushed. Suddenly someone called out: "Obama's taken Pennsylvania!" People yelled and cheered and wept and we clambered back across the bridge, noisy and relieved and joyous.