At last, Russet has his own blog:

http://russet-one-wing.blogspot.com/

It's a twitter novel. He talks, I type. (Yes,that is a little weird.)

((Writing is a little weird.))

Phone-chatting with a YA librarian yesterday, I explained the uneven rhythm of work that rules my life and sometimes consumes me--and I apologized for not being able to talk. She made an odd whooping noise. It startled me into taking the phone off my ear and staring at it for an instant. Then I listened again, catching her midsentence. "...wonderful! I'll tell the kids more books are hatching."

Yes. Exactly. I am setting eggs.

Russett: a Twitter Novel, is updated almost daily:

http://russet-one-wing.blogspot.com/

((It's kind of amazing, I think, how well the little bursts work.))

An update, of all things

Here's the scoop.

Garden, mostly planted, weeds, mas o menos under control.

The second Faeries Promise book is mostly written--another week or so.

Sacred Scars needs a few more hours in response to the final copy edit and it's off to production.

Russet (see post below) is ongoing and absorbing. I usually write fast and furious, but this is totally without a net and I can't explain how great that feels. How real.

Free Rat is stalled, but it won't stay that way. The science is burgeoning. My premise becomes more and more probable.

STAYS is growing into a great book. Should have the first 60 or so pages together by month's end.

The Unicorn short story (currently titled The Third Virgin) is lined up for revision...is all marked up with notes from my amazing editors' astute comments.

What else. Oh, a new thing, at the talking stages with my oldest and dearest friend. We spent a couple hours Monday walking in long circles in my little town, talking into my dinky digicorder, laughing like loons, doing the writers'-speed-flash-concept-brain-party thing. We have a *great* idea.

Back to work.

Russet: It's a book, I am almost sure. A book in 140 character bites.

Russet:

Here's a catch-up, with the tweets in order. It's turning into a book. I expect it will take a year or so. It's a few tweets per day... when Russet feels safe enough to update me. Anyone wanting to get Russet's story from the beginning, in order, can start   HERE

reading the future

Elizabeth Delumba and others are writing about the future of books and reading today here

In 2007, Simon & Schuster asked me to write about why I had begun writing, to talk about books I had read, other influences—they wanted text they could use in a trifold hand-out for teachers and librarians. After a few days of turning out drafts lauding favorite teachers and naming novels and picture books that had inspired me, I suddenly remembered the real reason. And so I wrote this…

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Colorado, fourth grade, morning recess:
It was a clear-blue winter day with one of those buffeting prairie winds that flattens the wheat fields before it bashes into the Rocky Mountains. We were indoors, desks in a circle, listening to the windows rattle. Then Mrs. Fredericksen began to read a story. It was about small town kids.

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Usually, I closed my eyes, but that day I watched faces. One by one my classmates looked dreamy. Then, in unison, we were irritated at a mean city kid in the story. He had just moved in, and we were all angry when he stuffed snowballs down kids’ shirts and made up insulting nicknames.

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When he was invited to go sledding—and the kids he had picked on ditched him in the woods—we all smiled. He deserved it. But when they circled back to find him, they couldn’t. It was late afternoon in the story—night would bring bitter cold.
I glanced around the circle. The whole fourth grade looked worried.

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In the story, the kids ran for help. The sheriff didn’t scold them. He hit the volunteer fire siren. The kids sprinted for the grange hall to lead the volunteers. Hundreds of people came, wearing parkas and snow boots. They walked through the pine trees in lines, twenty feet between the searchers, all of them calling, going slow, looking into thickets and behind boulders.

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We were all leaning forward in our desks. What if the mean kid was hurt? What if they didn’t find him? But finally, in the deep dusk, the boy was found. And he was all right, just scared and cold. I sat back in my chair along with everyone else—relieved, still listening to the story as apologies were traded, and the cold, tired volunteers headed home.

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I slowly came back into myself, back into the classroom. We were all still a little breathless from running for help, being scared that a prank we had laughed at was going to turn into something terrible. And we were all proud of those kids and that little town—it was so much like our own.
And it suddenly seemed like magic to me, how a story could turn plain words into feelings. Anger, worry, fear, relief—everyone in the classroom had felt all of that and more. All at once, all of us.

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Then Mrs. Fredericksen told us a little about the author—and I was changed forever. I had never once wondered about the people who wrote the stories I loved. That night, listening to the wind, I lay awake thinking. People wrote books? The next day, I started writing. I have never stopped.

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There were three happy years in that three-room school house. It had been built almost a hundred years before the day Mrs. Fredericksen read the story about the bully. The building had been planted, red-brick solid, on the edge of what later became a wheat field on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. It was a piece of history. It still had a hitching rail. People had been fighting to close it for a decade or two before I went there, because it lacked modern teaching aids. My class was the last to use it. It is a museum now.

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The book that made me want to write was a book: Paper and ink and pasteboard. Remembering Mrs. Fredericksen’s wonderful, changeful, reading voice, her insistence that I write a story a week (no one else, just me), the smell of the classroom, the Colorado snowstorms—it was astonishing how clear all the memories around that small-town story were for me.

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I closed my eyes and I could see the book in Mrs. Fredericksen’s hands, the angel-wing double curve of the spine and deckled pages. And I suddenly realized I hadn’t read the story about the bully. I had absorbed it via the oldest story-delivery system of all: Voice.
I sat, staring at the text on the monitor before me, wondering if the delivery system mattered. I wrote my thoughts and kept typing, watching words pile up on a screen using technology I didn’t begin to understand.
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Everything is changing. Some of my books are becoming e-books. And while most of my work is with Simon and Schuster and Penguin Group, I will soon write a story for a small company with a commercial space on itunes—where the stories will be downloaded. I work with another small company producing traditional looking baby-animal storybooks that come with a DVD of wildlife footage narrated by a child actor reading a script I have written, extending the character the child has met in the storybook . In the sleeve with the DVD is a secret pass code that opens a website with reading–readiness games based on the animal and its habitat. It’s huge fun to see kids’ reaction to the various elements of the story.
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I am old enough to wish things would slow down a little—but I don’t wish that. I am excited by the possibilities and all the ways readers can get their stories. I’m on Face Book, MySpace, I keep a blog, and I am writing a twitter novel—a real story in 140 character bursts. It will take a year or more.
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This year is busy. I'm chest-deep in a collaboration that includes a visual voice along with the words—not illustration, voice. My fantasy trilogy has two protagonists, the stories going back and forth every other chapter—two hundred years between the stories. It’s a complex and interesting thing and I am enjoying the reactions of readers raised with the flickering alertness of screen culture. Whoohoo! The media are mixing. Haven't the separations always seemed artificial and limiting?

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I agree with others that bundling versions of the story—book, ebook, audiobook, and download and other methods yet to be discovered—is likely in the near future. The story-delivery system doesn’t seem to matter.
Stories can be serious, silly, erudite, stupid, inspiring, spooky, discomfiting, affirming, illustrated, designed, storyboarded, filmed, read on an e-reader, absorbed through earbuds, sung, recited by parrots, broadcast through a system of routers aimed at the skulls of future students who will take them in, whole, and glance at each other, ready to discuss.
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Every story-delivery method will enhance something and lose something. Each story will touch some so deeply they never come all the way back, leave some cold, make some think, convince others the author is nuts, or brilliant, cruel... And ten years later, many will find they have different opinions of the same work when they re-listen, re-beam, re-absorb, re-whatever the story. Just as they do now when they reread.

This isn’t new.
Artists are just being handed new tools.

YAY! Let the fun begin.
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PS:
I don’t have a Kindle. Yet.

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I travel a lot and I hate lugging books. I am acclimated to reading on screens. So I am considering it. The biggest drawback will be not buying books from my local stores. And by local, I mean independent.

We need to figure that one out, and maybe the bundling of story versions will work. I hope so.

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Having only McBooks’ franchises is a very bad idea. So are underfunded libraries. Narrowing choices will hurt literacy and America and the world and humanity. So as we all wallow happily in new ways to get our story on—we just need to make sure there are LOTS of stories available. Saving a little money short-term, even now, is not worth the risk of waking up to the morning the last independent bookstore closes its doors.

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Paris will get too crowded if we all have to move at once.

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Many more thoughts about about the future of reading will magically appear if you click here!

Russet and Twitter

Russet has been whispering in my ear for a long time. I have given him my twitter account. He is on his way to the beach now...not to have fun. To hide.

http://russet-one-wing.blogspot.com/

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Springmingle Tut-ness

There is nothing like a trip to a museum with a knowledgeable (and brilliant) friend-docent, hundreds of astounding Egyptian artifacts, canopic jars, statues--and the sudden ending of a sudden snow storm--to bring out the silly....

Twitter...

Twitter is a brilliant little thing.
It was designed to create good in-house communication in corporations. So if there were twenty people on the "gizmo publicity" team, once each hour, they tweeted things like: "revision of proposals finished" and "waiting for printer ink, but the guy says he'll come before lunch" and "meeting yielded better idea. shifting to direct mail efforts, send blurb suggestions" and so on.

People are using it now in various ways--mostly to check in with friends in quick little bursts. If you can imagine my life being interesting enough to follow, please do follow me, I am trying to be interesting. http://twitter.com/kathleenduey
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But I am considering something else. I do not now, nor have I ever "invented" book characters. I have always more or less channeled them. They have to line up, though, because books take a very long time to write. There is one who is way down the list for having a whole book written about him. He is wildly unhappy about this. Since I am always interested in getting myself out of the way of the people I write about, I will see if he would consider surfacing sooner than later--in short little twitter-sized notes.

If it happens, I will announce it here, there, everywhere....and he can tweet instead of me. Trust me, his life is incredibly interesting.
we'll just see....


k

Finishing....

There is no writer-high like the one that comes when something is finished, off your desk--at least until someone throws it back for revisions...

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh............

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enlarging this one, you can

see that the tree blooms first,

before it puts out leaves.

It has a thorned trunk and

can grow to 60' tall.

It's about 20 tall now...

still a third-grader...

time? what time?

FaceBook, MySpace, MySpace Blog, Website, Writerwriterwrtier (blog), WRITE (blog), Twitter, Email, phone, and life.

And writing. I have five projects on deck.

If I don't answer your emails quickly, or sadly, maybe ever, it is not because I don't want to. It's because I can't find time. It means everything to me that readers write me. I just can't keep up, unless I give up writing. And that would make no sense at all. So please don't write me angry emails. The books that say I will answer every email were printed almost ten years ago, when it was true. I still do my best to answer them, and every single one makes me smile and write better. I just can't keep up.

Baby animals....

In the moments between my novels, I have been writing these. Each one is a beautifully illustrated picturebook , based on current research. The story is told from the viewpoint of a baby wild animal.

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Inside the cover, there is a DVD of BBC wildlife footage with a child actor voicing the baby animal, guiding kids though a typical day in in his/her life.

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The footage is scored with both natural sounds from the animals and their habitat, and original music that kids can sing along with. There's a set of "fun facts", too.

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On on the DVD case is a key code for the MAF Kids' Club website. When a child enters each book's code, a new section of the website opens. All are full of games for kids 3-6, each one based on that animal and its habitat. Many of the games are reading readiness games. Each child chooses, dresses and equips an avatar. Points are earned and can be used to buy adventure "gear" that allows kids to cross rivers, use binoculars to see the animals in the distance, play their own choice of music as they explore the habitatand more. Every navigation link is voiced for prereaders. The games span a wide range of abilities.

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It's a Stealth Literacy, multi-media three-fer: Book, Video, Website. There are four books available now, Ella, Leo, Korow, and Nanuq. Tahi (Dolphin) and Suluka (Snow Goose) are coming soon. The key-code in each book opens a new section of the website.

You can find or order the books through wonderful, local, independent bookstores, B&N, Borders, Amazon, and on the series website: http://www.mafkidsclub.com/

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The team:

Executive Producers: Ron Berry and John Christianson

Artist: Lara Gurin

Art Director and Book Designer: Eugene Epstein

Writer and Creative Director: Kathleen Duey

Vidiographer: Stephanie Carlson

Composer and Sound Artist: George Fogelman

Website Wizards: Caleb Gray and Wes Gray

Credits for individual voice actors are listed in each book.

Thorns.

This is a euphorbia:
Astounding thorns, poisonous sap. It is from a land of tenacious razor-toothed grazers and so makes no apologies about any of this.

I wrote some thorns into a scene in STAYS a while ago. They aren't the focus, just a background touch, but doing the initial rewrites, I noticed them again. I wrote a poem yesterday--first poem in a while. It felt nice.

Free Rat, Stays, Unicorn Untitled, The Virgin's Blood, Wishes

These are my current projects.

One is a film-book idea, one a short story, the rest novels. All but Wish, for 2-4th graders, are YA. One include two voices, one art, one text, one a development situation with an agent who will look at early work and contribute, the rest with my beloved literary agent.

I am working long days now, knowing that in about a month I will be starting the last book in my Resurrection of Magic trilogy. They are complex books: two stories go back and forth every other chapter, taking place about two hundred years apart (though that gap is closing). The first story causes the second one. There are two equally weighted protagonists, both in the same place--which has changed over time, of course. So, once I begin it...it consumes me.

Before I am consumed, I want to have a killer-diller partial book/complete synopsis of STAYS (which is shaping up to be *really* interesting) A good summary-start on Free Rat, which is fascinating as it grows, a finished Faeries Promise: Wish, a completed Unicorn Untitled, and a few chapters and synopsis of A Virgin's Blood. So I won't be posting as often for a bit...

That odd little thing is starting to happen to me again. I think about how upset a character will be when they find out another character is hurt, then remember they are in separate books. Or are they?

TEEN INK

My friend Sonya Sones, (Lovely person and fabulous poet/verse novelist) is judging a fun, teen writing contest. Entries will continue the story in her new book, What My Girlfriend Doesn't Know. Go check out all the rules and instructions. Here are the basic rules. To qualify you must state (truthfuly!!):

That you are the author of the entry
That you are 13 to 18 years of age on the date of entry
That the work(s) is/are original and unpublished
That you agree to the rules of the competition (details on the link above)
That you are entering only one work to the competition
All entries must be received by 11:59PM EST on April 3, 2009, the contest deadline. Limit one entry per person. Keep it short but sweet - no more than 1,500 words or ten pages

Have fun and good luck if you enter.....!!!

FREE RAT

Coming in for a landing, I think.

After wrestling with the Free Rat story for...years...
I think I have the basic plotline now.
How did I finally manage it? The truest thing is this: I finally got out of the way.

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This is Nashville TN from 15,000 ft.

Obama

President Obama has asked us all to do our best.

Martin Luther King said that if your job was washing floors, to make sure that you were the best floorwasher.

My mother said self respect is earned, not given. That has always made sense to me.

Whatever you do, do it well. Whatever you use, use less of it. Don't waste half of it--or any of it. The world can't afford its citizens to be foolish or asleep any longer. There are too many of us, too many problems and too much work at hand. I am inspired and encouraged and ready to work.

WINGS

If you ever read Sacred Scars, these are the cliffs, and this what Hahp did, with a very different sort of wingsuit. And oh, yes, he will do it again. Who wouldn't?


http://vimeo.com/1778399


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Looking forward to Feb!!!

I will be in Milwaukee for the Wisconsin Reading Association event Feb.4-7th. I look forward to speaking to educators, librarians and readers there. And seeing friends. They have a gazillion authors coming...

February 26-28 I will be in Altlanta to keynote the SCBWI spring conference. Session titles: "Art, Craft and Filthy Commerce" and "Bricks, Mist, Voices, and Heart - Tools to try".

I include the titles, because I like them. The last two speaking gigs have had terrible titles, truly lame, I have no idea what happened to my brain. Maybe the '08 travel extravaganza? The Sacred Scars dash-to-deadline? Whatever. Embarrassing.

After these two events, I will be locked in my office until May, for BEA in NYC...then nothing else until August. I have a lot of projects in the works this year and have to stay home and write until the release of Sacred Scars.

bumbling stupid day...

I rarely have completely useless writing days, but this was the perfect one. I have five projects in motion and none of them went anywhere. I give, I am off to do anything but sit here and try to write. Tomorrow will be better...

I cleaned a corner of my office yesterday and came across the National Book Award finalist medal that was given to me (such an amazing gift) in 2007. I am not sure I can explain what it meant to me. More than anything, the gift was a feeling that I really am a writer--that I really can write pretty well.

I finished Sacred Scars today--the copyedits, I mean, I am now free. It is the second book in a trilogy. Perhaps these characters will hush for a while, now, and I can think about other projects.

This picture was taken at one of the NBA award events--an auditorium in the New School in NYC, full of YA kids from all over the city.

Sarah Zarr and I are talking beneath the radar of the tall people all around us...left to right: Brian Selznick, me, Sherman Alexie, Sara Zarr, Sindy Felin