The Sacred Scars manuscript, a hundred and seventy pages longer than Skin Hunger, is off to the copyeditor. I will see it twice more as the editorial process continues, and will change a few things, because I can never read anything I have written without revising--but the book is almost finished and will be released Fall 2009. I feel like I have just gotten back from a long, harrowing trip, a twenty hour flight, amazed to be alive. I have no idea what to do with myself.

The artists who worked on Skin Hunger have provided art for Scared Scars. Cover art copyright David Ho (Thanks David!)Interior art, Sheila Rayyan (Thank you, Sheila

final revisions, sequestering, thanks

This is the Paris Ministry of Culture. The facade is like lace-- rigid, metal, architectural, lace. In a shifted form, it made the transition from reality to fiction recently.

click to enlarge, to see the pattern...

The Sacred Scars final revision began at 6am this morning. A thousand thanks to everyone who has written to me about Skin Hunger. Encouragment: literally, "the act of transmitting courage" is something most writers need now and then....

And now, into the cliffs...I will be there awhile.

Inheritance:

I just finished a kitchen chore; the way I do it is incredibly efficient. My mother, a farm girl during the depression, could squeeze more meals out of the contents of the pantry, the chicken coop, and the garden than anyone else I have ever met. She taught by example. My father and his brothers grew up in a 700 square foot house. They all three graduated from the Colorado School of Mines, by alternating--two in school--one out, working full time. They lived together in a shed up the hill from the old mill.

My parents are the reason I loved all the looney places I once lived-- fishermen's cabins, tipis, adobes, old trailers, most without electricity, some without running water. If times get tougher, I will be more prepared than most of my friends.

Watching the debates, I was thinking about my parents, and when I came into my office to continue the revision of Sacred Scars, I realized why. Hahp and the other boys were raised in luxury by people who had been raised the same way. All but Gerrard. And that makes all the difference just now. Necessity is a great teacher.

The picture is a wall in Modena, Italy, the backside of a restaurant with a strip-mall-esque bricked, modern frontside. Limori is full of buildings look like this wall: A long history, in layers. One of them is an unfinished stone monstrosity begun by the last king before the magistrates took over. It is shrinking now, as people find ways to carry off the stones.

Grampa Joe

These coat hooks hung in the flour mill that my grandfather opened in Golden, Colorado in about 1925. When bagged flour became common in grocery stores, the mill closed, then reopened as a feed store that served ranchers and poultry farmers and horse breeders for another 30 years. Millet, a common feed grain, is about the size of a ball bearing. Scattered evenly across 20-30 feet of a smooth cement floor, in an enormous room that provides a long approach run, it allows a child to slide/roll/fly/rocket along until she runs out of millet.

Yesterday, on a whim, I tested this general procedure using an old asphalt driveway and a zillion pea-sized drought-year- olives that had fallen from the trees that overhang it. It worked. And it reminded me of these hooks, now on the back of my office door. So they hold Sadima's old shawl now. And her new keys.

Getting down to it....

The ending(s) of Sacred Scars are coming together. Sadima's story is nearly finished. Hahp's has a little farther to go. He is still alive and I am hoping...

Thomas Marsham's passage

It took me an hour to find this image in my files. I remembered it, the arches, the various colors of stone and brick, the proximity of ancient and modern. It is the place where Sadima is shivering, standing straight. She is becoming something I never expected, but completely understand.

I am going to be adrift and weird when I am finished with this book, which will be soon. I will have to start the third one asap.



This is Volubilis, the southernmost Roman outpost. The restored arch (brick) frames the original Roman construction beyond it. Soliders lived here. Click to enlarge.

Interviews

Susan Raab, author of An Author's Guide to Children's Book Promotion, and book publicist has interviewed 16 people for Teachers for a New Era, a project supported by the Carnegie, Ford and Annenberg foundations, intended for student use at the University of Connecticut. She grabbed me in the aisle at the Bologna rights fair last spring and was kind enough to include me. Susan is a great interviewer. She somehow encourages you to examine your own thinking, and draws out what you believe in, too. She asks good questions, but way more than that, she listens so intently that you forget the tape recorder is on. Among the 16 interviews there are writers, artists, reviewers, and more, from all over the world....

Here are the: interviews

WRITERS: If you have limited time, please start with Leonard Marcus. His books and this interview are a gift to everyone who cares about and wants to understand the birth, history, and current direction of American children's books--both the art and the business--and a quick look at what is happening internationally. He is also one of the nicest people on the planet.

ILLUSTRATORS: Don't miss the wonderful Marla Frazee whose work is amazing and who somehow turns an interview into an inspirational class session--as well as a very personal exploration of her own love of picture books.

exits and traps

This image is from Morocco. It's also in South End, Limori, one of the exit-alleys, lined with vendors and kiosks. It eventually leads away from the ale houses and the sailors and the squalor, back to cleaner, better parts of the city. It's one of the alleys that Sadina cannot walk. She just can't.

I realized something this morning:

It's weird how much of every book is autobiography. Oblique, maybe, but true, true, true...

payingwriterjobs: filling the gaps

I have used this list off and on for years whenever publishers take six months to produce a contract that *still* needs minor amending, then another two months to write the check--or when they cancel a project because marketing was really hoping for something that would work with lavender glitter and a charm bracelet--or when an editor changes houses and the new one isn't really interested in historicals just now--or B&N decides they won't stock the next of a series so acquiring more titles is no longer of interest...etc, etc, etc....
Let's just not go into why I am suddenly reminded of its usefulness...
But it has saved me, and my bank account, a number of times.


The Official Rules:

This is a mailing list for PAYING writer and editor jobs. It can be Freelance, Staff, Contract, or Permanent, but must PAY. No work for free or chit-chat allowed. This is primarily a network for writers and editors who are looking for work and editors who are looking for professional writers. This is a moderated list, which means the owner approves of all postings.

My Version:

Payingwriterjobs is a group-generated listing of paying jobs for writers. No chit-chat, no communication between contributors, no nurturing, no writing advice, NO guarantees about the jobs listed. It isn't a list for beginners--but many beginners in one field of writing are professionals in another. The list assumes that professionalism: each writer will do his/her own research on any work offered on the list and be smart enough not to apply for work she/he doesn't know how to do. The purpose is to match professional writers with real jobs. Members are expected to contribute to the listings now and then by searching the internet for relevant postings--craigslist, industry rags, whatever. There is a moderator. To reiterate: NO ONE is guaranteeing anything to those who use the list.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PayingWriterJobs/

writing about writing about writing

Just a quick note to say I am asking writers to respond to this:

The hardest thing about writing is....

Your answers will help shape the book about writing that I am slowly compiling. I want it to be truly useful--or what's the point? Two lists have already given some great responses. I hope to get many more. The answer can be about any aspect of the endeavor: craft, time management, how you enter "the trance", art vs commerce, character control (or not), writing through personal crises, the business end of writing, your mother in law's insistence that it's a cute hobby as long as your house stays nice (oh, no, wait, that was me, years ago)...and whatever else stands between you and writing a brilliant book.

Anyone so moved can certainly answer it here. Anyone preferring privacy can email me at kathleen at kathleenduey.com

Thanks for writing, for leaving your work for family, friends, and readers to enjoy, thanks for saving literacy.

The Tannery

This tannery/leather dyeing enterprise is 400 years old. It is a family-run business in Morroco. When you ask to be shown around a little, one of the kids will lead you up long narrow steps to the rooftop, and give you a sprig of mint to hold under your nose. It doesn't help.

There is a tannery in Limori's South-End, too. It is guarded by a vicious dog. He is Sadima's very first friend.

click the picture....

J

fantasy writers--read this list

Excerpted from Sharyn November’s summer 2008 article for Locus magazine:

“I took a quick, informal poll of my bookseller and librarian friends and offer it as an anecdotal request: They are tired of faeries, werewolves and other shapeshifters, vampires, dragons, the Greek gods, trilogies, pirates, zombies, teen superheroes, the teenage Evil Genius, any kind of boarding school setting, “mean girls”, underground cities, (especially New York or London), the Victorians, the Male Chosen One (any genre) and retold fairy tales." Sharyn November, Locus YA issue, 2008 **see also below**

Since this list reinforced what I thought/feared must be true by now, I asked permission to post it. Sharyn said: "....please do add that all of those rules go out the window when something is wonderfully written. "

**below**
Writing me to inform me of a spelling error (ok 2 errors), she adds: "... knock-off urban fantasy and anything triggered by a tattoo."

So, writers, that's the assignment: Fresh fantasy ideas would be very welcome. Wonderful writing always is.

sacred scars update, quick and done

Jux has survived, a homeless, familyless child in a starving city with cobblestone streets and an inept king. He has loved only one person, and she is in terrible trouble.

Sadima is running, sobbing in each breath, too terrified to even look back.

.

Hahp is standing before a wall of stone, shaking, knowing he must walk through it, knowing what it will do to him.

.

This is a ceiling from a Paris renovation of an historic building. Standing beneath it, I thought about massive wealth, the options it brings, the art that money midwives. Somiss's mother has ceilings like this, painted, with gold leaf on the rosettes.








Adding this on June 2, 2011:  Updates on the third book in progress can be found here:
http://kathleenduey.blogspot.com/2011/05/writing-updates-all-projects-2.html

the woman through the window

This bronze is in a gallery in Paris.

I stared at it through the window, walked by twice, hoping the shop would open. When it did, they let me photograph it, and others...I have better pics from inside the shop. But it was this window-glare-muted-first-glimpse-image that sparked a book idea that is just growing in my head like strangler vine at the edge of the garden.

The artist: Dirk De Keyzer has many more wonderful bronzes.

the trees, the trees, the trees....

Trees are everywhere in my world. Yours, too. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the Bodhi tree which shaded Buddah's enlightenment, the Christmas trees, my father's fruit orchards, my screwy Scotch-Irish family tree, the silk oaks, pindo palms, beaucarneas ,and bananas outside my door. The pine trees I grew up with in Colorado and the pine forest where Sadima is hiding. I will be with her there all day, but first...

.

.

This is a baobab tree on Oahu, in a botanical garden. Lynne Wikoff was kind enough to provide contrast in scale. It was amazing to just stand there and look up. This is a smallish Baobab. This is a big one, in Africa, their home. I have a baby baobab. My son started it from seed. It's about six inches tall in a four inch pot. Amazing.

teachertube

My friend Katie Davis has a great interview up on her blog, about her new book. Take a look!
In the interview, she mentions teachertube.
Wandering around there, I came across this slide show, basically, of statistics.
Sigh.
I am writing something called Free Rat. Well, I will be writing it as soon as I turn in Sacred Scars and a few other things. And it is about the future the slide show describes, the connectivity implied. I thought I was exaggerating.

Guess not.

research: Mmm...mmm, good!

I have written over forty historical novels for middle grade readers. Research is an old friend, a good friend, and I employ all its tricks and tools to enrich my fantasy novels. Two great sources:

http://www.bookfinder.com/
which links thousands of small rare and used bookstores
(and a few large ones)

and
http://www.uidaho.edu/special-collections/Other.Repositories.html
The University of Idaho maintains a massive, worldwide list of primary source repositories. I have used it extensively; it's remarkable.
Primary sources are diaries, old newspapers, rent receipts from the 1800's, illuminated manuscripts for the 1200s, any kind of record left behind by real people. Fascinating!

Book-building, again

Fez, Morocco: South-End, Limori
South-End is a dockside slum in Limori, the city where my novel Sacred Scars takes place. This is the second in a trilogy, and the first title (Skin Hunger) took place in the largest part of Limori, the center, with Market Square and the public wells , where most of the shops are.

Limori rises like this, from a bay. The buildings are like this, old, jumbled, brick and mud. Limori has a second, higher hill--Ferrin Hill--that is visible in from the highest parts of South-End as line of tree-covered foothills that shelter the mansions of the wealthy. And beyond that are the black cliffs at the north end of the city.

South-End is where the ships come in with all kinds of goods. Hahp's father's fleet has made a fortune.
Sadima is there now. I am so worried about her. Inside the stone cliffs, Franklin is frantic, torn, caving in on himself. In those same cliffs, 200 years later, Hahp is fighting for his sanity, his life. Gerrard's secrets are keeping them both alive.

And I must go back to work.

If you enlarge the picture, you will get a real sense South End. The piles of stuff in the foreground are heaps of sheep skins. Fez is a tannery town, the home of the worlds oldest university and a thousand other interesting things. Look closer. On the thousand-year-old brick and adobe-wash buildings--there are hundreds of satellite dishes. The King provides internet access.

Back from ALA, back to work

My camera died. So this picture was taken in the Emirates, but it is the same variety of palm that lines the walkways of the Anaheim Convention Center where ALA was held this year. They are 40 or 50 feet tall and truly magnificent.
.
I saw lots of friends. LOTS. I love writers--they are generous and kind and funny: All good things. My signing was great and encouraging--a lot of people came up to me with kind words about my books, and I feel very ready to get back to work on Sacred Scars. Before I went I was wussing out on a tough scene. I can write it now, I am sure.

The Newbery/Caldecott acceptance speeches were incredible, just-flat-out, goosebumps great. I am so glad I went. I wasn't going to, but Ellen Hopkins had an extra ticket, so last minute, I did. Thanks Ellen!!
ALA rocks. Librarians will save the world if we just fund them well and get out of their way.