Diana Renn

Mysteries that Matter

Author

Notes from Seattle, Part 3

by | Jul 30, 2012 | Apocalypsies, author events, Barnes and Noble, Edmonds Bookshop, Edmonds Sister City Commission, Marissa Meyer, Realm Lovejoy, Seattle authors, Seattle bookstores, Tokyo Heist, Tokyo Heist events

Today’s post will be hasty, as I’m writing to the soundtrack of Tom and Jerry cartoons. It’s breakfast time in our hotel room, and my 5-year-old and his dad are in full vacation mode. That means breakfast with Tom and Jerry on YouTube. Sigh. I’m not exactly a fan of this show. Partly because of the violence, and mostly because of the music, which makes me feel completely frantic. I don’t know about you, but I like to ease into my mornings, not start them with maniacal chase scenes.

Nevertheless. Tom and Jerry are generously giving me some blogging time, so I’ll wrap up my notes from the Seattle TOKYO HEIST tour before the cat catches the mouse! (For those of you who actually have leisure time to read . . . notes from Part 1 of my tour, if you missed them, can be found here. And Part 2 can be found here).

Saturday found me in the beautiful port town of Edmonds, just north of Seattle. Once again, a CSI team beat me to the bookstore! Here’s the creative storefront display at the Edmonds Bookshop:

The Edmonds Bookshop is a real gem, bursting with books and bustling with customers. The booksellers made me feel right at home, and the owner brought in a spread of sushi. I spent an hour chatting with customers about TOKYO HEIST, YA lit, mystery writing, and Japan.

I was thrilled to meet two ladies from the Edmonds Sister City Commission, both of whom had read the book. Edmonds, WA and Hekinan, Japan are sister cities, with a great exchange program for teens. I donated a book and some swag for their upcoming raffle, and they gave me this cool T-shirt (above). One of these women came in adorned in gorgeous contemporary clothing from Japan, including these awesome split toe shoes! She said they’re super comfortable. (If you’ve been following my footwear travails on the previous posts, you’ll know how much I want these!)

After Edmonds, my chauffeur husband, my personal assistant son and I raced, Tom and Jerry style, our feet spinning into blurs, over to the city of Bellevue, for my final book event on the tour.

At the Bellevue Barnes and Noble, I joined my fellow Seattle-area Apocalypsies J. Anderson Coats (The Wicked and the Just) and Marissa Burt (Storybound) to chat about our books. This was especially fun because the three of us had met in Bellevue for coffee at the beginning of our publication journey, about a year and a half ago when we all joined the Apocalypsies. Now we were all presenting together, our books complete at last!

This event had great turnout, despite competition from the huge Bellevue Arts Festival right next door and a street closure nearby. We had excellent audience participation for some fun activities, and excellent questions. I’ve been raving about indie bookstores on this tour, but I have to say, my experiences with Barnes and Noble — here and elsewhere — have also been extremely positive. Every B&N seems to have its own character, and they’ve all been welcoming and enthusiastic. They really do support teen fiction as well as debut authors.

With Marissa Meyer, author of Cinder

At this event, I got to meet two rock stars! One was fellow Apocalypsie Marissa Meyer (author of Cinder) who showed up for a little shopping! Hey, look what she bought!

And . . . I met Realm Lovejoy! Realm’s one of the four artists who did an illustration based on Tokyo Heist, which I displayed here on my blog last month. She’s also an agented YA writer, and I’m hoping her book sells soon and I’ll be seeing HER present at Barnes and Noble. (And if you want to look back at my interview with Realm and her artwork inspired by the novel, you can find that here).

Thanks for reading my Seattle dispatches and book tour notes!

I hear an anvil dropping . . . I’m off to catch the tail end of Tom and Jerry with my son! 

With artist/writer Realm Lovejoy

Word for Teens Guest Post and TOKYO HEIST Giveaway

by | Dec 12, 2011 | Apocalypsies, December Debuts, Tokyo Heist, Tokyo Heist ARC giveaway, Word for Teens

Today I’m guest posting at a really fabulous blog called Word for Teens. I’m talking about Japan and giving away an ARC of TOKYO HEIST! Drop by if you can, and be sure to check out the “December Debuts” features all this month for sneak peaks of great YA titles coming out in 2012. Many of my fellow Apocalypsies will be featured on Word For Teens between now and December 31. There are interviews, guest posts, and giveaways galore! Many thanks to Nicole for hosting me today and for showcasing so many forthcoming books.

An interview with Sheela Chari

by | Jul 26, 2011 | Apocalypsies, Elevensies, Sheela Chari, Vanished

One of the great things about being a member of the Apocalypsies (a group of kidlit authors with 2012 debuts) is the chance to get the inside story on the Elevensies and their 2011 debuts. We each interview an Elevensie around the time of their book release date. I had the pleasure of interviewing Sheela Chari, author the middle grade mystery VANISHED (Disney/Hyperion). I also had the pleasure of reading VANISHED before it hit the stores today, and I absolutely loved this book.

Sheela’s a great writer, and has lots of wisdom about writing mysteries and writing for kids. My favorite quote: “Writing middle grade is like coming home after a long journey.”

Please pop by the Apocalypsies site to check out my interview with Sheela, and join me in wishing her a happy book birthday today!

NESCBWI 2011: A gem of a conference!

by | May 16, 2011 | Apocalypsies, conferences, NESCBWI, SCBWI

Spring brings showers — for me, showers of new information and new friends and contacts. It’s conference season, the time of year I like to put on actual clothes (as opposed to the pajamas I work in most days) and emerge from my cave. In years past, I attended teacher’s and textbook writer’s conferences; now, on a hiatus from teaching, I try to attend more events for creative writers. Earlier this month I attended Grub Street’s Muse and the Marketplace, and this weekend I went to the NESCBWI conference for the first time.

I’m relatively new to SCBWI (the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) and completely new to NESCBWI (the New England chapter). Why did I wait so long to join this amazing organization? I don’t know. Maybe I just found the acronym intimidating, or had trouble typing and saying it. Now, after this weekend, it rolls off my tongue. I cannot say enough wonderful things about this group. It was exciting to spend the weekend in the company of 500+ attendees who are all passionate about children’s fiction.

I could only attend two out of three days, due to a schedule conflict with a taiko drumming performance I was in (more on that later this week) and a desire to not completely abandon my child all weekend. Not staying on site also meant an hour’s commute to Fitchburg each way. But my long hours on the road were completely worth it. Highlights included:

  • A workshop with Janet Fox on “Elusive Elision” — deciding when to hold back and when to reveal — a craft issue I thought about a lot during my last novel revision. Extremely useful. 
  • A workshop with Susan Raab on promotion strategies and finding your marketing voice.
  • A panel discussion with Tony Abbott, Elise Broach, and Nora Baskin on sustaining a long-term career as a children’s author.
  • A sparkling discussion on multicultural fiction, with authors and illustrators of picture books, MG books, and YA books.

I also met up with four fellow Apocalypsies (2012 kidlit debut authors) for lots of shop-talk, and greatly enjoyed getting to know them in person. Email’s great and all, but there’s no substitute for a good old-fashioned face-to-face conversation. And it’s always so great to meet other writers and hear about where they are on this journey.

There are lots of good people working hard to write and sell top-notch books for children. The seriousness of attendees struck me the most. Yes, we’re all writing for children, and maybe (I thought, on occasion) we could lighten up at times. But I think we all have this great hunger for information on craft and promotion. When we get to a conference like this, we’re greedy. We don’t want to waste a minute. We want to write great books. We want to get them into the hands of readers. It’s a fun job, and a serious business.

I’ll be back next year at this gem of a conference, hopefully presenting with some colleagues!