Morale is about 0 right now. Ugly church meeting last night was ugly. Considering wearing a Christians for Christ shirt to church, just to sort of remind people about, you know, religion, which you wouldn’t suppose they’d need reminding about, but there you go.
And THIS, ladies and gentlemen, is supposed to be the liberal brand of Christianity. Gotta wonder what the conservative brand is like. I am liking your Christianity, yes, but I am not much liking your Christians.
***
But we don’t need to wallow in this mud. Let’s talk about Kidlitcon instead!
I went to Kidlitcon on a whim. I saw it flash by on Twitter courtesy of Flux, and looked into it. A joint effort from Flux, Milkweed, and Lerner, it was held at the Open Book in Minneapolis.
I was also interested in going because Maggie Stiefvater was the keynote. EVERY time I meet Maggie, she impresses me with her absolute coolness, being a real person in spite of the well-deserved praise of her writing. Yes, she can write, and she’s not drinking the kool-aid. Her journal is upbeat and positive, and her talk was as informative and useful as her entries. I also met the other two Fates: Tessa Gratton for the first time in real life, and Brenna Yovanoff, whose latest book I had the opportunity to buy and get autographed. They looked like they had a lovely, Fate-y time.
Brenna and Tessa were talking up a book called Split by Swati Avasthi. It is a book about what happens AFTER domestic abuse. Needless to say, that’s been moved up on my list, and you can expect a report.
***
We enter the educational part of the morning.
I sat in on a platform panel, and discovered Mark served me very well by helping me set up on WordPress. There was a lot of conversation about promotional techniques, as well as a very interesting panel about what publicists at various companies do to connect with bloggers and book reviewers. There was a panel about a middle grade site that had just started up, and panels about some of the places you want to go in the kidlit blogosphere.
I had nice snippets of conversation with Brian Farrey at Flux, especially since he and his compatriots worked so hard on organizing the conference.
***
The afternoon I spent with Caroline. It’s always great to talk about projects and otherwise with her. She had a really interesting story about a recent publicity event, and we talked about Elizabeth Moon, among other things.
The day rounded out with two YA authors reading from their works and dinner at the Town Hall Brewery. I met a few new folks: Marcia Lerner, who was kind enough to chat with me about traveling in Norway; Anne Torkelson, PR professional and dinner companion; Gretchen Schreiber, a film student and future author; and Laura from Harper Collins, who regaled us with geek out stories during our meal.
I learned a lot. I learned that there isn’t so much overlap between the children’s lit world and the “adult” lit world. I learned that there’s a crowd of very smart bloggers out there who care about kid’s books. It was a good time, and I might well do it again if it were near by.
Catherine
Sending smiles and hugs. Yeah, dealt with that (the church stuff) growing up. Strangely, I don’t feel any desire to belong to a church these days.
But it’s always good to hobknob with other writers. Going to do that this weekend at World Fantasy. I’ll heft a beer in your honor.
I appreciate the beer heft. I’d love to be there to see you, among others. I’ll be very interested to hear what you think of it.
I hope you come back with an angent and a book deal. 🙂
Catherine
From your lips to PNH’s ears. 🙂 Or any of the other fine editors’ ears and any of the houses (large and small).