There's a Cow in My Bedroom and Other Changes

I'm in a motel in Wisconsin on my way to what is my first, almost vacation only travel in a few years. After being in the room for a couple of hours last night I looked up and there is a huge photo of two cows hanging above the desk. How did I miss that for two whole hours? They are very cute.

So that's the way I sometimes feel about ideas and stories. The most obvious things can be right in front of you and you never notice.Forty eight hours ago I was in Arkansas and a very savvy reading professor, Ken Stamatis, asked about my blog. I told him I had one but that lately (or mostly) I'm a very bad blogger. Bad blogger (slaps hand). I hadn't blogged for months. He pretty much made me promise to start up again, and here's where the cows come in, promise. He directed me toward a new audience - student readers and writers. Cows in my bedroom. No, I'm not saying students or teachers are cows, but that as a former teacher and professional writer, I hadn't thought of blogging for you. Now I am. So to my friends and professional writer friends, come along. Comment all you want. We are going to share tips, and daily insight (or not - ahem) and just what I'm doing to work on books and career with readers and writers. We are going to start a discussion on our own unique experiences and the stories they produce.

So today, my husband and I are driving to the Upper Penninsula of Michigan. My sister is excited because that's where Ernest Hemmingway spent many summers. I'm excited to meet up with our son. And today, after years of searching for it, we are going to visit my grandmother's grave. She died when my father was six and he had few memories of her. Only her name really. My grandfather, her husband suffered from dementia by the time I was old enough to remember him. I got no information from him. So after years of looking in old records and crawling around a few cemetaries in Wisconsin five years ago, last Tuesday I got an e-mail from a lovely woman in Oneida County with the location of the grave. Today, I'm taking flowers. I'm pretty sure no one has visited in at least thirty years - maybe in almost a hundred. What does this have to do with readers and writers?

The Point: My story ideas come from lots and lots of places, but the best ones are ideas that won't leave me alone - like finding some piece of this grandmother's life to hold onto. I've never seen a photo - they all burned in a fire a couple years after she died. With only her name, and this desire to know about her, I wrote a whole novel that started with the day she was buried (I didn't know where then) and I made the rest of it up. That novel isn't published but I hope someday a version of it will be. It's a story I love. It isn't true but it started with a little truth and an idea that I couldn't let go.

INVITATION: Teachers - if you are working on writing this year, why not have your class follow and comment on this blog? I'll try to include tips and ideas and a peek into the writers life and I'd love to hear from you and your class. Let the discussion begin!!

Win a Copy of Bull Rider

So - has it really been five months since I posted here? It's five months that I've been in Lake Dallas, Texas, Oklahoma City, Elko and Battle Mountain, Nevada, Charlottesville, Virginia, Eugene, Oregon, San Diego, California. I've been neglecting the blog.

So today you can win a copy of Bull Rider by visiting the TeensReadToo blog and making a comment. Be sure to leave your e-mail address. http://trtbookclub.blogspot.com/2010/05/visit-with-suzanne-morgan-williams.html I wrote this for Memorial Day and it is featured along with an essay by Rosanne Parry and one by Sara Lewis Holmes. Together, I think they are powerful. I'll post the text of all three on this blog on June 1. Good luck!

OK, I've Been Gone and Now I'm Going to Brag a Little

So much for blogging two or three times a week. I've been on the road instead. Gone to Oklahoma (wonderful Encyclomedia Conference), Texas twice, and all over the Puget Sound area. Oh, and there was the quick trip to Oregon too. All since the last blog. So, although I could have figured out how to blog on the road, I left that for next time.

Some nice things have happened for Bull Rider since my last blog. It was selected for the 2010 Texas Lone Star and Tayshas reading lists. Yep, they picked it for both the middle school and high school reading lists. It's nominated for the ALA's Best Books for Young Adults, 2010 and also for a Cybil Award (see their cool widget on this page) in the Middle Grade Category - thanks to Greg Leitich Smith. The book's been getting some buzz from the rodeo community too. Cross your fingers for my next project . . .

Skeleton Horses and Rushmore Kid

Oh, don't you love titles that don't make any sense? It's been a cool week - but HOT. I have some random things to share. First, I went to the Battle of the Barns in Martinez, CA to meet the riders and sell copies of Bull Rider. I expected a horse show and got more of a performance.


The riders were divided into teams by their riding clubs or barns. They all dressed up - pirates, midieval peasants, Indians. They decorated the horses too and then, let the games begin. It's been so hot here, Terri Farley (my partner in signing) and I prepared with umbrellas and sunscreen. Turns out the Bay breeze was going and we longed for sweatshirts. I'm posting my favorite picture - Skeleton Horse. Thanks, Barb, for the invite.

OK, and here are a couple of links for you - Tina Nichols Coury posted an interview with me today on her blog, Tales from the Rushmore Kid www.tinanicholscoureyblog.com and the Sacramento Book Review also posted a review and podcast (30 minutes but come on, I'm kind of entertaining...) at http://www.sacramentobookreview.com/suzanne_morgan_williams.php. This one is also linked on my webiste.

On the home front, my husband and I had contacted a well service to check out our well pump that was cycling on for no apparent reason. We had a series of tests to perform to isolate the leak and decide - plumber, irrigation guy, well eeeek. Then yesterday I went to the goat pen and the darn goats had turned the spigot on. I turned if off. That ten seconds was worth at least two hundred dollars. Moral of the story - always suspect the goats.

Reno Rodeo Minutes

So I've spent three days in the indoor arena at the Reno Rodeo selling books with Sundance Books our independent bookstore in Reno. The Sundance folks have been great and are featuring several local authors at their table. I have a great view of the arena from our perch by the restrooms - and have seen a whole lot of drill teams and roping.

Highlights? Getting a signed Reno Rodeo poster from my friend Stephanie Long who painted this year's beautiful artwork which I posted here. Having a young cowboy run up to the table saying, "There it is, Dad." His father explained that they'd just bought Bull Rider for him and then the boy said, "It's really good. I read fifteen chapters last night!" Now that makes my day. There was the older gentleman who tipped his hat to me today, reminding me of my grandfather, and another one who examined Bull Rider and then declared. "Who is this person, Williams. I've never heard of him." So I held out my hand and said, "Pleased to meet you, sir, that would be me." We had a good laugh. There are the parents and sisters of service men and women in Iraq who have said they are glad someone is talking about the war - and the giggly little girls who pick out their books based on the prettiest horses on the cover. It's a pretty good gig.

BoysRead.org

Hey guys - instead of blogging here I'm giving you a link to a great website and blogspot - www.boysread.org Go directly to my guest blog by clicking this link. http://readingtribe.blogspot.com/ Happy Reading and be sure to comment both at Boys Read and here. Would love to hear from you.

Nevada Novelist Community

About four years ago Ellen Hopkins, Teri Sloat and I stayed up very late at the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrator's conference in Los Angeles brainstorming about a mentor program that would help aspiring writers and illustrators who were "almost there" and but had reached a plateau in their work. As the Nevada SCBWI Mentor Program (which we are in the third round of running right now) took shape, I began to imagine a time when many of the great writers we were working with would be published. There was a long list of probable people. Wouldn't it be cool to surprize people with a group of novelists whose connection was Reno, Nevada? I imagined a "school" not in the teaching sense but in the identifiable sense - a school of writers for Middle Grade and Young Adult readers who were mostly serious, mostly contemporary, mostly reality based - but not necessarily all of those at once.

Today I had coffee with Ellen, our friend and fellow author Heidi Ayarbe, and her daughter. Several years ago we were all in critique groups together and none of us had published fiction. Ellen was first with Crank published in 2005. So check it out now - Ellen is a New York Times best selling author several times over for her verse novels Crank, Burned, Impulse, Glass, and Identical. Tricks in it's great red cover comes out in August. Heidi's debuted in 2008 with her novel, Freeze Frame and she has another one on the way. Freeze Frame recently won the IRA (International Reading Association) Young Adult Book Award for fiction, 2009 - given for an author's first or second book for young readers. And as for me, Bull Rider was released this February and is a Junior Library Guild Selection.

Also in the Nevada Novelists Community - Terri Farley, author of the Phantom Stallion, Wild Horse Island series and Seven Tears into the Sea - with a gazillian books in print, Fran Cannon Slayton who is from Virginia but completed our first Nevada SCBWI Mentor Program (Ellen was her mentor) so we proudly claim her. Her first novel comes out in June from Philomel - When the Whistle Blows. One reviewer called this historical novel set in a 1940s West Virginia railroad town "an understated masterpiece." And we'll claim Lindsay Eland from Colorado - another novelist who completed the mentor program. Look for her novel, Scones and Sensibility in 2010. There are more names we fully expect to add soon - but I won't say them here. I'm not planning to jinx anyone but there are some really talented people around. So, how about a big Nevada YeeeHaaa for these authors. I think the dream is happening.

More Midwest and an Idea

This is Sheboygan Falls in Wisconsin. When everything is mainly flat, you take what you can get!

What I haven't shared about the Midwest trip is all the cool students I met - mostly seventh and eighth graders. I loved the three schools in Des Plaines, Illinois. The students were good, active listeners, they had great questions, and we connected in a way that makes me want to visit more schools. The kids in Bright's Grove and Errol Village Ontario were polite, smart, and stretched themselves to learn something way out of their experience - rodeo - and to talk about some things within it - brothers, sisters, the war. Yes, there are Canadian troops in the Middle East too. The group in Okemos got into the stories we made together and individually. I know. And I hope they will share some of those stories and ideas. Each one is unique.

OK, and the idea - wondering if Bull Rider readers, through the website and this blog could "adopt" a deployed soldier or marine. You know, send cards, care package etc. There are lots of organizations that do it. I've been thinking of linking to some on the website, but maybe we should take someone on directly too... hmmm. So that's all for today. It's Memorial Day and the weeds are still there. Vacquero Girl, I'm so putting newspapers in my difficult spots. I'll let you know what happens.

Home Again with LOTS to Say

OK, when I don't blog for two weeks I end up with lots on my mind and not enough time to share it. Starting with an e-mail I got from Chris in New Mexico today about a collection that the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators made for a library that burned down during the horrible Australian wildfires this spring - my friend Ellen Fockler at Washoe County School Libraries asked if SCBWI was doing anything and how the community could help. She posted the collection to our Reno libraries and the kids raised $800. People can be so cool - espcially kids and especially book people. Chris just let everyone in our organization know about the Reno donation. I'm proud to live here.

Next, I met so many really nice and exciting people on my trip to Chicago, Southern Ontario, and Lansing, Michigan. The book signings were great, the weather was mostly fabulous, the schools and kids were energizing. I'm happy to have met you all and look forward to more time in the Chicago area in the future. If you missed getting Bull Rider there should be copies at the Book Stall in Winnetka, Anderson's in both Naperville and Downer's Grove, and at the Barnes and Nobel in Overland Park. If you are in London, Ontario, the Chapters at Richmond Centre has copies. You can ask for it at any bookstore and order online.

Last, I have photos and stories from the midwest trip. I'll be posting some of them. If you met me in this last two weeks and have photos, e-mail them to me and I'll post some of them here. This is a great ride that we are taking together. Yeehaa!

California Readin'

I promised a switch from Bull Rider info and since it's snowing outside, I've decided to give you a sneak preview of two books I've read recently that are set in sunny and floral Southern California. Both are gentle middle grade books with lovely writing. Both confront their girl characters with difficult family situations

Jane in Bloom by Debby Lytton reads like the bright flower on it's cover. Jane is the second child, the one who lives in her perfect older sister's shadow. But Jane knows what that perfection is costing the sister she loves. When tragedy changes her family forever, Jane finds some unexpected allies and begins to create a space where she can bloom. I love the color imagery in this book and the clear prose creates white space for the splashes of yellow, purple, and orange to shine. Jane's relationship with her sister is haunting and the book will leave you thinking about family interconnections and personal resilience.

.The Year the Swallows Came Early by Katherine Fitzmaurice is set on the Central California coast. Between the fog, the ocean, the sun, and flowers, you can almost smell the setting as you read. In the first chapter Groovy Robinson's father is taken away to jail - in the kindest way by a policeman they both know. Groovy is confused and then angry as she discovers the reason her father was arrested. I was routing for Groovy from beginning to end, first as she has to rethink her dreams and then as she comes to accept her parents as they are, not as she'd believed them to be. The book makes me long to stare at the ocean and put my thoughts in order.


Information: From the website Mirrormirror:
Anorexia is the third most common chronic illness among adolescents.
40 – 60% of high school girls diet.
50% of girls between the ages of 13 and 15 believe they are overweight.
80% of 13 year old girls have dieted.
40% of 9 year old girls dieted.

Since both books are full of roses - try browsing for one at http://www.everyrose.com/everyrose/roses/browse.lasso