Oh my!

I have recently been given not one, not two, but six blog awards! How crazy is that?

Thank you Marcie Colleen, Debbie LaCroix, Jennifer Lee Young, and Lori Degman! Yes, I know that doesn't add up to five, but Jennifer and Ruth Schiffman aka inluvwithwords also awarded me the Kreativ Blogger award! I truly feel so special that these ladies thought of me!

The Liebster Award is given to blogs less with less than 200 followers. When you receive this award you are to link to the person who gave you the award and also list 5 things about yourself, then pass it on to five other great blogs that have less than 200 followers. Hmmm. What to tell you all?

1. I would eat cheese and/or gravy for every meal if I didn't know it was so bad for me.
2. I have music jam parties at my house on a regular basis. I don't sing unless they force me.
3. I like to quote picture books all the time. "If you love chocolate cake so much why don't you marry it." (That's Betty Bunny, incase you didn't know already.)
4. I absolutely hate it when my socks get wet. It seems like such a harmless thing, but I can't stand it!
5. I think that having a breakfast cafe in my house is working against my internal clock. I can only pretend I'm not a night owl for so long.

Now, for the Kreativ Blogger award I have to answer the following questions so you will know even more crazy random things about me! Here are my answers that go with the Kreativ award:

1. Name your favorite song:

Little Wing by Jimi Hendrix

2. Name your favourite dessert:

Wild raspberry pie with french vanilla ice cream

3. What ticks me off:

When people are mean.

4. When I’m upset I:

Tend to not feel very well.

5. What’s your favourite pet:

My three not so little lambies who run up to see me whenever I come around.

6. Black or white:

Depends on what it is. Black sheep? Yes. White pants? No. I can never keep those clean. Black mashed potatoes? Eww.

7. Biggest Fear:

Dying before my children are old enough to take care of themselves.

8. Everyday attitude:

How much can I get done today?

9. What is perfection:

I don't know, I've never experienced it.

10. Guilty Pleasure:

Watching late night tv and not working... on anything!

My nominees for the Liebster are:

Sergio Ruzzier: He has a great blog focused on picture books and he has created tons of great books. Come on, he should have way more than 200 followers!

Nina Laden: Nina is a picture book author and illustrator and she has created some of my favorite books! Plus she taught my kids how to draw some really cool dogs when she visited our library during the Summer Rading Program. My kids still talk about it! She explores all sorts of interesting topics on her blog titled The Night I Followed the Blog.

Natalia Ortega-Brown's A Picture Book A Day: Natalia is a 5th grade ESL teacher and she still takes the time to post wonderful, in-depth picture book reviews every day!

Bridget Heos' Save Everything! (and the Picture Book): Bridget's Blog title says it all!

Lisha Cauthen: Enter The Imaginal Realm and she'll blow your mind with her thoughts on all things writing related And she's always putting up crazy pictures to go with her posts. SHE IS DA BOMB.

And the Kreativ Blogger award goes to the fabulous...Susanna Leonard Hill! She does all sorts of great stuff on her blog, she even has a schedule:

Monday: random topics

Wednesday: Would You Read It

Friday: Perfect Picture Books


Monthly:

Pitch Pick

Straight From The Editor

Interviews


I was also included in Shore Lines Friday Five! How about that? Thanks Stella!

Sharing the Love

Wow. This was our second weekend having the cafe & gallery open and it was hoppin'! I was so tired on Saturday that I fell asleep around 7pm! I have to say, this new venture makes me even happier that I have the fabulous Karen Grencik working to sell my books. I have to use my spare minutes to write! I did find the time to share some love over at Kai Strand's blog for Share the Love month. I talk about my friend/librarian and how she has gently pushed me into being a more outgoing author. I mean, it's not everyone that will get you up infront of a group of librarians while a well known book reviewer flips through the pages of your book for you! Anyhow, if you want to read about my library adventures, or even learn how you can help push an introverted author in the outgoing direction, head on over and check out my post at Strands of Thought.

A café, an interview, and a review. Oh my!

It's been a busy week! My husband and I have just wrapped up the Grand Opening weekend of our café & gallery. I have an in-depth interview up at GotInterview.com. And Julie Hedlund chose Bedtime Monster for her Perfect Picture Book Friday post. People even said all sorts of nice things about my book, which made my breaks during my extra-super busy day on Friday, so much more fun! I even have 115 followers now here on my blog and 100 likes on my Facebook page. *waves* It's all so exciting! Phew. I'm going to go take a nap before our music jam starts in a couple of hours. Hope you had a fun week too!

Monster List of Picture Book Agents--Kirchoff/Wohlberg Literary Agency

Kirchoff/Wohlberg is another one of those slightly mysterious agencies that are hard to find information on, but I find them quite interesting. This listing has certainly put my internet search skills to the test! Kirchoff/Wohlberg seems to be an agency/book packager. As you will see on their website they provide solutions to publishers and have numerous published projects, many of which I recognize from my library. Be sure to peruse their project list and click on the samples to see the portfolios. It is quite informative.

If your writing tends toward the educational/leveled reader type of books, Kirchoff/Wolhber might be a good agency to try. They do represent a number of authors. (I love Lois Ehlert's books!)  On their website, Morris A. Kirchoff is listed as President and Ronald Zollshan as Vice President. I was hard pressed to find any information on them. I do know that Agent Liza Pulitzer-Voges worked at Kirchoff/Wohlberg for 25 years, and she has quite an accomplished list at her Eden Street agency.

Mr. Zollshan is the person to whom you are asked to send your submission. Submissions from unpublished and established writers are welcomed.

Kirchoff/Wohlberg represents: Kari Winters & Bonnie Grubman.

If you have any experience with Kirchoff/Wohlberg I'd certainly love to hear about it!

This post is part of the Monster List of Picture Book Agents. If you have any changes that you think should be made to this listing, please contact me or leave them in the comments. Thanks!

A Quacky National Buy a Book About a Duck Day Reading

I love my ducks. Whenever I go outside they greet me with their jovial quacking. They sound like they're laughing. It makes me smile every time. Since it's National Buy a Book About a Duck Day I thought it would be a great way to celebrate by reading our ducks a book! We got Henry Goes West by Robert Quakenbush. (Ducks love books by Robert Quackenbush!) Here we are reading:

The ducks seemed to enjoy it and the sheep thought the book was quite tasty. My husband quacked up that I would go and read a book to a couple of ducks. But he knows that that's just the sort of wacky thing I like to do. So, what are your favorite duck books? Robert Quackenbush has been a favorite of mine ever since I discovered Henry's Important Date when I was a kid. Now my kids--and my ducks--love his books too.

A Change in Perspective

It occurred to me the other night when I was awakened by a loud banging and found five officers of the law on my front doorstep. My life has changed. It's not just that a bunch of cops will show up in the middle of the night doing an investigation on a call. (It's likely that that would never happen at my other house, usually no one can even find it.) My teenage daughter pointed out that she never imagined that she'd ever see me talking on the phone while making dinner. (There's no phone service at our other house so it's impossible! She has seen me tweet while cooking though. Yay for satellite internet!) We have people stopping by all the time too. Old friends, new friends. It's fun to have people actually come over, although I do tend to feel like I have to get dressed every morning when I get up now.

I have really been enjoying being able to call my family and friends whenever I feel like it. And they can actually call me! I have learned that being nice to telemarketers just gets you more telemarketing. You know what I really love? Having a washer and dryer. This is a big deal for someone who has been going to the laundromat for 16 years. (We also had to snowmobile our in and out in winter. Or hand wash. I don't miss that.) And there's the sauna, and the private office. They aren't too bad either.

So it may sound strange that I sort of miss it. The quiet. The solitude. I mean, it's probably as close as you can get to the best of both worlds here. There's space, and peace, and beauty and modern conveniences, and civilization. I do still live in rural America, in a ghost town even! A guy from the big city stopped by the other day. He definitely thought that this was the boonies, until I told him about where I used to live. He looked shocked. Hee hee.

How is this affecting my writing? I think it's good. I certainly have gotten a fresh perspective on a lot of things. People. Interactions. Sharing. Privacy. Patience. Forgiveness. Letting things go. Being cautious. Setting boundaries. These may sound like negative things but they're not. Taking over an inn comes with a lot of responsibility. It's basically a big house that many people are attached to. And for good reason, it's a fabulous place to be. I'm definitely feeling a little more attached to it than I had wanted to be. And soon we'll be opening our house to the public. The dream of the cafe and gallery is quickly becoming a reality. I am going to be meeting all sorts of people and doing all sorts of new things so I'm certain I'll have lots to write about. Hopefully I'll figure out how to be better at time management so I can get it all done.

Sometimes a change in perspective is good for writing. I know, I am doing an extreme change here, but finding little ways to find the new in life can be good for the notebook. Here's to looking at things with a fresh eye.

Big Plans!

I guess I must be feeling the end of the year as a deadline this year or maybe I'm just trying to distract myself while the publishing industry is sort of closed during the holidays. Whatever the reason, in the past few days I have seriously been getting stuff done! I finished a long overdue interview and sent it to my oh so patient interviewer, I got brand new picture book manuscript all polished up and sent out to my fabulous critique partner, and, thanks to my daughter's nudging, I have a nice new author page on Goodreads. I also started a Picture Book Authors! list in my sidebar. Plus I joined Julie Hedlund's 12 x 12 in 2012.

I've also got some ambitious (or maybe crazy) plans for 2012. Things in my life are more different than they ever have been. This is the first time I've ever started the year with a fabulous agent on my side, I'm living on a new mountain, and I have Big plans, big plans I say! (Yes, that is a quote.)

Now, it wouldn't really be fair of me to tell you I have big plans and not let you in on any of them. But they feel so secret. I mean, what if I fail? What if I can't make any of my big plans come to fruition? *sigh

Well, one thing I do know is that my husband and I will be opening a breakfast cafe here at our mountain inn very soon. He's been cooking up all sorts of great stuff and I have been eating it! It's a tough job but somebody has to do it. Seriously, this cafe is going to be a lot of work but it's something my husband has always wanted to do so it's really cool to think that we're finally going to do it.

I will admit that I have this wild idea that, since we have an inn, I could host writing retreats here. But we live sort of out of the way (I think this might be an understatement) so I'm still at that in between place where I'm not sure if people would come. There's a lot of planning involved, but I'm at least going to get it all figured out and see if it might be viable. I do know that it would be great fun.

So there, I spilled some of my plans. Others are just not as big, like plans for the blog. I want to start up The Unread again. I do have at least one great interview set up! And some things, like selling books, are just really out of my control, at least once I've done my best to write a great story. So I will work on my big plans while I wait, and maybe I'll even come up with some more--although I'm note sure if I can handle any more plans than I already have!

So, do you have any big plans for 2012? I'd love to hear them. I promise, I won't call you crazy.