The Whole Story with SCBWI France

This is a flyer that I created for the SCBWI France Spring Atelier. As Assistant Regional Advisor of our chapter, I organized this event for our picture book writers and illustrators.

The Belgian publisher, Mijade was presented by its founder and editor, Michel Demeulenaere.  He was a bookseller specializing in comics and children's books before he followed his dream and created Mijade. Michel’s talk was so interesting because his point of view of children’s publishing is very personal. He owns the company and has his own idea of what this all means. He ran through submission guidelines as that information is on their website. For illustrators, they have very specific artwork requirements : an illustrator would probably have to create some pieces to satisfy them. Michel also talked about the books they publish and what kind of stories interest them (not message-driven and with some humor). Mijade prefers to work with illustrators and writers on a regular basis if possible— he is sincerely concerned with his collaborators’ ability to make a living at what they do. As part of his powerpoint presentation, he showed us actual earnings for the author/illustrators of certain books over time. Eye opening! Diane Meirlaen also of Mijade, added details about the sales aspect. And they brought a bunch of their books and let each attendee pick one out to take home. Wow!

Next up was Sue Porter a member of SCBWI France and an author/illustrator with a long experience in picture books. Sue is currently finishing up a book with Mijade: PAPA SE MET EN BOULE. Her segment began with a presentation of her and Michel’s collaboration on this project. She explained a bit about the process of taking an idea (that she had about 25 years ago) to words to pictures and a dummy book and then submitting it to Michel. This was still just the beginning. Several months and 22 pages of email later they are almost done. Another eye opening presentation for our members— the realities of bringing a picture book to the world. Later Sue gave the group an idea of her career: starting with beautiful early work and how it evolved as she grew as an author/illustrator thinking more and more about the child reading the book.

All this was followed up (after lunch) with a workshop on using photo references to grow ideas. Sue has inherited the picture archive compiled by Faith Jaques and first bequeathed to Janet Ahlberg. She brought us just a sliver of this huge collection to peruse while trying out an exercise on creating characters and getting to know everything about them.

The SCBWI France Spring Atelier was a wonderful way to spend a Saturday. The members who attended left buzzing with excitement and ideas (and a new Mijade picture book!). Big thanks to our extremely generous faculty, Michel, Diane, Sue; and our Regional Advisor, Tioka Tokedira for all her help as well as The Marymount School for hosting us in their beautiful library. 

From Very Humble Roots

I was going to do a sketch of this vegetable for you but I decided that a photo was necessary— you’d never believe how ugly this céleri-rave is unless you saw the real thing (some English translations: celeriac, celery root and knob celery).

This veggie was new to me when I came across it here in France. In food, what’s unusual to one is quite ordinary to another. Maybe this is how it is for you with céleri-rave. Food familiarity often comes from what our mothers liked and knew how to cook. And regional preferences; I never saw céleri-rave when I was a kid in New England or later on, in New York. I wasn’t looking for one so maybe it was right under my nose and I ignored it. You can’t blame me— look at it!

(top and bottom)

Poor céleri-rave! Not blessed with a pleasing physical appearance it has to make up with a surprising taste and texture. And to add to the surprise and perhaps to lessen the competition, it appears in the markets in the right season, winter.

Now what do you do with it? You have to cut off the outer layer and you get this:

Then you julienne it in the food processor and get this:

Isn’t it pretty now?! It went from a dirty knobby root to a fluffy white cloud.
Then you peel and cut up a pink grapefruit. Zesty!

Add a little lemon juice. I use a non-fat goat milk yogurt (but you could use any type) as the dressing.

This is a winter delight. Cool and refreshing and packed with sunshine. My teenager loves it too. And it's very low-cal. From humble beginnings we get fantastic results. Just need to look past the first impressions.

And while I’m preparing this (takes about 15 minutes), I think about all the times I’ve worked on a painting or a story and thought, Wow, this is bad. This is ugly. What was I thinking? But I hung in there, cut something here, added in a little of that and finally pulled it off, much to my own surprise and delight.

Do you know and use céleri-rave? Are you going to try it now?

The Liebster Award

Four people honored me with the Liebster Award in the last couple of weeks and each time it was such a pleasant surprise. It’s awarded to blogs with less than 200 followers to generate attention and create new connections. Liebster is German for dearest, beloved or favorite.

When you get one you add the logo to your blog, thank the person who awarded it and link back to their blog. And then give a Liebster to 5 bloggers by leaving a comment on their blog.

Big thanks go out to Penny Klostermann, Angela Peña Dahle, Jennifer Kirkeby and Lynda Shoup for brightening my day with a Liebster.

And then there’s that matter of five random things about me.

1) I’m a New England/New York City girl living in France.

2) I won the National Grand Prize of the Cappy Dick contest in the Sunday comics when I was 10 years old: a set of the World Book Encyclopedia AND atlas. I still remember what my entry looked like (word puzzle and drawing).

3) I used to live in Little Italy, NYC over an Italian caffe. It was noisy.

4) I used to live a stone’s throw from the Château de Versailles and worked in what was, in Louis’s day, the stables of the king as an English teacher to architecture students.

5) I volunteered at a restoration in the French Alpes of an old fortress called La Redoute Marie-Thérèse … for six weeks. If you see a crooked little stone wall there, you can be sure that I made it.

Without further ado I will pass the good vibes along.

Juriko Kosaka is an English language enthusiast who loves drawing and painting. She’s such a dedicated sketcher of things like food, people on the Tokyo subway, desktops. Right now she’s posting a Drawing-a-Day. You will love Juri's blog and tweets in English and Japanese.

Jean Reidy is the author of picture books Too Purpley!, Too Pickley!, Too Princessy! and Light up the Night. She is the champion of worthy causes. Sometimes she has giveaways on her blog where you can win a manuscript critique. What are you waiting for?! Go look.

Elizabeth Stevens Omlor’s blog is called "Banana Peelin': The Ups and Downs of Becoming a Children's Writer" and she’s gotten the down and dirty from the likes of Tara Lazar, Iza Trapani and Katie Davis among others. Find out what faux pas they made on their journey in the publishing industry. Hurry!

Lisha Cauthen says "I write YA novels for boys that girls like to read too. About normal kids who have abnormal things happen to them. Let’s call it horror, for now," on her blog "The Imaginal Realm." She is funny and knows a lot about this writing stuff. She’s an active member of SCBWI Kansas and edits their Sunflower Scoop. Her tweets @lishacauthen are legend.

Sylvia Liu is so great at passing along helpful information. She writes and illustrates for children and is interested in things like "kraken, flotsam and robots." I’m going back to her blog to find out what kraken is. See you there!

New Bird in Town

I have to admit something. We moved in September so technically, I’m not Up in the Attic Lately anymore. I am living in an apartment duplex but I’m still at the top of the building though, okay?

With a move comes changes. It’s more urban here and bigger. There’s a bus system that runs until 8:30 pm, lots of library branches and a Fine Art Museum.

The change I’ve been thinking about lately is the birds. In the old house, in the attic I worked under the roof. I heard the birds scurrying around, their claws scratching the slate. Singing meant chickadees and sparrows. A repeated phrase of several notes spelled the longing call of my favorite blackbirds. And the cooing of the turtledove couples was either soothing or annoying, depended on the day. Squawking signaled the turf wars fought by crows in the giant oak tree.

The crows! I didn’t love them or hate them yet I couldn’t remain indifferent to them. They traveled in packs and dominated. They couldn’t share like those little songbirds. It had to be their oak tree. Their TV antenna perch. Their driveway. Their chimney pot— where they ate plums from our tree. I know because sometimes they’d drop one and boy, did that make a racket when it smacked the fireplace screen.

In this new place, I don’t hear the birds much. The double glazed windows have us sealed up tight. No spaces between roof slates to let in sounds. But I see the birds more. Mostly seagulls. Lots of gliding swooping seagulls. We live on the coast. Water is everywhere, ports and bridges abound. This apartment is surrounded by lots of open air space and has tons of windows. Birds dive onto the roof— close to the windows below the ledge then land out of sight and sound. The close-up views of them mid-flight is new to me. Yesterday, when I turned towards the window in the kitchen, I startled a seagull who had landed on the sill. This could not have been easy because seagulls are very big and the windowsills not so big. I was startled too. Daphne Du Maurier, Alfred Hitchcock and "The Birds" came to mind.

New Year and new town. I realize that it takes me awhile to get into a new place. I take small steps. Learned the bus lines. Joined a gym. Found a marché. Chose a café with excellent café crème as my hangout. Got a library card. Doesn’t seem like much but I also realize the value of small steps in life— and in my work. There’s been a lot of talk online about New Year’s resolutions as well as anti-resolutions, post-holiday slumps and procrastination. I’m familiar with these things but I’ve got to keep moving things forward. I’ll take small steps on some days and hope for more on others.

The view has changed. The birds are different. Onward ho!

Chugging along with PiBoIdMo

Sketch made in a café for PiBoIdMo Day 26. Who knows where it will go?

This past November was a busy one. I took part in Picture Book Idea Month (PiBoIdMo created by Tara Lazar) and as ARA for SCBWI France worked on its Regional Conference set for December 2nd and 3rd. I wrapped up PiBoIdMo and headed off to Paris on the very fast train (TGV) from Brest at 6:42 am in the pitch black— a rather lonely time of day at the train station.

I stared out the window at the dark landscape speeding by and thought back on my 30 ideas and could not remember one single distinct idea. I decided that they must really stink if I’d already forgotten them. It was a little sad but somewhat typical of me so I took out my PiBoIdMo notebook and a printout of the December 1st Post-PiBoIdMo blogpost "Pat Miller Follows Through" to change my mindset. Pat advised this newly graduated class of 2011 PiBoIdMo’ers to turn back to our ideas (oh boy! I was already one step ahead) and look them over each day, adding to each one— plot points, characters, conflicts.

Reading the idea from Day 1 I remembered that very day— out in the sunshine taking a walk with my daughter to get to know this new place where we’d recently moved. We checked out the neighborhoods, found the local library (only to see a poster announcing that it had just closed for renovations), kept walking and came upon a row of semi-detached houses. This reminded me of a trip to Ireland where I met my Great-Uncle Willie Green and he proudly showed me a mural of the town when they lived in rows of thatched roof cottages. Then I got the day’s idea.

The train chugged on. I continued to plow through my ideas still feeling sleepy and still thinking the ideas were a bit stinky (not stench-level stinky but lacking). I kept reading, started to add a bit here and there, to really think. The time passed as the TGV zipped along. I looked up and the sun was rising. And that’s all it took to feel better about my ideas— reading, thinking, adding, a little sunrise and VOILA! I will keep going.

I think that’s what I like best about PiBoIdMo— every time I think I won’t have another idea, I do. Then I think I won’t have another good idea and I keep trying, making better. All the support and solid advice PiBoIdMo provides makes it so much easier.

I hope to carry what I’ve learned with me all year long and bit by bit turn a few of these ideas into something more.

Thanks to everyone (especially Tara)!

Pumpkin, moon, rainbow

Happy Thanksgiving to all who are celebrating!

It's business as usual here in France but we managed a little celebration.

I made pumpkin soup and pumpkin flan but I had to kill this beauty for it:

I felt so bad I had to take a few photos.

The turkey that I bought at the market was fresh.

When I bought it the poultry farmer told me it'd keep for at least a week

in the fridge because she just killed it the day before.

So I wasn't the only one killing stuff for this meal. It was delicious.

This was the moon about a week ago.

Hard to see here but it was eerie and beautiful.

From the windows of this apartment (we've only been here since September)

we have lots of uninterrupted views.

Here's another view on a stormy day.

I spliced two photos together so you can see the whole rainbow.

Big beautiful sky. Ever changing.

That's all for now.

Summer Inspirations

Inspired by the SCBWI European Union Scrawl Crawl and my daughter's prolific blogging, I decided to sketch and put it up here. Right away. Not after thinking and procrastinating and whatever! It's a Sunday morning warm up sketch of my latest purchase: old buttons. There's a "brocante" (antique (-ish) shop) nearby and I 've been going there for years, picking up odds and ends. It's owned by a friendly woman with a good eye and a great talent for display. And so, here's the sketch:

You may be wondering what a "Scrawl Crawl" is and rightly so. It's a day out, roaming around, sketching from life. I had a wonderful time with Sue Porter and her dog, Maisie; we went to Carnac and sketched the prehistoric stones.

It felt so good to draw outdoors from life, getting out of the attic, away from my desk, the dummy book I'm trying to complete and the computer screen. I got back into the drawing process-- it's way different sketching from life than pulling reference pics from search engines. Everyone knows that but it's easy to get caught up in work and not look up or out. I'm going to try to keep sketching for fun because it is just that.