You may have notice that I have been derelict in my posting duties. But I have a good reason! From July 9th to the 17th, I was at my Vermont College residency, which rocked, but is crazy jam-packed with lectures, workshops, and readings, to the extent that the doing anything other than grabbing the occasional power nap is totally out of the question. I came home last Thursday...and immediately came down with the flu.
Four days, and one season of Buffy DVDs later, and it was time to hop in the shower, scrub those residual germs off of myself, and head upstate to Rome, NY, to the Turning Stone Casino and Resort!
No, unlike Cass Parker of GETTIN' LUCKY, I am *not* a poker player. The whole gambling thing doesn't appeal to me at all. So why, then, was I up at Turning Stone? Believe it or not, it was all in the name of YA writing!
I was invited to visit the Jervis Public Library (check out their nifty events calendar: http://www.jervislibrary.org/eventscal.html), to talk about my books, my career, and teen lit in general. It was a rainy Wednesday afternoon, and Lisa Kinna, the FABULOUS program director, warned me that I shouldn't expect a large crowd. That didn't deter me. Here I am, getting ready for my big talk:
(Note the stack of ro coms to my right--those were a hot commodity, no suprise!)
Her "small crowd" turned out to be one of the biggest groups I've ever spoken with--twenty-plus of actual teens (as opposed to my family and friends, that is). We talked a bit about my own writing, and from there, they had all kinds of questions about breaking into publishing. In fact, a bunch of them were creative writing students through the library's teen programming! Totally something I would have done back when I was a teen, in the dark ages. Lisa's own daughter (so sweet and cool) is getting ready to send her writing out to agents. I gave her some so-called professional advice.
Finally, we came to one of my favorite parts of a visit--signing! Though I tend to make things harder on myself by writing something unique in everyone's books. Thank goodness the readers are generally pretty forgiving.
It was really exciting to have a chance to meet some of my readers, but more than that, it was exciting to meet teen readers (there were even some dudes chilling out in the back row--though they wouldn't cop to having read any of my ro coms)! I can't wait to hit the road again for more library visits in the not-too-distant future.
Once I've had a chance to rest up, that is!
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7 comments:
Inquiring minds want to know ... WHICH season of Buffy did you watch?
Glad you're feeling better.
I watched Season Two. The good news is that I know it all by heart, so even if I passed out, I wasn't missing anything. ;)
I have two questions:
1) How do you get into publishing?
2) How did you get your name? I think it's a super cool name.
Glad you recovered from the flu. I hate having (putting it mildly)
1) I started in publishing straight out of college--got a job at Simon and Schuster. I worked in adult for about a year, and then switched over to young adult, which I fell in love with right away. I cannot believe they paid me to edit that stuff--and now they pay me to write it!
2) The name came from my parents! It's Italian, even though they are not. They got it from a movie about Italian Jews in World War II, called "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis." I haven't seen the movie yet. Don't tell my parents!
Summer flu always seems unjust, doesn't it? But the library talk looks like fun.
Kelly
WOW, you write something unique when you sign every book? I'm impressed. When I sign books I'm just trying to spell my own name right.
I TRY. But usually I fail. :P
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