Yesterday the ALA Youth Media awards were announced. It’s a big, big day in the world of children’s literature. Lives are changed by the experience of winning a major award. Careers take a flying leap forward. It seems like everyone in the industry knows the name of the winners, the names of the winning books.

Five years ago, after another ALA Youth Media awards day, I was pumped up with some excitement of my own. No, I didn’t win any big award but I did learn that my middle grade novel, Hugging the Rock, was named an ALA Notable. And it got a lovely, shiny  sticker on the cover.

Congratulations to FreshBrain user caitlin1591 who is the winner of the $1,000 "FreshBrain Video Book Trailer Scholarship" based on my book, Hugging the Rock. There were so many really talented teens who entered the contest and I want to thank all of them for the time and effort they put into their trailers. Many of them really went for the heartstrings, just like my book.

Thank you, Cailin!

Okay, I know if I try to embed things over here LJ will go all wonky, so you’ll have to click through each one.

These are in NO PARTICULAR ORDER but here are the top 10 videos for Hugging the Rock book trailer scholarship contest. The rest of the judges and I are working hard on narrowing down a winner but feel free to chime in with your opinions.

1.   MRose

2.   Erin McCarter

3.   KevinMFox

4.   Cat814

5.   Caitlin1591

6.   AnnaPhilomena

7.   amdedinboro

8.   robowasabi

9.   elwen

10. tennisdancer51

Only a little over a week left for teens 13-18 to get their entries in for the FreshBrain.org $1000 scholarship to create a book trailer for the middle grade verse novel, Hugging the Rock.

There are only a few entries so far and a nice chunk of money on the table so the chances of winning are looking good!

Deadline December 15th
Details: http://freshbrain.org/scholarship/freshbrain-video-book-trailer-scholarship

Please help spread the word!

Time is running out for teens 13-18 to enter the $1000 book trailer contest! Please help spread the word to teens and teachers and librarians. The deadline for submissions is December 15th.

Create a video book trailer for the novel "Hugging the Rock" by Susan Taylor Brown.

Put together a cast and act it out, create an animation, or use photos with text set to music – it’s up to you. Be creative. Have fun. Make people want to read the book.

More details can be found at the Freshbrain.org website: http://tinyurl.com/rocktrailer

SUMMARY OF RULES
- U.S resident only between 13 and 18 years of age (as of the close of the contest)
- 30 seconds to 2 minutes in length and in a standard video format (.wmv, .mov, .avi, .mp4)
- Your own creation, NO copyrighted material
- Include a brief description of the process you followed
- Deadline for entries is 12/15/09

JUDGING
Judging will be based on the following criteria. Please see the official rules for more details.
- Creativity (50%)
- Consistency with the book (25%)
- Fit and finish (25%)

AWARDS
- The winner will receive a $1000 scholarship!

I am so excited to finally be able to announce my secret project I’ve been working on with the wonderful folks at FreshBrain – The Technology Exploration Platform for Teens. We’re offering a contest for kids 13-18 to create a book trailer for my book, Hugging the Rock and the prize is a $1000 scholarship! How cool is that?

FreshBrain is an educational non-profit so the use of the website for teens, teachers, homeschoolers, is completely free! So teachers, if you haven’t already checked it out, I highly recommend it. Here’s a bit about FreshBrain from their website:

FreshBrain provides teens with the opportunity to explore, engage, and create through activities and projects. FreshBrain takes advantage of the latest technologies, such as web conferencing and social networking, to provide a very progressive environment where teens can complete activities and work together on projects. This experience is enhanced with Advisors, available to support and mentor teens who are working on projects, with the intention of increasing the likelihood of success. In addition, FreshBrain provides teens with tools and training in the latest technologies to complete these projects.

On with the contest! I hope you’ll consider helping to spread the word about this opportunity for teens.

Please feel free to copy and paste from this post or if you want to link directly to the FreshBrain sign-up page, you can use this tiny url: http://tinyurl.com/rocktrailer

Create a video book trailer for the novel "Hugging the Rock" by Susan Taylor Brown.

Put together a cast and act it out, create an animation, or use photos with text set to music – it’s up to you. Be creative. Have fun. Make people want to read the book.

More details can be found at the Freshbrain.org website: http://tinyurl.com/rocktrailer

SUMMARY OF RULES
- U.S resident only between 13 and 18 years of age (as of the close of the contest)
- 30 seconds to 2 minutes in length and in a standard video format (.wmv, .mov, .avi, .mp4)
- Your own creation, NO copyrighted material
- Include a brief description of the process you followed
- Deadline for entries is 12/15/09

JUDGING
Judging will be based on the following criteria. Please see the official rules for more details.
- Creativity (50%)
- Consistency with the book (25%)
- Fit and finish (25%)

AWARDS
- The winner will receive a $1000 scholarship!

How exciting is it to see a copy of your book on TV?

Very. Very very exciting.

A huge thank you to author Katie Davis for showcasing my book, Hugging the Rock, on TV(in Connecticut)http://tinyurl.com/nffgvm for Father’s Day round-up.

I’m back. Sort of. Wading into the cold blog waters one toe at a time.

We have moved. We have unpacked a lot of boxes. (The books, mostly.) We are far, far from settled. 

Thank you to crew at ARS Technica who came over and made the move an ARS meet. Also a big thanks to my buddies Mac and Tom from work.  More on everything I hope later today but for now, we have a book box contest winner!

jodyfeldman

Jody guessed 236 and the final book box count was 232. 

Jody, send me a mailing address and I’ll send you a copy of either Hugging the Rock or Oliver’s Must-do List. 

And a thanks to

kellyrfineman

 for the LJ nudge to post. Sorry it still took me a week to get here.

Today is my book’s secret birthday! That special day when authors receive their very first copy of their new book. I knew what it was as soon as I saw the envelope. I could feel the hard cover inside the padding as soon as I picked it up. I carried it around the house and debated where to sit when I opened it and, for a moment, whether to wait until my husband got home late tonight from his week long business trip. No. There would be no waiting. It had been a rough week. (I haven’t even told y’all the story of my broken glass all over the kitchen.) So I plopped down on the couch and pulled the tab on the back of the envelope. I pulled hard. Too hard. Gobs of gray glitter came flying out. Wait. No, it wasn’t glitter. It was just the packing material from the envelope. Sigh.

It was shrinkwrapped. Whew! No gray gunk to stick to the cover. I’ve never had a book come to me shrinkwrapped before. I stroked the plastic front and back before using my fingernail along the top edge to slice through the plastic and slip it out the book. I held it up to my nose and sniffed. Chelsie (my dog) thought I had food so she demanded to sniff it too. I flipped the pages. Sniffed some more. Showed the insides to Chelsie then pulled it away before she started to drool on it.

It’s a book. A real book. It’s not my first book but it feels so different. It’s a NOVEL, not a picture book, not an easy reader, not an educational anything. It’s a verse novel. It’s poetry. Omigosh…it POETRY. (That still sort of freaks me out.)

It’s beautiful. I have seen all the elements that went into the book, the design, the font, the cover, the flap copy and the author info but this, seeing it in its altogether, well it is just the sweetest thing. (Cue up some U2, will you please?)

And when I turned it over there was that blurb, that wonderfully almost unbelievable blurb from a poet whom I admire tremendously. (Someone remind me later to post about how my editor actually first told me about the blurb.)

Yes, Lee Bennett Hopkins blurbed my book!!! Now you know my blurb-secret I’ve been keeping.

In case the image doesn’t come through, here’s the text of the blurb that my editor said I could now share.

“Brown creates a poignant work dealing with a topic rare in children’s literature. In spare, poetic prose, the pain and angst of a young girl whose bipolar mother leaves, never to return, is detailed. The heart of the story is the growing relationship between Rachel and her father – a rock with soft spots – and how they must learn to live, love, cope – go on with their lives – together. Readers will hug this book. I did.”

Let me tell you, Lee writing a blurb really rocked (pun intended) my world!

Official pub date is September 1st!  You have called your local independent bookstore and asked them to order you a copy, haven’t you? No? Well go ahead and do that right now. I can wait. I’ll just be flipping through the pages, rereading my book, while you’re gone.

PS to someone, I can’t remember whose blog it was (sorry) who asked for a jacket photo of poet who was smiling. This is me raising my hand. I’m smiling in the pic on the jacket flap for Hugging the Rock.

I’m popping up here briefly for a bit of shameless self-promotion. I’m working my way through the replies I owe folks bit by bit. Thanks for your patience. The shoulder is screaming less loudly now but it is still an issue, nonetheless. Sigh. But a few nice things have happened lately and I wanted to share them.

Thanks to Kelly Herold of Big A little a for her review of Hugging the Rock in the June/July 2006 issue of the online magazine The Edge of the Forest.  (If you are reading this blog entry after July 2006 you’ll have to go to the archived issues for it as the links go to the current issue.)

A thank you to those of you who are “friending” my writing prompts writeonrightnow and letting me know how useful you are finding the prompts. I appreciate your support.

The very optimistic artistq who guessed correctly that my galleys would arrive today, AND THEY DID!!! And just like sarazarr said here seeing them is a little bit scary but in the very best way. I still love the cover. Lots. And when I turned it over to read the teaser there was just a single sentence on the back:

What do you do when your mom runs away from home?  

I read that and my heart skipped a beat. I flipped the pages and the first thing that jumped out at me was the section heading for Two Months Minus Mom my heart started beating faster now. I flipped again and found the poem they are featuring in the catalog, I Never Told My Mom and I suddenly felt stripped naked with the thought of other people, complete strangers, reading this book. Oh my.

So artistq email me an address so I can send you your prize. 

And the rest of you, never fear, there are a few more contests ahead. 

Off to do a happy dance because I’m finding it a bit tough to sit still at the moment.

So when Cynthia Lord knew her galleys were coming for book Rules she got the bright idea to hold a little contest to see when they would arrive and offered to send a copy of the galleys to the winner. I’ve been racking my brain  trying to think of a unique contest of my own for the galleys but no such luck. I decided that if you’re going to copy, why not copy from the best? With credit to cynthialord I hereby launch the official Hugging the Rock "When Will They Get Here" galleys contest. My publicist said they have been ordered and will be at the publisher on Friday. This Friday. Then mine will be shipped to me. Note: Both my publisher and I are on the same coast. 

By my reckoning I should have them by the end of March so here are the ten arrival date options:
3/19, 3/20, 3/21, 3/22, 3/23, 3/27, 3/28, 3/29, 3/30, 3/31  Pick one and win!

And another plug for you to sign up for my newsletter (just in case you forget to read my blog.) The first issue will go out shortly and, if you’re a subscriber, there will be another contest in the newsletter to win a copy of the published book. 

Getting early attention for your book is really important but I think it’s also hard for many writers to do because so many of us, (like ME) are introverts. I have a hard time jumping up and down and asking people to look at my book, read my book, review my book. But I truly believe that Hugging the Rock is the best thing I have written yet and if it takes me going out on the limb to the uncomfy zone to talk about it, I will. So that brings me to the topic of blurbs. My publisher mentioned it was time to start thinking about blurbs. Blurbs are endorsements, bits of praise, the appear on the cover (back or sometimes front). Actually they’re used in all sorts of promotional efforts. 

Usually they’re by someone famous but my publisher said they use blurbs from regular readers, reviewers, librarians, etc for all sorts of things. But asking people to read for the purpose of blurbing is hard. First off, just because you like a person doesn’t mean you will (or have to) like their book. But some people don’t understand that. Some people think that if you hate their book you hate them. And some people are afraid to be asked to blurb for one person because then they’ll feel like they are fair game for everyone else to ask. So it’s a decidely awkward place to be. I’ll just say this, if you read a copy of the book, in galley or final form, and you want to comment on it, good, bad, or whatever, you can send to me, but you can also send to any comments to Laura at the email above.

Hugging the Rock is a journey of the heart that does make many people cry, but it is a hopeful journey that portrays a relationship not often seen in children’s books, a positive relationship between a girl and her father. In writing this book I gave myself the father I’ve never known.

As important as promotion is to getting the word out about an author’s books, it’s often the most difficult (and time consuming) thing to do until you’re so famous that it seems like you don’t need worry about it anymore. I rely on the kindness of friends and strangers to help spread the word. That being said, it seems like blogs are becoming one of the top ways that booklovers share their love (and dislike) of various books. Not long ago,   (Nadia Cornier) tried something called The Great Blog Experiment to see how many people she could get to buy and talk about a certain book in order to help it get the push she felt it deserved. I haven’t heard how that experiment went but I do know that it’s getting harder and harder to find a reader who hasn’t heard of R. A. Nelson’s controversial book Teach Me. (Go Russ!!!)

Now’s the part where I ask for a little help of my own. My latest book, Robert Smalls Sails to Freedom, is out now. It’s an easy reader, On My Own History title from Millbrook/Carolrhodda. Robert Smalls was a slave in South Carolina during the Civil War. He worked (handing over his money to his master) on a sidewheel steamer and knew every inch of the Carolina waterways. When he got his chance, he stole the ship he was working on and sailed himself, his family, and a few friends, right out of the harbor under the eyes of the Confederate troops. He handed the ship over to the Union Navy. For the rest of the war Smalls assisted the Union Navy. After the war Smalls went on to become a South Carolina congressman. He is considered one of the first African American heroes of the Civil War.

I haven’t had nearly the time I needed or wanted to promote this book in time for Black History Month next month. If you are a teacher or a librarian or know someone who is a teacher or a librarian or a homeschool parent or anyone who is looking to read about an interesting slice of history, please consider taking a look at this book. And I hope you will help me spread the word. If anyone can, bloggers can and will.

I have more time to get the word out on this next book, but as many of you know, it takes time to build a buzz, and that’s what my publisher and I hope to do with my middle grade verse novel, Hugging the Rock. It will be published in the fall of 2006 by Tricycle Press. This weekend at ALA Midwinter Tricycle is handing out excerpts from the book with information on how librarians and reviewers can request a galley. If you weren’t able to make it to ALA and pick up a copy of your own, never fear. Download an excerpt of Hugging the Rock in PDF form right here on my website.

Fall books have a higher chance of being lost in all the holiday stuff so please help me spread the word about the availability of the excerpt to any librarians and reviewers you might know. And if you like what you read, please let me and/or Tricycle know.

How far can a blog reach? Let’s find out, and thank you, in advance.

as in THE Oliver of my new picture book Oliver’s Must-Do List. He has his own blog called, appropriately enough, . If you’re a teacher, librarian or a parent who homeschools, Oliver wants to come see you at your school. This is not a plug for a Susan visit but an opportunity for Oliver to visit WITHOUT Susan. Visit Oliver’s Blog to learn more about Traveling Oliver. I came up with this idea because my day job keeps me from being able to do as many school visits as I might light to do but I still wanted a way to be able to talk to kids about my book and help them with their writing. I’m hoping I can get some teachers on board to help get things started so please, if you know someone who might be interested, I’d appreciate you spreading the word.

Oh, and reminded me that I forgot a couple of important things, like the publisher, which is Boyds Mills Press and the pub date, which is October 2005, as in next month.

This has been a busy weekend as I’ve been working on the Oliver publicity. I made some magnets to hand out at the NCCBA meeting next week.

see the magnet here