Ever since visitng Zurich several years ago, I’ve wanted to use the little shop I discovered on a side alley. It isn’t really a map shop. But that’s what authros do, right? Reconfigure ideas.  That’s me in the skirt peeking in the window with my niece, Liz. There’s a big green enameled stove in the corner and every beam holds books and rolls of mysterious papers. I want to work there.

Speaking of maps— Don’t forget the Map Your Way into Story Workshop at Kennewick Barnes and Noble

Sat Sept 6th at 2 pm. Bring your colored pencils.

“What the best stories awaken in us is yearning and recognition, yearning for something longer ago, further away or yet about to be. Recognition of something we have never met, but have always known.”

So what is the bad news, you ask? The first round of Travelers’ Market had typesetting errors. Words are hyphenated in odd places, double periods, backwards quotation marks, the list goes on. As soon as I realized this, changes were overnighted and a new printing is in place, but books went out. All the books were pulled and labeled as uncorrected proofs. So, if you, dear reader, received one of the snafu copies, you can return it for a new unsnafued one or you can keep it and consider it a collector’s item or use it to teach your kids proof reading–25 cents an error?

How embarrassing.

with my agent, Sandra Bishop.

See the glazed look in my eyes? I gave two presentations, a book signing and six critiques in two days, and loved every minute of it–really! Okay, I don’t love the roar of the planes at PDX starting at 6 AM, but other than that… There’s something about the Willamette Conference that feels comfortable. You know writing conferences can be intimidating, all those NY people dazzling us with their professionalism, and that feeling of competition–so, just how many books have you sold? But I never feel those things at Willamette. Everyone seems to be in your corner cheering for you. No wonder I come back every year.

Presented: “Scene By Scene, Writing the YA Novel” with my good friend Renee Riva and “Fantasy, Myth and the Reluctant Hero” on my own.

Heard:Virginia Euwer Wolf read the opening paragraph of Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt. Doesn’t get any better than that! Yes, there really is literary YA fiction, despite much evidence to the contrary. And every time I read or hear that description of August days like the slow climb of a ferris wheel I am reminded of why I wanted to become a writer.

  The Travelers’ Market will be available in early July.

Book Signing  The Bookworm

Richland Parkway Sat. July 26^th  1-2 pm

Fantasy Map Workshop and Book Signing

at Barnes and Noble, Columbia Center Mall

Aug 16th, 2 pm 

Reserve your copies now!

Every scene must have a reason.     

q       Identify the main event : ____________________________

q       How does the event move the scene forward?__________________________________________

1. Increases tension
2. Changes something
3. Reveals something
4. Sets up other events

  q       What do the characters want in the scene? (drive)

 q       What new info. do readers learn about the characters or events in this scene?

 q       How do the characters respond to the main event? Show rather than tell. 

 q       Does this scene set up your next scene by creating a new situation?

Our lives are full of them. At least my life is. So today, an aside, a story about my son, some spiders and Rita.

To start you must know Rita. She is an old grand dame of a car, a VW Quantum circa 1986. Her owner is my son, who  dislikes arachnids.She lives in Seattle outdoors; she is a street car. She weathers the rain, the fog, a little snow and the occasional bursts of Seattle sunshine. She longs to be a garage car. And to make it worse, she must now compete with public transportation for his attention. This is the story of Rita’s revenge.

On the day in question, my son and his friend were driving through one of those occasional bursts of seattle sun. Nothing beats Seattle sunshine–all was right with the world, until the spider.  A large spider crawled out of one of the defroster vents.  It was a pale white, almost transulcent spider, very fleshy. The friend, D, used a piece of the random detritus on the floor to squish it.  A minute later, another large pale spider began rapelling down from the rear-view mirror.  And that’s when they noticed a few more spiders crawling out of the vents.  My son felt something moving up his leg.

They pulled the car to the curb,  leapt out and dove onto a nearby patch of grass. They slapped at their clothes and rolled back and forth on some poor guy’s front lawn, in an effort to squash or at least dislodge the dozens of spiders which they were sure had to be crawling around inside their clothing. Rita’s engine purred. The frightened homeowner peered furtively through the blinds. My son wanted him to know that they were friendly, harmless, spider-infested people. He waved as he rolled and slapped.   

As soon as they got the car home, they tossed in a bug-bomb (yeah — the kind that says it’s made for a 3,000 square foot house) and locked Rita up and left her for a few days.   My husband pointed out that bug bombs are pretty toxic stuff, and he should probably drive Rita with the windows open for a few days.  Ever since then, any time I call Brennan on the phone and he’s driving somewhere, I can hear the roar of the wind. I suspect Rita is smiling.

The Travelers’ Market

paperback: 978-1-59597-012-1

hardcover: 978-1-59597-013-8

The doorbell rang for the fifth time that evening. Timothy James Maxwell had been counting. He finished off another Almond Joy bar and poured the rest of the bag of candy into the large bowl right by the front door. Every year it seemed that there were fewer and fewer trick-or-treators. It was already after nine, late for little kids to be out, even if it was a Friday. Still, they had only gone through one bag of candy; three more bags were stacked on a chair by the door.

Timothy looked at the candy with satisfaction: mostly chocolate, and he’d have them all to himself, since Sarah always complained that chocolate tasted like mud. Besides, she was off at a Halloween slumber party tonight, and his parents had left him and his friend Jessica in charge of answering the door while they watched a movie in the family room.

Timothy smiled to himself. Just six months ago, he and Jessica could never have been friends. Jessica was popular. She was pretty. She was a trend girls tried to follow, a status symbol boys tried to collect. She was smart, but she cloaked it well. And she had been one of Timothy’s biggest detractors. But that part, at least, was in the past. It had all changed when Jessica received a pale blue note with a riddle written on it―a riddle that led her to a terrifying encounter with the Wild Hunt. To survive, she had been forced to join forces with the most unlikely persons she could imagine: Timothy James Maxwell and his sister, Sarah.

Just then, Jessica came in from the kitchen with a steaming bag of popcorn in her hands. A group of people had just stepped up on the porch, all much bigger than the earlier groups who had come in princess gowns and superhero capes. Late night was the domain of teenagers dragging large grocery sacks and wearing just the minimal to be considered Trick-or-Treaters. In front of the group were two boys Timothy thought he recognized: fifteen or sixteen years of age, they were dressed in dark baggy clothing, their faces smeared with black smudges. A younger girl was with them, all in black with pointy cat ears and a long tail pinned to the back of her pants.

“I didn’t know you were friends with Sarah,” the girl cooed to Jessica, looking right through Timothy.

Jessica smiled and took the bowl of treats from Timothy. “Open your bag. You’re probably the last people tonight and we might as well get rid of all this candy.”

Timothy was about to protest, but his attention was caught by the fourth person on the porch.

Like the others, the figure was bundled in black, but his face was disguised by a rubber mask. A dark hood shaded the mask from the porch light. Most disturbing of all, Timothy couldn’t tell if the figure was male or female. At first, he thought the masked figure was part of the group, but when the others melted into the shadows, clutching their bulging bags of candy, the hooded shape lingered, a pillowcase extended like an offering[DLM1] .

The night grew still, without wind or noise. Timothy felt his scalp prickle. Even Jessica stopped chattering behind him.

Timothy grabbed the last handful of candy from the bowl and leaned forward, deliberately dropping it piece by piece into the pillowcase so he could steal a closer look under the stranger’s hood. In the dim porch light, the Trick-or-Treater’s rubber face was gray and puffy, the nose a misshapen blob.

Above it was a dark rimmed opening for a single eye.

Timothy jumped back and Jessica drew a sharp breath.

The hooded figure took a step toward the lighted living room. A raspy hum rose like a swarm of bees from behind the mask and something squirmed in the pillowcase.

Timothy’s mind screamed for him to shut the door, but his arms refused to obey. The figure shuffled forward, one foot raised to cross the threshold, then stopped, abruptly, as if it had run smack into an invisible barrier.

The figure shuddered and dropped the sack. It spilled open.

“Shut the door!” Jessica cried.

Finally, Timothy’s arms moved. He flung the door closed, but a moment too late: a large brown rat darted out from the pillowcase and scampered across the threshold into his house.

From behind the stranger’s mask, Timothy heard the bee-hum swell to a high wheezing laugh just as the door crashed to a close.

“What was that…that thing on the porch?” Jessica shrieked, jumping onto the bench in the entry way and knocking over the bags of candy in her rush to escape the rat. Miniature chocolate bars and packets of M&M’s skittered across the floor.

“You’re supposed to be the one with powers!” Timothy retorted. “And by the way, rats can climb.” Timothy’s heart pounded in his chest and he hoped Jessica couldn’t hear how frightened he felt. He couldn’t see the rat anywhere in the long hallway, but he was sure it was there somewhere, lurking, watching them. “Did you notice that the…the…that it couldn’t come through the door?”

“The sprig of rowan stopped it!” Jessica ,still tensed on the bench, peered into the darkness of the hallway.. “I hung it there when I came in, to keep away evil[DLM2] .” She reached up to touch the small cluster of leaves and took a deep breath. Her face was very white and her hazel eyes enormous. “It was just a precaution. It’s not like I expected anything to happen.”

“Then why could the rat get in if he couldn’t?”

“Maybe it only works against people. Either way, I bet it’s what your leaf has been warning you about. Something awful has found a way into your house.”

Timothy looked wildly about. “We have to find it before anything happens!”

“Don’t worry,” Jessica said grimly, “I think it will find us.”

The search for an agent is daunting. There are websites, articles, and books that tell authors how to find just the right person to represent his/work. I was ready. I did my research, wrote queries and rewrote them, sent out letters, and then sent out more. I used site like www.agentquery.com and hunted down agent interviews. I checked my email obsessively. It was so much easier, in the first round, to query agents who accept e-mail queries. E-mail friendly agents, we authors love you.

And  I had my list ready. You know that list of questions you keep just in case an agent makes the call and is interested in your work. I kept mine right by phone on my writing desk–just in case. And there were agents who requested partials and fulls, but nothing definite until I went to the grocery store. Okay, I’m sure it doesn’t happen this way for everyone, but here’s how it happened for me.

My most promising lead had evaporated. I was down. I sat at my computer and moped. My nice little list of agent questions was all printed out and set by the phone. I turned it over so I wouldn’t have to look at it.

In Safeway, around 4 pm, somewhere between the coffee and deli aisle my cell phone rings. I fumble it out of my purse and can hardly hear the voice over the piped in music and intercom announcements about specials on roast beef.
“This is Sandra Bishop.”
I drop my bread.
“Do you have time to talk?”
“Ah, I’m in the middle of the grocery store, can I call you back?”
“I only have twenty minutes and then I have another appt. I’m leaving the country tomorrow.”
I realize that it would take to much time to get home. I desperately look for a quiet spot, hunker down between the teas and wine. Not much action in the booze section.  Musak keeps blaring. Luckily, she didn’t hang up!

I was able to hear just enough of that conversation to realize that an agent really was interested and wanting me to consider her. It wasn’t the way I pictured it would be, sitting at my desk with my neat list of questions. It was a good reminder that life surprises us, sometimes in the most unlikely places.