Uncategorized

I felt like a rock star this weekend! I was at the society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Conference (SCBWI) in Los Angeles with 1,100 other writers. And I got to hang out with other rock stars, like Richard Peck, Linda Sue Park, Sherman Alexie, Eve Bunting, Holly Black, Ellen Harper, David Wiesner!!! We ate rubber chicken and talked about writing and books for days—I can’t think of much I’d rather do. Sherman made us cry, Richard made us think, David made us wish we could draw, and Lin Oliver and Steve Mooser made us all feel so welcome we wanted to move in! My editor, Dinah, fed me shrimp and enchiladas, and Linda Sue took us to a Korean restaurant where I learned I like kim chi but jellyfish—not so much. I recommend you find people who love to do what you love and go do it with them. And rock on!

I have been reading the galleys for Alchemy and Meggy Swann. Galleys are manuscript pages printed just as they will be in the book but not cut and bound. This is the last chance to find missing words, misspellings, words divided inappropriately, and other such mistakes. It’s too late to do editing although I always find sentences I wish I’d written differently or totally the wrong words! It’s frustrating, but it’s an exciting time. The pages look almost like a book. I start to believe it’s real—there really will be a book. And reading the manuscript over reminds me of what I loved about Meggy and how annoying she can be, what a terrific guy Roger Oldham is, and why Master Peevish needs a good shaking sometimes!

Not only does Meggy have a cover now, she has her first review—from the wonderful Richie Partington of richiespicks.com. He says, among other things, “The first thing that you’ve got to know about Cushman’s latest piece of historical fiction—this one set in London at the dawn of the Elizabethan era—is that there are wonderful waves of high-spirited discourse providing balance to the dire predicaments in which feisty, differently-abled heroine Margret “Meggy” Swann finds herself…Page after page, the pre-Shakespearian London in which the tale is set is delightfully colorful—at least if you are having the thrill of reading Meggy’s descriptions of it and not actually having to live and breathe and smell and taste and step in it every day. Eww! …Ye toads and vipers! Meggy Swann’s coming of age story is way-fun and, thus, my trip through Elizabethan London was come and gone way, way too soon.”

I was delighted to read such a positive response. After all these years, sometimes I still fear that someone will shout, “The author has no clothes!” and I will be found out—a poor writer or worse, no writer at all. Funny how that still happens. I hope you agree with Richie and find that Meggy is lots of fun.

There is a rumor around that Johnny Depp was interested in buying the big cattle ranch in the middle of our little island, but the deal has fallen through. Too bad. I had fantasies of running into him at the grocery store when we were buying zucchini squash and socks, and I would convince him to make a movie of Alchemy and Meggy Swann. He would make a great dark-haired, dark-eyed, obsessed alchemist. I didn”t picture Master Peevish as a sympathetic or romantic figure, but Johnny Depp would have made him so. Farewell, Johnny. I hardly knew you.

This is Strawberry Festival weekend here on Vashon Island, sometimes called Mayberry on the Water. We have art and game booths, animal rescue displays, carnival rides, beer gardens, and lots and lots of food that is really bad for you. This morning was the parade led by Vashon Island Veterans, followed by the fire truck, antique tractors, politicians waving and cheerleaders cheering, tap dancers and samba dancers, the library cart drill team and—my favorite—the Thriftway shopping cart drill team. Every kid and dog on the island is welcome to join the parade and most of them do. The softball championship is happening at the park down the road, and around the corner are free puppetry workshops. We don’t grow strawberries anymore on the island but we do a great Strawberry Festival.

Elizabeth, Agent Terrible, and I just had a long conference call with publicity and marketing people from Clarion and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. They had lots of great idea about getting Alchemy and Meggy Swann out there to readers. Spring 2010 will be very busy with book tours, store visits, conferences, blog tours.  I will be in Los Angeles in April, Seattle in May, and Washington D.C. in June. So far. If you want me to come to your area, go to the contact page and email Kate Green at Clarion. No promises but who knows—I just might show up.

Often I’m asked why I started writing. I was almost fifty after all. Why did all of a sudden I decide to write a book? Because I had an idea for a story about a girl who lived a long time ago and I wanted to know what happened to her. I wanted to know what she did and felt and what her life was like, and the only way I could do that was to make it up and write it down. When I think of my writing like that now, it seems easier and brings me great joy. When I think, “Oh, I have to write a whole book!” or “Will readers, teachers, booksellers, librarians like this book I am writing?” or “This has to be good, better, the best book of all!” the joy goes away. The best reason to write is just to find out what happens.

Last week I read two very different books. Down Sand Mountain is the delightful story of a boy in a Florida mining town in 1966. It’s a lovely book about important things, and Dewey’s voice is wonderfully distinctive, funny, sad, and true. You’ll be crazy about him. I highly recommend you read it.

The other was The Marvelous Hairy Girls, about the Gonzales sisters of 16th century Spain. They had a rare genetic condition called hypertrichosis, which caused them to grow abundant hair on their faces and other parts of their bodies.Grace, a character inWill’s Sparrow’s Road,my work-in-progress, has the same condition. The book was interesting but it couldn’t tell me what I most wanted to know. How did the girls feel about their condition? Did they hate it or did it seem normal to them? Were they always aware of being different or did they forget at times? How did they respond to the attention—good and bad—they received?What would it be like to be considered abnormal? If you have any opinions, please email me and let me know.

My good friend Olivia Moats of Fresno, California, just sent me these pictures of Tip, her pet rat. Isn’t she beautiful? Tip is the sweetest rat I know—and I’ve met lots of rats—and likes to run in her wheel, eat popcorn and pistachio nuts, and take naps in someone’s sleeve. Tip and her family visited last winter, and she was the perfect house guest—quiet and funny and no trouble at all.

My daughter used to have a pet rat named Tova. We would let Tova out of his cage at times and he’d run around Leah’s room, finding secret places to sleep. When I wanted to find him, I would call “Tova, Tova, futfutfutt,” and out he’d come, waddling and answering, “futfutfut.”

Rats have gotten a bad rap in fiction—think of the evil Templeton in Charlotte’s Web. For another take on rats, you might read Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, The Wind in the Willows, and Tor Seidler’s A Rat’s Tale. And then never call someone a dirty rat again.

Alchemy and Meggy Swann is three steps closer to being a real book. First, I finished the copyediting. That’s the part of editing where I have to change commas to periods and periods to commas and argue about spelling and grammar and odd turns of phrase. It’s also the part where I secretly snarl at my copyeditor but really shouldn’t because she is only doing her job and making my book better. But it feels so good.

Second, I saw a drawing of the art for the cover. Meggy looks beautiful with Louise the goose on her lap and alchemical implements in the background. I can’t wait to see it all finished in full color.

Third, Clarion has announced a publication date of April 2010. I hope all of you readers will look for my story of Meggy Swann, sent to the London of Elizabeth I, to assist her father the alchemist. I grew very fond of Meggy through the writing and I’m certain you will like her, too.