All Manner of This and That

The Bar Harbor Book Festival rocked, although not exactly the way some might have expected. As is typical of first-year ventures, it didn't draw much of a crowd, so we ran workshops for ourselves. But since there were 25 of us, it turned into the world's most intimate and helpful writers' conference.

Nothing beats hearing someone else describe the level of self-hatred they sink to while drafting. Not to mention the amount of obsessive email-checking.


I got to meet other Maine kidlit writers, always a plus. The lady at left with the great t-shirt is Deva Fagan, whose MG fantasy Fortune's Folly now has a place of honor on my To Be Read pile. Deva's a fellow blogger at The Enchanted Inkpot. I had a great time chatting with Megan Frazer, Erin Dionne, Robin MacCready, Kekla Magoon, and Bethany Hegedus, whose works also grace the now-tottering TBR pile.

Kudos to Carrie Jones for organizing this. And watch for it next year!

Wafting off into the wild world of book marketing, the estimable Kirkus Reviews authored a very sweet tweet on August 31: "The most tragically overlooked book of 2008: THE UNNAMEABLES, by Ellen Booraem. Reviewed 9/1/08: http://tinyurl.com/nojcy4." I'm not sure who overlooked ol' Medford, but whoever it is should consider themselves tweaked. Or tweeted, anyway. Kirkus has been a good friend to the The Unnameables, having starred it and highlighted it every chance it got. I'm very grateful.

They get results, too. I learned about the tweet from a comment on GoodReads, and then in a blog review on Librarilly Blonde.

The Horn Book, meanwhile, included The Unnameables on its list of "talented newcomers," which was sweet of them, too.

I think I win the "links per line of type" prize, if there is one. There should be, don't you think?