Publication Day for DRAMA QUEENS in the house

The dedication in my book reads, "To my daughter, Jennifer, and our jumble of a chosen family." Here's a picture of Jennifer at 16 accepting bouquets of flowers after a fabulous dance concert. Like the book's main character, my daughter is biracial. She's also tall and beautiful, smart and funny (with a huge laugh), deeply perceptive and good at anything she does. It's accurate to say that along with my many years in the theatre, she and the other members of our diverse and nontraditional family are the inspiration for this novel. That's what I love to write about -- family ties, relationships, all the ways we struggle to discover who we are and find the right path for ourselves in life.

Of course, in the act of writing, Jessie took off on her own (the way characters do) and became someone different from both my daughter and myself. Still, it was a relief to me when Jennifer read the final version of the book and gave it (and Jessie) her stamp of approval. I'll share more later about the other people who inspired this story.

Today we are celebrating a long writing, rewriting, editing, and publication process that has finally come to fruition.  Today you can buy the book (online at B&N, amazon.com, many other sites, as well as in bookstores). And you can find it in libraries, too. I hope you get your hands on a copy. I hope you read it and fall in love with Jessie and her crazy jumble of a chosen family. I hope you'll let me know if you do!

Got Cover Art!

All of Jessie's world is a stage, and she's determined 

to become a player.

A lot has happened on the "book front" since I last posted. The title has gone from the original, It's Not the End of the World to All the World's A Jumble, and has finally been nailed down as DRAMA QUEENS IN THE HOUSE! It's been edited and copyedited and revised and revised and revised. And now the ARCs (Advanced Reading Copies or bound galleys) are done and making their way out to all the places publishers send them. 

Here's what the book is about:

Sixteen-year-old Jessie Jasper Lewis doesn't remember a time in her life when she wasn't surrounded by method actors, bright spotlights, and feather boas. Her parents started the Jumble Players theater, and theater is the glue that holds her crazy family together. But when she discovers her father is cheating on her mother with a man, Jessie feels like her world is toppling over. And then, on top of everything else, there's the delusional aunt who is predicting the end of the world. Jessie certainly doesn't feel ready to be center stage in the production that is her family. But where does she belong in all of this chaos?

I'm really happy with the new title and the cover art.  The process of writing and selling and rewriting (and rewriting and rewriting) a book is such a long and intensive one, it's almost anticlimactic to have it suddenly done.  But then the ARCs arrive and it's an enormous thrill to hold the bound copy in my hands and know that in a few months the actual hardbound book will be coming out! (March 2014 from Roaring Brook/Macmillan) 

Happy New Year 2013!

How is the new year treating you? My wish for you is that it's getting off to a fabulous start!

I'm just coming up out of the deep hibernation of what I hope is the last big rewrite of my upcoming book. Let's just say, the holidays slid by in a blur of words, words, words. Even without the pressure of a writing project, it's easy for me to hibernate this time of year. As I look out my window right now, snow is starting to fall again. It's warmer today than it's been (it's all the way up to 15 degrees)! My cozy basement studio with its wall of windows is a pleasant place to hole up and create.

So, is the rewrite done, you ask? Uh, no. Not quite. But I'm so close I can taste it. And so absorbed and obsessed I am even dreaming about it. My morning journaling is now always about the story. More problem-solving happens in that journal than anywhere else. Even my massive story board (see below) takes a back seat to the journal.

It seemed like a good idea to take a little break this morning and open this blog back up after a year hiatus. Who knew a year could fly by like that?

The book is IT'S NOT THE END OF THE WORLD, a YA novel due out sometime soon from Macmillan/ Roaring Brook Press. My editor, Nancy Mercado, is coming back from a delightful hiatus of her own, and I'm looking forward to moving into the next stages of this project with her.

Here's what I do most days after the words have dried up. Lately I've been finding ways to incorporate some of my poems into my visual artwork. In this one, titled "Spring Morning," the poem is written in white and silver ink on the blue sky. There's nothing like dreaming of spring and new boots and gardening when the entire visible landscape is white and shades of grey.

SPRING MORNING (acrylic on stretched canvas 20X20")

What are you up to these early days of this first month of this new year? Are you finishing up a creative project you began in 2012 (or 2011 or 2010 or 2009 or . . .)? Are you starting something brand, spanking new? Whatever it is, I wish you all the best with it!

What is it and how is it going? Write and tell me about it. I want to know!

MN WOMEN'S PRESS

Yup, that's my artwork on the cover of the November issue of Minnesota Women's Press! How cool is that?!!!

Norma Smith Olson (co-editor with Kathy Magnuson) and I had a very enjoyable phone conversation and she wrote the Cover Artist article, "Masked and Unmasked." I've been a long-time admirer of this free mag (published for 25 years, originally as a newspaper and more recently evolved into a newsprint magazine with an e-edition as well.) I love the focus on "Changing the Universe through Women's Stories." It's an honor to be included.

You can check it out at: http://eedition.womenspress.com/SiteImages/SpecialSection/72/p1c1.html

There's a certain irony about being on the cover of the issue where the theme is, "showing up." That's always been one of the big challenges in my life. Never knowing quite how to do it, when it's more important to "show up" for myself or for others.  Let's just say that sometimes I do it smashingly well and other times, well, you know . . . not so good. Let me also say that I'm working on it!

Like I am now going to work (yet again) on showing up for this blog! I can't believe it's been over a year since I last posted. It's been a year of pretty intense ups and downs. But, hey -- I've got some new artwork to share, some news about my book, and some other musings I don't want to keep to myself.

Gathering Branches

I've become obsessed with branches.  It started harmlessly enough in a couple of small mixed media pieces I did using old family photos adding sticks and wire as a means of hanging them.  The next thing I knew I was doing another and another, each one larger and more complex (and using more branches).  Maybe I should say it's an obsession with wood, because I've added in driftwood and bamboo and big old sheets of plywood.  I even took apart an old shelf unit and nailed it to this one.  And don't get me started about how much I love the bark of trees.  (Don't worry -- I don't strip the bark from the tree.  I only pick up dead wood!)

I'm sure this will run its course, but in the meantime, I'm working on a series of Family Tree collages, searching as always for the stories hidden in familiar photos and behind the surface in other people's family pictures.

This one is titled:  What She Said, What She Did

It's 2ftX3ft (plywood, canvas board, repurposed shelving, branches, wire, beads, vintage hardware, vintage lace, ribbons, digitally altered vintage photos,  acrylic paint, handmade and decorative papers).

Family stories are what I write about, too.  And they're what I gravitate to in the books I read, whether poetry, fiction, or memoir.  Nothing fascinates me as much as the complexity of family relationships and the stories that are either passed from generation to generation or are suppressed until someone with a lot of curiosity (sometimes called being really nosey) comes along to dig them out or make them up as she goes along. 

This piece, titled "Leaving Camp" uses some of my husband's family photos to explore the experience of the Japanese American internment camps in this country during WWII.  

I don't just gather tree branches. I also love to rescue vintage photos from yard sales and estate sales and thrift stores. At first, it broke my heart to think such a personal thing as a family photo album could end up on a sale table. But after I started working with them, I realized that each photograph of people I've never met has multiple stories to show and tell, a wealth of material I use over and over in my collages and assemblages as well as in my poems and stories.

I am always deeply grateful when people let me use their family photos in my artwork.  It feels risky, even dangerous at times, because unless I'm doing a commissioned work, I'm not really thinking about telling their story. But there are countless stories embedded in the richness of the old photographs, and I always hope to uncover some kind of emotional truth as I work and play with the images.