Happy Holidays – I’m off to New Zealand

Well, it’s finally time for my long overdue honeymoon.  Ian and I are heading to New Zealand to hang out with sheep and penguins and do lots of hiking and photo-taking.  I’m well armed with lots of fantastic books to read and I’ll be doing a little travel writing as we go.  While we’re gone, check out the pets on our webcam here.

I hope you have a fantastic holiday!

Best wishes,

Tanya

I’m back (and getting published!)

Hi all you faithful readers out there.  Sorry for dropping off the blog radar for the past few weeks.  When did it get to be December?  The days have been filled with serendipitous travels, lots of writing, eating, and honeymoon planning.  I hope you can forgive me.

I’ve crawled out of my cave (aka the library) to tell you one of my poems is getting published in the Northridge Review.  Woot!  The Review will be released early in the spring and they (gasp!) want me to do a reading.  The possibilities for embarrassment when you combine me + public speaking are endless.  And that’s just how I like it!

That’s all for now but I promise I’ll be back with lots more fun soon.  Thanks for stopping by!

Look! There’s me!

So I was reading the blog of the lovely Lisa Yee today and look what I stumbled on!  It’s a whole post of pictures of Peepy at the SCBWI conference.  Take a look at the photo of Lisa’s panel on writing for multiple ages.  If you look in the front row of the crowd, on the right side of the screen, next to the aisle, and squint really hard, you’ll see me.  Ha!  I’m strangely proud.

Graduation, among other things

Wow, it feels like I’ve been gone from the bloggosphere for forever, but it’s really only been just over a week.  First of all, I’m sorry for my absence.  In a quick recap, I’ve had the following things to deal with over the last week: 3 trips to the vet (the first: diagnosis, the second: get foods to convince my cat to eat, the third: picking up the food that my cat actually liked), a trip to the emergency room with my friend (post to follow tomorrow), photographing an Indian engagement ceremony/party (pulled together in 2 days while my husband was out of town), a power outage or two, tea with friends, first chapter critique, writing a long synopsis, then a short one, writing my final exam for my last class ever, reading two books, shooting a wedding, picking my husband up from the airport which meant I could finally sleep again (I didn’t get any sleep when he was gone) but also picking up his Switzerland-zombie virus.  Commence sleeping/popsicle eating/nose-blowing.

So yeah, I didn’t do much blogging but it was a busy week.  I’ll try to do more frequent updating and not abandon all you readers out there.

In parting words, today is my official college graduation.  What will I do with my time?  Ha.

2009 SCBWI Summer Conference

As promised, here are a few pictures from the 2009 SCBWI Summer Conference.  I know they’re long overdue, but I hope you enjoy.

Mara Bushansky and me.  This was day 1, still bright eyed and well-rested.  That would all end soon.

Writers Sara Wilson Etienne, Mara Bushansky, Rita Crayon Huang

Here’s half of Israel Sanchez, who won the Illustration Portfolio Showcase, writer/artist Andy Mitchell, and writer Charlie Cohen

Rita and illustrator Ken Min

Jennifer Bosworth and me

There were a lot of creative costumes at the Blue Moon Ball, including the Blue Man Group!

Sara enjoys the wild rumpus in her fantastic Where the Wild Things Are costume

Me and Esther Hershenhorn

Me and Edith Cohn

Rita and me

One of my favorite parts of the conference was a mini lesson on plot and structure from Holly Black. Here are Rita, Holly, and Lee Wind

My excuse for slacking off

As you may have noticed from my husband’s posting a blog entry for me (sneaky, he is) I was dead tired last night and in no mood to blog.  I have a good excuse though!  My husband and I had purchased tickets to see Neil Finn play at Largo, and after our weekend to San Francisco, we completely forgot about the concert.  Luckily I remembered that afternoon or we would have been doing laundry and grocery shopping while the band played on.

Before the show we grabbed a bite to eat at Kings Road Cafe, and overheard one of the funniest conversations in awhile.  Some musician, who wasn’t famous enough for me to recognize, sat down across from his friends.  He launched into a story about how when he was in Milan and Donatella Versace recognized him.  “Come to my store,” she said to him.  “I’ll close it down for you.”

The musician thought it would be a trip, so he and his friend went.  “Come,” Donatella said, “pick what you like and take whatever you want.  You can have what you want.”

“Sweet,” this guy thought.  “It’s free.”

He and his friend went on a shopping spree, picking out things they would never wear, like leather shirts with gold studs, all because he thought it was free.  When it was time to leave the store, Donatella says, “Let me just take your credit card in case.”

“In case what?” the guy thought.  That’s when he realized that what he thought was free wasn’t free.

He and his friend walked out.  “Holy cow,” his friend said.  “I spent 35 million lira.”

They did the math.  “That’s thirty five thousand dollars.”

The musician sighed.  “I guess I got off lucky.  I only spent seventeen grand.”

There’s a lesson to be learned in there.

Back to the daily grind

You know what’s ironic?  At the airport you need to be at your gate at a certain time, and yet there are no obvious clocks in the entire place.  This is not just one airport, but nearly every one I’ve been to. Seems odd to me.

That tidbit aside, this wedding weekend in San Francisco was fun but brief.  I didn’t get as much writing done as I would have liked, so I’ll try to play catch up this week.  I’ve got added incentive to work efficiently – at the SCBWI summer conference I was a door prize winner for a manuscript consultation with Stephen Mooser, President of the SCBWI.  I’m beyond excited, but I have to pull together a synopsis for my book.  This is harder than it looks, since my book isn’t actually finished.  That and I want to make a few changes to the first pages, since some plot lines have changed from when I began writing.  All in all, it’ll be hectic but fun.  Let’s just hope life doesn’t throw too many other projects at me.

Exhausted

I feel guilty for not updating this blog for the past few days, though it appears my husband has been busy behind the scenes posting old photographs of me.  I feel so absoluletly tired and excited and inspired by the SCBWI Summer Conference, which was truly an amazing experience.  I don’t do too well without sleep, and while the adreneline kept me going this past weekend, my body is now in catch-up mode.  I’ll give you more details on what I learned over the next few days, but for now I’ll leave you with this: the biggest piece of advice I heard over and over was to write what you love.  Write the story only you can write, the story you have to write.  The rest will come.

Resource Thursdays: SCBWI Conference Blog

Tomorrow starts the four day whirlwind that is the SCBWI Summer Conference, and I am beyond excited.  With so many amazing faculty members and so many interesting workshops, I’m having a hard time figuring out which sessions to attend.  Sadly I haven’t yet figured out how to be everywhere at once, but luckily for you and me, there’s the SCBWI Conference Blog.  This team blog, featuring contributions from Alice Pope, Lee Wind, Suzanne Young, Paula Yoo, Jolie Stekly, and Jaime Temairik will be the place to go for faculty interviews, conference highlights, and a run down of the events.  I’ll be catching up after the conference by reading the blog, but I’ll be signing off my own blog for the next few days.  I hope you enjoy the weekend!

I’m a prepper

What can I say, I’m a prepper.  And by prepper, I don’t mean preppy a la cardigans and blazers, I mean I’m a preparer.  For the SCBWI Summer Conference, which starts on Friday (holy cow!) I’ve got more notes than I know what to do with.  Not kidding – I have a 12 page spreadsheet.  (This should be a clue as to the kind of student I am.)  I want to get as much out of this conference as I can, so I’ve been spending my time the last few weeks taking notes and reading up on the conference faculty.  Not only has the research helped in narrowing down the speakers I want to see, it’s also helped me start a list of agents who I’d like to submit to in the future.  Getting ready for the conference is also like studying for the best kind of test – one where you hope to prove yourself professional and involved in your community.  Hopefully I pass, and if nothing else, this has been such an incredible learning experience.  I can’t wait for Friday.  I may not sleep for the next two days!