Vonna | April 25, 2010
In spite of the beautiful weather in Houston Saturday, a nice crowd showed up at Blue Willow Bookshop for Jenny Moss’s signing of her new fantasy, SHADOW. About half the audience had already read the book and had opinions on what they would like to see in a sequel. Most of them agreed they [...]
Vonna | April 13, 2010
It never rains; it pours.
In the next two weeks we have three fantastic kid-lit author events in our neighborhood. For me, these events are like going to a free conference. Think about it—if these authors were appearing at a conference, they would speak for forty-five minutes. There might be a question and answer panel at [...]
Vonna | April 6, 2010
April is turning out to be a pretty good month for the Houston children’s writing community. Yesterday I picked up a long-awaited copy of Jenny Moss’s new YA fantasy SHADOW from Scholastic. I hated to put it down but I’ll have good reading tonight! Jenny will be having a book signing for SHADOW April 24th [...]
Vonna | March 9, 2010
Last night, when Mary Pope Osborne, author of the famous Magic Tree House books, and her sister, Natalie Pope Boyce, author of the companion Research Guides for the Magic Tree House series asked the masses of children in their audience to help decide which book Mary should write next, a burst of enthusiasm met each [...]
Vonna | February 16, 2010
Last night I got to see a real treat—Heather Brewer, author of the popular teen series, The Chronicles of Vladimir Todd, had a book signing at Blue Willow Bookshop, my favorite local book store. The book she was promoting, ELEVENTH GRADE BURNS, is the fourth in the series, and her fans, or minions as she [...]
Vonna | February 9, 2010
In my last post I talked about the great lineup of authors who will be showing their books at next week’s Houston SCBWI conference. In fact, it is such a great lineup that I need to add SIX more authors!
A few weeks ago I did a post on Creative Publishing using Cherie Foster Colburn as [...]
Vonna | February 8, 2010
In just two weeks, the Houston chapter of the SCBWI will be having our annual conference. Besides the great speakers we have lined up, one of the great features of our conference is the amazing number of local authors who will be participating in the conference bookstore. For those of you who will be joining [...]
Vonna | February 1, 2010
Those of us who were in Austin this past weekend got lucky—the ALA announced the 2009 awards after the writers and illustrators had already agreed to attend the Austin SCBWI conference, Destination Publication. So, we had both the author and illustrator for the Caldecott Honor winner, All the World. We had the author of the [...]
Vonna | January 25, 2010
This past Friday night, I had an opportunity to hear Becca Fitzpatrick talk about her NYT Bestseller, HUSH HUSH. A standing-room-only crowd filled Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston to get a chance to hear Becca and have her sign their books.
I saw a few writers from Houston’s SCBWI chapter, and Becca recognized some of her [...]
Vonna | January 4, 2010
The neighbor’s cat (I’ve dubbed him Snickerdoodle because his fur looks like a sugar cookie dusted with cinnamon) is stalking in my garden. He hasn’t been out for a while; probably been lying inside by the fireplace for the past two weeks, shirking his duties of keeping the lizard population down. Bad news, cat—the lizards [...]
