Vonna | September 4, 2010
As I mentioned in my last post, I have a lot of writing events coming up. Some of them come with homework. EEEK!
Actually, it is homework I’m looking forward to. For the Oklahoma SCBWI conference, Joni Sensel, who is leading the fantasy intensive, has asked us to read or reread the first chapter of several [...]
Vonna | August 29, 2010
Thanks to Elaine Scott for speaking at the August SCBWI meeting. Elaine’s topic was billed as Get an Agent or Not, but her talk was far more fascinating than this title indicated. Elaine shared her experiences with her two very different agents, why she felt compelled to leave her first, well-known, high-profile agent for [...]
Vonna | June 3, 2010
Hooray; it’s summer! It’s getting real nice and steamy down here in Houston. Speaking of Houston, those of you from other parts may not know that in January I started a newsletter for the Houston SCBWI chapter. I have added a page here on my blog for anyone who would like to keep up with [...]
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 | February 22, 2010
On Saturday morning, our conference had sold out and had a waiting list. The Merrell Center was an excellent facility. We had three big screens so everybody could easily see the speakers presentations. The microphones worked perfectly and we had wi-fi and plenty of electrical outlets so that our bookstore ran smoothly. The room for [...]
Vonna | February 22, 2010
The Friday night before the Houston SCBWI conference, Varsha and Rajeev Bajaj hosted our guest speakers and the conference organizers at their lovely home in Katy.
We treated our guests (and ourselves) to good ol’ Texas barbecue and had a great time getting to know each other. This will be a low word count post, [...]
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 [...]
