Library Visits…. from 'The Other Side'

By Teri Terry

I’m not referring to holding a séance, here. Though, if it could work and you could get Roald Dahl or C.S. Lewis or the like in for an afternoon, that would be interesting. But that isn’t today’s topic. Instead, I’m putting my other hat on for a moment, and looking at author visits from the library’s point of view.

Disclaimer: These are purely the views of the blog author (meaning me) and are not meant to represent anyone who may or may not be alarmed at the expression of any pro-literacy or pro-library sentiment which I may or may not hold.

Am I good to go on?

NYC 2011: Sara Zarr gives the speech that she wanted to hear

By Candy Gourlay

Reports from the 2011 Winter Conference of the Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators

I didn't manage to get a good shot of
Sara so here's a nice portrait I found
on several blogs

Note: This post has been abridged extensively since it was first posted. I'm afraid my detailed notes threw up some copyright issues and I have had to scale back my piece. Apologies to all.

The best books I've read are the ones that make me go, "OMG that was me. That book is totally who I am."

That's what I felt about YA author Sara Zarr's keynote speech on the last day of the SCBWI conference.

Sara attended her first New York conference in 2001, after five years of being serious about writing. She was frustrated - even angry.

"I wanted something to happen ... seriously, how much longer did I have to wait? I had an agent, I had finished my book ... I came in part to figure out the system and work out an angle; network the hell out of it ..." She was straining to hear that "magic piece of information" that would finally open the door.

Build Your Own Website: The Trouble With Pictures

I created this for my Twitter profile
after an author friend reminded me
how important it was to keep your

book cover on people's minds.
I now use it on Facebook and other
online profiles such as my profile
image when comment on blogs.

By Candy Gourlay

We're almost at the end of our Build Your Own Website series ... there is of course plenty of stuff we haven't covered, but what we have will pretty much get you up and running.

We've talked about audience, we've debated the pros and cons of blogging,we've learned what platforms are out there, and we've learned about bananas and websites. Now here is one of the biggest headaches of running a website: images.

Every website needs eye-candy - images help draw the eye to the important things, images make people stop and stare, images draw people in.