Tag Archives: Author Visit

Trees and Tours and News, Oh My!

First, let me start with the Oh, My! Has it really been this long since my last blog post? Wow. Yeah, I guess it has. I’d like to blame my lack of communication on being really busy and that’s part of it, but mostly I didn’t have enough cool stuff to share. Until now.

So. Where to start.

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Cool Thing #1 – SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE has been named an Honour* Book by the fine kids of Manitoba in their Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice Awards. Cool, right? MAKING BOMBS FOR HITLER by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch won, which is awesome and so well deserved, but my book was one of two honour books (with UNGIFTED by Gordon Korman). I can’t begin to tell you how amazing this is.

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Cool Thing #2 – As you may know, SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE is a Red Maple nominee in the Ontario Forest of Reading program. Another huge honour for me and my little book about ghosts, boys and bras. So I was afforded the opportunity to do a little bit of touring last week up to North Bay and Parry Sound to celebrate at their Festival of Trees. I didn’t take near enough pictures, but here are a few. I always have a great time hanging out with book-lovers of all kinds and I have to say that this event made me feel like quite the rock star. Look at all those fans! Thank you to the Near North School District for making this happen. What a great couple of days!

 

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And this isn’t even the whole crowd. I was told there were about 1600 kids there. Amazing!

Here’s a smaller crowd of SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE fans who came to my presentation and sat in the front row (check out their cool SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE buttons!). <3!

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Here I am with fellow Red Maple nominees, K.L. Armstrong and M. A. Marr (LOKI’S WOLVES: THE BLACKWELL PAGES)

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And a group photo with the rest of the authors (K.L. and M. A. had to leave early) and some of the event organizers. Thank you Near North!

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Also, I was fortunate enough to do some school visits in Sudbury on my trip. Check out the cool artwork some kids did to tie in with my book:

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Here I am with Ms. Vigna’s ASD class. These kids were so great and engaged and asked some of the best questions. I loved meeting you!

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AMAZING! Thank you so much to these great kids. I loved meeting you all and chatting about books.

There will be more Forest of Reading events next week and I’ll update again once I have more pictures.

Until then, thanks for making it to the bottom of my post. Here’s your reward, a dancing chicken:

 

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*These cool things are happening in Canada, so I’ll be using my Canadian spelling here.

Auction #17 – KidLit Cares: In-Person Visit from Author Lisa McMann

Welcome to KidLit Cares, an online talent auction to benefit the Red Cross relief effort to help communities recover from Superstorm Sandy. KidLit Cares was started by the very awesome Kate Messner, but I’m taking over Round 2. Agents, editors, authors, illustrators and other generous people have donated various services to be auctioned off to the highest bidder, with donations being made directly to the Red Cross disaster relief fund. You can read more about KidLit Cares here.

Now, on to the auction!

Lisa McMann is the New York Times bestselling author of the middle-grade dystopian fantasy series The Unwanteds and the upcoming Infinity Ring book 3 (The Trap Door), as well as bestselling teen novels including the Wake trilogy, Cryer’s Cross, and Dead To You. She lives with her family in the Phoenix area. Read more about Lisa on her website at http://lisamcmann.com. Or better yet, be her friend on Facebook or follow her on Twitter.

 From Lisa: This auction is for an in-person visit to your school, library, or bookstore anywhere in the continental US (48 states & DC), or Hawaii, or one of four cities in Canada (Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, Toronto) in the 2013 calendar year. I’ll take care of my flight, hotel, meals, and I’ll waive my speaking fee. I’ll need an experienced adult driver to cart me around to/from airport, hotel, and event. Pack in the whole school for an assembly, book fair, and/or signing, or bring me in for your 10-person book club to hang out and talk about books-audience size doesn’t matter to me. I can work with grades 3 and up for The Unwanteds series and/or Infinity Ring, and grades 7 through adults for my teen books (Wake trilogy, the new Visions series, Cryer’s Cross, and Dead To You).

Opening Bid: $100

This auction closes at 10pm Eastern Standard Time on November 23. Any bids placed after that time will be void.

If you’d like to bid on this auction, check the current high bid and place a higher bid by leaving your name and bid amount in the comments, along with some way to contact you (email, FB or Twitter…I’m not fussy.) Winners will be notified when the auction ends and should be prepared to make an online donation to the Red Cross Disaster Relief fund in the amount of the high bid at that time.  After you’ve made your donation, you’ll forward your receipt to me, and I’ll put you in touch with the person who donated the service you won so that the two of you can work out the details about how and when.   All services will be provided at the convenience of both the person making the donation and the auction winner, but this should happen within three months of the auction’s end unless something else is agreed upon by both parties.

Good luck and thanks for your help!

Tip: if you’re bidding, you may want to subscribe to the follow-up comments, so you can get notice of future bids. Subscribe via RSS on the right. —>