I turned the calendar this morning - and almost fell off my chair.

Who wrote all those events/practices/obligations/travel plans/appointments in December??

I can't see the days of the week, for goodness sakes.

Maybe I'll just stay right here in November . . .

Yay!!!

It went really well - I'm hooked!

kmessner had a student in her creative writing class who was asking her questions about writing a verse novel and Kate didn't know the answers. So she asked me if I'd be willing to do a Skype Q&A session with her class! I said, of course!!

The kids had great questions, and it's just so amazing to me that I can be sitting in my office in Oregon talking to kids in a classroom all the way on the East coast!! So cool!

Interested in a Skype visit with me?

Check out my Skype an Author page for information!!

        
         photo from ichabodhides's photostream.

Alrighty then.

Can you hear that faint jingle of sleigh bells? Eep! Christmas is only 24 days away. Hope you had a good Thanksgiving. In my next life I'm coming back as pie. Actually, after this weekend, I've already become pie. Just call me pumpkin or chocolate pecan.
November 29th and 30th are very good days for literature. Born on the 29th: Louisa May Alcott, Madeleine L'Engle, C.S. Lewis, Katherine Paterson. Born on the 30th: Mark Twain, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Jonathan Swift, Margot Zemach. 
The incomparable Maira Kalman (Pursuit of Happiness) created an amazing Thanksgiving picture essay,"Back to the Land." She visited Alice Waters at Chez Panisse, a couple of edible schoolyards, walked to California in her head a couple of times, met Michael Pollan, and makes a great case for America becoming "less fastly fastly and more slowly slowly" when it comes to growing our food. Don't know how she does it, but each month Maira tops herself, and I have to say this one is my favorite so far. Don't miss it!
Corinne at the Paper Tigers Blog recently mentioned the OllyBolly Online Picture Book Project from Korea. Anyone with internet access can watch animated stories from various countries around the world. So far, Vietnam, the Philippines and Mongolia are represented. They will be building their list of culturally diverse offerings to include West Asia, South America and Africa in the coming months. Stories can be heard in English, Korean, or their original language.
Exciting announcement! Tarie of Into the Wardrobe has a new blog featuring children's and YA books set in Asia, or with Asian characters by both Asian and non-Asian authors and illustrators from around the world. Asia in the Heart, World on the Mind, is a much needed resource in the kidlit blogosphere. We congratulate Tarie on this new venture and look forward to lots of reviews and interviews, and learning about titles we would otherwise never encounter through traditional channels. Tarie will also continue posting about general children's and YA books at Into the Wardrobe.
If, like me, you plan to give a lot of children's books as holiday gifts, make sure to check Chicken Spaghetti's Best of the Best List as well as the nominated titles for the 2009 Cybils Awards for recommendations. Also, if you plan to order from Amazon, click through from the Cybils website widget. The small commission earned from the sale will help purchase prizes for the winning authors and pick up the tab for a few other minor expenses. 
If you happen to notice a little strangeness with my LJ cuts (text hidden behind a link), it's not because I'm seeing double or making mistakes to get your attention. Ever since LJ updated its Rich Text Editor to FCKeditor 2.6.5., whenever I try to use LJ cut, instead of (Read More), it does this: (Read More)(Read More). It's driving me crazy and I've put in a support request. Others are experiencing similar probs, so we'll just have to be patient and hope they fix this bug soon. Till then, I hope you'll continue to (Read More)(Read More)(Read More) . . .
Don't forget to watch Grace Lin on the NBC Today Show this Friday, December 4th at 9:45 a.m. (EST)! Her wonderful middle grade novel, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, was selected for Al Roker's Children's Book Club. Can't wait to see the famous red dress!
Happy Monday and happy shopping and wrapping and mailing and eggnogging and decorating and partying and caroling. More 2009 Fall for Restaurants fun coming up in December! 

Copyright © 2009 Jama Rattigan of jama rattigan's alphabet soup. All rights reserved.

Finally, you decide you're ready. You've chatted about your novel with your agent, made sure she's on board with your premise, and revised until your fingertips are bloody. (Okay, so that's an exaggeration, but pretty damn long...)

And then you send it with a note, "Hope you like it. Looking forward to hearing from you soon."

From that moment until you get your feedback, it's like being nine months pregnant. You're uncomfortable, nervously excited, and hopeful. But the waiting kills you.

So here's to my agent: may our union result in a healthy, happy, speedy delivery.

In the meantime, maybe I need to revisit "What to Expect When You're Expecting" so I can learn how to breathe properly. :)

The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum and the Roosevelt-Vanderbilt Historic Sites will host a series of free holiday events for families. The Roosevelt Library will be decorated for the holidays and open to visitors free of charge Dec 5 from 9 am to 6 pm. There will be refreshments and activities beginning at noon at the Henry A. Wallace Visitor and Education Center. The fourth annual Children's Book Festival in the Wallace Center runs from noon to 5 pm. Children's authors will read from and sign copies of their books:

*Iza Trapani, 12:15 "Jingle Bells," "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."
*Susanna Hill, 1:00 "Punxsutawney Phyllis," "Not Yet, Rose."
*Della Ferreri, 1:45 "Star of the Show," "How Will I Ever Sleep in This Bed?"
*Doreen Rappaport, 2:30 "Eleanor, Quiet No More: The Life of Eleanor Roosevelt," "Lady Liberty: A Biography."
*Hudson Talbot, 3:15 "River of Dreams: The Story of the Hudson River," "United Tweets of America: 50 State Birds, Their Stories, Their Glories."

Family-friendly musicians, Dog on Fleas, will perform at 4 pm at the Wallace Center. There will be free photos with Santa from 1-3, and children can make holiday cards for sailors on the USS Franlin and Eleanor throughout the afternoon.

The Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site, Val-kill, will also be free and open to visitors from 4-7 pm on Dec 5. Visitors to Val-kill are required to take a shuttle from the Wallace Center. There will be no on-site parking at Val-Kill.In Addition, there will be a holiday open house with free admission at Vanderbilt Mansion from 9 - 5pm on Dec 5.
Call Cliff Laube at 845 - 486-7745 for more information.

If you'll be visiting Hyde Park,NY please stop by and say hi!!!
~Della

A big THANK YOU to everyone who participated in my Big Bookmarks Giveaway. I'll be mailing out 750 bookmarks tomorrow morning! Yea! In addition, a copy of My Last Best Friend will go to our book drawing winner.

And who might that winner be? Here's the scoop:


Our contestants.



Our impartial name-drawer.



Our winner!

Tammi Sauer (aka tamarak ) you are the big winner!!!

A special thank you to my daughter and my sock monkey, George, for helping with the drawing. :)

I still have bookmarks I would love to give to your favorite classroom, library, or book club. Just send me your address and the number of bookmarks you'd like to have and I'll mail them right out!

Backstory -- I was thrilled when I heard there'd be a 4th Jak and Daxter game, Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier, for the Play Station 2. The second in the series was one of my all-time favorite PS2 games. Sadly, the new game pretty much fails in a number of ways. Basically, it seems they wrote the game for the Play Station Portable, and just dropped it, pretty much unchanged, onto the PS2. (The PS2 has much better potential controls for a game since it has two joysticks, one of which is often used to totally control the viewpoint. In PSP games, the camera control is often limited to rotation, using the shoulder buttons.) The camera controls in this game are broken. Often, you can't even see what you're fighting, or where you're supposed to jump. The frustration level kills any potential fun. I feel sorry for kids who spent their allowance on this one.

This hammers home something I've spoken about in a lot of schools. During Q&A, kids often ask, "What was the hardest book to write?" I tell them that True Talents was the hardest, because I didn't want to ruin the original with a crappy sequel. I actually tossed the first sequel, and wrote an entirely different one. I feel a bad sequel is far worse than a bad individual book. The reader of a sequel come to the book with expectations. There's a sort of social contract. In a way, perhaps the characters belong to the reader as much as they do to the author. This doesn't mean the sequel can't go in unexpected directions. I definitely did that with True Talents. But I stayed true to the characters, and I told an exciting story. I'm pretty sure I gave the readers what they wanted. If not, I suspect I would have heard complaints. Or seen blog postings like my first paragraph.

I have no idea what any of this has to do with the Thanksgiving season or Black Friday. Oh yeah -- now I remember. I'm supposed to be writing the 5th book in my Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie series. Which explains why I'm sitting here blogging. And dusting my shelves. And reading your blog.

I've been building this list for a long time and thought I would share it with friends. It's a list of over 200 movies about authors, poets, editors, screenwriters - basically anything to do with the writing business. I don't claim it as a complete or perfect list so please feel free to add titles or corrections in the comments. The links will take you to IMDB.

WRITERS
84 Charring Cross Road (1987)
A Murder of Crows (1998)
Agatha (1979)
Alex & Emma (2003)
Almost Famous (2000)
American Dreamer (1984)
The Answer Man (2009)
As Good As It Gets (1997)
Ayn Rand -- A Sense of Life (1997)
Balzac: A Life of Passion (1999)
Basic Instinct (1992)
Becoming Colette (1991)
Becoming Jane (2007)
The Best Man (1999)
Best Seller (1987)
Big Bad Love (2001)
Boy Meets Girl (1998)
Breakfast of Champions (1999)
Carrington (1995)
Celebrity (1998)
Celeste (1981)
Chapter Two (1978)
Children of the Century (1995)
Cross Creek (1983)
Croupier (1998)
The Dark Half (1993)
Deconstructing Harry (1997)
Devotion (1946)
Door in the Floor (2004)
Double Take (1998)
DreamChild (1985)
The End of the Affair (1999)
Eternity and a Day (1998)
Factotum (2005)
Father's Day (1997)
Fiction and Other Truths: A Film About Jane Rule (1995)
Finding Forrester (2000)
Finding Neverland (2004)
The Flower of My Secret (1995)
Freedom Writers (2007)
The Front (1976)
Get Bruce! (1999)
Gothic (1986)
Hamsun (1996)
Harriet the Spy (1996)
Haunted Summer (1988)
Hav Plenty (1997)
Heartburn (1986)
Henry & June (1990)
Her Alibi (1989)
The Hours (2002)
Impromptu (1991)
Infamous (2006)
In Love and War (1996)
In the Mouth of Madness (1994)
Iris (2001)
Isn't She Great (2000)
Jack London (1943)
Jane Austen in Manhattan (1980)
Jewel of the Nile (1985)
Joe Gould's Secret (2000)
Joshua Then and Now (1985)
Julia (1977)
Julie and Julia (2009)
Kissing a Fool (1998)
The Last Time I Committed Suicide (1997)
Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles (1998)
The Libertine (2004)
The Life of Emile Zola (1937)
Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962)
The Lost Weekend (1945)
Love and Death on Long Island (1997)
Making of Daniel Boone (2003)
The Man From Elysian Fields (2001)
Margot at the Wedding (2007)
Mark Twain Tonight (1967)
Melinda and Melinda (2004)
Misery (1990)
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985)
Miss Potter (2006)
Morvern Callar (2002)
Mother (1996)
My Brilliant Career (1979)
My Dear Secretary (1949)
My Left Foot (1989)
The Mystery of Rampo (1994)
Naked Jane (1995)
The Night and the Moment (1995)
Nora (2000)
Paperback Romance (1994)
Pola X (1999)
The Prize (1963)
The Proprietor (1996)
Purple Violets (2007)
Quills (2000)
The Raven (2006)
Reprise (2006)
Romancing the stone (1984)
Rowing With the Wind (1988)
Sade (2000)
Saint-Ex (1996)
Secret Window (2004)
Shadowlands (1993)
The Shadow Dancer (2005)
Shakespeare in Love (1998)
Shining (1980)
The Singing Detective (2003)
The Squid and the Whale (2005)
Stone Reader (2002)
Storytelling (2001)
Stranger Than Fiction (2006)
Surburban Girl (2007)
Swann (1996)
Swimming Pool (2003)
The Technical Writer (2003)
The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952)
Theodora Goes Wild (1936)
The Third Man (1949)
Throw Momma from the Train (1987)
Time Regained (1999)
Todo sobre mi madre (1999)
The Trip (2002)
Where Sleeping Dogs Lie (1991)
The Whole Wild World (1996)
Wild in the Country (1961)
Winter Passing (2005)
Wonder Boys (2000)
Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962)
World According to Garp (1982)
World's Greatest Dad (2009)


POETS
A Fine Madness (1966)
An Angel at My Table (1990)
Barfly (1987)
Beat (2000)
Beautiful Dreamers (1990)
Before Night Falls (2000)
The Belle of Amherst (1976)
Between the Lines (1977)
Blood In, Blood Out (1993)
Blue Car (2002)
The Business of Fancydancing (2002)
Byron (2003) (poet)
Color of Pomegranates, The (1968)
The Dark Side of the Heart (1992)
Dead Man (1995)
Dead Poet's Society (1989)
The Edge of Love (2008)
Fighting Words (2007)
Gu cheng bielian (The Poet) (1998)
Heart Beat (1980)
Henry Fool (1997)
I, the Worst of All (1990)
Il Postino (1994)
In Custody (1994)
Keats and His Nightingale: A Blind Date (1985)
Love Jones (1997)
Mindwalk (1990)
Mirage (2004)
Moulin Rouge (2001)
Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994)
Nostalghia (1983)
Pandaemonium (2000)
Pinero (2001)
Poetic Justice (1993)
Regeneration (1997)
Runoilija ja muusa (1978)
Satan's Brew (1976)
Slam (1998)
So I Married An Axe Murderer (1993)
Sylvia (2003)
Tom & Viv (1994)
Total Eclipse (1995)
West of Brooklyn (2006)
Xiang ji mao yi yang fei (2002)


SCREENWRITERS
Adaptation (2002)
Bullets Over Broadway (1994)
Cabin by the Lake (2000)
French Exit (1995)
Hit and Runway (1999)
In a Lonely Place (1950)
The Lonely Lady (1983)
Midnight (2006)
The Muse (1999)
Out of Order (2003)
Paris When It Sizzles (1964)
The Player (1992)
Sunset Boulevard (1950)


PLAYWRIGHTS
Author! Author! (1982)
Barton Fink (1991)
Beaumarchais, the Scoundrel (1996)
Deathtrap (1982)
How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog (2000)
The Producers (1968)
The Savages (2007)
Tema (1979)
Wilde (1997)


NEWSPAPERS & JOURNALISTS
Absence of Malice (1981)
Ace in the Hole (1951)
All the President´s Men (1976)
Call Northside 777 (1948)
Citizen Kane (1941)
City in Fear (1980)
Continental Divide (1981)
Deadline U.S.A. (1952)
Down With Love (2003)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
The Front Page (1974)
Funny Farm (1988)
His Girl Friday (1940)
It Happened One Night (1934)
La Dolce Vita (1960)
Libeled Lady (1936)
Meet John Doe (1941)
The Paper (1994)
The Parallax View (1974)
The Pelican Brief (1993)
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Platinum Blonde (1931)
Reds (1981)
Roman Holiday (1953)
Salvador (1986)
Shattered Glass (2003)
Saving Sarah Cain (2007)
Street Smart (1987)
Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
Teacher’s Pet (1958)
Welcome to Sarajevo (1997)
Year of Living Dangerously (1982)


I haven't seen all of these movies (not even half) so I can't vouch for quality, only subject matter. :) In many cases there are multiple versions of the film. I've only linked to one. Enjoy!

Things I am thankful for...

I didn't have to go with my wife and daughter to watch New Moon.

Hmmm. Let's see. Everything else sort of pales in comparison with that.

I'm getting ready to catch the 8:40 train to Grand Central, then off to the Holiday Market at Union Square, 14th and Broadway.
I'll be at the Shenanigan Books Booth today signing Star of the Show from 10:30 to 3:00. Can't wait to meet Mary Watson, Creative Director of Shenanigan Books. If you're up for some cool shopping, and don't mind braving the wind, stop by Union Square, and say hi!

Here's a sneak peek at Shenanigan Books stall:



~Della

Looking for a gift for the person who has everything? What about some beautiful crystal jewelry?



Or signed copy of this book:
Or proofreading services by the author of the above, founder of the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar?




Or a limited edition Curious George Barbie?

Or critique services, or couples therapy, or babysitting, or tickets to the Madison Symphony Orchestra, or wine or beer or books, books, and more books?

These items and more are up for bid at the Bridget Kicks Cancer: Auction! A Benefit for Bridget & Barrett.

Here's more:

1. Thanksgiving was wonderful. There's nothing like looking around the table and seeing every seat full. I loved it.

2. The Scottish Terrier won the dog show!

3. I spent Wednesday morning researching chipmunks. It's amazing what little, surprising details come up at the end of a novel!

4. Hanukkah starts the 12th of December. Yikes. That's not far away.

5. I'm not going shopping today, but my daughter and I went yesterday in the late afternoon. LL Bean is only a few minutes away from me and they're open 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. If you've never been, it's a fun store.

I had hoped to have a new poem up today but I didn't quite finish it. So I went looking through my archive for something to share and came across some poems that were cut from my book Hugging the Rock. If you've read the book you may remember a pivotal time for Rachel, the main character, when she goes grocery shopping with her dad. In an early version of the book I had this poem of Rachel shopping with her mom to show the differences. But in the end it was too much of a flashback and didn't add anything new to the story.


GROCERY SHOPPING WITH MOM

At the grocery store
mom stops to talk to everyone.

She scoops up new babies
sings them lullabies
nuzzles their peach fuzz heads.

In the produce aisle she spouts advice
races off to give her coupons to the old man in the wheelchair
then slips a quarter into the rocket ship
for a skinny kid in a baseball cap.

She tosses boxes of cereal
into the cart
then dances away
chasing a guy blowing a harmonica.

I put four boxes back on the shelf
and trail after her.

In the pet food aisle
mom talks fast
her hands pointing everywhere
and nowhere
until the guy smiles
cups the harmonica
close to his mouth
and plays a sweet tune.

The guy tucks a bag of dog food
under one arm
and they both walk off
still talking.

My mom marches beside him
right through the checkout stand
and out the door
and never once looks back at me.

I wait over an hour
watching the ice cream melt
and drip onto the loaf of bread
and a jar of pickles
wondering what is
in me
that makes me
so invisible
to her.

--- Susan Taylor Brown
All Rights Reserved

The round-up is at Becky's Book Reviews today.

I am thankful for a great many things today - family, friends, health, ability to be home writing - but I wanted to speak specifically to a single recent experience.

Earlier this week I went on a retreat with a few writer friends and a few writer/artists strangers who are now friends. We gathered at the beach mostly with solitary intentions and yet, it seemed, the magic of where we were and the creative energy of those gathered had other ideas.

We came with no agenda, no speakers, nothing that absolutely had to be done.

Groups of two and three started to form. Individual work turned into freeform group writing fun. Books and art were shared. Gifts were acknowledged, praised. We were validated as professional creatives. Meals stretched for several hours as we lingered over coffee and tea. We sat by the fire and talked long into the night. We laughed (and some of us cried) and took a great many pictures.

Our backgrounds, our journeys to be writers, were of course very different.
Our passion however, was very much the same.

I am so grateful for the time spent with these fabulous and talented women. You have to understand that it isn't because someone took me aside and said a particular thing to me. It isn't because of anything we saw or ate or did. I think it might be because of what they didn't do.

They didn't say "do this." They didn't say "don't do that." They just listened. And accepted.

It rocked my world from the inside out.

Happy Thanksgiving to each of you. Thank you for all the times you read my blog. May your bellies and hearts be full of everything you need.

As many of you are touching bare-skinned birds, rinsing their innards, pulling fat from flabby turkey underarms, I wanted to share some cooking advice from kindergartners, who, of course, are the supreme authorities on meal preparation.

You may want to grab your recipe box and some extra note cards. Or, that's right, you could just click 'print.'

What's even better--most of the "recipes" (yes, I'm going to use quotes here and you'll see why in just a moment) offer cooking times of less than one hour.

When I was in high school and a freshman in college, I dated a nice guy named Mark. We went to prom together and broke up soon after I got to William and Mary. (Ah, the short-lived devastation of breaking up with your hometown honey--I think everyone I knew broke up with theirs by Christmas).

Mark, like me, was into theater in high school. We both thought we'd teach high school someday--him, drama; me, English. I did end up teaching English. He didn't become a drama teacher. He came to William and Mary, too (not because of me), and continued doing theater (which I didn't). Somewhere along the line (and I don't know when because although we were friendly, we weren't really close friends anymore), he decided to pursue theater as a career.

We were out of touch for twenty years. I'd occasionally google him, the same way I'd google other old friends, and see that he was in a show here or a show there and worked with Actors' Equity. Then around two years ago we reconnected on Facebook and played the occasional game of Scrabulous before Scrabulous went belly-up.

This past spring, I learned from his Facebook Wall that he was in a Kennedy Center production of RAGTIME. I thought that was pretty cool.

Well, that production did so well that they decided to bring it to Broadway this fall. So at the fabulous age of, well, let's just say, not quite as middle-aged as I am, since he's a year younger, Mark is on Broadway, in RAGTIME.

And today, the cast of RAGTIME performed in the CBS Thanksgiving Day special, which includes part of the Macy's parade as well as some bonus performances like one from the cast of RAGTIME. They performed in Battery Park across from the Statue of Liberty, which was a fabulous location for it.

Mark's on Broadway now because he worked his butt off, learned his craft, and stuck with it for years and years. And I think it is AWESOME.

I don't know if there's a lesson there for you, but there's a lesson there for me.



Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!