Book Trailer Discoveries

Excuse me while I take a moment to extoll the wonder that is YouTube:

"YouTube is awesome!" (Okay, I'm done.)

I never used to go on there, and in retrospect I don't understand how it eluded me for so long, but recently I've become much more proficient at surfing for videos. As a result, I have found the following:



I LOVE book trailers. I've always wanted to create one for The Rock and the River, but I never quite got the hang of gathering photos and setting it to music and such. I am now inspired to try one for Camo Girl or Fire in the Streets, the ROCK sequel that is coming out in 2012.

Thanks very much to the person who made this. I couldn't tell his/her name (apparently I'm not that YouTube-proficient yet) but I really enjoyed the end product here and I appreciate the time and effort someone took to create this for the book.

And then I found another one, by Robyn Young:



Thanks, Robyn! It looks great.

New Year, New Directions

Okay, so it isn't the new year yet, but I can't believe how fast the summer disappeared, and how quickly the fall seems to be getting chomped up, too. It's already mid-October (eek!) and I'm sure I'll be dragging out my snowboots and singing Auld Lang Syne much sooner than I can possibly imagine.

So, I just wanted to share a quick update about some changes that I'm planning and some new ideas that I'm forming about my online presence. In short: I need to step it up a notch! I started this blog when my first book was published, believing that it would be a good way to keep people informed of my activities. It is, but I've felt for a while now that I can't be an effective blogger until I find a focus and direction for my posts that is larger than myself and more content-rich than simple self-promotion.

Happy news: After only three years, I finally figured out what I want to blog about! Hooray!

The new focus for my blog (as yet untitled) is going to be the author's journey. I'll share my reflections on the experience of transitioning from being a person who aspires to publish, to a person with a book contract in hand, to a person who is a published author, especially focusing on all the steps along the journey from being a debut novelist to being an established and successful author. Writers view publication as the epitome of success, but there's also a profound personal and professional journey that begins when you get your first contract. Sometimes it feels like you've been thrust into no-man's-land, and we don't talk enough about how to negotiate the "after." I hope this blog can become a gathering place for authors to share their experiences and struggles (personal and professional) as well as a place to welcome debut writers into the fold with resources, advice and support that will help them get off to a great start.

I'm updating my website design now, and it will all launch in January, so I'll do some cross-posting at that time and try to drum up new traffic and start a broader conversation. In the meantime, for the benefit of my few but faithful followers, I'm going to be posting some initial material on these topics so that when the brand new blog (yay!) goes live, I'll already have some things posted for people to look at.

Basically, this is a warning to my existing fans (you are few, but you are loyal!): Don't freak out when I start posting more than once a week! I truly hope you'll join me when I move to the new and improved keklamagoon.com, and that you'll add your insights to the conversation there.

Image: Pixomar / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Review at Color Online

Susan at ColorOnline has posted a discussion of some of her favorite books of the year so far, including The Rock and the River! She gives it a nice review, too. Yay!

Susan also lists and reviews some other great titles, and she talks about why historical fiction is growing on her. See, there are plenty of excellent reasons why you should check it out HERE.

First Encounters of the Child Reader Kind

Today, I volunteered at a reading program, where I got to read The Rock and the River with kids for the first time. It was fun. The girl I read with was nine years old - a bit young for the novel, I thought at first - but as it turned out, she understood and could even relate to some of the events that occur early in the book. As I read a scene in which my character (Sam) encounters racism, my new friend stopped me from reading on. "Yeah," she said. "That guy's racist." Then she proceded to tell me about how she had seen racism in action in her own community. I was impressed by the way she took the scene and connected it to her own experiences. It was exciting to realize that the book was beginning to have the effect I hoped it'd have - at least on one reader!!