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My books are arriving at my local bookstores!  When the awesome Angela informed me that my book Summoning the Phoenix had arrived at Kepler’s, I rushed to the bookstore as soon as I could.

I arrived at Kepler’s last night at the end of another event for Starting Up Silicon Valley: How ROLM Became a Cultural Icon and Fortune 500 Company by Katherine Maxfield, author and wife of ROLM co-founder Bob Maxfield.  What I did not know was that Bob and his co-founder friends all attended Rice University!  I’m always excited to meet other Rice alumni.  So of course, I had to buy the book.  Katherine was so kind and wished me luck as she signed it.

I scoured the children’s section and couldn’t find my book, not on the normal shelves nor the displays on the open floor.  So I asked the awesome staff, and they directed me to the window right next to the entrance:

 I’m beyond delighted that Summoning the Phoenix got its own window display!

And it’s right next to a picture of Amy Tan!
Or more accurately…a picture of Diana Gabaldon!

These are authors whose first books
majorly shaped me as a young adult reader.

And right behind my book…
a huge display dedicated
to George R.R. Martin:

I feel so incredibly lucky that my book at Kepler’s
is surrounded by so many of my literary influences!

  That lime green box in the window is pretty spiffy.
I also love how the height of my book’s display is PERFECT
for kids’ line-of-sight as they walk in and walk out the store.

Hope people can make it to my book parties!!

New book beckons when
it’s on a shelf in a store,
waiting to be read.

 

 

 

Today I’m so thankful to Mary Robinette Kowal for featuring my picture book Summoning the Phoenix on her blog series My Favorite Bit!  In this article, I talk about my poem “Magical Melody” (which inspired the book’s title) and how its format was changed because of the amazingly brilliant companion art by April Chu. I promised April that I would write something profound. Well, I’ll let you be the judge.

Picture book writers
need not dictate art ideas
to illustrators.

Read My Favorite Bit about My Book Summoning the Phoenix!

 

Since I’m blogging everyday for National Poetry Writing Month in April, I’m rebooting Multicultural Monday and Thankful Thursday.  Today is a follow up post to my first post about SCBWI Spring Spirit 2014.  I had a wonderful impromptu discussion with Nathalie Mvondo, Kim Zarins, and Amanda Concoran about how we can incorporate more diversity in children’s literature.  I love reconnecting with such kindred spirits.

Perhaps the session I was most looking forward to at SCBWI Spring Spirit was Nikki Grimes’ early morning talk on Beyond Race: The Universality of Story.  I know she had planned this talk way before the recent media coverage of the lack of diverse characters in children’s literature.  So I was interested in hearing what she had to say.  What she said was so beautifully grounded in poetry that it left me without words, only pure emotion.  She inspired me to dedicate an entire blog post to her session.  Pretty much everything Nikki said was a brilliant gem, better shared as quotes than summary, and here are some that stuck with me the most:

“Lyric, rap, call it what you will, poetry is as natural to most teens as breathing.  Celebrate it, incorporate it, use it as a jumping space to read and to write.”

“I move through the universe on a day that does not belong on your clock.”

“When an author dares to share a work of one race or culture with readers of another race or culture….what is learned is that even though we look different on the outside, we are pretty much the same on the inside.”

“To say or even think that books by or about African Americans should only be read by African Americans is equivalent to saying that Charlotte’s Web should only be read by whites, that The Diary of Anne Frank should only be written by Jews, that 1001 Arabian Nights should only be read by Arabs.”

Nikki explained that ALL kinds of kids connect to her stories, and she read excerpts of fan letters from kids who are white, Chinese, Vietnamese, Native American, and African American.  My favorite quote from one of her readers:  “Ms. Grimes, I learned that poems can have feelings in them.”

“The most common denominator is The Heart.  Our job as authors is to create stories with Heart.”

“The audience for our stories is only limited by those who are the gatekeepers.  Booksellers, librarians, teachers.  The stories we write are human stories intended for human audiences….We rely on the gatekeepers to take our books and share them with the young people that they serve.”

Nikki often gets correspondence from teachers and librarians who love her books but are concerned that their white students won’t connect with black protagonists.  Nikki’s advice is to let go of these concerns and share all books with all children, and “Let the stories speak for themselves.”

“Our worlds are not homogenous, so why should our books be?”

“There is nothing that is more powerful for a young reader than seeing him or herself within the pages of a book….We need these stories in every genre….”

“Who will write these stories, if not you?  When will they be written, if not now?”

If you ever have a chance to hear Nikki Grimes speak, GO FOR IT!  And write the stories only you can write!

Though we look different
on the outside, we all love
well-crafted stories.

 

 

It’s been a while since I had attended SCBWI Spring Spirit.  I think the last time was when Tekla White, now retired, was in charge.  But this year I signed up because my Lee & Low editor Louise May was a main speaker.  Here’s pictorial proof:

 

Yes, that’s me, Louise May, and April Chu all proudly holding Summoning the Phoenix, the book that we have brought into this world.  A rare photo op!  It’s funny when you meet someone in person for the first time after working virtually with them.  I’m always a little surprised when my mental image (sometimes I don’t even realize I have one) of someone collides with the reality.  When first I met April, I was surprised at how tall she is.  When I met Louise, I was surprised at how petite she is.  And I love her East Coast accent.  Thankfully, she’s a hugger, like me.  So exciting!

For the the conference scavenger hunt, the first item on the list was the autograph of a published author.  So I signed Item 1 for April Chu, Cynthia Mun, and Jenny Pessereau.  It’s still a bit of an outer-body “Is this really happening?” experience for me to give my author signature.  What a creative way to get to know people!

Beyond Race: The Universality of Story
My day started listening to Nikki Grimes sharing her philosophy on storytelling & reading her powerful poetry.  Can I just say that starting your day listening to fabulous poetry is one of the best things ever?  I’m devoting an entire blog post to this session tomorrow.

KEYNOTE: How to Sell a Book in Twelve Years…Or Less
Jay Asher is a New York Times Best Selling Author with his first book Thirteen Reasons Why.  Many consider him an overnight success, but he disproves that misconception with his excellent talk, so wonderfully illustrated with slides depicting pop culture icons of the 1980s.  Pretty awesome.

Revising Dialogue
My Lee & Low editor Louise May and Deirdre Jones of Little, Brown gave an informative talk chock-full of good examples of bad dialogue techniques.  Then they encouraged all of us to write bad dialogue.  Here’s my example of truly bad dialogue, overpopulated with adverbs and run-on sentence, and info dump:

“Hello little girl,” the wolf said seductively.  “Where are you off to?”

“I’m supposed to stay on this path and never stray and never go away from what is supposed to be the right thing to do, according to my mom and my grandma, who I am visiting right now and I hope that she’s home because if I don’t see her, I will be extremely pissed off for carrying this heavy basket all the way through the woods.”

She took a breath, and during that breath the wolf noticed the luscious curves revealed underneath her red cloak.  She was not so little after all.

“I know a short cut,” he said smoothly, “Why don’t you join me?”

Trade vs. School & Library: how to Target Your Book for Each Market
Deirdre Jones & Tricia Lawrence discussed the differences between trade and school & library markets.  Basically the publishers own copyright for school & library writing while the authors own copyright for trade books.

LUNCH
It was so wonderful to catch up in person with author Mike Jung, whose funny Tweets often make me laugh out loud, and it was especially hilarious to Tweet at each other in the same room, sometimes sitting right next to each other.  Like, I asked him if he wanted a piece of chocolate on Twitter instead of in person.  Oh, how the internet has affected social interactions.  Mike and I were some of the last people to arrive in the main room for lunch, and we wandered the entire room, bouncing from table to table, as if we were back in middle school, until we found one that actually had two free seats.  It was a table near the front with the always warm and friendly Linda Joy Singleton, Dana Smith, and Linda Whelan.  Also seated at the table was another familiar face Jeannette, whom I had met at SCBWI Golden Gate, and she asked me to sign her copy of Summoning the Phoenix!  Luckily I had my chop with me in my car, so I had an informal impromptu signing during lunch.  Thanks to Mike Jung for the photo:

 

Another unexpectedly joyous lunch-time experience occurred when I bumped into Nathalie Mvondo, Kim Zarins, and Amanda Conran and we had a wonderful discussion how to improve diversity in children’s literature.

The Dating Game
Cheri Williams was an emcee for The Dating Game, where agent Tricia Lawrence interviewed three editors Louise, Deirdre, Chad.  I took these photos mostly because of the fabulous decorations.

 

Creating Characters Readers Want to Read About
Louise May shared great examples from several picture books and emphasized the importance of language.

Structure and Plot
Deirdre Jones outlined the structure and plot of one of her first and favorite books that she edited: What We Found in the Sofa and How It Changed the World by Henry Clark.

KEYNOTE: The Poetry of Patience
Nikki Grimes recited more of her amazing poetry and shared her story of getting published.  One of my biggest take-aways is that her editor “tricked” her into writing a novel, one section at a time, and one of her novels was sparked by a poem.  So cool.  She shared her own struggles with writing novels, which was reassuring that she felt the same insecurities as I often do.  But what brought me to tears was her ending:

“Give yourself permission to take the time to write it well.  Don’t be in such a rush when you settle for good when your story has a capacity to be great.  Great books are what young readers deserve.  Great books are what we should strive to give them.  And a primary key to doing that is patience.”

When writing a book,
the difference between good and
great is patience.

Spring Spirit was such an information-dense day, and because it was sold-out there were so many people to meet and reconnect, like Mike and my own Region’s leaders Naomi Kinsman & Lea Lyon, as well as the amazing Kathy Shepler.  It was nice also to meet new-to-me attendees like Mira Reisberg and Stacy Heather Lee.  The only down-side to such a packed day was that I didn’t have the opportunity to truly catch up with everyone, and I wish I could have spent more time conversing with authors like Erin Dealey, Bitsy Kemper, Deborah Davis, Annemarie O’Brien, Cassandra Whetstone, Linda Boyden, Tekla White, and many, many more. Some of them I hadn’t really spoken to in years, and I was sad to have missed them.  Well, it’s a good excuse to return to Spring Spirit next year.

Thank you, Patricia Newman, Catherine Meyer, Cheri Williams.  You did an outstanding job in creating a welcoming, inspiring, fun-filled day!

Spring Spirit renews
my creative energy,
inspires stories.

Today was the SCBWI Spring Spirit conference, and it was so much fun! I’ll post an actual write up soon, but for now, in honor of National Poetry Writing Month, here’s a long poem cobbled together from my some of Tweets today at Spring Spirit (#SpSp14):

Listening to Louise May & @DeirdreEJones at #SpSp14
makes me want to write
nonfiction picture books
with a fun twist.
#author #ButMyYAnovels

A good question:
How do you get the emotion
out of a biography?
My answer:
Find out WHY
you want to write the bio
& go there.

Happy to report that I finally met
my @LEEandLOW editor Louise May
in person!
And I got a hug!
So did @AprilChuART !

The internet has invaded
our face-to-face lives.

I refuse to believe
that my internet friends
are NOT figments
of my imagination!

So @jayasherguy denies
ever having spoken a keynote
at @SCBWI LA, but
I clearly remember cheering him on.
Anyone confirm or deny?

Excited to listen to @nikkigrimes9
taking photos of the audience!
I missed out
taking a photo
of her
taking a photo!

I didn’t plan to sit
at the front for
The Dating Game,
but it’s the best way
to admire @DeirdreEJones‘s
AWESOME TEAL SHOES.

The premise for The Dating Game:
agent Tricia asks really great questions & stumps
3 plate-faced editors.

If I were stranded on a dessert island,
I would read my e-reader or phone.
Then when that died out,
I would write my own books.

Louise & Deirdre
both say their favorite book
is Little Women.
If Chad says his favorite book
is Little Women,
I will give him
a chocolate bunny.

No chocolate bunny for Chad.
But Jay gets one!

Just offered @Mike_Jung a piece of pumpkin zucchini cake
that he could not reach during main session. It’s delicious!
But I’m keeping the pumpkin blueberry muffin for myself.
#sorry #notreally

If my life is a hashtag,
it would be
#AlmostAllAsianAllTheTime

Hurray for Asian-American protagonists in #kidlit!

My favorite fictional food
I want to eat right now
is a chocolate frog
with a pint of butter beer.

I know I was perceived as Hermione as a kid,
but I always felt like a cross between
Ron and Ginny. #WeasleyAtHeart

.@nikkigrimes9‘s closing lines made me
teary-eyed. The difference between good and great
is patience. #SpSp14

I love reading Poetry Friday posts!  It makes me so happy to hear other people’s thoughts on poetry.  Today I’d like to share a little background on a wonderful poem I co-translated a few years ago called “Moon” by Xue Tao, one of the most famous female poets who lived during the Tang Dynasty, over a thousand years ago.  Here is “Moon” in Chinese:

月

魄依鉤樣小,
扇逐漢機團。
細影將圓質,
人間幾處看。

Here is my translation:

Moon

A small shape of a hook,
follows a fan of the Han.
The shadow of the moon is round,
which all of humankind can see.

Here is the unexpected creative journey of “Moon,” a little poem translation that could:

Poem Translation For Article
I originally translated this poem for an article “When Flowers Bloom, When Flowers Fall,” which I wrote for the poetry magazine Stone Telling.  It was a fun article to write, and it was actually was part of my research for world building for my YA novel set in an alternate ancient Asia.  I explain more about the premise of this novel and how it inspired my first published picture book at John Scalzi’s The Big Idea.

Lyrics to a Song Played on Internet Radio
Then when I started composing choral music, I decided to set my translation for “Moon” using the pentatonic scale.  “Moon” the song was recorded at one of my choral workshops, where I was singing with four other friends.  Then Kinetics Radio played it on internet radio.  You can’t listen to it now because it’s internet radio and meant to be ephemeral.  I continued to compose, building a set of five songs, each song taking its English text from translations of five different poems written by five different poets (2 women & 3 men) who lived during the Tang Dynasty.

Song Sung in Performance
“Moon” became the first song in “A Pentatonic Moon” a series of five songs written for women’s voices.   I debuted these songs in a concert of all my original compositions and arrangements, and the concert’s title was Songs of Moon and Mischief.  Twelve wonderful singers performed my music and my uncle KC played the Irish tin whistle.  It was an amazing event, and I feel so fortunate that we had an appreciative audience of around 90.  “Moon” was later performed by the San Francisco Choral Artists, whose concert received a rave review from the San Francisco Classical Voice.

Published in an Online Literary Journal as Text and as Song
Then “A Pentatonic Moon” was accepted for the inaugural issue of Interfictions, where they managed to embed the songs so you can listen to them while you read the translations!

Published as Part of a Musical Album
I’m currently planning an album release of Songs of Moon and Mischief, and “Moon” is one of them.  If all goes well, the album will be ready for download, and hopefully available as a CD, in late 2014.

This is the journey for “Moon” thus far.  I hope it continues to travel far and wide.

Sometimes a poem
is just a poem. But words
can transform to song.

So I had already decided for April I would post either a poem excerpt or new poem a month and then I discovered NaPoWriMo, or National Poetry Writing Month.  What I like about their site is that they are featuring an independent poetry press each day in April!  So cool!

My poem for today is inspired by my publisher’s blog post about my book Summoning the Phoenix.  They posted a video of a girl playing Happy Birthday on the dizi, aka a bamboo flute!

When playing common
melodies, make them your own–
indulge in flourish!

Today I’m so grateful to author John Scalzi for featuring my debut picture book SUMMONING THE PHOENIX as part of his blog series The Big Idea.  In this article, I share how The Big Idea of my picture book actually originated from research from a YA novel-still-in-progress that I envisioned while still in grad school.

A creative spark
grows into fire, refined
as The Big Idea.

Read about Summoning the Phoenix’s The Big Idea!

 

April is National Poetry Month AND the month where illustrator April Chu and I are launching our debut picture book SUMMONING THE PHOENIX: Poems & Prose about Chinese Musical Instruments! We’re having FOUR book parties in the San Francisco Bay Area and there are also other events soon to be confirmed. To celebrate National Poetry Month and our new shiny book, I’m sharing part of a list poem I wrote for Summoning the Phoenix. The poem is called “Being Backstage” and here’s the first stanza:

Now I must dress up:
Shiny black shoes,
Neatly pressed concert dress
Or crisp trousers, button-down shirt,
And a bow tie
Because
Bow ties are cool.

Last week I was in Florida as an invited Creative Participant for the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (ICFA).  I had a fabulous experience reconnecting with so many people and meeting new friends.  It would be a rather long, almost unending list if I named every awesome person with whom I conversed, so I’m sticking to  personal antedotes.

My original plan was to attend as many scholarly panels as possible, but that plan was quickly abandoned when I encountered so many authors I liked and wanted to support at their readings.  So I attended lots and lots of readings and limited the scholarly sessions of people I already knew and met by the pool, though it was difficult to choose.

There were a lot of firsts for me at ICFA, and here’s a list:

My First ICFA Reading with Keffy Kehrli & E. Lily Yu

I was super-nervous about my reading, scheduled for the early morning session (8:30 AM) of the very last day of the conference.  The probability was high that most people would be exhausted and sleeping, though I was quite happy to be grouped with Keffy and Lily, who are so awesome and so fun.  Lily and I even half-joked that if no one showed up, we would have our reading in the pool.  Thankfully, the room was well-attended for a 8:30 AM reading, and I read poems from my picture book as if I were reading to a kindergarten class.  I’m a children’s author now, and I thought it would be the best way to engage people. Because all adults have experienced what it was like to be six years-old, even if they don’t remember it.  And the See’s Candy lollipops I brought from California served well as a reward.

I am grateful to have experienced my first ICFA reading with Keffy Kehrli & E. Lily Yu, two talented and amazing writers whom I love so dearly.  I am grateful for the wonderfully caring and gracious host Valorie, who took the time to personally connect with all three of us and ask not only how we pronounce our names but also what we wanted to include in our bios.  Valorie is, quite simply, awesome.  I am grateful for each and everyone who attended my reading and who were willing to learn Mandarin with each flip of the page from my picture book.

My First Autograph Signing Session

Following our reading at 8:30 AM, Keffy & Lily & I were supposed to participate in an autograph signing at 10:00 AM.  So I sat between them at a table, and much to my surprise, a line formed with people holding my picture book!  It was an overwhelming experience, seeing  wonderful, smiling faces holding my book and waiting for my signature.  My mind went blank and my fingers went numb.  To add to this whirlwind of emotion, an older gentleman with a trim grey beard arrived and sat right next to me at the autographing table, exactly in the spot that Lily had just vacated.  I automatically extended my hand and said, “Hi, I’m Emily.”  He kindly shook my hand and said, “Hi, I’m Stephen.”

One glance down at his name tag revealed that he was Stephen Donaldson, author of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, a series of fantasy books that hugely affected with me when I read them at the age of thirteen.  I’m pretty sure I stared for a long time at Stephen Donaldson, who is a popular author with one of the longest lines during the World Fantasy mass autographing sessions.  I just could not comprehend why I was sharing an autographing table with someone so famous, and I could not stop my self from asking him, in a rather befuddled (Keffy’s word, not mine) tone: “Why are you here?”

“I’m here to sign books,” he said simply.  Just then a man approached Stephen Donaldson carrying a huge stack of 10-15 books.  He quickly got to work signing, and so did I.

Thank you to my wonderful friends who purchased my book and waited in line, in the lobby, in the hallway of the hotel for my autograph.  I am forever grateful.

My First Podcast with Skiffy & Fanty Show with John Chu & E. Lily Yu

The wonderful duo of Julia Rios & Sean Duke invited me along with John Chu, & E. Lily Yu to chat for their Skiffy & Fanty Podcast.  Don’t want to give away what we talked about, but here’s a sort-of-selfie of Lily & me being silly while John was talking.  We’re quietly fun like that.

My First Encounter of “I Like Your Work” from a Stranger in Person

One of my new favorite people is Derek of Speculating Canada.  We met the first night through the fabulous Kathryn Allan, and we just clicked.  Perhaps it was because I caught his cane before it whacked me on the knee, and he marveled at my reflexes.

In any case, Derek has a lovely habit of introducing people.  After dinner, when we were chatting without our name tags, he introduced me to a young scholar named Sara, who took one look at me and said, “Oh, I like your poetry.”

Whoa, I thought, someone knows my poems and knows me by sight?  That’s just not possible!  I took a step back, looking around to see if someone was setting me up for a prank.  After confirming in a quick second that everyone looked genuine, I wondered if maybe Sara, who seemed like a very nice person, had mistaken me for E. Lily Yu.

So I asked, rather carefully, “What’s my name?”

“Emily?” answered Sara, her voice now lightened with doubt.  “You’re published in Strange Horizons and Stone Telling and Goblin Fruit.”

“Oh,” I said, with relief.  It had honestly never crossed my mind that anyone would remember my handful of poems & short stories published online, and wow, what a wonderful realization that Sara did actually recognize me.  “Yes,” I said. “How are you?”

It turns out Sara is a folklore scholar AND a published poet!  She has a lovely poem in Cabinet des Fees!  I am always a fan of meeting more poets!!

I’m so grateful for everyone at ICFA.  It is an amazing conference and I’m definitely going to try my best to return.