It's About Time

I finally emailed my picture book manuscript to Kaylan Adair of Candlewick Press.

I had until Sept 15th to send it to her.

Amazing Miss Maizy is now titled Miss Gracie and the Shiny Black Crows.

It has changed a lot since I first put the words on paper.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I still have not heard from Sourcebooks about my manuscript, Lucy of Tupper's Hollow. I sent it to them in June. It has only been two months, but it seems like it has been a lot longer.

I've started putting together The McMillion Family History. I have wanted to do this for a long time and look forward to writing it.

I think I will call it That's Okay, We'll sit the Coffeepot on it. Everyone in the family tells me that was a favorite saying of my Grandpa McMillion. He died 6 months before I was born, so I only know him from pictures and recollections of older family members.

In addition to family trees, pictures, names and dates, I will fill it with info about the everyday lives of our family. I'm going to write about our food customs and traditions (with recipes), superstitions and special abilities of family members (my grandma was a very superstitious person and my grandpa had special abilities. . . such as stopping bleeding and blowing the heat out of burns), their occupations, military records and much more.

I have found some old obituaries from the 1800s that tell a lot about the person. One tells how this lady will be remembered for her beautiful thick black hair, which came to be known by family and friends as "McMillion hair" (My mother had thick, wavy, dark hair).

There is so much we can learn from these early records.

Another one tells how this man loved to go to auctions and that he loved to work in his apple orchard, and farmed and raised sheep and cattle. I was lucky enough a few years ago to find the cemetery that this long ago Uncle was buried at in Cana, VA, and the path leading to the cemetery was lined with apple trees!

Has anyone ever written their family history? Any suggestions from anyone?

Behind The Scenes of a Publishing Company

There's a big red wall at Candlewick Publishing Company.

They have an office dog.

There is a tray on Kaylan Adair's desk. . . the top tray has very urgent papers, the middle tray has urgent papers and the bottom tray has somewhat urgent papers.

And then there is the SLUSH Pile. . . Ms. Adair's definition of a SLUSH Pile is - Things That Are Not Solicited. Sorry, they do not currently accept unsolicited manuscripts.

On Tuesdays they have Production Meetings.

On Thursdays they have Picture Book Meetings.

On Thursday mornings they have a Cover's Meeting.

When searching for an illustrator for a picture book, they narrow it down to three choices, then they show their choices to the author.

Sketches arrive.

Final Art arrives and they spread them out on a table. Everyone gathers to look at them. They are scanned and put into layouts.

Kaylan has worked on more than 100 titles.
She looks for well written stories with interesting characters, strong unique voice and lots of heart.

She says for a Picture Book it takes 2-3 yrs from signing the contract with the author until the book hits the shelf.
For a Novel it takes 18months to 2 years. It all depends on how smoothly everything goes.

I attended her workshops at our writer's conference over the weekend. Those attending have until Sept. 13, 2010 to send a manuscript to her.

Now, all I have to do is decide what to send her, write it really, really good and then keep my finger's crossed.