Author, Wendie Old, lives in a colonial era stone farmhouse with her husband, two cats, a huge hairy dog, and has adopted her grandkid — with his and hers and hers computers. Her new book THE HALLOWEEN BOOK OF FACTS AND FUN is available in bookstores now. Visit her website at http://www.wendieold.com

What were your favorite books when you were a teen?

Historical fiction — I did not like contemporary/ problem novels

What do you read in the bathroom?

Time magazine/ National Geographic/ Regency romance books/ L.L. Bean catalogs

Do you eat right, get plenty of exercise, and sleep eight hours, or do you sit in front of your computer writing all the time?

Oh yeah. Right. Exercise as a separate event? Not hardly. I work full-time as a children’s librarian in a public library system. I am raising my granddaughter, which means running to gymnastic lessons, swim lessons, dance lessons, soccer practice, gymnastic tournaments, dance recitals, (no swim team, yet) and Brownie Scout events. Plus birthday parties. Exercise? I figure I walk a couple of miles just doing my daily stint. When do I write? In the morning when I’m going to work for the evening shift of 12 - 8pm, sometimes on weekends, and on vacation days. (I take writing vacations from my full-time job.) I read BLOGS and answer e-mails in the evenings.

What’s the best piece of advice anyone ever gave you (or you learned from a book)?

The people who were the Regional Advisors of our SCBWI region pointed out that, since my fiction wasn’t selling, why not try writing non-fiction. Which I did and proceeded to be multi-published. Nonfiction sells. They also became my co-authors of two of my picture books. We used the pen name C.W. Bowie, which incorporates all three names.

Where do you see yourself in ten years?

Either dead or dead-tired.

I gave you ten questions and asked you to answer five. Were you tempted to answer all ten? Why?

Yes, because when someone asks a question, I answer to the best of my ability. I’m a librarian. It’s my job to find answers.

Do you use an outline when writing, or just let it flow and write as fast as you can?

I have an idea of how it begins and how it should/ might end. With a biography it’s easy, it ends with the last thing you can find about the person and possibly a summary of their life’s work. The outline is the chronology of their life.

With TO FLY,THE STORY OF THE WRIGHT BROTHERS I wrote both the first chapter and the last paragraphs of the last chapter at the same time. I wanted them to reflect each other — to give the book that satisfying, “ahhhhh” factor.

What’s the most embarrassing thing that happened to you in high school?

Who wants to remember high school? High school is just a time to get through. The whole thing is one big embarrassment. Life begins in college when you can pick your own friends and activities, and study things interesting to you, and find out who YOU are, and accept what you are not.

Titles by Wendie Old

The Halloween Book of Facts and Fun, Albert Whitman 2007 (September)
The Groundhog Day Book of Facts and Fun, Albert Whitman 2004
Busy Fingers (pen name C. W. Bowie), Charlesbridge 2003

To Fly, the Story of the Wright Brothers, Clarion 2002 – A multi-award winning book!
Seven biographies for Enslow (Three presidents, two musicians, a social activist and a couple of inventors)

No, I’m not talking about a messy manuscript. I’m talking about the mess my office is. The thing is, the old me would’ve said, “Okay…no writing until everything is unpacked and in place.” but the new me says, “No cleaning until you’ve written!” This is helping me get a lot of writing done because frankly, who likes to clean?

It’s true! I wrote today. Yay, me! If you’re interested in what I’m writing, well, let’s just say it’s got a lot of music woven through it and if you like music, head on over to the Music tab on this site, there are three recordings of music that are from the book. Yeah…I’m hoping to someday have a CD to go with this book, but first I have to write the book, so back to work!

By the way, I intend to go back to some sort of format for this blog…I haven’t figured it out totally yet, but I will have a Teen Topic day and I will be doing Author Interviews again. And I’ll probably do the Humorous Essay Thursdays again too. I have a few Author Interviews stockpiled so check in on Friday for sure to see who I’m interviewing this week.

What kind of music do you listen to?

Well, not quite off and running today, but starting tomorrow I will be jumping back into the writing fray after nearly three months off.

I have a Work In Progress that’s about eighty percent done. It is now a sequel to a book that I wrote last spring, so it needs some adjusting in order for it to make sense. I wrote this WIP first and then got the idea for a book to go before it. Since my agent was working on pitching an entirely different project, I went ahead and wrote the “prequel” and shelved this one for a while.

Now I know it may sound sort of arrogant to say, “the novel I wrote last spring” as if I just knock them out. I mean, who do I think I am? Meg Cabot? The truth is that it just flowed out of me like water. I think a big part of it was that I already knew all the characters intimately so I didn’t have to do a lot of that kind of background work. And I had some ideas of what had happened previously to the one I’d written because you have to know your backstory, right? Anyway…or “anywho” as some people say (why, I’m not sure)…tomorrow morning I will sit down at my desk and ask myself the age-old question every writers asks herself when siting down to write…

“Is there anymore of that Halloween candy left?”

Hi. I’ve made some changes to Need To Read. I’ve moved the actual blog back to my Live Journal where the archives work better. Also, I’ve put up a big list of Young Adult books that I like under the Need To Read tab here on the website, plus re-listed my Fave Fifteen of 2006 there. Please feel free to add your favorites in the comment section (MG is welcome too) and make sure you bookmark the new/old Live Journal site so you don’t miss what gems I’m finding in my new library!

What are you reading?

Hi, All.

A friend asked me to compile a list of contemporary YA fiction for a fourteen year old girl. Below is what I ended up with and I’m going to leave it up here, and add updates to it occasionally. Feel free to add titles to the comment section. This will be followed by my Fave Fifteen for 2006.

* I have marked a few books with an asterisk to indicate where I think content is probably for 14 years or older. However, if you were my kid, I’d let you read whatever you felt up to reading. That’s what my mum did and I believe it’s the right approach. However, some parents who check out this site have asked me to do that and I don’t mind complying. Again, it’s all just my opinion.

Humor, Fluff and Fun (this is sometimes pretty light reading, but I’ve chosen the BEST of the best)

• Rat Boys – A Dating Experiment by Thom Eberhardt
• I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You by Ally Carter
• Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy by Ally Carter
• All of Louise Rennison’s Georgia books – They start with Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging
• Leap Day by Wendy Mass
• All of Phyllis Reynold Naylor’s Alice books (they start when she’s very young though, so MG and YA readers may just want the older ones)
• My Road Trip to the Pretty Girl Capitol of the World by Brian Yansky
• My Cup Runneth Over – The life of Angelica Cookson Potts by Cherry Whytock (there’s also a sequel)
• Alice I Think by Susan Juby (and the two sequels)
• The Teacher’s Funeral by Richard Peck
• Absolutely Positively Not by David La Rochelle
• All of Meg Cabot’s books (the Mediator series, The Princess Diaries, and the All American series) – They’re what everyone else is trying to copy in this genre.
• A Fate Totally Worse Than Death by Paul Fleischman (a satire on the teen horror genre)
• Oy! Joy! By Lucy Frank
• I Was a Non-Blonde Cheerleader by Kieren Scott

Historical Fiction/Foreign Settings/Other Time Periods

• Gentle’s Holler by Kerry Madden
• The Minister’s Daughter by Julie Hearn
• Gilbert and Sullivan Set Me Free by Kathleen Karr
• The Legacy of Gloria Russell by Sheri Gilbert
• The Legend of Buddy Bush by Sheila P. Moss
• Catherine Called Birdy by Karen Cushman
• Here Today by Ann M. Martin
• Shadow Spinner by Susan Fletcher
• Daughter of Venice by Donna Jo Napoli

Anything by these authors:

• Joan Bauer
• Cathy Cassidy
• Janette Rallison (falls into fluffy)
• Linda Crew
• Jerry Spinelli
• Rachel Vail
• John Rowe Townsend
• Jill Paton Walsh
• Arthur Slade

Contemporary – sometimes edgy

• Walking Naked by Alyssa Brugman*
• Parent Swap by Terence Blacker
• The Geography of Girlhood by Kirsten Smith
• The True Meaning of Cleavage* by Mariah Fredricks
• The First Part Last by Angela Johnson
• Define Normal by Julie Anne Peters
• Love and Other Four Letter Words by Carolyn Mackler
• The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things by Carolyn Mackler
• Honey, Baby, Sweetheart by Deb Caletti
• So B. It – A novel by Sarah Weeks
• Speak* by Laurie Halse Anderson
• Money Hungry by Sharon G. Flake
• Begging For Change by Sharon G. Flake
• Hang on in there Shelley by Kate Saksena
• Finding Miracles by Julia Alvarez
• The Canning Season by Polly Horvath
• Each Little Bird That Sings by Deborah Wiles
• Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin
• Dizzy by Cathy Cassidy
• Children of the River by Linda Crew

Fantasy/Sci Fi

• Hannah’s Garden by Midori Snyder
• All the Artemis Fowl books by Eoin Colfer
• Alia Waking by Laura Williams McCaffrey
• Treasure in the Heart of Tanglewood by Meredith Ann Pierce
• The House of Scorpion* by Nancy Farmer (won lots of awards but is a little icky)
• The Wish List by Eoin Colfer
• Catch Me Once, Catch Me Twice by Janet McNaughton
• An Earthly Knight by Janet McNaughton

MUST READS!

• Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko
• Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

Series That I Love

• Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace
• The Melendy Quartet by Elizabeth Enright
• The Borrowers by Mary Norton
• Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling

Thrillers/Mystery/Suspense

• Deep* by Susanna Vance (Oregon author!)
• Colibri by Ann Cameron
• Say Yes by Audrey Coulombis

Fave Fifteen of 2006

GILBERT AND SULLIVAN SET ME FREE by Kathleen Karr
ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY NOT… by David La Rochelle
TRIBES by Arthur Slade
PROM by Laurie Halse Anderson
TOTALLY JOE by James Howe
STUMPTOWN KID by Carol Gorman and Ron J. Findley
INDIGO BLUE by Cathy Cassidy
THE BIG NOTHING by Adrian Fogelin
DO-OVER by Rachel Vail
SUMMER OF THE SKUNKS by Wilmoth Foreman
FAT KID RULES THE WORLD by k.l. Going
THE XANADU MANUSCRIPT by John Rowe Townsend
NOT AS CRAZY AS I SEEM by George Harrar
WELCOME TO WAHOO by Dennis & Elise Carr
LOOKING FOR ALASKA by John Green

  As you know, my cat, Grinder, was missing for almost three weeks. He’s been back since last Friday and boy could he eat. However, there was one little problem. It was as if he had indeed left the island during his sojourn and gone to Mexico where he must’ve drunk the water, if you get my drift. So finally I called the vet and asked what to do. She said…and I quote…”We usually recommend a 24 hour fast.”

HA HA! No, really? Really. We were supposed to put this cat on a 24 hour fast AND live with him during it. You know how people have all kinds of grandiose things they would do if they won the lottery (or got a fat advance)? Well, last night we would’ve gone to a B&B.  As it turned out, neither of those things have happened (yet) so we all got very little sleep. Well, except for my husband who can sleep through anything.

Our other cat, Miss Sophie did not help matters. She was hungry too, but not on a fast (and couldn’t join him anyway because she takes meds and needs food to go with them). My plan was to keep the food in the laundry room and every time she looked hungry (i.e. followed me around with big accusing eyes) I would toss her in there and let her out when she scratched. Of course, she’s freaked out by being locked in the laundry room, so as soon as I put her in there and shut the door she immediately started scratching to get out and the cycle started all over again. We finally had to lock her in my husband’s office with him so she could be calm enough to eat.

Grinder’s approach to getting food was to walk over all the kitchen counters and lick my cutting board for scraps of cheese (I’d already washed it and BELIEVE me, I washed it again this morning. TWICE.). His next plan of attack was to never let me out of his sight. He accomplished this at night by laying on my head.  He has been at my heels, in my lap, or generally underfoot ever since I got up. I probably would’ve given in by now, but my husband would look at me disapprovingly (after he came out of his office where he’s been hiding with the door shut so he doesn’t have to face the Orange Menace).

The torture is about to end, although he won’t get an all-you-can-eat buffet. It will be more like the small meals they recommend in women’s health magazines– nibbles every once in a while until he recovers from his South of the Border experience.

–Oh, and for those of you who wonder if I’m writing this at my new desk…let’s just say there was a slight injury which derailed the work last night. However, while Victor’s foot was throbbing like Fred Flintstone last night, he is barely gimpy at all today. He did inform me that the West Coast tradition of not wearing shoes in the house is for the birds and he will be wearing his from now on, thank you very much. If not for warmth, then for protection from Ikea.

Sooo…tonight we are going to put my new desk together (in theory) and then I’ll be able to write again (also in theory). That’s assuming we can figure out the drawings. We bought a desk and a filing cabinet at Ikea and last night we put together the filing cabinet. At Ikea they have figured out several ways to keep the costs down. One is to put all the hardware in one bag and make you sort it yourself. Another is to give you EXACTLY what you need and not a screw more. And thirdly, they use pictures instead of words on the directions so they can sell the same product in many countries without having to have the instructions translated into a bunch of languages. Great for visual people, not so much for word people.

Being writers (my husband is a songwriter), it became crystal clear to us that we would’ve happily paid a little extra for the written word. Pictures mean very little to word people. One screw looks pretty much like the other, and if it fits in the hole, or sort of fits and can be forced together with a hammer, then it must be the right screw right? Wrong. Of course, you don’t find that out until the end when you need the short screws and you have four long ones left over. Luckily, Ikea has dealt with word people before. They have stock numbers on each illustration of each piece of hardware. So…in two to three weeks, we’ll receive four screws in the mail and be able to finish the filing cabinet.

Wish us luck with the desk.

Are you a word person or a visual person?

Take this advice from me…if you’re planning on moving cross country and you think that immediately following this giant event you will be ready to attend a huge writer’s conference, I can pretty much guarantee that you’re not going to be able to make it. At least, I wasn’t. This past weekend was the Surrey International Writer’s Conference (B.C. Canada). I was going to go now that I live near there…sort of near there…close enough to get to it…and my friend, Eileen Cook does live near there and we were going to hang out…but alas, I spent my weekend in front of the fire reading (see Need To Read to find out what). I shouldn’t say alas because it was a fabulous weekend and boy, did I need the sheer do-nothingness of it.

Aside from the fire and the reading, the very best thing happened that probably wouldn’t have happened if I’d been away. We found our knucklehead cat who had been missing since 2 October when he escaped. One of our new neighbors had the whole community searching for him. We got a hot tip on Thursday night that he’d been seen at the pub. Granted, he does have opposable thumbs, and probably can hold a beer or play darts, but when we got to the pub the next morning, no one had seen him. However, the second part of the hot tip was that he’d escaped down a rocky embankment from his would-be rescuers. It was pouring down buckets of rain, so we weren’t surprised when we went to the rocky outcrop and called and he didn’t come, but we went back later when it had stopped raining and I only had to call him twice before I heard a giant MEEEEOOOOOOOWWWWW!!! below me. I called again…again with the MEEEEOOOOOOOWWWWW!!! and before I could start to scramble (okay, probably fall) down the bank, his little orange head popped up under the rocks at my feet and I scooped his skinny little butt up into my arms. He was purring before he was off the ground.

The reason I say we might not have found him if I hadn’t been there is because I come from a long line of cat lovers who can do that KITTY-KITTY-KITTY-KITTY-KITTY call unmercifully loudly. My husband is more of a “Hey, Knucklehead? Where are you?” type of caller and cats don’t always notice that he’s talking to them.

Once we got him home, we thought we’d have to lock him in, but you know what? I think we’d have to throw him out to get him to go outside now! He’s deliriously happy to be home.

Finding him beats any writing conference any day. However, if you went, I’d love to hear any comments about it here. Do tell…

Those of you who read this blog know I don’t read a ton of nonfiction, but I do foray into it occasionally. The fact that I read TWO nonfiction books in a row…well, that’s pretty unusual. However, it’s still true (If you’re wondering where the review for the other one is, it is THREE CUPS OF TEA on the homepage).

I recently dipped into the fabulous BEAUTY TIPS FROM MOOSE JAW by Will Ferguson and it was a great read. Packed with Canadian history, it’s a travelogue of sorts a la Bill Bryson. I learned a lot about Canada and what they eat (grilled cheese, their national cuisine) and found some cool places I’d like to visit (St. John’s, Newfoundland). Very entertaining AND informative. I highly recommend it, even if you don’t ever see yourself venturing to the Great White North.

After all that nonfiction, I needed something breezy and funny, so I turned to Meg Cabot’s adult series about Heather Wells, washed up pop princess turned dorm, I mean residence hall, assistant director turned unofficial private investigator. SIZE 14 IS NOT FAT EITHER is the sequel to the first one (SIZE 12 IS NOT FAT) and is just as funny and entertaining, although a bit more gruesome. Still, I ploughed on and read it in two sittings. Not that that did much in the way of getting my moving boxes unpacked, but it was more fun. While I’m not a big fan of adult chick lit (teen chick lit I find strangely engaging), Cabot does manage to capture my attention with this series (not true of her other adult chick lit). She’s a good writer and highly amusing. If you’re a writer looking to learn about that ever elusive “voice”, Cabot is your writer to read. She’s got it down. And Donald Maass would be thrilled with all the “layering” she does in this book in particular.

And that’s the word on the street right now…my street anyway.

Ha! I bet you thought I was going to complain about writing a synopsis, didn’t you? Well, you’re wrong because I don’t have time to write anything, let alone a synopsis. I am BURIED in boxes! That’s right, the husband arrived with the moving van.

However, I am going to talk about synopsis writing anyway. I think if you took a poll, asking writers what the hardest thing they have to write is, most would probably say the synopsis (and if they don’t say that, they’re lying). One of the first things I asked my pal, the talented writer, Eileen Cook, after being offered representation by my fabulous agent, Kathleen Anderson, was, “Do I still have to write synopses and hooks?” Her answer was sometimes. Kathy’s answer was, “Give me a summary, not a synopsis.” Hmmm…that made me feel lots better. NOT! Anyway, I did it and she didn’t send it back saying, “Are you kidding me?” so I guess that qualifies me to teach someone else how to write one, right? Hehe.

My critique partner (and wonderful artist), Wanda Collins Johnson is working on a synopsis for an agent request right now (Yay, Wanda!). Last night I read draft one. Then I was really tough on her. I told her what it was missing and how she had to really let it shine, but not how to fix it. Why not? Because I have no idea. I was just winging it. Actually, I did give her some tips, which sounded good to me, and either she’s a quick study or I’m a marvelous teacher (or maybe she got online and got some real help!). Either way, she did a great second draft and I’m confident the next one will really show how she can sparkle when it comes to language.

Here are a few tips I gave her. If you have any to add, we’d all love to have them! Especially me since I’ve decided to steal any ideas of yours and combine them with mine and write an article about it.

1. Take your time. I can guarantee from personal experience (and those posts on Kristen’s blog, Miss Snark, and every other agent’s site), you have time. The partial does not have to go out TOMORROW or they’ll change their mind. If it takes you a week, it takes you a week.

2. That said, stop querying until you’ve already written a stunning synopsis.

3. Your synopsis needs to be a sample of your fabulous writing. Show that you can write, not just throw down a list of plot points (way easier said than done).

4. Hmmm…maybe if I really am going to write an article I better stop here or they’ll say, “Why buy the cow when we can get it for free on her website?”

What do you know about writing synopses?