We're All Ears!

Time for a Milestone Monday! We want to hear your good news, your accomplishments, your movements forward! And, a-hem, we have it on good authority that one of our readers with the initials RM just sold her first book in a "very nice deal" to Disney/Hyperion. We'd love to hear the deets!

I've recently taken a big, bracing breath and sent my picture book ms. to a friend/rock star/former bookseller to have her take the first look at it. No one has seen my rewrite. Sweat is running down both sides of me, but I'm glad I've done it. I'll keep you in the loop on this. In the meantime, I'm practicing detachment from the outcome and going nose down on my WIP.

How about the rest of you? What have you moved forward? Anyone done any public speaking, leaping over their own personal buildings? Please share with us.

I want to welcome my awesomely lovely sidekick, Robin, back from her week-long East Coast book tour. It's been great fun following her on Facebook and hearing about all the great indies she has visited, the people she has connected with, and all the places she has been able to sightsee. Given her recent enormous output, I'm calculating that she'll need about 3.5 days plugged directly into the socket before she is speaking. But, we can still send her a quiet and heartfelt Hail the Returning Violet!

Speaking of indies, it is the last week of May ( spewing here at that!) and if you've not yet visited your local independent bookstore and supported them, please jump into your Converse now and pay them a visit. We are celebrating Buy Indie Day for the entire month so none of you miss out! Buy a book, a book cert, card, bookplates, magazines, or just cruise it and thank them for their contribution to your community.

And as promised, here are some words from our 2007 Indie Bookseller of the Year, Ms. Kris Vreeland of Vroman's in Pasadena. 

"For me, shopping indies means building relationships. As a bookseller, it’s my opportunity to get to know someone, not just as a customer, but as an individual. Everyone coming into the store has a story to share. Sometimes it’s about a favorite book or author. Sometimes it’s about a trip or a friend or a birthday party or a school assignment or a childhood memory or a seemingly impossible combination of criteria for something to read. It can be an interaction that lasts for a few moments or more than an hour. Each person coming into the store can be someone who is here for the first time or someone who thinks of us every time they want a book or a gift. Some customers even become a life-long friends. As a bookseller I get to know our customers and as a customer in other independent businesses I get to feel valued and respected, like my story is important, like I, as an individual, make a difference community where I live. It’s more than just about dollars and cents (though the dollars and cents are necessary to stay in business), it’s also gets to be about being personal."

Thanks, Kris! It's really wonderful hearing how much you value the one-on-one in your work. That's what makes you royalty in our book!

But, wait! There's even more listening that we want to do today. As you've surely noticed, we've been very fortunate to have enlisted both Laurie Helgoe and Nancy Ancowitz with us as SME (subject matter experts) and IE (introverts extraordinairre). We hope that we can harangue (I mean invite) them to come back now and then. Between the two of them, they possess a wealth of intel on the life-from-the-inside-out. Are there issues/questions/topics you'd like them to do a guest blog about? If so, let us know either by commenting here today, or more privately by emailing me. If they choose a topic or question of yours, we'll prize you to boot!

Lastly, perhaps, but not for certain-- for the longest time, well since last Thursday, I've been wanting to come up with more introvert-friendly text lingo. Every single time I text LOL (laugh out loud), I feel like such an imposter. Honestly, it is rare that I laugh out loud, particularly when I'm texting. It's more likely that I am LQ2M (Laughing quietly to myself.)

So, I'll need some help coming up with some new ones and then we need to deploy these out into the world at large, celebrating our uniqueness.

The Shrinking Violet Guide to Texting: A Work in Progress

LQ2M (laughing quietly to myself)

RCTL (recharging talk later)

:-X (can't talk)

UYF (Use your filters)

GA (Going alone)

E!!! (Extrovert approaching)

Add yours here

Lastlier, and I mean it this time, I want to close with the most marvelous description of taking in literary feedback that I've ever heard. Though it strikes me that it is most apt for most all we take in from the world. It's credited to Peter Elbow in his work Teaching without Teachers.

"I try to take in feedback like an owl swallowing a mouse--whole, but then later I can spit out the bones and other stuff I don't need."

We would love to hear from you this week, whether it is about a milestone, a guest blogger topic, or some introvert-friendly text lingo. Or, just come by and say hello! We will select a winner from all of the comments on this post. The winner will recieve her or his pick from the Children's Next Indie list. Your choice from a fabulous line-up of books!

Have a wonderful week, everyone--

Pax,

Mary