Jody Feldman

02:23 pm - CONTEST!

Current Mood: challenged

08:40 am - One More Try

Once upon a time (or in a post exactly 10 weeks ago ), I tried to include a video of the event that turned me bright red. I think I finally got it right if you care to relive the moment with me. 

 

Current Mood: still red after all these days

07:55 am - Five on a Friday

1. Author, and my occasional lunch pal, Cindy Reeg was featured in this month’s CBI enewsletter. Actually, her blog was. You can visit Cindy here. Congrats, Cindy!

2. I forgot to mention another best the other day. Best barbeque potato chips I’ve ever eaten. Hands down. Bar none. Subject closed. Seyfert’s. (Is that an Indy thing or can you find them in other places?)

3. Also back in Indy, you can see a picture of me, my T-shirt, Foster Grants and bad hair day crossing the finish line here.  (The site won't let me post.)

4. Nesting ... grackles in the front of my house ...
 
the nest                                                                       and the skittish parent
... robins in the back. 
 
about a week ago                                                             yesterday
(And just minutes after I took this picture, that second baby robin found its wings.)

5. Getting excited! A week from today, Marissa Doyle (Bewitching Season and our Class of 2k8 co-president) comes in town to visit me. We'll be appearing here. 

Current Mood: lazy

08:09 am - I Love the People at My Publisher

I spent about two hours yesterday searching my computer and my hardcopy files for THE puzzle I’m going to use for the contest. It was originally intended to be the extra puzzle for my readers at the very, very end of the book. It was decided, however, should there be last-minute changes to the book, that particular puzzle wouldn’t work. But when I was in NYC last month, Lois the amazing copyeditor, suggested I resurrect it for my contest. 

So I went to pull it up on my computer, but it had totally vanished. And it wasn’t in the two-and-a-half-foot stack of hardcopy copyedits and notes and earlier Gollywhopper versions. So as a last-ditch, why-am-I-bothering-someone-else effort, I emailed Lois on the off-chance she might still have a copy. 

She stopped everything, located a hardcopy and had the wonderful Michelle type it back up so she could email it to me. Sure, I could have mostly recreated that puzzle, but I would have forever wondered how the new one compared to the original. And yes, I obsess over things like that.

Current Mood: thank you, thank you

06:06 am - A Favor?

What’s The Gollywhopper Games without some real games? 
In the middle of this month, I’ll be launching a contest. Entrants will need to solve a puzzle to qualify, and to do that, they’ll also need to spend some time with the book in their possession. Knowing that not everyone can afford to buy one, I’d love to ask you a favor. If the spirit moves you, take a couple minutes to check your library’s catalogue. If they don’t have the book in their cpllection, please consider requesting they add it. This should be all the info you need:

Title: The Gollywhopper Games
Author: Jody Feldman
Publisher: HarperCollins/Greenwillow
ISBN number (library edition): 978-0-06-121451-6

I’d truly appreciate it ... and so will some kids who might not otherwise be able to enter.

Current Mood: thankful

08:45 am - Weekend Bests

In our last episode, I was heading to meet P at the Mini Marathon in Indianapolis where, perfect for me, they also had a 5k. Their downtown area is beautiful, the event was amazingly well-planned, and the weekend kept filling with bests. In semi-random order:

Best weather news ... They’d been calling for Race Day thunderstorms all week, but it ended up being overcast then sunny. 

Best idea ... To wear my Gollywhopper Game t-shirt. I caught more than a few kids staring at my chest.
 Now that I've taken a picture, it can go into the laundry basket.

Best use of a medal ... I turned in my finish medal to a group that uses them as rewards and incentive for others.

Best realization ... I’m a 5k walker (with occasional short running spurts thrown in for good measure)and (probably) won’t ever again entertain thoughts about running a half marathon. 10k maybe.

Personal best ... My time for the 5k: 40:26.

Best freebie ... Each running bib came with a ticket to the Indianapolis Speedway for the opening day of the Indy 500 season. It was Rookie Test day or something like that – I know pitiful little about racing, but went there for the experience and was awestruck by the enormity of the infield and by the near-complete access of attendees to anything and anyone within the track.

 
A parade of Corvettes                                                             The rookies appear to be from Central Casting

Best Name for a rookie driver at Indy ... Will Power (yes, really). 

Best Moment of the Weekend ... Running up to the finish line, past the thousands of people in the bleachers and lining the street, and hearing the announcer blast across the loudspeaker: "Here comes The Gollywhopper Games!"

Current Mood: Thanks, Indy!

08:26 am - Help Wanted ... Questions at the End

 Saturday is the Indianapolis Half Marathon, and I will be there. P talked me into going, and she will be running it. Lucky for me, they also have a 5k, and I will be mostly walking it. I should finish in about 40 minutes. That’s about all I want to push myself. 

I do need, however, to push myself to put together a contest I’ve been threatening to do. Given the two topics, I have several questions for anyone inclined to answer. 

Indianapolis Questions ...
1. Anyone in Indy reading this? Anyone know Indy? 
2. Any restaurants we should go to? 
3. Any sights we should see? 
4. Any great bookstores?

Contest questions ... 
5. While most kids would probably prefer to win a Wii over a Nintendo DS Lite, would they be just as likely to enter a contest (with a qualifying puzzle to solve) no matter which prize was at the end? What do you think? Feel free to ask kids if you have access to them. 
6. What other game-themed prize might be an enticement?

Thanks!

Current Mood: Question-able

12:34 pm - My New Addiction

Surprisingly, this new addiction doesn’t involve food. And I’m not an hourly Amazon rank checker either. It concerns libraries and WorldCat. According to the line on their website, "WorldCat connects you to the collections and services of more than 10,000 libraries worldwide." 

Yesiree! Just type in the name of any book, fill in the location name (I always start with USA), and it will display how many different library systems own a copy or more. So the really fun part (I know I probably need a life) is that when you hit the link to a library system, that system displays how many copies of a book they own. And every once in a while I’ll choose a system at random and peek in. (Yes, this is getting sadder, isn’t it?) 

So what prompted me to admit this today was not that the Orange County Libraries have 12 copies of The Gollywhopper Games, but I’m so, so excited that 7 of them are actually checked out. (Yes, even more pitiful that I didn’t realize this might happen.) 

And as long as I’m here and speaking about libraries, an announcement to the students from the schools I visited in St. Louis. Remember when I told you that if you didn’t have a book and the copies in your school libraries were checked out that you could go to the St. Louis County Library? Remember when they didn’t have any copies? That’s all been fixed now. They have 18. Thanks, SLCL!

Current Mood: grateful

10:06 am - Five on a Friday

1. I love brainstorming. I love spilling out random ideas without censoring. So while I may have sounded as if I were complaining about the difficulty of my task yesterday, I was still having fun through my frustration. Not only that ... but

2. Thanks to yesterday’s comment by 

slayground, I decided to think of this process a different way ... so

3. I might have foundThe Word ... except

4. The one word may end up being three words ... but

5. My 4 most exciting words today start with NCTE. Our Class of 2k8 panel has been accepted to speak at NCTE* in November.

*NCTE = National Council of Teachers of English

 

Current Mood: psyched

04:48 pm - Sometimes Writing Feels Like This

Current Mood: treading carefully

08:26 am - One Word

I need one simple word. I have a list that’s probably nearing 150, but the one word is not on it. 
I need this one word to sound inviting, enticing and maybe a little mysterious. 
I also need this word – the name for a school club -- to convey the purpose of the group. 
(Sorry, not ready to share that right now.) 
I thought I’d found the perfect word, but then I thought again. Although it has the perfect ring and a perfect dictionary definition, it can also bring to mind violence and death. 
That’s not what I’m going for. 
One irresistible word. 
It shouldn’t be this hard. 
But it is.

Current Mood: stuck

09:20 am - Maybes

Maybe it was the meme going around the other week, the one where people listed their unpublished manuscripts. Maybe that’s what jumpstarted my thoughts about a YA I’d shelved. And maybe that’s what compelled me to sit at the computer for three hours yesterday, rereading it for the first time in forever. (Or maybe it was avoiding what I should be doing.) 

Several years ago, an editor had slashed critiqued 40 pages of this story, something I continue to be grateful for because that critique sent me back to writing my MG books. But you know what I discovered yesterday? That YA has a lot more potential than I remembered. 

Maybe someday.

Current Mood: happily on to the MG revision

08:20 am - Friday Five

1. I went to this boys' and girls' club to rock the drop yesterday, but ...

2. The lobby, where I was going to leave the book was filled with plaster/paint buckets, dropcloths, ladders, tools, debris and other evidence of (re)construction, so ...

3. I stepped to the left and saw the gym/basketball court with bleachers outstretched like welcome arms, and that’s where I dropped it, but ...

4. I didn’t think I dropped it hard enough to cause the 5.2 earthquake that woke me at 4:37 am CDT, yet ...

5. Though I lost some sleep, I am thankful that nothing appears to be damaged.

Current Mood: Everyone okay?

08:02 am - Today!

I’m still deciding where to drop, but it will happen today. 
And remember ... you can drop a book by another author as well. Find both labels here. 

Current Mood: ready to rock

11:22 am - Before and After (A Google Activity)

Especially for those of you authors with unconventional titles-in-full ... 
(and I’m only admitting this to provide a service).

Before The Gollywhopper Games received its first review, I admit it. I’d Google the title every so often. The first time, I got four hits. About two months later, I remember the number 131. I haven’t Googled it since then (really, truly), but, yesterday, some unidentifiable something possessed me to see if the number had grown. I threw the title in quotation marks, hit search ... and okay, then. 

So, if you’re waiting for your book to launch, I didn’t want you to miss the opportunity to take a before and after snapshot. Consider it part of your baby's growth chart.

Current Mood: weird

08:30 am - A New Calling? Probably Not.

I’d always thought it might be fun to take a stab at writing song lyrics. I don’t know that I’d be any good at it. I have no training and no background in music other than listening to it frequently. What I do have is a 100% success record. Sort of. 

I was working at an in-house advertising agency when I first got out of college, and the powers-that-be chose my lyrics for a discount shoe store commercial. Of course, the competition wasn’t all that fierce; just me and probably another writer or two from the department. And the pay? It was part of the full-time job which grossed me less than today’s minimum wage. 

This week, though, I might take a brief step into the music industry. My agent pointed out a bumpy spot in Potential Book #2, and I’ve decided that a few well-chosen song lyrics may smooth it out. Is this my big opportunity to prove to the world that I can be the next important lyricist? Uh ... no.  I’ll be entirely happy if a few lines work to connect the disjointed pieces.

Current Mood: And the Grammy goes to ...

07:39 am - Friday Five

1. I’ve never done this before, thinking I wouldn’t have five things. But I love reading all of yours, so I’ll take a stab. 

2. I’m off to Mason Ridge School today for a casual visit. They were one of the classrooms that sat in on my videoconference. Little do they know, I’m going to ask them to help me come up with a new name for Potential Book #2. I hope they have fun with that. 

3. I just finished the upcoming book from Class of 2k8's Daphne Grab. Alive and Well in Prague, New York is well worth watching out for. 

4. Congratulations to another 2k8er. Elizabeth Bunce’s A Curse Dark as Gold has received an ALA/YALSA BBYA nomination. 

5. With a book that rides on the MG/YA bubble, I never expected this. But  if you look on that nomination list, The Gollywhopper Games finagled one, too. Thank you ALA/YALSA BBYA committee members! I’m flabbergasted!

Current Mood: Who? Me?

09:38 am - And Another Thing (Or Two) ...

A couple things I forgot yesterday ... 

First ... I spent a few minutes chatting with Molly O’Neill, the wonderfully wonderful assistant editor of Brenda Bowen’s new imprint at HarperCollins. Sorry, no pictures, but I did see her slushpile, individual stacks from the SCBWI conferences she’s been attending. And she promises to get to them soon. Next up for her, Utah SCBWI. If you get a chance to meet her, she’s lovely. 

  And second ...
I’ve had a bunch of T-shirts made with the intention of holding some sort of contest to get them onto the backs of readers (of any age). I mentioned it when I was at the Greenwillow offices, and Lois, copyeditor extraordinaire, reminded me I may already have a contest mostly developed. After ‘The End’ of The Gollywhopper Games, you’ll find an extra puzzle. That wasn’t the first I wrote; the first would have been, logistically, too difficult given the nature of the publishing/printing process. However, it may be perfect after the fact. I hope to iron out the details and have this puppy up and running by the end of the month. My biggest decisions will be how long to let this contest run, and how many shirts to give away (10 because it’s a nice, round number; 50, with one winner per state or ... ?). I should have taken better notes during the Contests 101 course. I welcome any advice!

Current Mood: challenged

08:34 am - Randomly, From My Trip

So I found myself in New York last Wednesday (which makes it sound as if I were making my bed then turned around and was standing in Times Square, but it was all more real-life than that). And then was also non-magically transported to Des Moines on Sunday. What happened in both cities? A few random things and one that was huge ... at least huge for me. In no particular order ...

The set designers of the Tony Award winning Broadway show Spring Awakening stole one blue butterfly wing from the cover of Mary Pearson’s latest, The Adoration of Jenna Fox. 

The subways are so easy to navigate, but you may want to take an occasional bus instead of walking for 20 minutes to get to the right subway stop on your way to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Otherwise, your feet might hurt too much for you to enjoy it, especially if you were on them for most of eight hours the day before.

But do sit at a bench and really look at the artwork or artifacts that are in front of you. Maybe they’ll give you some inspiration for Potential Book #3.
       


Editorial staffs get very excited when you bring in candy. T-shirts, too.


Agents have some really, truly good ideas; ones that make you excited about going back and tweaking Potential Book #2 when you’d hoped you wouldn’t need to deal with it until it was an official book.

If you get a chance to meet online friends in person, seize it. I had so much fun hanging out with fellow Class of 2k8ers, Courtney Sheinmel and Daphne Grab.

The office of Bank Street Books, as jammed as it is with inventory and other backroom things, is a warm and lovely place to sit and do a drop-by stock signing. (And the people couldn’t have been nicer.)

And speaking of nice, a huge wave to the booksellers, authors and others who were at the Midwest Booksellers Association meeting. Seeing how passionate they are about their livelihoods, I was even more honored to be named a Connections author.

In turn, (and this was the biggie for me), I was so glad to be able to tell them something I learned in New York ... and to give them part of the credit: The Gollywhopper Games trade edition has gone back for a second printing.

Current Mood: still bouncing

07:04 am - Now Playing

For your viewing pleasure, 
come find me on Authorlink ...
and, for something completely different,
for ShopTalk. 
(Don’t laugh at the hair. I hear you laughing. Stop it. Really!) 
Thanks, Sue and Laura!
 

And happy birthday Mrs. Poz!

Current Mood: chatty