Back.

Whew.
That's just about all I can say.
Whew.

I just got back from the American Library Association Mid-Summer meeting in Orlando. We stayed an extra day so we could enjoy a baseball game with our son, who's interning with the Tampa Bay Rays. We also went there a day early so I could spend my birthday at Harry Potter World. In the three days in between, I had--I just counted--coffee with an editor, lunch with a writer friend, a drink with more editors (I'm blessed with editors), an official Newbery-type dinner, brunch with editors, a book signing, an awards ceremony, a fancy drinks reception, a full-on big-deal awards banquet with a receiving line after it that last three hours, another book signing, another awards lunch, another awards ceremony at which I gave a speech, a short reception, and another official dinner.

I am whacked.

I am wildly happy; I love everyone, especially my fellow writers; I met in person many people I've been friends with online for a good long time, and liked them all better than I hoped to; I feel personally called to be an even better writer after all this. My family was with me and my Newbery Dress was the bomb. It was wonderful. It exceeded my already high expectations.

Whacked, I tell you.

Yesterday's schedule: (after arriving at a St. Petersburg hotel near my son's apartment at 11:30 pm following that last official dinner)
9:45 wake up
10:15 breakfast
11:00 go to post office, mail home 48 pounds of books garnered at the convention. These include ARCs, books my fellow awardees personalized for me, and a lovely presentation copy of The War That Saved My Life.  (No, scratch that--I put the presentation copy in my handbag. It's specially bound in black and orange cloth (Penguin's colors) and has Newbery Honor 2016 embossed on the front. I didn't know this was a Thing. I will treasure it all my life.) Anyway, mail home 48 pounds of books.
11:30 visit Haslam's bookstore and buy another book. Yup. Not kidding.
12:00 lunch with my son!
1:00 personal tour of the Tampa Bay Rays' offices and ball field.
1:30 nap
4:30 wake up
5:15 go to son's apartment, and thence to ball game.

I imagine I might feel quite rested if I hadn't had to wake up at 4:45 to make my plane home. Still, I'm home, and I'm itching for words. The first thing I did was sit down at my computer. I don't have a novel to work on--I swore on several holy things that I wouldn't so much as glance at my sequel until my editor gets her notes to me next week--and while perusing the internet caught sight of my new copy of Lily and Dunkin, and dove in. I tore myself away to go say hi to my horse, and now I'm slightly scratching this writing itch, and then it's back to reading.

All ALA my husband remarked that in quiet moments I tended way more than I usually do to get completely absorbed in my phone. I was conscious that I was doing this, too: I told him I thought it was an introvert's reaction to all the noise and fanfare. I could go away into my phone for five minutes and recharge. It wasn't until I'd gotten on the plane for home that I realized what else made my phone so temporarily attractive: it was where the words were. It's very, very rare that I go five days without even starting a book. At ALA I was surrounded by books, but didn't have time to read, except on my phone, for tiny snippets of time.

I've already made up for that. As I was packing the box at the post office I threw one book into my purse instead: Richard Peck's latest, The Best Man. I finished it just as we got to Atlanta. Let me tell you, this may be the best Peck yet. Now I'm off to enjoy Lily and Dunkin. Lots more convention thoughts in the days to come.

I Did It!

"I did it!" has become a catch-phrase in my family. Last 4th of July weekend, my very small nephew Louie got a little overstressed by lack of sleep and the excitement of so much family. On the last day of his visit he was playing some age-appropriate games on my sister's iPad. He yelled "I did it!" every time he completed any task appropriately. He Did It! approximately 20 million times.

That's how I feel today.

Tomorrow I leave for ALA.

Yesterday I finished, and submitted, the latest draft of The War I Finally Won. I've been working hard on this. Can't tell you how relieved I am.

In light of yesterday's success, today I let myself go to yoga, where, two days before my 49th birthday, I did a full, real, handstand, for the first time ever. Doing a handstand before I turned 49 was a goal I set about 6 months ago.

I did it! I did it! Hooray!!

My Newbery Dress Saga: The Final Chapter (The Embarrassing One)

So I came home from NYC with a lovely Newbery dress that just needed to be hemmed a tad, and this was no problem. I'm short-waisted enough that a lot of my clothes need to be altered to fit correctly. We may have several competent people who alter clothes in Bristol, but the only one I know, and the only one I've ever used, is a woman named Valentina. She's from Croatia, and she's lovely.

I had another dress that needed the shoulder straps taken in (this is where my clothes usually need to be altered) and my daughter had her white dress for Class Night that needed alteration. We procrastinated, the way we usually do, so by the time we got to Valentina's it was early May and Valentina had a hand-written "Valentina is not taking any more alterations at this time" sign taped to her shop's front door.

We went in anyway. It was Prom Dress Heaven. The whole place, prom dresses everywhere. I hid the bag containing my dresses, which I didn't absolutely need right away, and pulled out my daughter's white dress.

"No, no," Valentina said. "No more dresses."

"We don't need it until after prom," I said.

She raised her eyebrows. "After all the proms?"

"Yes," I said, so she marked my daughter's dress and agreed to fix it. I picked it up the day of Class Night, and, at the same time, dropped off my dresses.

When I pulled up to the shop Valentina saw me coming. She laughed and stuck the "no alterations" sign back on the door. Then she took it off again. "Very nice dress," she said, about my Newbery dress. "Where this Macy's? Johnson City?"

She marked both dresses for me. This was about the 20th of May. I told her I didn't need the dresses until mid-June. She replied that she was going to Croatia for all of June, so I would have to pick the dresses up next week. I thanked all my stars that I hadn't procrastinated to the point that I'd gone looking for Valentina in the first week of June, and I left.

A week later she called to say that my dresses were ready. I put "pick up dresses" on my mental to-do list. Clearly I should have put it on my physical to-do list, because my mental to-do list is crap, and I forgot.

Until I was stretched out with a book on the back porch of our mountain retreat, in North Carolina, late Friday afternoon of Memorial Day Weekend. Valentina called. "You coming now for these dresses?" she asked. "I close at five."

Uh. "Can I come Tuesday?"

"Tuesday I fly to Croatia."

"Um-Monday?"

"Monday I am like chicken without a head. I not opening shop on Monday. Maybe I can call you, meet you there for ten minutes. I don't know."

I could not in any way blame Valentina for my issues. I had planned to stay in North Carolina through Monday evening; I could got back early and wait for Valentina's ten minutes, but it sounded painful for both of us. So I did what any self-respecting Southern woman would do, and I started calling the friends I have who can rescue me from my own idiocy without letting it damage our friendship.

Friend #1 wasn't answering her phone. Friend #2 laughed and said, "Kim, I'm in Ohio." I was flipping through my mental Rolodex (only slightly more reliable than my mental to-do list) for more people who would be in town and not at work at 4 pm on a Friday when my daughter, who'd overheard enough to understand what was going on, said, "Mack."

It was the obvious solution. Mack has worked for me for the last 18 years. At first I was only one of many people whose lawns he mowed. Eventually, however, I bought a farm, and then a tractor. (On the day the tractor arrived, Mack asked if he could "hop on and give it a try." He got off it five hours and 15 acres later). As Mack's grown older he's slowly given up all other jobs and now works for me, in good weather only, mowing everything I've got, which is a lot. He also mends fence, spreads manure, weed-whacks the creek bank, and in general saves my bacon. Also--this is huge--Mack is family. He loves me, and he loves helping me, even if it's by picking my Newbery dress up from Valentina at the last minute on a Friday afternoon.

To really appreciate the humor of this situation you have to know something about a certain type of older Appalachian redneck. I can't adequately explain Mack. But I will say that my directions sounded like this: "Her shop's on the little street between State Street and the post office--"

Mack: "Tennessee side?"

Me: "Yes, right down from the post office--"

Mack: "Sixth Street?"

Me; "I have no idea. Just go to the post office and head straight from there to State Street, and you'll see it on the left. Down from the pizza place--"

Mack: "By the post office?"

Me: "Put Linda on the phone." (That's Mack's wife. She knew what I meant right away. Please note that I now give directions like a native Bristollian, mostly devoid of street names. (State Street doesn't count. State Street is the main street of my hometown, and also the state line between Tennessee and Virginia. Everyone talks about State Street.) The only way I could have made this more authentically Bristol is if I'd used the phrase "used to be." As in, you know where the post office used to be? Right, go from there to-- ) "Mack? Call me if you have trouble. Oh! You'll have to pay her!"

"That's all right, Miss Kim. You can pay me back."

Mack called half an hour later. "Got your dress. It's real pretty, Miss Kim. Where you wearin' this?"

"To the Newbery dinner. Thanks, Mack. Thanks so much."

"Miss Kim, you know I'd do 'bout anything for you." And aren't I lucky that's true.

The End.

My Newbery Dress Saga, Round 3 (Shoes)

Shoes to match the Newbery dress.

This one was easy. We were still inside Macy's, the big one in New York City, and that store devotes about 500 acres to shoes. (The only store I've seen with more shoes is Galleries Lafayette in Paris; the difference is, I can afford AND I can walk in most of the shoes from Macy's.)

Anyhow, I wandered among the shoe fields until I found the room devoted to shoes that went with ball dresses and wedding gowns. Like everywhere else in Macy's that day, it was packed. A group of elderly black women tried on wedding shoes on one side. A group of young women wearing headscarves tried on prom shoes on the other.

I was overjoyed to learn that the exact same company that made my dress also made shoes. There were two strong candidates to go with my gown: one silver, one midnight blue. Both covered with beads, which made them awesome. I asked to see them both.

The silver shoes were lovely. The blue shoes were lovely. Both fit well, I could walk in both of them. Eventually, trying to decide, I put the silver shoe on my left foot and the blue shoe on my right foot. I reached into my shopping bag, pulled out my dress, and held it up to me in front of a long mirror.

The other women in the room sighed. It's that kind of dress. "The blue shoe, honey," one of the black women said. "Blue," the Muslim teens agreed.

So I went with blue. Like I said, easy. Then I took the dress to be altered and ran into some trouble.

Where I'll be at ALA

Hi guys!

I'll finish up my Newbery Dress Saga soon. Today I got my official schedule for ALA, that is, the American Librarian Association summer conference in Orlando, and it's a doozy. Lots of fun and excitement. I know many of you are also attending so I thought I'd post where to find me.

On Saturday my daughter and I will be trolling the floor for free books. I'll also attend the memorial service for victims of the Orlando shooting at 8 in the morning, but don't plan to stand out in the crowd. At 9:00 I'll be reading in the Banned Books Readout Booth, I hope from The War That Saved My Life, though I don't think it's been officially banned anywhere so I might have to choose a more subversive book, like Harry Potter or the Bible.

Sunday I am signing free copies of TWTSML from 1 to 2 at the Penguin Young Readers Booth. I don't necessarily anticipate a crowd, but I can not stay late as I have to get to a Schneider Award photo session, so if you're dying for a book come early.

At 6:30 on Sunday is the big Newbery-Caldecott-Wilder Banquet. I'm told something like 1000 people attend. Tickets may be available? don't actually know. A "receiving line and cash bar" follows. I will be wearing my fabulous princess dress.

Monday I am signing free copies of TWTSML from 10 to 11 at Children's Plus, booth 1313. Again I can't stay late, as I'm off to the Schneider Luncheon. At 3 pm I'll be attending the Odyssey Awards Presentation, where I'm giving a very brief speech I haven't written yet.


Phew! Please do come, get a book, shake my hand, whatever. I'm so glad to be doing this.

Pony Club, Love, and Orlando

As I type this, it's very early in the morning on the third and final day of pony club camp. I have a dozen mostly-teenagers sleeping in my basement. In an hour or so, they will wake themselves up, select breakfast from the food I've laid out for them, stuff their sleeping bags into my car (I'll drive it over to the barn) and then set out across the fields to the camp barn, laughing and chattering in the early light. Our club does camp exceptionally well. Every year I marvel at how these kids learn to work together, learn to truly be a team.

Eleven years ago my son captained a team at quiz rally, an unmounted regional pony club competition. His team won, beating something like 11 other teams, mostly due to the fact that they'd come to trust each other and work together. I can still picture their faces when at the end of a very long day they found out that they'd won. I can still remember their joy.

One of the children on that quiz team, now all young adults out of or near the end of college, is gay. One of those children, who is gay, posted yesterday on Facebook how scary it was to be singled out in hatred because of something intrinsic to their very being. My heart is breaking for that child, now a fine adult, for Orlando, for us all.

My novel For Freedom tells the true story of a 16-year-old who fought the Nazis in the French Resistance during World War II. Of the 23 people in her group, 2 survived the war. She knew those odds from the start. She fought, she told me, because she never wanted to look back and admit she had not acted against the horrors of Nazi Germany. She fought for her own freedom, for freedom of conscience.

I think that gun control is a complicated issue in our country--we've got an awful lot of guns on the street already, and no matter what we do they aren't going to disappear. I think we have to work toward gun control anyhow. We have to at least try something, at least make it a little bit harder to acquire the means to shoot a hundred people in a crowd.

I'm also going to keep standing up for humanity: for gay people, for straight people, for transgender people. Black people, white people, Latinos, Muslims, Catholics, Jews. I watched the Tonys on Sunday because I love the musical Hamilton, so got to see Lin-Manuel Miranda recite an incredible sonnet that paid homage to his wife, his musical creation, and the victims in Orlando. It ended,

We chase the melodies that seem to find us 
Until they’re finished songs and start to play 
When senseless acts of tragedy 
Remind us that nothing here is promised, not one day, 
The show is proof that history remembers; 
We live through times when hate and fear seems stronger, 
We rise and fall and light from dying embers, 
Remembrances that hope and love last longer.

And love is love, is love, is love, is love, is love, is love, is love, is love. 
Cannot be killed or swept aside. 
I sing Vanessa’s symphony, Eliza tells her story. 
Now fill the world with music, love and pride.

Every one of the people in that nightclub was loved. Every one of the people in that nightclub were worthy of love. We are all of us put here to love.

My Newbery Dress Story: Part Two

So after the Nordstrom's in Nashville proved a bust, I took my Newbery-dinner-dress-shopping self to New York City. (You can not find a ball gown in my hometown, Bristol. You can rent a tux or buy a prom dress, but only barely.) The trip to New York was actually my husband's Christmas present--tickets to Hamilton, and yo, it's as good as the hype--but fortunately my generous husband did not mind at all spending the morning finding me dresses. He's lovely.

New York has Bergdorf's and Neiman-Marcus and lots and lots of swank boutiques, but while I was looking for an amazing dress I was not looking for an amazingly expensive one. So we went to the flagship Macy's, and it was the ever-loving bomb. Lots of New York women buy ball gowns. Lots of them were there that specific Saturday morning to buy ball gowns. I snagged a dressing room early, and I held onto it while my husband brought me more and more dresses to try on, and that was lucky, because even though they had over two dozen dressing rooms they had a line of women waiting for a chance at one.

Macy's had hundreds of dresses. All sizes, all colors, everything you wanted. The dressing room was a wild melting pot of Polish babushkas, Latina teens trying for prom dresses, elegant matrons, half a dozen different languages. We helped each other with zippers and cheered each other on. At one point, a child gleefully yelled, "Everyone come look at my Mama! She's beautiful!" A dozen heads popped out of dressing room doors and we all applauded a plump, comely young woman who did, indeed, look beautiful.

I tried on a parade of dresses. Disney princess was out. Bare midriffs were out. The very trendy dog-collar design: out. (I have broad shoulders and a perpetual farmer's tan.) Dress, dress, dress. Out, out, out. I'd step outside the dressing room and display each dress to my husband and a group of people waiting on their relations. Pretty soon we all got friendly. I'd come out, and the people would all shake their heads. I'd hang the rejects on the clothes rack by the door, and my husband would bring me something new.

Then we found it. Midnight blue, covered in beads, slithering elegantly to the floor. Scoop neck and short sleeves. Fits me like it was made for me. I don't look like a Disney princess in it, but I feel like a princess. I love that dress to pieces.

One of the babushkas helped me with the zipper. I stepped outside the dressing room. The whole waiting group nodded in approval. A stout woman with a Middle Eastern accent said, "That's it, honey. That's the one."

Next in the saga: shoes.