​Congrats about your new release, Fearless Public Speaking! And thanks for stopping by to chat with us about it. 

Thanks for having me, and yes, it's exciting! Fearless Public Speaking was just published by SparkNotes, distributed by Sterling Publishing, on May 7, 2019!

What's the book about and why did you decide to write it for young people, ages 12 and up?

Fearless Public Speaking teaches young people how to plan, prepare and deliver a speech with confidence. Outlining, ad-libbing, composing, performing, writing and reciting-- everything you need is found in this fun yet practical guide. I wrote it because many people fear public speaking and a lot of time that fear starts when they’re children. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Actually, I believe that stage fright is your friend--that nervous energy you feel is the power-source that will enable you towards fearless public speaking!

How did you find your home for your book?

SCBWI was the secret ingredient in my success. I had been sending the project out for a long while on my own. But it was when I went to the SCBWI Mid-Atlantic Fall Conference that I had a turn for the better. I met an editor there and initially pitched her a picture book. She didn’t like that book but she said she did like my writing and encouraged me to submit something else. So I did.

What did you enjoy about working with your editor?

My editor was very patient and encouraging. I submitted two books to her before she said yes to Fearless Public Speaking. Although the first two books didn’t appeal to her, she didn’t make me feel like a loser. I felt that I should just keep trying. The third try was the charm!

Why do you hope young people will read it?

Not being afraid to speak in public is a huge advantage. As soon as you get comfortable with standing in front of an audience, you've locked into a powerful personal plus. Besides, if you learn to really enjoy it--it can be a love-and-money combination. To be able to do something you find fun, while boosting yourself professionally, impressing influencers, and even becoming a source of income....it doesn’t get better than that.
      
What are you working on now?

Currently, I’m shopping around a middle-grade novel about a girl who forms a double Dutch team. In real life, I started a double Dutch team--not as a girl but as an adult. In 2018, DC Retro Jumpers did a three-city tour in Russia as cultural ambassadors, teaching and demonstrating double Dutch! Check us out at dcretrojumpers.com.

Joy Jones has addressed countless audiences-- performance poetry, training workshops, storytelling, classroom teaching. She is the director of the performance poetry group, The Spoken Word and founder of the multigenerational double Dutch team, DC Retro Jumpers. Joy is the author of several books including Private Lessons: A Book of Meditations for Teachers. and Tambourine Moon, which was selected as one of the best books for children by the black caucus of the ALA and featured on the Bernie Mac show. Fearless Public Speaking debuted May 7, 2019. JoyJonesOnline.com

Welcome, Zara! Thanks for stopping and for sharing your kidlit journey with us!

Thanks for inviting me!

Do tell! How did you find your way into illustrating for children?

I don’t know that I can pinpoint the exact path, or even when I “started.” My answer may be considered a clichéd illustrator’s, but I can’t remember a time when I didn’t draw. The form those drawings have taken has always been one that leaned with a whimsical bent. 

That being said, my path to illustrating children’s books has been a long and winding one. Although in retrospect it should have been the obvious place for me to start (considering my love of stories and drawing), for some reason it was not. I think I was so convinced I couldn’t do it that I had to try everything else I possibly could before I finally let myself admit that this was where I wanted to be. 

So I led a few creative lives before I stumbled into the wonderful world of children’s publishing. And now I never want to leave!

What do you love about illustrating for children?

I love that anything is possible. Children don’t care that elephants are supposed to be grey or that people don’t usually wear snails on their heads. Their minds are open and they are interested in EVERYTHING. The smallest thing in an illustration might be the thing they obsess over. I keep that in mind when I am drawing and try to stuff each page full of interesting bits and pieces for them to find.

Describe your process, please. 

I’m pretty loose when it comes to how I work. I don’t have a set process in place, but rather let the project dictate how I will approach it. It’s a little hokey, but I tend to do a lot things based on what feels right.

For the book I’m working on right now, I read the manuscript a number of times just to get the voice and flow of it stuck in my head. Then I gave myself lots of opportunities to let my mind wander—walking the dog, gardening, cooking. I do my best thinking when my body is otherwise occupied, and that’s where I find a lot of my ideas and meet my characters.
 
I do a lot of doodling, too, trying to coax the things I see in my head out onto paper. In theory, these doodles are all in a special notebook I start at the beginning of the project. In reality, they are often on scraps of paper and drawn with whatever happens to be handy.

I’m also a total creative magpie. I keep scrap files for inspiration and tend to collect interesting patterns and color combinations that I might want to remember for some future project, so I’ll often pull these out when I am looking for inspiration or trying to spark new ideas.

How would you say your family, cultural influences, your travels, and/or your life's experiences shape your work?

I think they are woven into everything that I do. From the subjects I choose to illustrate to the stories I choose to tell. Every one of them is somehow touched by my experiences, whether I realize it at that moment or not.
 
I don’t think we can extract ourselves from our work no matter how much we might try, but luckily those are the things that make us unique and give our work it’s unique character. 

What type of children's books do you want to continue to illustrate?

I want to illustrate books that feature diverse characters—especially characters that are part of more than one culture. This is particularly important to me as a Latina, a Jew, the wife of an immigrant and as a mother of a child growing up at the intersection of multiple cultures. 

Zara González Hoang grew up in a little bungalow in the great white North. Surrounded by snow she spent her days dreaming, doodling and listening to the colorful stories of her dad’s life growing up in Puerto Rico while trying to figure out where she fit in as a mixed-race Latina Jew in a sea of Scandinavians. (She’s still figuring that out.)

These days, she lives outside of DC in a magical suburban forest with her Mad Man husband, her son, and curly coated corgi. She still spends her days dreaming and doodling, but now instead of listening to stories, she’s starting to tell some of her own.

Zara's first picture book, Thread of Love--published by Beach Lane Books  an imprint of Simon & Schuster in 2018, and written by mother-son team Surishtha and  Kabir Sehgal--was chosen by Seattle Public Library as one of the best picture books of 2018! Find her and her delightful portfolio at zaralikestodraw.com and  follow her on Twitter and Instagram @zarprey. Zara is represented by Andrea Morrison at Writers House. 

Welcome, Leah! Thanks for stopping by!

Nice to be here, Dionna!

Do tell a little about the Kweli conference, and how you found your way onto the planning committee.

Kweli--The Color of Children’s Literature Conference--is a wonderful day-long kidlit writers and illustrators event (with optional Masterclasses on Friday). This year it will be held Saturday, April 6, 2019, at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. In 2014, after reading author Walter Deans Myers op-ed piece "Where Are the People of Color in Children's Books?", Laura Pegram, editor-and-chief of the Kweli Journal and Kweli conference founder, decided to create an event that is exclusively for Indigenous people and persons of color who were writers and illustrators. As she puts it, “we honor Walter Dean Myers' legacy with a conference that celebrates and supports our voices, our stories, our truth.”

In 2016, I stumbled across a post for an upcoming Kweli conference that was happening that weekend. I didn’t do much thinking, I just sent an email to inquire if walk-ins where permitted and once I got a "yes" back, I booked a train ticket. There was no way I was going to miss it! I had never been to a children’s writing conference where Indigenous and persons of color were the majority. It was a wonderfully refreshing experience to see and hear from creatives who had many of the same concerns as I do. But it wasn’t just about the struggles. Kweli is also a celebration of our many successes. After that first year, I was hooked and about a year later, when Laura asked if I was interested in becoming involved, I was honored to be a part of it all.
​
What do you love about working behind the Kweli scenes, creating a lineup that is both rich culturally and holds promise of a real educational experience for attendees?

I go to a number of conferences and retreats and it’s nice to create programming that I hope to see. Also, I love that Kweli is a good mix of new and established voices. 

Share one or two of your most memorable experiences while either attending or planning for the conference.

Kweli is a very unique experience. I will never forget the welcome I received during my first conference. It’s hard to explain, but when you are used to being one of the only people of color in a room, it was nice to see and meet so many other POC creatives in one space. They were doing so many amazing things in their work and were just as curious and eager as I was to learn more about craft and the business-side of writing.

May people from any background, not just persons of color, attend the conference?

Kweli is a conference exclusively for Indigenous and POC creatives. It’s an opportunity for this community to come together to speak about issues and concerns that are unique to our experiences as well as general discussions on craft and the ins and outs of publishing. Kweli’s aim is not to exclude, so the organization does offer a literary festival during the summer that is open to anyone interested in attending.

What is the process for a published author or illustrator who would like to be considered for the Kweli faculty?

At the moment, the planning committee creates most of the sessions offered, reaching out to people we feel will work best for each panel or session. Since we want to highlight newer voices on the publishing side of the table as well, we often get recommendations from IPOC editorial assistants, designers, or marketing experts. Everyone, especially Laura, does a pretty good job of knowing which authors and illustrators are coming out with new work that can be highlighted each year.

Leah Henderson is the author of the middle grade novel One Shadow on the Wall, an Africana Children’s Book Award notable, and a Bank Street Best Book of 2017. Her forthcoming picture books include Together We March, Day For Rememberin’, and Mamie on the Mound. She also has a new middle grade novel  The Magic in Changing Your Stars on the horizon.

Raised in Andover, Massachusetts, Leah has fond memories of getting up to all kinds of shenanigans that often made for great tall tales told late into the night. Growing up in a family of curious travelers, she has always known where there is adventure, there is story. Through seeing the world, Leah has witnessed the richness that can be found within everyone’s individual story. That is why writing the world she sees is so vitally important to her. These days, when she’s not off exploring, you can find her writing, laughing, or playing soccer at midnight with her dog, Boston, in Washington, D.C. Learn more about her and her books at leahhendersonbooks.com.

​Hi Dionna! Thanks for having me!

​KidLit411 is such a wonderful resource for those trying to master the skill of writing for children! Do share how it came into being.
​
Five years ago, my critique partner, Elaine Kiely Kearns, had an idea to create a resource website for writers, to share articles on children’s writing and illustrating. I joined her effort and we created the website KidLit411.

Since then, your website has been named a best website for writers many times over! Congrats on that! Why do you think that is?

KidLit411 contains over thirty pages of writing and illustrating topics, from contests and awards to writing tips and agent submissions and many more. The pages include sixty to one hundred articles on each topic. We also interview at least one author or illustrator each week, featuring their recent books or work. Subscribers get a weekly update of all the new articles added to the website, about a dozen a week.

Since we began, we’ve featured over three hundred authors and illustrators in our Author and Illustrator Spotlights. Our website gets twenty-five thousand to thirty-five-thousand page-views a month! 

The best part of KidLit411 is the community of authors and illustrators we’ve connected with, both online and in real life. We run an active Facebook group of over 6,300 children’s writers and illustrators and two companion pages where people can find critique partners, the KidLit411 Manuscript Swap and the KidLit411 Portfolio Critique Swap. Every day, people ask and answer questions in our group on all sorts of topics, from self-publishing to querying to mentor texts and more.

Despite being a writer and illustrator yourself, why do you continue to spend your time keeping KidLit411 up and running?

Personally, running KidLit411 is very gratifying. Elaine and I work great together and have a system to keep the interviews and links coming every week. Although it does take work, I feel so connected to the kidlit community. A side benefit is that we’ve created a platform that helps our own author careers. While promoting other authors and illustrators, we develop great relationships and friendships with those who in turn help us when our books come out.

Why do you think KidLit411 has such a continued following?

We try to keep our community engaged. Most years, we run a multi-day book "birthday" bash giveaway, where we give away books, editor critiques, agent query passes, and writing and illustrating courses. This year we ran a contest for illustrators to help design our website banner and Facebook group cover photo. The top two winners got cash prizes, and the top ten are having their banners featured on our website over the course of the year. 

We always welcome kidlit peeps to join our Facebook group or follow our website and get connected. We can be reached at kidlit411 (at) kidlit411 (dot) com. Your blog readers are welcome to join us!

Thanks so much for the invitation, Sylvia, and for stopping by! It's been an honor hosting you!

The pleasure is all mine!

Sylvia Liu creates stuff, mostly for kids. She's inspired by aliens, robots, bunnies, cephalopods, and more. Her love for writing and art began while she was growing up in Venezuela. While working at her first career in environmental law at the U.S. Department of Justice and the non-profit group Oceana, she loved protecting the oceans. And now she loves writing and illustrating for kids just as much. Her 2016 picture book, A Morning with Grandpa, illustrated by Christina Forshay, was a  Lee & Low New Voices Award Winner! She also writes speculative middle-grade fiction, and is represented by Jennifer March Soloway at the Andrea Brown Literary Agency. Find Sylvia blogging at Sylvia Liu Land, and her amazing resource--listed by industry professionals like Writer's Digest, Feedspot, and Freewrite as one of the best websites for writers, consecutively for several years--at KidLit411.

​How did you find your way to becoming a kidlit illustrator?

Before I decided to change careers, I used to be a high school teacher for German and English literature and so books always had a very important status in my life. When I had my three children, I obviously introduced them to kidlit early on and that’s when my creative side emerged again and it could not be stopped. It was a very powerful calling that made me see who I really am.

Your work infuses such true-to-life humor! How do you find your inspiration?

I just think I try to look at things in a humorous way whenever possible. Life can be too hard otherwise.

How would you say your cultural heritage influences your creative decisions when you are creating art for children?

My art is a direct reflection of my cultural heritage and upbringing—you will find a lot of the spirit of European kidlit or even music I was brought up with in my illustrations and stories. Themes with darker emotions are not taboo and unconventional characters are very common in European stories for children.

Please share a little about your process.

A normal work day without any pressing deadlines usually starts with a long walk with my dog to clear my head or even find inspiration in nature. Then I start drawing in my tiny studio until my children come home from school. In the evenings I often work on my manuscripts. 

When I’m working on projects together with editors, I usually spend some days reading the manuscript I’m supposed to illustrate. Then I begin rough sketching and collecting material. Next stage is the storyboarding and then, when everything has been approved, I start working on the final coloured illustrations.

What are you working on now? And are you enjoying it?

I’m currently working on a picture book about an English bulldog as the main character and am very much enjoying it. There are other projects in the pipeline I can’t officially talk about yet!

Thanks so much, Stephanie, for stopping by to chat with us about your publishing company Spooky Cheetah Press! It was a real delight working with you as a work-for-hire author!

Delighted to be here, Dionna, and I enjoyed working with you too!

Please share a little about yourself and how you eventually found your home in the kidlit industry.

From the time I was a very little girl, there was nothing I enjoyed more than reading. My parents always told stories of how they’d have to take a book out of my hands and push me out the door to play with friends. When I became an adult my father would love to remind me of how he would wake up in the middle of the night and find me up reading.

“Steffie—it’s so late,” he’d say. “You have to go to sleep.”

“I will—as soon as I finish this chapter,” I’d invariably reply.

That love of books continued throughout my life. So to say that I’m lucky to be making a living creating books is a huge understatement!

I started my publishing career as an editorial assistant at a magazine. The job was not very glamorous and at times downright awful, but at least the pay was bad!  My last job "working for the man" was at a continuity company in Stamford, CT. We produced card-and-binder and card-and-box series that were sold through the mail. The work was interesting and fun—and the job led to me starting my own business…and to marrying my husband! So all in all a good experience!

After I started my book producing company, I continued working with my old company. I produced a series in a variety of subject areas, but none specifically for young readers. Then, in 2010, the company hired me to produce a series with Sesame Workshop. My work on that series, called Elmo’s Learning Adventure, led to work with Scholastic’s school and library publishing division, which remains my biggest client to this day.

Twenty years ago, when you founded your company, how did you come up with the name Spooky Cheetah Press?

Again — that last office job! I was doing photo research for a book about African wildlife. In those days we still leafed through books for images and I was tagging photos that I wanted to look at again with the art director. I labeled one image “spooky cheetah” and we all just loved the way it sounded. (I’m also a bit of an African wildlife nut.) I left to start my company soon after and settled on that as the name—even though most everyone agreed it was a better name for a dance club than a book producing company!

As an editorial director, you are uber busy, working as a liaison between many different industry professionals—book designers, editors and art directors from different publishing houses and numerous work-for-hire authors and illustrators? What are some of the challenges you face while doing so, but why do you keep at it? 

There are definitely a lot of challenges that come along with my job—and a healthy amount of stress. However, all are outweighed (by about a million times) by how much I love what I do and how much I appreciate working for myself. My biggest frustration these days is "pulling teeth" to get what I need from a client to meet our deadlines. My biggest pet peeve (always) is contributors who complain and/or act like prima donnas. I do whatever it takes to get the job done well and on time—and to keep my clients happy. I expect the same from the subcontractors who work for me. (As I’ve said to my husband many times, I’m the grease, never the squeaky wheel. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that same consideration from the people who work for me.  Happily there are lots of them!)

What do you love about what you do, being in the thick of things, producing high-quality nonfiction books for children of all ages?

Everything! Nonfiction is so much fun for me. I’m super curious about so many things... working on nonfiction for kids gives me the opportunity to learn something new and interesting practically every day. 

Even more important, my job gives me the chance to (hopefully) impact young readers in a meaningful way. Over the past six or so years I’ve become a bit of a zealot about trying to instill a love of reading in young kids. I was lucky that my daughter joyfully took to reading as a very little girl. It breaks my heart to see how many other kids struggle to read and end up hating it—which of course leads to academic difficulties and setbacks all the way down the road. My greatest hope is that I can create books that might light a spark for a young reader. 

So far on your kidlit journey, describe an accomplishment/achievement that has brought you a sense of satisfaction, maybe one that surprised you?

The first time I felt a real sense of pride about what I do was when I worked on Elmo’s Learning Adventure. It was the first time I worked with a client who wanted exactly what I did—to push the kids and give them all the tools we could to learn and grow as readers and as human beings. (As opposed to "don’t use that word, kids won’t know what it means", or "we can’t talk about that…") The guiding principals so evident in the Sesame Street show were the same for our series. It was so gratifying. (Looking at photos of Muppets all day and writing in the voices of Elmo, Cookie, Grover, et al was pretty cool too!)

That was the start, of course. Working on school and library books for Scholastic continues to be very satisfying. Nothing’s perfect—and I’m certainly not saving any lives—but I can feel good about what I do. 

Are you open to working with new authors, illustrators and graphic designers? If so, how might they submit samples of their work to you?

Yes. Writers can send manuscripts that only they have edited through my website. Likewise designers can send a link to a portfolio. I just thought of another pet peeve! Contributors should look at my site and note what I do before sending anything. If we don’t seem like a good fit, we’re probably not. The submission will go directly into the trash. I can’t tell you how many solicitations I’ve received from business and finance writers who think they’d be "perfect" for me.  Whaaa????

Thanks oodles for stopping by, Kara, and  many more thanks for choosing my entry GOT ME A DADDY MAP to be on your 2018 Query Kombat team!

I'm happy to be here!

What did you enjoy about hosting the 2018 Query Kombat Kompetition along with Michelle Hauck and Michael Anthony?

I enjoyed the high level of camaraderie between Kontestants. It seemed like a lot of people made connections either through being on the same team or competing against each other. Getting into the contest is exciting for the month or so it goes on, but making connections with other writers can benefit a writer's career for years. To me, that's the real prize of Query Kombat.

I was truly surprised and delighted when my entry was chosen to compete. There were so many excellent entries across multiple genres, including queries and openings from young-adult and adult novelists. Why did you choose my middle-grade entry to be on your team of twenty-one kombatants?

I chose your entry because it absolutely dripped with voice! I think voice is more crucial in middle grade than any other age category. Others may disagree, but for me a strong narrative voice usually is what makes me pull a middle-grade book off the shelf.

How did you feel about someone from your team (yours truly!!!) being crowned 2018 Query Kombat Grand Champion?

Not gonna lie, having someone on my team win felt pretty good! I was just filling in as a host for Laura Heffernan this year, so to be honest, I didn't care too much about winning when we began. But having so many of my entries make it past the first couple rounds helped confirm to me that I do recognize good writing when I see it. Being in the publishing world for several years has helped with that, no question.

Thanks so much for chatting with me here on my blog, Kara! 

Delighted to be here, and congrats again! Don't forget to let me know when you sign with an agent!

My disbelief began when my query and first 250 words for my unpublished middle-grade, MAMA'S CHICKEN & DUMPLINGS, was chosen out of 400+ submissions to kombat during the 2018 Query Kombat contest that pitted one query and opening words against another in a series of rounds. I was super excited that Kara Reynolds, young-adult novelist, had plucked my entry out of the sea of hopefuls to be a member on her team of kombatants. After all, those vying to compete included young-adult and adult novelists of  manuscripts with all kinds of explosions and intrigue. And my middle-grade? Well, it's what you'd call the quiet sort, (at least, if you keep my main character's temper out of the equation). That's why I was surprised Got Me a Daddy Map was chosen. Honestly, though, I didn't think it would go very far.

​And then the judges began to vote. And this is where my disbelief grew. Daddy Map advanced, round after round! It remained when 64 entries were whittled down to 32, 32 to 16, 16 to 8--all the way down until it was one of two entries battling it out for the win!

And man, was the last round intense--hour after hour, Daddy Map was neck-in-neck with Assassin Mom, an adult thriller that seemed ready for a Hollywood screening. Then--during the very last nail-biting hour--Daddy Map was crowned the victor--the Query Kombat Grand Champion!!! Only by one vote, but still! (And yes, I kept recounting the judges votes because I simply could not believe it.) 

Of course, I am realistic. I know the victory doesn't mean my manuscript will for sure snag an agent or find its way to publication. (Only three agents requested a read of my manuscript during the Query Kombat agent round, whereas others received as many as 16 requests.) Nonetheless, my query was greatly improved, thanks to the insightful comments of judges and fellow kombatants along the way. My confidence in my main character's voice and story was certainly boosted. And the entire experience encouraged me to consider writing my main character into Book 2, even though Book 1 is yet to find a permanent home on an editor's desk.

​In honor of the win, I'll be hosting Kara Reynolds here on my blog very soon. She'll be sharing what she loved about hosting Query Kombat 2018, and why she decided to add Got Me a Daddy Map to her Query Kombat team. So stay tuned!

Outsiders might consider that 17-year-old Blade has a perfect life. His family has money--lots of money. He drives a sweet ride, lives in an amazing house, and has a girlfriend, Chapel, who is absolutely gorgeous with those amazing blue eyes. But as far as Blade is concerned the only thing right in his life is Chapel. She's his lifeline to surviving each day. She's his solace, his friend. She completes him. 
Still, he can't stand being his father's son. In Blade's eyes, his father is nothing short of a failed human being--a washed-up famous musician who loves nothing else but the limelight and partying hard. Being his father's son, Blade believes, ruins his life. Besides, it seems his father loves music, fame, and drugs more than him. Blade's emptiness intensified after his mother died. He still has nightmares. Nothing besides Chapel seems to make his emptiness subside. But a close relationship with her is off limits because her parents don't approve of his messed up family. They don't  even acknowledge that he is making different choices.

​And then things get worse. His father publicly sabotages his salutatorian speech on his graduation day--ruining his chance to show the world who he is, apart from his father. Blade is told that he's adopted. And he discovers that Chapel is not at all the confidant  she purports to be! 
Blade decides to go solo in search for his birth mom in far away Ghana. But will he find the inner happiness he's looking for? Will he make peace with his father? Will he forgive Chapel? You'll have to read SOLO, a young-adult novel in verse, with legendary concert references throughout, to find out. SOLO is poetically penned by award-winning authors Kwame Alexander and Mary Rand Hess. It is published by Blink YA Books.  Find below a musical video in which Randy Preston sets to music "Excuse Me," an entry found in  SOLO.