It's always nice to celebrate the day of love with all things pink - like... my picture book Glitter Girl and the Crazy Cheese - click the cover to learn more!
RT @thewritermama: The Remedy For Author Overload (Hint: It’s a Very Short Word) http://shar.es/aPGY0 SO, SO TRUE!!!
A bit more on this subject: I am lucky enough to have followers who love my work and want to help spread the word by asking me for giveaway books, visits, and artwork to share in charities, fund-raisers, at needy schools, etc. Sometimes I receive several requests a day. As you can imagine, at that rate, there's no way I can say 'yes' to everybody. (And just responding to them all can eat up huge chunks of creative time.) But these are sincere requests for good causes from well-intentioned people and I really do want to help. So, what to do? It's part of why I create my coloring pages and make sure all my books have lots of fun free activities. So, I sincerely hope you are enjoying them and sharing them! It's my way of giving back for all your wonderful loyalty and support. Thanks so much!
Gustaf Tenggren was one of the masters of the early days of picture books. He set a standard we still work by today. He was also one heck of a marketer. He started out with Disney but quickly realized it did him no good to sign his work 'Disney.' Hence, the Tenggren books and the golden days of the Golden Books. Did you have a "Tenggren Tell-It-Again Book" when you were a kid? Do you recognize the style? Go to AnimationArchive.org for a fantastic summation of Tenggren's work at Gustaf Tenggren and the Genesis of the Golden Book Style.
One More Story is a groovy resource for your kids - recently voted a top 10 Digital Resource by School Library Journal! You can subscribe to enjoy up to 108 picture books online - including some Caldecott winners. They can be read to you (or not) in English or Spanish or Mandarin! Very groovy way to spend a Saturday.
• Facebook claims that 50% of active users log into the site each day. This would mean at least 175m users every 24 hours… A considerable increase from the previous 120m.
• Twitter now has 75m user accounts, but only around 15m are active users on a regular basis. It’s still a fair increase from the estimated 6-10m global users from a few months ago.
• LinkedIn has over 50m members worldwide. This means an increase of around 1m members month-on-month since July/August last year.
• Facebook currently has in excess of 350 million active users on global basis. Six months ago, this was 250m… meaning around a 40% increase of users in less than half a year.
Today I would like to introduce you to a talented author - Loretta Ellsworth. She is celebrating the release of her latest novel IN A HEARTBEAT!
In a Heartbeat has a strong plot line - a star ice-skater is killed suddenly in a freak fall and her heart is donated to a sick teen who has needed a transplant for years and was running out of time. But when her heart is transferred into the new girl's body - some things from the past life linger... here's the trailer:
Q. Loretta, WHAT was the inspiration for this story??
A. As is often the case, the inspiration for my book came from a personal experience. My nephew died in a motorcycle accident, and although they weren't able to save his heart for transplantation, many of his other organs went to people waiting for transplants. We were surprised to learn that Jason had signed up to be a donor - he hadn't told anyone of his decision. Shortly after that, my mother died of heart failure. Writing this book was therapy for me, a way to work through my feelings and to give voice to Jason as a donor. I purposefully made the donor a girl so that she could develop her own characteristics and there would be no comparison to my nephew.
Q. You talk about ice-skating like an insider (this coming from an outsider - ha!). Are you a part of that world? How did you get it right?
A. I'm not an insider, although in Minnesota I guess pretty much everybody knows how to skate. I spent time at the St. Paul Figure Skating Club and visited with coaches and skaters and parents. I attended skating competitions and I had a competitive skater and her mom both read my manuscript to make sure I had the skating lingo right, and to check my skating terms and descriptions.
Q. The ideas of what happens to us when we die were distinct and new to me. Can you summarize how you described it, and do you hold those opinions yourself?
A. I didn't want to attempt to describe Eagan's version of heaven - that seemed an impossible task to me, so I put her in a sort of limbo, an in-between place. Since she dies in the first chapter, the challenge for me as a writer was to give her some obstacles and her own conflict to resolve. Her relationship with her mother makes it difficult for her to leave her life behind and move on.
Q. You've written many other books I'd like my readers to know about - can you share?
A. I've published two other books - one called THE SHROUDING WOMAN, which is historical fiction about a girl whose aunt is a shrouding woman, an occupation few people know existed before funeral homes and undertakers were around - they were special women in the community who prepared bodies for burial. This book is now being published in Japan as well as the U.S. My other book is called IN SEARCH OF MOCKINGBIRD and it's a story of a girl named Erin whose only connection to her dead mother is through the pages of a worn book her mother adored. Erin decides to take an unannounced and unescorted bus trip from her home in Minnesota to Alabama in search of her literary idol, Harper Lee, the author of her mother's favorite book (and mine).
Q. Tell us a bit about your writer's life. What was your path to become an author and how has it shaped your life?
A. Even though I always enjoyed writing when I was young, I didn't start writing seriously until I had four children of my own. It took many years of hard work, classes, writing workshops and critique groups, and hundreds of rejections and revisions before my work saw publication. It taught me that nothing is easy, least of all getting published, but if you're dedicated to learning the craft and have a lot of perseverance (and I mean a lot!), you will get published.
Q. Anything else you would like to share?
A. Despite the difficulties of publication that most authors face when starting out, it's still a blessing to be able to do what you love. I enjoy the journey that writing each book takes me through and spending time every day with my characters.
Thanks for the interview, E, and best of luck to you and your wonderful books.
And here is Loretta, R.A. Nelson, Me, Jennifer Echols, and Jay Asher at the Alabama Book Festival in Montgomery back in April 2008. She's a blast to hang out with!
You have to check out The Fun Theory! The idea is that people will be more responsible, healthier and happier if we just make the things we usually avoid, a little more fun to do! Here's one example:
Click their logo to learn more and see more social experiments: Thanks to School Library Journal for the heads up!
Book Giveaway - We Have a Winner!!! Woosie! We have reached over 1,500 subscribers to "Coloring Page Tuesdays" and "e's news"! The moment our 1,500th person subscribed, I went in and did a random drawing of all our current subscribers and the winner of a signed copy of Soap, soap, soap ~ Jabón, jabón, jabón is.... Peggy H.!!! Peggy was the 874th subscriber to Coloring Page Tuesdays just this past January. Congratulations Peggy!! And keep telling your friends about Coloring Page Tuesdays - we'll do another drawing when we reach 2,000! (Let's think postively, shall we?)
From iPhone Savior: "Fring App Debuts Skype Calls Over iPhone 3G." Video phone calls on your iPhone? Wow. Y'know, I remember when I was a kid (back in the stone ages) going on a weekend science class field trip to NASA (yeah, it was a cool class) to see the space shuttle and all the other cool things the scientists were up to at the time. What was hot that year? Gumby on tv, space ice-cream, and mock video telephones. The idea was they would be in all our homes some day - these massive contraptions (the size of a mini-fridge now) that we would stand in front of to talk to somebody via video. If the me of today could go back to the me back then and show her this new gadget/feature, I think she/I would have fainted. (Okay, now I'm confused enough I still might.) But isn't that a trip of a thing? Just wild.
We're at 1,493 subscribers! Just 7 more people need to sign up for my weekly Coloring Page Tuesday alerts and/or "e's new, for me to do the drawing (from all current subscribers) for a free, signed copy of SOAP, SOAP, SOAP (bilingual or all-English - their choice)! What do you need to do? Encourage your friends to go sign up! How? They can go to the Coloring Page Tuesdays page, or HERE.
Click the covers to learn about my newest picture book, Soap, soap, soap and Soap, soap, soap ~ Jabón, jabón, jabón.
Need photos you can use for reference, or your blog, or whatever, without worrying about stepping on somebody's copyright? Go to Wikimedia Commons and have no fear! It is a "database of 5,805,961 freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute." Groovy!
Drum roll please... (I'm following the live blog feed on engadget.com - maclive.com was struggling. They think the iPad killed the internet. Ha!) I'm tweeting what I learn as I learn it at @dulemba Cool new features on the Painting apps - but still no touch sensitivity?? Apple - I want a digital sketch pad!!!!
I like the visual pages, but there's not much else on iBooks (not eBooks). But WHAT is this iBookstore???
Nothing on picture books. Methinks we have a trail that needs a' blazin'....
Okay - this is cool. We can type like this... or like this!!!! Hubbie mentioned its bluetooth capability which means you could probably use it with an unattached keyboard as well.
Bottom line = I hate the name, but I might have to have one. iPad
For those of you who can't shell out the big bucks for Photoshop - have you heard about Gimp? It's a "freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring." And it may make your life a whole lot easier...
Sign up to receive alerts when a new coloring page is posted each week and to view more coloring pages - click here! The holiday of luv will be upon us soon and I know y'all are anxious to start making cards and send out your greetings. So, here's my first Valentine's Day image for 2010... How many times have we missed what was right in front of us because we were focused elsewhere? Click the image to open a .jpg to print and color. Send me your colored version (less than 1mb) to dulemba.com and I'll post it to my blog!
Getting Closer on the Giveaway! We need to reach 1,500 before I do the drawing for SOAP, SOAP, SOAP - but we're getting closer every day. We're at 1,479 subscribers! So how can your friends sign up? Tell them to visit Coloring Page Tuesdays, or go HERE. Update! Several of you emailed that you loved the Moose sketch from last week, so I've made him into an actual coloring page as well. So here's a bonus on this Coloring Page Tuesday - Moosie 2!
So, I may be opening a huge can of worms here (I can't promise I'll post all the cards y'all send me - it's a LOT!) - but check out the sweet card Vicky Gould made using this week's image!
my picture book Glitter Girl and the Crazy Cheese - click the cover to learn more!
Today I would like to introduce you to a talented author - 
Q. You've written many other books I'd like my readers to know about - can you share?
