3 Weeks

Today marks 3 weeks since I sent my status inquiry letter to the publisher. I haven't received a response yet and that's ok. I haven't been to the mailbox today though, so there could be a response today.
Follow me on twitter @auntieflamingo where I will tweet #WhatsInTheMailToday.

I didn't expect to have a response by now but I was hoping...dreaming.

The 1st week I didn't expect anything since the post office told me it would take a week for my letter to get to the publisher.

I wasn't really expecting anything the 2nd week since publishing houses are very busy and need time to respond to the mass of mail they get. However, the publisher's website states "Letters clearly marked Status Inquiry will be given immediate attention." - Which I did. I also assume it will take a week for their letter to get back to me in the SASE I provided in my letter (yes, I did include a SASE in my original submission as well) I guess I had a glimmer of hope for a response in week 2 since I'm also available by other means - like email.

Today is the end of week 3. I think expecting something today is a little....ok - overly optimistic. Publishers are very busy and I can understand and appreciate that it takes some time to responding to all the postal mail they receive.

I have been asked by several people - What are you going to do if you don't hear anything back? How long will you wait?

I still believe 'No News Is Good News.' I'm very please the manuscript I sent in January did not get rejected right away. This tells me my writing is getting better and, when scouting out the right home for my manuscripts, I'm not so far off the mark. I'm certain the publisher will get back to me when they're ready to get back to me. If I had a choice of receiving a rejection letter now or a possible acceptance 3-6 months from now, of course, I would choose the acceptance. I'm in love with the story I submitted and I feel the publisher I sent it to is a great fit. There is nothing more I would like to see then to have this story in print. I will re-evaluate the situation at a later day and figure out what to do from there. For now, I'll patiently wait for a reply, work on other manuscripts and keep dreaming.

I Met Lesley Livingston, Author Of DARKLIGHT

Today I got the privilege of meeting Lesley Livingston, author of WONDROUS STRANGE, at a local Chapters promoting her new book DARKLIGHT.



I recently bought both of her books and after hearing the excerpt she read today, I cannot wait to read them.



If her books are half as good as she is friendly, then I'm sure I am really going to enjoy them.



For now, I will leave you with some pictures from today's event and report back once I've read her books.



*Thanks to my 7 year old son for taking these pictures. Great job!*

You Might Find These Interesting Too

Here are two links to other blogs I have been reading. I particularly like these two posts: interesting, informative and entertaining.

Jill Corcoran Books - Live. Love. Write.
GETTING YOUR BOOK ON B&N's, BORDERS', ETC. DISPLAY TABLE

Editorial Anonymous - a blog of a children's book editor
The Subtle Art of Form Rejections

My Name In Print

It's November which means a new issue of Scifaikuest and this one has my scifi tanka in it!
I do not have my contributor's copy yet but there is a picture of the cover of the new issue from their website.



Take a close look at the bottom of the cover. See all those names? The last one is mine! I like seeing my name in print...or at least a picture of the print in this case. Can't wait to get my copy to see my poem in print as well. Issues can be ordered at http://www.genremall.com/zinesr.htm#scifaikuest

No News Is Good News

I always say, "No news is good news." However, yesterday's "No news is good news." I received an email from Teri Santitoro of Scifaikuest accepting my sci-fi tanka for the November 2009 print edition of the magazine. This is wonderful because, not only do I get paid but, I get to see my poem in print in the contributor's copy I will receive. Though this is not a children's market it is still a publishing credit and I'm very pleased to post it here. :)

When it is published I will post the cover here.

Creative Children Book Trailers

I've been looking for examples of good children book trailers. In my opinion I have only seen two. They are both interesting colourful and the sound is clear.

The first one I have seen is the trailer for Pond Scum by Alan Silberberg. I love the animation and the lizard's speach. The trailer gives a magical feel which is prefect because that is what the book is about. ;) The trailer can be found here: http://silberbook-blog.blogspot.com/2007/04/pond-scum-book-trailer-part-deux.html


The second one I just came across today. The trailer for The Clever Stick by John Lechner is bright and colourful with soft gentle music. I'm now curious to see what the stick is up to. You can view this trailer here: >http://johnlechner.com/cleverstick_trailer.html

The ones I don't like are the ones with a scratchy recording of the author reading their book in a monotone voice while the odd, fuzzy still shot of the book appears on the screen.

Is there any children's book trailers that you love?

Friendly Writer's Forum

Looking for a 'safe' place to ask a writing question? Want to talk about a new book you just read? A publication question?

Paula Yoo, author and screenwriter, has created a friendly forum on her website at
http://paulayoo.com/forum The forum headings include Announcements, Writing 101, Reading 101, Publishing 101, Author / Illustrator News and, of course, Procrastination, anyone?

In this forum there is no such thing as a stupid question and I have found everyone to be kind and helpful.

So grab a cup of coffee and I'll meet you over there.

Paranormal - not for children and not poems

This is not for children and not about poems.

For those of you who followed the link fro Paula Yoo's blog or from Twitter, here are the links regarding the paranormal info.

This is the link to the published article I wrote about a former court house in our city potentially being haunted: At The Downtown Center, You Might Not Be Alone

And here is the link to the group who research paranormal activity: The Shadows Project

And that is all I have to say about that.

NaPiBoWriWee days 6 & 7 - DONE!

Ok a quick update on day 7 of NaPiBoWriWee.

On day 6 I completed picture book (PB) rough draft numbers 4 and 5 and was quite pleased with them. I think they have potential but need a lot of work. At least it gives me something to start with.

On day 7 - - I DID IT! YIPPY! I completed PB 6 and 7. Book 7 seemed to roll right out. I am so happy with PB 7 that I plan for it to be the first one polished up and I want to start looking for a home for it. I was actually laughing while writing it because it was so funny.

I would like to thank Paula Yoo for organizing the very first NaPiBoWriWee and look forward to doing it again next year. Please take a look at Paula's site http://paulayoo.com/
It has some wonderful writing information and is very entertaining. This is one site I have bookmarked!

The Other Manuscript

"Ok Auntie Flamingo, on March 27th you said you submitted another manuscript but you have only talked about the poetry book, IF MY FISH FEET . What is the other book and why haven't you talked about it?"

This is true. I have only been talking about one of the books. Like Mother Goose, Auntie Flamingo is known for her poems. Though the other unpublished book is in rhyme it will probably be published under my 'other' name and not Auntie Flamingo. However, I will talk a little about it here.

In a CANSCAIP interview by Lucy Falcone, author Arthur Slade said, "And there's no such thing as 'normal'. Even if there was, who wants to be normal anyway?" Every child, at some point, will feel abnormal about something. For me it was my height. As a child, playing house in kindergarten I was always the mother but was never allowed to play the role of the baby, I was always in the back row for class pictures and my pants were often a half inch too short. ANNALEE is a story about an unique young woman who is nowhere close to being ordinary. Many of the things she does is upside-down, backwards or just a little crazy. The town's people of Normalville tolerate her antics until the day the media arrive looking for someone to place in their magazine. Fearing ANNALEE's weirdness will ruin their chances the town's people cruelly tell her to go home on the outskirts of town. Will ANNALEE get her chance to try to impress the photographer and reporter?


Now grown, I see what a gift my height really is and I have realize how being different opens doors. This is something very difficult for a child to understand.

Comments on the story? Is there something you are/were insecure about? Isn't is nice to know that you are not the only one who feels this way?

Bubbles! - SBP (Story Behind the Poem)

It is time for another “story behind the poem.”

Today's story is for the poem BUBBLES IN MY TUB from my unpublished poetry book IF MY FISH HAD FEET. The poem is about a child's over zealous use of bubbles at bath time.

This poem is based on a real life bath incident at home. My son (I think he was 4 years old at the time) wanted to have a bath in the tub in my bathroom instead of the kids' bathroom. The tub in the en suite is a large, deep, soaker tub which my son pretend to swim in it. In order to fill the tub in a reasonable amount of time the water from the faucet comes out rather quickly. Well, between the amount of bubble bath I put in and rushing water stirring things up, a large volume of bubbles was created. I didn't quite realize the amount of bubbles in the tub until I dropped my son in and he practically disappeared. Of course, my son squealed with joy and I started laughing.

Thinking of this story still makes me chuckle.

I have a picture somewhere of him in the bubbles. I'll have to search and when I find it I will update this post.

Score! - SBP (Story Behind the Poem)

Another poem in my book, IF MY FISH HAD FEET, is titled SCORE. It's about a child playing, the great Canadian sport, hockey waiting to get the puck and score. Our character finally gets the chance to get a goal however, the outcome in comically unfavourable.

This poem is based on a personal experience when I played basketball in school. Unlike the character in the poem I often had the opportunity to score but the result was not always as I intended. I am sure that I'm not the only person to do this but at the time I couldn't believe it happened.

What happened? Well, you will have to wait for the book to be published and find out for yourself.

The Silly Poetry Book Name Is ....

Auntie Flamingo recently submitted a book manuscript of a collection of funny poetry for children. The name of the book is currently, "IF MY FISH HAD FEET And Other Silly Rhymes." (I say currently because it could change prior to publication.) The book has not been accepted for publication yet. It will probably be several months before I hear anything from the publisher. As Gary Gnu would say on The Great Space Coaster: No Gnews is Good Gnews.

The title of the book is the name of one of the poems in the book.
I've recently been finding my mind wandering thinking about each poem and how there is a story behind it. The idea of writing a poem called IF MY FISH HAD FEET came from my older brother. When he was young, around 4 or 5 years old, he had a pet angel fish named Herbie. One day was looking at the fish and said, "Hey! Herbie has no feet." My dad loves telling this story about my brother. Of course, when I heard it my brain starts turning and thinking about all the things a fish might do if he had feet and the poem was born.

Stay turned to find out more stories behind the poems.

Signs, Signs Everywhere A Sign

Ok the baby is napping time to post a quick blog.

I was so please yesterday to get another book manuscript in the mail. Yay me!
The manuscript had to be submitted by the end of the month to be considered and I knew I was cutting it short. Regular mail can take 4 to 5 business days. This meant it may make it in on time on the 31st or it could be one day late. I put a lot of work into it and I felt good about this manuscript so I was willing to pay the extra money to send it Xpresspost and make sure it gets there on time. Xpresspost mail gets to its destination in 2 business days (which would be Monday) and you can track it. Cool! I checked the tracking number this morning and my manuscript made it to the destination city. Oh, one other important piece of information about this story is since the book was a collection of silly poetry it was by Auntie Flamingo not my real name.

That afternoon the baby and I went to the mall to meet a friend and her son. I needed to buy some clothes to wear to volley ball next week and I always like to look at the children's clothes. My friend wanted to go into Baby GAP which is a store I don't usually go into though I do like their clothes. For some reason I made a bee-line for this one rack and what do I see for my little girl?



As often as I look I see very few things with flamingos on it. Is it a sign? LOL
I don't know but it was on sale and I just had to have it! Not only did they have this top but they had the cutest little pink skirt with little flamingos on it. I didn't get it though because I am not sure what size she will take when the weather gets warm enough to wear it.

Have you ever had anything happen to you that you took as a sign and it was correct?

WHO IS AUNTIE FLAMINGO?

Mother Goose has a sister.
I bet you didn't know.
She's pink, tall and graceful.
She's Auntie Flamingo.

Her rhymes are a little different,
With a unique style.
They’re silly and they're funny,
Sure to make you smile.

Mother Goose has a sister.
I bet you didn't know.
She's pink, tall and graceful.
She's Auntie Flamingo.

Welcome! I am Auntie Flamingo, an author of children's poetry. I'm currently working on a book which will be a collection of some of my best poetry. When published, I will donate 10% of my personal profits to a children's charity. I will announce which charity when my book is published.

Have a comment or question? I would be more than happy to answer your emails and I may even post your question and answer on my blog. Contact me at auntieflamingo@gmail.com