ROCK CHALK!

Anyone who knows me—or has read Airball: My Life in Briefs—knows I am a hard-core Jayhawk basketball fan. I graduated from the University of Kansas in 1988, the year the Jayhawks last won the national championship, and they’ve been breaking my heart every basketball season since.

Until now. Last night, in San Antonio, Texas, my beloved Jayhawks did it again. In an incredible, heart-stopping nail-biter, they came from behind to win 75–68 in overtime against a fabulous Memphis team.

So indulge me just a little, because at the risk of offending everyone in Memphis, North Carolina, and Missouri, I have to say:

Rock Chalk, Jayhawk! Go, KU!

Appreciating Educators

As I said before, on Saturday, April 5, 2008, I’ll be part of a children’s book panel (that also includes my friend Jenny Whitehead, whom I haven’s seen in way too long) at the Borders on 119th and Metcalf in Overland Park, Kansas. Afterward, I’ll present a writing workshop in the café. The store is going all out to celebrate educators. Jenny at Borders sent me this flyer:

Educator Savings Week April 2nd-8th
Educators save 25% on purchases!

Friday April 4
Special Reception
4:00—8:00 PM
Food, fun and prizes!

Book Signing
4:00—6:00 PM
Dr. John Laurie, author of Managing the Game

Saturday April 5
Storytime
10:00—11:00 AM
Mary Anne Demeritt, author of The Twilight Ride of the Pink Fairy

Children’s Author Panel Event
12:00—2:00 PM
Local authors on hand to discuss their books or answer questions about getting published!
• Leigh Legere: Do Antelope Eat Cantaloupe
• Mary Anne Demeritt: The Twilight Ride of the Pink Fairy
• Jenny Whitehead: Holiday Stew and Lunch Box Mail
• Sandra Jacob: Smiling Faces
• Mary Martin: Miss Lilly and the Hollyhock Garden
• Jancy Morgan and Tom Dunn: If This Old Tree Could Talk To Me
• Lisa Harkrader: Airball: My Life in Briefs
Join us for crafts, food, games, contests and lots of fun!

Kansas City Writers Meetup Group
2:00 PM
Lisa Harkrader: “Tips and Tricks for Writing Effective Dialogue.”

Acoustic Guitar
4:00—6:00 PM
Singer-songwriter Bayley Kate will perform folk/indie rock.

Sunday April 6
Educator Escape!
2:00—4:00 PM
Take some time out for yourself and enjoy:
• The Yoga Studio of Johnson County
• Mary Kay
• 24hr Fitness
• Massage demonstrations
• Coffee and Tea Tasting

Wow! If you live in the area, drop by. This is some weekend they have planned.

Kansas SCBWI Workshop

I had a wonderful day yesterday at the Kansas SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) workshop, “Taking Care of Business: Marketing and Promoting.”

In the morning, I gave a presentation called “Promotion 101.” Which is ironic, considering that I don’t have a single sales gene in my entire body. When Airball: My Life in Briefs first came out, if you’d told me I’d soon be giving other writers tips on promotion, I would have first laughed and then passed out in terror at the mere thought of doing promotion.

I’ll never be an in-your-face promoter, but I have picked up a few things. My guiding principles for marketing are:

1. Don’t do things you hate. Try new things that may seem scary at first (like school visits—a terrific way to connect with readers, librarians, and teachers), but if you absolutely hate some kind of event or promotional effort, don’t do it. Life’s too short.
2. Don’t spend a fortune. Plenty of free or low-cost opportunities (like sending out press releases or speaking at regional library conferences) exist.
3. Focus on your own piece of the world. You can’t cover the whole country anyway, and the people who live in your region are probably going to be the ones who are most excited about your book.

In the afternoon I attended Sue Uhlig Ford and Kate Barsotti’s presentation, “Websites and Blogs 101.” They gave great tips on what your goals should be for a blog and/or website and how to set them up. One of the best tips I picked up is probably one of the simplest (and also was one of those moments where I thumped myself upside the head and said, “Duh”): Make sure the URL of the About Me or About the Author page on your site is titled with your name. Search engines looking for your name will not connect About Me with you.

So I immediately came home and updated my site. Now instead of saying “About the Author,” the tabs on my web pages say “About L.D. Harkrader.” And the page they link to is LDHarkrader, rather than Author.

Duh.

Young Writers’ Conference

On April 19, 2008, I’ll be one of the speakers at the 2008 Young Writers’ Conference in Emporia. Here’s a link to the great article the Emporia Gazette ran about the conference.

A Full Day at Borders

My friend Suzanne Lieurance is simply tireless. She does so many things in a day—writes, coaches writers, interviews writers for her daily blog talk radio show Book Bites for Kids, reviews books, runs probably 37 different writing-related websites (37 may be an exaggeration, but not by much), owns and operates a gourmet baking mix company—that I am convinced she has finally mastered cloning technology and now has ten or twelve Suzannes to do her bidding.

A couple years ago she started the KC Writers Meetup, a group for Kansas City area writers, and it’s not only still going strong, it’s getting bigger and better all the time. The group holds a monthly meeting at the espresso bar at a local Borders, and each month they invite a speaker. For their April 5 meeting, Suzanne has invited me to conduct a workshop on writing dialogue.

Which in itself is pretty cool. But it just gets even cooler because when she contacted Borders, they invited me to be on a children’s writer panel in celebration of Educator Appreciation Week, scheduled that same day.

Here are the details:

Children’s Writer Panel
Noon–2 p.m.

KC Writers Meetup Workshop
Tips & Tricks for Writing Effective Dialogue
2–3 p.m.

Saturday
April 5, 2008
Borders Books
119th & Metcalf
Overland Park, Kansas

What a Glorious Day

Some days I wake up inexplicably. . . happy. Today is one of those days.

Part of it—a huge part, I’m sure—is the weather. This is the third day in a row of beautiful sunshine and warm weather. It’s been windy as heck, but that’s okay. This is Kansas, after all, so we’re used to wind, and (in one of those instances where nature is wiser than we mere mortals) it turns out that wind has a real plus side: It’s drying up all that nasty mud we’ve been fighting out here in rural America as weeks of snow and ice have finally melted and turned our driveways and gravel roads into pudding.

Another huge part of my happiness is yesterday’s panel and booksigning at the Topeka Barnes & Noble. I’m always sure nobody will show up, but we had a nice little group who were almost all writers, and I think our discussion was well-received. And hanging out in a bookstore with writers, talking about writing and drinking frou-frou coffee drinks laced with cinnamon and whipped cream, is always a fun time. My thirteen year old wanted to come with me, and I think later, as extreme boredom nearly sent him into a coma, he regretted it, but I always enjoy his company and was glad for his help schlepping my stuff to and from the car.

Another big part of the happiness is that I think my writing is going well. In all the angst we writers have about getting published and sweating the reviews and hoping our books sell well enough that we can publish the next one, the rock-bottom truth is, it’s all about the writing. When I’m working, creating, giving life to my characters and their stories, I’m happy, and I have a real sense that everything else will follow (eventually).

It’s supposed to snow and sleet tonight, and I think my daughter is coming down with the nasty flu bug my son and I had a couple weeks ago, so I’m going to enjoy my happiness while I can.

I’m Available in Softcover

Hooray! The paperback version of Airball: My Life in Briefs will be released Tuesday, March 4—four days from now. It’s published by Square Fish, my publisher’s paperback imprint, and I love the new cover:










P.S. Happy Leap Day. I keep thinking I need to commemorate this day, which only rolls around every four years, by leaping into something new and exciting and slightly scary, something I’ve been wanting to do but have been too busy or too afraid. . . but I can’t think what that something would be. So maybe I’ll just leap into some drawings for my middle-grade WIP (comic book panels that my superhero-wannabe main character is creating as his own story goes along) and do so without fear or self-doubt.

I’m Updated!

Well, not me personally (ask my son—he’ll be happy to tell you how quickly I’m sinking into old fogeydom), but my website is updated, at least partially. I’ve added some upcoming events to the calendar page:

Panel Discussion and Booksigning
Topeka Barnes & Noble
Saturday, March 1, 2008
(see below)

Kansas SCBWI Workshop
KU Edwards Campus in Overland Park
Saturday, March 15, 2008

Young Writers Conference
Emporia High School
Saturday, April 19, 2008

Great Manhattan Mystery Conclave
Manhattan, Kansas
October 31–November 2, 2008

I’ll be adding some school visits and other events in the very near future.

Panel Discussion and Signing

I love Esther Luttrell. She was a script advisor, script consultant, and screenwriter in Hollywood for many, many years, and she is a wonderful and generous screenwriting teacher. I took a class from her a few years back at UMKC (University of Missouri–Kansas City—I keep forgetting that not everybody knows all the local acronyms). Now she lives in Topeka, and she’s writing mysteries. Her novel Murder at the Movies, which draws on her Hollywood background, has just been released.

Esther has arranged a panel discussion and booksigning at the Topeka Barnes & Noble, and she has invited me and Mark Bouton to join her on the panel. Mark is a terrific mystery writer and retired FBI agent whom I’ve met at several GMMCs (Great Manhattan Mystery Conclaves). He was one of the agents who investigated the Oklahoma City bombing and tracked down and arrested Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols.

I am so looking forward to the panel. The Topeka Barnes & Noble has been very good to me and to Airball. Here are the particulars:

Demystifying the Mystery of Writing Mysteries
Panel Discussion and Booksigning with Esther Luttrell, Mark Bouton, and Lisa Harkrader
2 to 4 p.m.
Saturday
March 1, 2008
Barnes & Noble
6130 SW 17th Street
(17th and Wanamaker)
Topeka, KS 66615
785-273-9600

I’m so impressed with everything Esther has done to arrange this event, and tickled to death that she invited me to join her.

What I’ve Been Up To. . .

. . . besides writing, writing, writing (and actually—no kidding—getting a lot written that doesn’t completely stink):

Yesterday I did a school visit at Jeff West (Jefferson County West Unified School District, for those of you who don’t live in northeast Kansas :-) ), and I had a great time. I talked to the 4th and 5th graders at the Intermediate School in Ozawkie and the 6th and 7th graders at the Middle School in Meriden, and they were all just terrific. Their teachers and librarians prepared them well, reading Airball out loud in class, talking up the visit, making Airball bulletin boards, and all those wonderful things teachers and librarians do every day that get taken for granted.

I’ve actually done several school visits lately. Last month I was in Linwood, talking to the 7th and 8th grades at Basehor-Linwood Middle School. Before Christmas I talked to kids in Overbrook and Stanton. And I always have a great time.

Which, knowing my personality the way I do and for as many years as I have, surprises me. People laugh when I tell them this, but I’m a very shy person. And the first few times I did school visits, I was so panic-stricken (I agreed to do WHAT? In front of HOW MANY KIDS? Did I have a head injury? What was I THINKING?) before the visits that I honestly and truly thought I would pass out in the car on the way. And then I sort of hoped I would because running my car into the ditch seemed infinitely preferable to speaking to an auditorium full of middle graders.

But, to my surprise, I find that I enjoy speaking to auditoriums (auditoria?) full of middle graders. And, even more surprising, they seem to enjoy it, too.

I’m still a shy person. But I find that as a writer, I need to have two personalities: Lisa the Hermit and Lisa Who is Allowed Out in Public. It’s sometimes hard to shift between the two. The Hermit likes being hunkered down at the computer with fictional characters, not having to fix her hair or talk to anyone real. But once I let my Public personality out, she ends up on such an adrenaline high after school visits that she really hates to be put back into the cave.

Other stuff my Public personality has been doing includes a really fun day before Christmas, when I spent the morning at the Barnes and Noble in Topeka at the Auburn-Washburn Book Fair talking to kids and teachers and parents, listening to the elementary school early morning choirs, and signing books with Beverley Olson Buller, author of From Emporia: The Story of William Allen White, a terrific biography that includes incredible photos, many from the morgue of the Kansas City Star and not widely published before now.

I wished I could have stayed there all day, but I left just after noon to motor over to The Book Barn (which, as I’ve said before, is a wonderful, wonderful independent bookstore in historic downtown Leavenworth). Owners Bob and Barb Spear were hosting their annual holiday open house, and they invited me to be their guest, along with Ally Carter, author of the wildly popular Gallagher Girls books, a YA series about a spy boarding school for girls. I had a great time there, too, talking to readers, answering questions, signing books.

I’m very lucky my Public personality gets invited to so many events. And I’m lucky that the Hermit allows her to go.