This is my last Shelf Space entry. I’m not going to lie and say that I’m sad to go – as it turns out the whole deadline every week thing isn’t really for me. It makes me a little crazy. Good thing I didn’t use that writing degree as a journalist.

You’ve patiently listened to me prater on about vaguely book- and blog-related topics for three weeks. For my final week, I thought I’d turn it over to a few friends of mine; people I met through this electronic medium and for whom blogging means more to them just rambling with an audience (like me). They are all published – or soon will be. Three of them are authors, the fourth an illustrator. They are all at different places in their publishing careers. Because of that, blogging isn’t something that they do just because they have big mouths and no social life (like me). Blogging for them, one would assume, must also contain at least a smidgen of self-promotion (that all blogging is self-promotion is an entirely different debate). I thought I’d ask what it’s like to blog from their end.

I roped Tanita S. Davis, Elizabeth Dulemba, Sarah Miller and Colleen Mondor into answering a handful of questions about what it’s like to be a creative professional – and a blogger. Here are their answers:

JP: Were you already published when you started your blog? How far along were you in your career? Did you have an agent?

SM: Sorta kinda. I started blogging publicly in late May and Miss Spitfire was released in July.

TD: I was published, but only in magazines and at a small house, and the two chapter books I’d written had already gone out of print! I had no agent, and was just finishing my MFA.

CM: I was published several years ago with some nonfic articles on Alaska aviation. I started the blog after Bookslut, , but I found my agent via the connections I had made there. I would say I was advanced in my career as far knowing my subject, but just starting out in terms of publication.

ED:I tried some experimental blogs before I was published, but didn’t really have the hang of it until after my first picture book came out.

Why did you start? Why do you continue?

SM: I’d been blogging privately on MySpace for a year or so, and more and more, my entries centered around my own personal book-news. By then, I was working with Little Willow to build a website, so the public blog was probably an offshoot of that. I figured there were people besides my 25 MySpace buds who might be interested in my literary goings-on. (My 93-year-old grandpa doesn’t have a MySpace profile, but he has been known to look at my Blogger page from time to time.)

ED: I thought it would be a good place to document my successes, visits and book signings, if for nobody else, then for myself. And that’s exactly what it has become. So, along with being a good resource for others, it’s also a great memory book for me. By labeling and bookmarking my posts, my blog has become a good resource for other budding illustrators; I get e-mails all the time thanking me for the information I share. I also link to particular posts from other areas of my site. For instance, most events on my calendar link to posts describing how the event went - hopefully it also shares good information for those looking to hire me for their own event.

CM: I was e-mailing with lots of bloggers and authors due to the Bookslut column and several urged me to start a blog of my own. Primarily I would thank Cecil Castellucci and Gwenda Bond for being supportive in the beginning. I did it to become part of the larger literary community that I had only scratched the surface with via the column. I continue because I have met so many friends and found so many good books via the lit blogosphere.

TD: Have to quote A. Fortis from our first post in 2005 on this one: “As writers we already have a natural tendency to want to foist our words on the unsuspecting public, so why not start a blog?” The blog was started – as a team blog. There were supposed to be five of us. It was launched as a means to keep in touch with our writing group – thus the tagline “the WritingYA Web Log.” The original group in WritingYA petered out after about a year, and the myriad people who had faithfully promised to be a part of the blog never materialized. It was down to A. Fortis and me, and we held on grimly for a while, and then less grimly, as time went on. After the first six or eight months, it got easier. We finally found the community – and discovered quite a few blogs who were already successfully doing what we wanted to do – the Greenlake Library Blog, Fuse #8, the kind of frighteningly smart Chasing Ray, Big A, little a, Book Buds, Paper Tigers, Chicken Spaghetti – a whole bunch of nice librarians, booksellers and readers who were communicating about a topic that was near and dear to us. We connected – and we still connect – and we have changed the way we think and talk and share about books. We’re much more confident about it now – we know all you other Word Nerds are out there.

SM: Now that I’m not a bookseller anymore, blogging makes me feel like I’m still in touch with the reading world, and that I still have a voice. I particularly enjoy having an outlet to spread buzz for books I like. It’s not as personal as hand selling to individual customers, but at least I can still hold up a great book and holler, “Lookit!” Plus, through blogging I’ve ’met’ some really nifty people -- Jackie, Miss Erin, Little Willow, Barbara O’Connor, Kirby Larson, to name a few -- and this lets me keep in touch with them, as well as a few old pals from my Halfway Down the Stairs days. There’s a cozy feeling of community in the kidlitosphere, and even though I don’t travel widely through cyberspace, I like my little neighborhood.

JP: Has your blog changed over time? How so?

CM: I’ve gotten a bit more comfortable talking about my personal writing then I was in the beginning and I get a lot more feedback now on many things I post about.

ED: My blog has evolved over time, and now I couldn’t imagine not having it, but I no longer worry about what I’m going to write about, as there seems to be an endless stream of subjects I can cover. Once you get on a roll with the theme of your blog, it would seem it starts to drive itself.

TD: Oh, definitely, yes. We neither of us were savvy with the links and the HTML, for one thing. And our topics were narrower – within the scope of our own opinions. We didn’t read other blogs as much and tended to stick to our little corner of opinion. Now we’re both fairly widely read about young adult literature and read reviews and interviews and discussions from newspapers, other blogs, scholarly journals, etc. Our opinions are broader, and our involvement within the blogging children’s literature community is much greater, and our blog topics reflect that involvement. And also? We can rock the HTML. We can make our lines scroll AND blink. (We be unutterably cool now.)

SM: At the very beginning, it was pretty much a festival of Miss-Spitfire-and-me. I was mostly blogging to keep my friends & family informed, but before long my audience expanded into strangers. Longabout August, I noticed *I* was getting tired of posting every piece of Spitfire-news that passed across my radar. It made me a little self-conscious, even. So I spread out, with more reviews, bookshop anecdotes, and The Week in Hand Sales feature -- stuff I hoped could be interesting even if you didn’t know me personally. Now that the bookstore’s gone, I’ve had to adjust and fine tune again. State of the TBR Pile took over the weekly hand selling totals, but I still miss being able to tell stories from the frontlines of bookselling. Folks seem to enjoy my WIP Progress Report sidebar, but I haven’t decided yet how much of the process itself I’m willing to share.

JP: I loved The Week in Hand Sales. I’ll miss that.

JP: What are you hoping to come from blogging?

SM: When you get right down to it, I like keeping my finger in the pie. Besides, it’s just plain fun to jabber about books.

ED: I hope to pay it forward a bit in my career, which is why I like to write about what I’ve learned. I also want to drive traffic to my site and my books. I’d like to have readers who know all my books, not just one!

CM: It’s mostly connections that I look for via the site - the chance to meet more people who enjoy literature and promoting literature like I do.

TD: The payoff for me in blogging is community connection and involvement. As a writer, this is crucial – simply because writing can be really isolating and lonely and devoid of a daily sense of accomplishment. By now, everyone is quoting the statistics that blogging is good for people’s health I don’t know about all of that, but I do know that blogging keeps me reading – and reading makes me a better, more thoughtful writer.

JP: How do you think blogging has affected your career? Has it?

SM: I’m not aware of many concrete effects. More people come to my website through my blog than any other source, but I don’t know if that translates or snowballs into any other measurable effects. I think it’s interesting that my blog-fans and book-fans are not necessarily the same group -- I’ve heard people say, “I love her blog, but I haven’t read her book yet.” That was unexpected -- I get a big kick out of it, and it’s also good to know blogging keeps readers aware of me even though I’ve been taking my dear sweet ever-loving time getting Book #2 out into the world.

ED: I have lots of subscribers and people who respond regularly to my posts, so my blog has definitely drawn attention - Especially since I started “Coloring Page Tuesdays,” hits to my site have increased exponentially. Many other bloggers now link to me, which I think also drives traffic my way. Of course, I don’t think I’ll ever know the full breadth of benefits, but there definitely seems to be momentum related to my blog.

CM: This is a tricky one as so many of the people I’ve met were through Bookslut first - I can never be sure how much of a component Chasing Ray has been in my career. I think the site mostly helps in that it is a way to reach out to people who are interested in my writing and that certainly is always a positive.

TD: I don’t know yet… I don’t feel like I can yet say that I have a “career.” I’ll get back to you next year at this time and let you know! In all seriousness, it gives me a thrill to know that there are people ready and eager to buy my books. I am tremendously grateful – and sort of elated and horrified and hope it’s good enough and- -- okay, enough of my neuroses. If there’s any way in which blogging has affected my career, it’s putting a face to some of my readers. Yay, and …yikes. On the other hand, I now know a whole lot of people who can’t review my book! Which is a potential negative, from some people’s point of view. I’m not worried about that, I’m just grateful for the friends I haven’t yet met who are nevertheless cheering me on. That means so much.

JP: Has your agent or any industry professionals (editors, art directors, etc) expressed any opinions about your blogging?

SM: My editor reads my blog, though I don’t know for sure how regularly. I think it’s a way of vicariously touching base. My agent doesn’t read my blog unless I send her a link to something newsworthy. Other than that, nada.

ED: From industry professionals, I get more responses to my e-newsletters than I do from my blog - but that’s another subject! One of my most recent posts covered the 1st Annual SCBWI Southern Breeze Children’s Book Illustrator’s Show (which I put together in my new role as Southern Breeze Illustrators’ Coordinator). The response from everybody involved has been tremendous. Where else would this event have been covered so thoroughly?

TD: My agent would love to talk about my blog – he’d love to be able to point people to it, but, it’s not just about me or my books, and so I kind of feel he’s a little confused as to why I bother. My agent HAS thought that some of my Summer Blog Blast Tour interviews and Under Radar Reads coverage has been nice – mainly because I actually highlighted another writer who is one of his clients. He was thrilled. But other than that, nope – the blog is my little semi-anonymous corner of the world, and I don’t think anyone particularly cares about it but me and my peeps.

CM: My agent is focused on my book(s) pretty much - she likes that I have a site and a column as they show me to be dedicated to spreading the word on my work. Beyond Michele though (Michele Rubin - agent), I have engaged in dozens of email exchanges with authors/illustrators/publicists and editors through mentions at my blog of different books I’m reviewing and also over the multi blog projects I’ve worked on (Summer & Winter Blog Blast Tours, Guys Lit Wire, One Shots, Recommendations Under the Radar, etc). Everyone seems to be very excited over the possibilities of organization they see in the blogosphere and through the work I’ve done in that vein, I’ve gotten a lot of support. Also, several editors have contacted me directly after they’ve read entries on my AK aviation memoir as well, and asked that I forward their info to my agent so she can be sure to send a manuscript to them.

CM: Basically, the blog helps a lot if you’re a writer, especially one just starting out. I will add though that it means nothing if you don’t reach out to the larger lit blogosphere community - you have to work at it if you want to be noticed.

Tanita S. Davis’ first book for teens, a la Carte is out on June 10th (I remember this because it’s my birthday).

Elizabeth Dulemba has beautifully illustrated a healthy handful of children’s books. Sarah Miller is finishing up her second novel, and Colleen Mondor should be turning in her final revision of her memoir this week, before turning her attention back to the other two writing projects she has going. All of them are far better, far more thoughtful bloggers than I am, so I hope you take a look at them if you aren’t already familiar.

Thank you ladies, and thank you ForeWord for hosting me!

Posted by: Jackie Parker

It’s funny what happens to your reading habits once you make them public. I started out blogging right after graduating from library school, and right before beginning my first professional position. I was wildly enthusiastic about teen literature and constantly feeling that teens didn’t get proper attention in libraries—but I had no outlet for my enthusiasm other than my mother (a school librarian) and the friends I had made at the library system at which I was a paraprofessional. Knowing that I was leaving the people I talked to books about, I wanted to be able to continue that dialog. So, I started a blog. I didn’t do it methodically. I wasn’t a blog reader. I didn’t know what people wrote about. I had no idea what I was doing.

At first, I peppered the blog with events, activities and happenings in my life unrelated to books—but my reading habits were always the cornerstone of my blogging. Then, a curious thing happened. People I didn’t know started reading my blog. People with whom I shared an interest.

And then I started reading more blogs. First the people who had commented on mine, then the ones who made interesting comments on theirs. Then I sought them out. Dialogs were created. I became influenced by what they were reading. I joined in on memes. I volunteered for the Cybils. I said yes when someone asked me to join in on one of those new-fangled blog tour things. Then Reader Girlz asked me to be a poster girl—someone who recommends books to them, primarily to go along with their monthly featured author.  Suddenly I found myself with lists of books to read. What used to be happenstance began to contain a certain level of obligation. And am I really a teen librarian/blogger worth my salt if I haven’t read the latest books buzzing around these communities?

I don’t want you to interpret this as complaining. Through those commitments and through that community I’ve found books that I might not have found. Books that I adore. Books that I hate. Books I can’t get worked up to feel much of anything about. But I do miss wandering the shelves on my own just discovering things. I don’t so much have time for that anymore. But without that wandering, that discovering, I might not have found authors I treasure today—Laurie Halse Anderson, Tamora Pierce, L.A. Meyer, Brett Hartinger, John Flanagan, Justina Chen Headley, and so, so many others. I read all of these authors because I just stumbled upon them while shelving or checking books in or out, or simply browsing. I found them merely by happenstance, without any premeditation, without anyone telling me that I should read them or I had to read them or I needed to vet them for this, that or someone else. I wonder what I’m missing these days.

So what have I been reading lately? What do I plan on reading?  However I found them, here’s what’s been on the menu lately:

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
The Disreputable History of Frankie-Landau Banks by E. Lockhart
Violet on the Runway by Melissa Walker
Songs for a Teenage Nomad by Kim Culbertson
Life Sucks by Jessica Abel
Sovay by Celia Reese
Good Enough by Paula Yoo

What are you reading? What are you looking forward to? How has blogging or blogs affected your To Be Read pile?

Posted by: Jackie Parker

Last year I was a panelist on YA Fiction Cybil Awards. This year, I somehow ended up heading up the category. If you've managed to miss out on the Cybils both this year and last, it's an award that tries to find the irresistible balance of quality and appeal in children's and young adult literature from that year. It's run entirely by bloggers. Entirely. Both years were amazing experiences for me.

The winner was announced in February, but I'm still seeing traffic on my posts, and not too long ago someone asked if I saw any similarities between the books of 2007. Well, I can't say that all 123 of the YA Cybils nominated titles are represented here (let alone all the books published last year) - but I did have fun coming up with the list. If you know of any similarities I've forgotten - let me know in the comments! Full list of nominees here. Feel free to add on any YA titles in which you find weird, wacky or just plain coincidental events, themes or trends. They are always amusing!

2007 Similarities:
Fathers Obsessed with Model Railroads: Twisted, The Nature of Jade
Girls hit in the face with sports balls: 10 Uses for an Unworn Prom Dress, Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall
Comas/Knocked Unconscious: Heaven Looks a Lot like the Mall, Rubber Houses, Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac
Ucky Mothers: Heaven Looks a Lot like the Mall, Poison Apples, Such a Pretty Girl
Bad Dads: Twisted, The Nature of Jade, Such a Pretty Girl, Touching Snow
Abuse: Touching Snow, Billie Standish Was Here, Such a Pretty Girl, Lessons from a Dead Girl, Twisted
Novels In Verse: Heaven Looks a Lot like the Mall, Song of the Sparrow, Glass, Shark Girl, Walking on Glass, Rubber Houses
9/11 mentions: Does My Head Look Big in This?, Heaven Looks a Lot like the Mall, Someday this Pain Will Be Useful to You
Death: Saving Zoe, Rubber Houses, Deadline, Before I Die, Lessons from a Dead Girl, Cures for Heartbreak, A Swift Pure Cry, 13 Reasons Why
Voices from Beyond the Grave: Saving Zoe, 13 Reasons Why, Something Rotten, High Spirits, Wonders of the World, White Darkness
GBLTQ Friendly: Parrotfish, Freak Show, Off Season, Someday this Pain..., Split Screen, Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend, grl2grl, Cupcake, Evolution, Me and Other Freaks of Nature (mostly)
Historical: Tamar (1940s), Cassandra's Sister (1700s), Wednesday Wars (1960s), Song of the Sparrow (er...600s?), Red Moon at Sharpsburg (1860s), Enter Three Witches (1600s), Touching Snow (1980s), A Swift Pure Cry (1980s), Brothers, Boyfriends & Other Criminal Minds (1970s), Billie Standish Was Here (1960's), Tin Angel (1960s)
Sports: Zen and the Art of Faking It, Deadline, Slam, The Off Season, Boy Toy
Religion: In the Name of God, Converting Kate, Ethan Suspended, High Spirits, Evolution, Me & Other Freaks of Nature
Books inspired by Great (British) Literature: Something Rotten (Hamlet), Enter Three Witches (Macbeth), Song of the Sparrow (Arthurian Legend), Cassandra's Sister (Jane Austen), Red Glass (The Little Prince, ok, fine that's French Lit. Whatever.)
Traveling: Carpe Diem, Girl at Sea, Red Glass, In Search of Mockingbird
Social Networking: Saving Zoe, Angels on Sunset Boulevard
Adults who Fail to protect kids in a Spectacular manner: Touching Snow, Such a Pretty Girl, Boy Toy
Second/Multiple Marriages: Poison Apples, Something Rotten, Touching Snow, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful..., Lemonade Mouth
Buddhist Rules: Cupcake, Zen and the Art of Faking It, Lemonade Mouth
Aloe Used, straight from the plant: Red Glass, Billie Standish Was Here
Coin Tosses: Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, Lemonade Mouth
Pizza Parlor as Meeting Place: Lemonade Mouth, How to Get Suspended and Influence People
Multicultural: Finch Goes Wild, Red Glass, Lemonade Mouth, Don't Get it Twisted, Prime Choice, Revolution is Not a Dinner Party, Ethan Suspended
Lust-worthy boyfriends: Memoirs of a..., Tips on having a gay (ex) Boyfriend, Bloom
Too Cold for Me: The White Darkness, Peak
The "responsible" adult doesn't tell mom where he's taking the kid: The White Darkness, Peak
Younger Twin Sisters: The Poison Apples, Peak

Read last year's similarities at this link.

In the vein of bloggers coming together to do great things, check out next week’s Summer Blast Blog Tour. It's organized by Colleen Mondor at Chasing Ray and features a healthy handful of kidlit bloggers interviewing authors and illustrators over a swath of kidlit. It's the third time we've done this, and it never ceases to amaze me that authors and publicists actually respond to my queries to interview. I'm not in for as many as I've done in the past, but there are lots of fun and informative interviews to appear next week all over the kidlitosphere.

Gina Gagliano at First Second has been having bloggers, as I said on my own blog, "rebel with them against the sweet flower-filled month of May and post about a vampire books." She's posting links to the participants on the First Second blog, and it's been fun to find new blogs and new books. They are calling it Vampire Month, and if you haven't stumbled across it yet, now's your chance. There are also some great free graphics if you want to create an impromptu display on the theme. Or you could just save them until that one vamp book comes out this summer. Whatever it’s called. ;)

Last week we talked about why people read blogs. These little coordinated events? They create a society amidst the random wilds of the untamed internet. The kidlitosphere is not only a virtual civilization, but a community that I love being apart of. I've found genuine friends out here through participating in the efforts above. Friends that are just as real as the ones I know outside of my computer. Friends that when I finally meet them greet me with hugs and laughter. And that is what keeps me blogging.

If you wanted to know.

Posted by: Jackie Parker

One of the questions that seems to pop up a lot when people talk about blogs is WHY bloggers blog. I know why I blog. Mostly. And I’ve talked about that before.

What I’m more interested is why YOU read blogs. I don’t consider myself an authority on anything. I might be able to scrape together an argument that I’m knowledgeable in my little field of libraries and teen lit, but I’m not any better than countless others. I’m just enthusiastic, or crazy enough to have one day decided to share my thoughts in a public way. So I’m not quite sure why you read me – or the others like me.

Why do you follow the blogs that you follow? What makes each one stand out to you? What makes some blogs stand out from others that have the same general subject matter? How is it that we begin to feel a connection with a person we’ve never seen, let alone met? Yes, if you frequent a blog, you probably share some interests with the blogger, like Leila’s Dr. Who and cheesy horror movies or Sarah Miller’s headcheese. But SOMETHING makes you return again and again.

I realize that I’m asking questions that might not always have clear or easily definable answers.* Perhaps it’s guerilla journalism for the arts & culture section starved - editorialized. Maybe we are just, at least with books, covering things that don’t get the attention they deserve in the mainstream. Perchance it is the decline of society’s need for authoritative sources (you must allow me that - I am a librarian after all)?

Is it our enthusiasm? Our earnestness? That we’re talking about books and issues we care about, and that excitement shines through? Is it that we seem like normal people who aren’t pretending to be anything other than what we are? Because we aren’t claiming to have the answers or the final word? It is the voyeurs that I’m especially interested in, those who read, but never comment. You know who you are. Now’s your chance. Talk to me. Add to a dialog. Tell me why you give us your time. How have we earned your attention?

I don’t know.

Anyone?

*(Ok. Sidebar on the conversation for a second. I’m writing this in a café and there’s a guy behind me who keeps sucking in his snot in snorts so loud I can hear him over my headphones. I really want to turn around and tell him, “Grown-ups use Kleenex.” But I just can’t. My mom wouldn’t approve. Back to the… um, whatever it is I’m writing.)

Posted by: Jackie Parker