Whoopee ti yi yo, get along little pseudonym

I've been writing about James a lot lately, and I'll continue to write about him for quite some time. But tonight's the last time I'll be referring to him as "James," because I've got a couple of announcements to make.

First, "James" is Alan Lomax (1915-2002), the folklorist and ethnomusicologist who preserved countless folk songs from the U.S. and around the world through his travels and recordings in a career that spanned seven decades. His life's work left its mark on everyone from Leadbelly to Moby, and his life's story intertwines with the New Deal, McCarthyism, and the space program. Plus, he was from Austin.

But the big news is this: Bloomsbury USA will be publishing my as-yet-untitled (and as-yet-unwritten) YA biography of Alan. I've been trying to tell his story for more than five years now, and hoping for nearly as long to work with the editor who's handling this project. I can't give enough thanks to my family, to my agent and all of my friends who have read my various picture-book attempts at getting Alan's story told. Your support means the world to me.

Between this deal and S.V.T., the past few months have been an absolute thrill. The next several will be thrilling in their own way, but a lot of work, too. I hope you Bartography readers won't have to wait to long for this book, but however long it takes, why not pass the time with some great music?

Good call

My interview with Liz went great -- I'd been warned by her daughter that I'd have to be the one to cut the conversation off after our allotted hour, and she wasn't fooling. After 60 minutes, Liz was still going strong, and I was hankering to hear more, so I'll be pulling together another set of questions for another telephone session later this week.

One sign that all my research is sinking in: On several points, I was able to fill in (at least mentally and sometimes verbally) a name or place or date that eluded Liz -- facts that she knew because she was there six, seven, eight decades ago but which I had merely read about.

I heard what I wanted to hear...

...not what was actually there.

That delightful coincidence I reported a couple of days ago? Different Liz. A related Liz, a Liz with a very similar name, but not the same Liz I'll be interviewing later today.

I got it wrong because, in this case, getting it wrong meant having a better story. I'd prefer to get it right, of course, and I'll be watching myself.

A voice from the past

During the past couple of weeks, I've worked at setting up an interview with another of James' contemporaries, now in her 80s -- we'll call her Liz. On my lunch hour yesterday, I was finally put in touch with the person in the best position to make that happen, so I'm optimistic.

But talk about coincidences: On my way home from work, I was listening for the first time to a commercially available collection of decades-old interviews when the questioning unexpectedly shifted to a different interviewer: Liz herself, at age 19.

Back from a tangent...

But how long before the next one?

It took me the better part of a week to realize that I'd gone off on a tangent in my research for James, delving into an associate's biography well beyond the pages directly related to my subject. Fascinating stuff, but nothing I should be drifting off into if I want to keep to my schedule for finishing this project.

Seeing as how James' path crossed with those of everyone from Carl Sandburg to Moby, I'll have to watch out for these tangents. At least for now.

August 31st? I don't think so...

Last week, I mailed a James-related interview request to someone who's been a major figure in American music since the Truman administration. Yesterday, I got my letter back with a charming, handwritten note on it saying that he's too busy to talk now, but that I should get back in touch in July or August.

He'll be hearing from me again right around July 1.

Chapters

I had a day off from work yesterday (the other work) and made a family day trip to San Antonio, which meant that I didn't spend 10 hours in front of a computer before dinnertime, which meant that by the time we got home and the boys were in bed I still had the mental wherewithal to spend two or three hours on my preliminary chronology for James.

I've now pulled together key dates and facts from hundreds of pages of articles and FBI files (not to mention quite a few "facts" from the latter) and arranged them year by year. While I was doing all this, and without my really trying, eight or nine key chapters of James' life emerged -- some lasting a couple of decades, some less than a year.

Next, I'll divide up the chronology according to those chapters and look for what's obviously missing or unclear. (For example, James' second wife wasn't mentioned in his obituaries. What became of her?) I'll also be looking for any inflection points that I've missed -- episodes where something fundamentally changed in James' life and a new chapter started.

This last bit has me thinking about my own life. Where have my inflection points been? Two come to mind quite clearly, but is that it? If so, that doesn't make for much of a biography, which may help explain why I'm writing someone else's.

Ill-gotten good stuff

My research materials for my biography of James include, among other things, hundreds of pages of documents detailing his whereabouts, activities, and acquaintances' views of him over the course of many years. This is, in highly technical terms, "good stuff."

So, what's the "ill-gotten" part? These documents are from the file the FBI maintained on him during World War II and the Cold War, they contain a lot of unsubstantiated speculation, and they represent the significantly compromised freedom of just one U.S. citizen among the many subjected to the same sort of governmental intrusion during that period and beyond.

I've got mixed feelings about having access to this material. (Thank you, Freedom of Information Act, har har!) But I've also been waking up ahead of my 5 a.m. alarm, eager to read what's next in the file.

"Journalism" is to "the first draft of history" as "obituary" is to...

That would be "the first draft of biography."

Beware of first drafts.

We all know what you get when you give enough monkeys enough typewriters and time. But what happens when you give 100 obituary writers a juicy subject (such as James), 100 keyboards, and a quick deadline?

The answer, I've found, is a fascinating array of perspectives on that subject, a relatively well-rounded view of the person, a good deal of conflicting information, and the occasional far-out, freakishly tantalizing unrepeated tidbit (e.g. "attacked with a knife") whose original source begs to be chased down.

This was true with the comparatively few obituaries of Bob Switzer, and even more so for James, who was much more prominent. It takes a fair amount of effort to pare away and straighten out the inaccuracies that inevitably result from the obit writers' limited time, familiarity with the subject, and access to primary sources.

I'm not complaining, though. I'd much rather have those 100 obituaries -- or even just 10, or 1 -- than not. In many cases, they represent the world's -- and nonfiction writers' -- last chance to catch a glimpse of an intriguing life. After all, it was from Switzer's obituary in The New York Times that I got the idea that the invention of Day-Glo just might make an interesting children's book.

Really?

For my latest batch of work on James, I'm reviewing and cataloging all the research I've done for this project over the past five years. While I've had the opportunity to do some work with primary sources -- and expect to do much, much more -- most of my research has involved sources that are at least one generation removed from any original, contemporary documentation of the facts.

When I put all my notes from these secondary sources side by side by side, I'm struck by the variations in the facts, by how differently they portray even seemingly simple, objective truths. My favorite example is the frequent reference to a machine that weighed 350 pounds, or maybe 500. Or perhaps it was 300. Could've been 650, though. Unless it was 315.

I could just take an average, I suppose, and claim that this piece of equipment weighed 423 pounds. But I figure that somewhere in some collection of old papers resides the truth (and maybe even an explanation for the many variations in how that truth has been presented). My job is to find that fact -- and then, for the rest of the manuscript, repeat the process dozens of times over. Scores, even.

Maybe hundreds.

What am I waiting for (3/07)?

News from editors on Pasta, James, Smith and P.O.

Submission (or revision) news on J.R. and Arbor.

Word on whether, where and when I'll be traveling to do some on-site research for one project or another.

The Cybils post-mortem. Get your comments in now.

The receipt through Interlibrary Loan of an obscure figure's autobiography -- a book that might well be a crushing bore but might also inspire yet another research project. The two are not mutually exclusive, you know.

Official confirmation on a couple of fun pieces of news that I can share with you all.

The arrival of my very first issue of Horn Book, which I ordered over the weekend. It seems like it wasn't very long ago, when I was first getting started in this business, that subscribing to Horn Book seemed like a total cart-before-the-horse extravagance.

What are you guys still doing there?

Satchel Paige once said, "Don't look back: Something may be gaining on you." For me these days, it's more like, "Don't look back: A pair of old manuscripts may still be sitting there waiting for you."

With J.R. out the door and Pasta still making the rounds, I've recently turned my attention to Arbor, a middle grade novel that's been in the works for about a dozen years. Half of that time, it existed only in my head, but that still leaves a long history of development on paper. I've been happy with Arbor for a long time, too, but parts of it still aren't clicking with editors, so I've gone back and worked some more on the first few chapters, where I think the problem lies.

Then there's James, a biography I began researching about five years ago. On Monday, I read four "final" drafts of considerably different tellings I've tried along the way in attempts to make the story resonate enough with editors for them to want to help me shape it further. The most recent draft, which I last touched a year ago, I like very much. Still, I may be on the verge of yet another approach to James' story.

The thing is, I don't mind. I feel like my writing has come a long way over the years, but I really want these old projects to come with me.

What am I waiting for? (2/07)

News from editors on S.V.T., Pasta, James and Smith.

P.O.'s return to circulation.

The right time to travel a few hundred miles east for some on-site research for J.R.

Anything that may develop from an animation studio's recent out-of-the-blue inquiry about one of my projects.

TLA!

What's next? Who knows?

Whatever else 2007 may have in store, it doesn't look like I'll be spending much time ginning up ideas for writing projects. Instead, I'll just need to figure out which one to pursue next.

I've gotten encouraging editorial news lately on several of the projects I've got in circulation. Revision notes are supposedly forthcoming for both the James and Smith manuscripts. My Pioneers proposal has elicited interest in seeing a complete manuscript. And my Pasta proposal has met with a request for an additional couple of chapters.

On top of those are a trio of nonfiction projects that haven't been pitched to any editors yet (including J.R.) but which I'm itching to tuck into, along with long-on-the-drawing-board ideas for a couple of middle grade novels.

This is a happy situation to be in. I vividly remember a loooooong period a decade or so ago when I wanted badly to write something but had no clue as to what, or even any idea about how to figure that out. I sure don't miss that feeling.

What am I waiting for? (11/06)

Half a year since I last posted about this, I'm still waiting for more things than I'm working on. Including:

My first glimpse of the art for The Day-Glo Brothers.

News from editors about several manuscripts:

• My biographies of James (picture book) and Smith (middle grade), which are both with the same editor. This editor gets them, I think, but there's a big difference between "gets" and "buys."
• My middle grade novel, Arbor.
• My proposal and sample chapters for Pasta.
• My picture book/graphic novel series P.O.

Copies of the books nominated for the Nonfiction Picture Book category of the Cybils.

The next big industry/literary event I plan to attend: the Texas Library Association annual conference in San Antonio in April.

Next summer, when -- a year before The Day-Glo Brothers' publication date -- I'll get cracking on a full-fledged web site, curriculum guides, and whatnot.

This, that, these and those

The details are out regarding my next highly anticipated (by me) public appearance. Here in Austin on Friday, August 4, I'll join Nathan Jensen, Janice and Tom Shefelman, and recent compadres Anne Bustard and Mark Mitchell on a children's literature panel at the conference of the Texas Christian Schools Association.

At the same conference, another local author, Lindsey Lane, will be celebrated for Snuggle Mountain, the honor book for the 2006 Children's Gallery Award.

In other developments, I've put the (possibly) finishing touches on Arbor, a middle-grade novel that I first "finished" in 2003. At my agent's suggestion, I took another pass at it this spring and made some further tweaks this past week. I had forgotten how much I enjoy that story -- I've got some really high hopes for it.

When I last wrote about Toast, I was still trying to catch VR for an interview. Well, we spoke two Fridays ago and had a great, warm conversation. My CB and VR interviews have made the story much richer than it was before. I'm now trying to get a new draft finished by Wednesday, in time for Don to read it at our next critique meeting. After that, I'll have about a day and a half to make further changes in time for my agent's monthly manuscript-reading week.

Meanwhile, there's been some progress on the submissions front. Smith, James and Pioneers all went out to an editor this week. I've been told not to expect a reply right away, which was not the case when another manuscript -- P.O., perhaps a picture book, potentially a graphic novel -- went out this Tuesday. It came back the same day. But those were six suspenseful hours, let me tell you.

I'm taking a long weekend, so have a great, safe July 4th (and 1st, 2nd and 3rd), everybody.

A forgotten bibliography, a willing interview, a winning book

You know you've had a manuscript in the works for a long time when you start working on the bibliography and don't even remember the one you've already done. Luckily, I wasn't too far along in putting together a bibliography for James yesterday when I discovered a printout of the one I'd last touched in April 2002. If I were organized -- like I'll be for my next project, of course -- I'd have been maintaining it all along. Instead, I'll just give myself a pat on the back for having clicked "Print" 50 months ago. I've drawn from lots more sources since then, but it saved me some time all the same.

Today I called VR to arrange an interview for later this week. I'd been put on notice that she was particular about who to talked to, but she was more than willing -- she wanted to do the interview now. Now wouldn't work for me, and the next two days are out, too, but we're on for Thursday. Which means I've got a couple of days to work on the questions I'll be asking. And maybe get a jump on the bibliography for Toast.

Dan Gutman's Race for the Sky has the makings of a huge hit with seven-year-old S. We just finished our third straight night of reading from that for his bedtime story, and when I tried to set it on his shelf for the night -- OK, yes, I was testing him -- it was nothing doing. He's probably still up there reading it now, and I bet I find it in bed with him when I turn off his light later on. So far, it's a knockout of a book -- fun, funny, and interesting as can be, the best historical fiction I've read in a while.

It's three, three, THREE rejections in one!

Yesterday I got a big "No, thank you" on James, Smith and Pioneers, all from a single editor. She seemed to like my subjects a lot more than she liked my writing style, which is somewhat troubling -- I come up with new subjects every week, but my style changes a little less often.

Oh, well. This means a new chance with a new editor -- maybe three new chances with three new editors -- starting next week.

And maybe, to quote Duke Ellington, "Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be too famous too young." Of course, it was funnier when he said it, because he was in his 60s at the time. And famous.

Once more, with no feeling

Things did not go as I'd hoped with the latest submission of my picture book biography of James. Yesterday morning I had an e-mail from the editor saying all manner of nice things about the manuscript but also that, for various stated reasons, this version wasn't right for her or her house. While unenthusiastic about seeing another revision of James, she did ask if I had anything else to send her.

I switched right into "What's next?" mode, thinking about where to send James off to now and mentally flipping through my file of potential picture book ideas. I zapped a quick e-mail to my agent and got on with my day.

It was only in the evening while washing dishes that I realized how, not so long ago, I would have felt either bruised by the editor's rejection (after 11 months of sharing James exclusively with her) or overjoyed by her request that I send something else her way, or quite possibly both. And however I would have felt, I likely would have felt that way for some time.

I miss having that sort of reaction. Even-keeled professionalism has its benefits, but frankly, I'd have preferred feeling a little more strongly about yesterday's news. But I really didn't give myself time for that, which is a shame, because writing can't be just business -- it has to be personal. So if I had it to do over again, I would have read the editor's e-mail and just let it sink in for a few hours, maybe overnight, before doing anything else. And that's what I'll do next time.

What to do?

This may well be a very short-lived condition, but for the first time in well over a year, I don't have a nonfiction revision roosting at the top of my to-do list. Earlier this week, I sent Agent Erin my Smith rewrite, and with James dispatched to an editor last week, that takes care of my major, non-Day-Glo projects of late.

So, how to fill my time?

• Compiling and burning a companion CD for my Smith manuscript. I don't do this for all my subjects (though I guess I could), but Smith was a musician whose work is not as well known as it should be. Obviously, I'm trying to change that. Does a companion CD enhance the experience of reading a manuscript or expose its flaws? Guess I'll know soon.
• Resuming work on my marketing database for The Day-Glo Brothers. Does anyone know a good children's bookstore in Cleveland?
• Getting back to my research for E.F.
• At last revising, maybe, a picture book fiction manuscript that a friend critiqued last fall. I think it's going to take me a long time before I'm even ready to write a proposal/sample for E.F., and I've got to be writing something in the meantime. It could be this one. Or maybe that middle-grade novel.
• Insisting to Agent Erin that I really am focused on nonfiction. It just depends on what the meaning of the word "focused" is.

Go, James, go!

A few minutes ago I e-mailed my rewrite of James to the editor who last June asked to see a manuscript combining elements of two earlier approaches.

June? Can it really have been that far back that I got her request for revision? And for a picture book? Yep. There was a lot of research I needed to do for this rewrite. While the draft I just sent does not directly use as much of that as I expected, I know James a whole lot better than I did seven months ago (reading the highly opinionated letters he wrote when he was 16 sure helped), and I hope that it shows.

There's no contract for this book yet, and so I also hope that this new version will change that. If not, I may have to read more letters.

James lived to be 87. That's a lot of letters. Please let this version sell...

Is anybody goin' to San Antone?

I heard back from my agent today about my latest draft of James. She made a couple of editorial suggestions that seem so obvious that I'm a little embarrassed that I hadn't caught them myself.

Both suggestions feel like they should be fairly simple to address, but I suppose I'll find out for sure in the morning. I've got an idea for a new opening sentence, and I'll be curious to see how well it holds up after a night's sleep.

I'll get to meet my agent in person for the first time next week at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in San Antonio. Liz B at A Chair, A Fireplace and A Tea Cozy will be there, too, as will Don Tate. If you're reading this and plan to be there, please let me know -- I'd love to meet as many of you as possible.

My three pseudonymous friends

Late this past Friday night I put the finishing (for now) touches on the latest version of my James manuscript and sent it off to my agent. An editor is already interested, so I could have sent it directly to her, but before I did I wanted it to get a reading untainted by way too many hours of staring at index cards and spiral notebooks.

Also, like a pet cat with a dead bird it caught, I wanted to show off my latest effort to my new handler. I hope the new draft is better received than most dead birds are.

One-year-old F was sick for several days after Christmas, so I spent a lot of time with him slumped on my shoulder while I read a recent book about E.F. and slathered it with Post-It flags (in Day-Glo colors, I'll have you know). I've since started reading a second book and expect a third to arrive from Amazon this week. So, my research for E.F. is well underway, and I'm even more excited about the topic than before.

On my lunch hours this week, I'll be revisiting the Smith manuscript I revised last summer. It's filled with facts and as many quotes as a semiarticulate, taciturn man (Smith, not me -- I don't think) could muster. But now I need to add a certain personal spin to his story to make it come alive. On the other hand, that sounds fairly involved -- maybe I should be saving it for a five-day work week...

Warts and all

Something I'm still trying to figure out with my nonfiction is how far to go with the "warts and all" approach.

Obviously, it's important to me that young readers know about the people that I'm interested in writing about, or else I wouldn't be writing about them. And with one notable exception, I can't think of any children's biographies that were written about horrible people precisely because they were horrible people. We tend to write about people we admire, or at least about those whose stories are meaningful to us.

But people aren't perfect, and what I struggle with is how much to dwell on those imperfections. Is it dishonest to frame a story so that it avoids having to deal directly with those flaws? Is it lazy to save up those shortcomings for the author's note so that they don't disrupt the flow of the narrative? Would a children's biography in which the author goes out of his way to poke holes in the subject be any fun to read?

I wish I had better answers than "maybe," "maybe," and "probably not," but at the moment I don't. I sure hope I do by the time I finish new drafts of Smith and James.

Clued in

I somehow managed to get within a month and a half of the ALA Midwinter Meeting without realizing that it's going to be just down the road in San Antonio. And unlike with the IRA show in San Antonio this past May, exhibits-only registration is priced quite reasonably. So I'm going.

(If you haven't been to one of these shows, the term "exhibits" can be a little misleading. It's not as if they'll be displaying a prehistoric librarian perfectly preserved in amber -- we're talking trade show booths, albeit booths piled high with new books and giveaways and populated with real, live editors and marketing folks.)

In other news from the past week, I heard from an editor that Smith still isn't working for her, had lunch with Don Tate (thanks for picking up the check, Don), interviewed a former Rolling Stone editor about James, and began lightly delving (if one can delve lightly) into E.F. I'm skeptical that I'll get much more done before Christmas, but I'm OK with that.

Further on up the road

So why all the e-mailing and phone calling lately? Part of the reason is my research on James, but it's mostly due to my discussions with the agent.

Things have progressed farther than with any other agent I've been in touch with, to the point of me contacting several of her clients. It's been as illuminating as it has been time-consuming.

I most likely won't post any more on this topic until the process plays itself out, but I will probably have a lot to say once things are resolved, one way or the other. So, if you've got any questions -- like I did, and to some extent still have -- about the process of finding an agent, feel free to ask them in the comments or e-mail them to me at the contact address on the main page of Bartography, and I'll answer as much as I can when the time is right.

E.F. takes hold

An idea for a new book took hold today. I don't mean a new idea -- it was one that I'd been kicking around for a while. But today, for whatever reason, it seized my imagination and demanded to be moved to the head of the line of my various projects. (It's nonfiction, by the way.)

My family went on a short road trip this morning. Ordinarily on our outings I'm happy to drive while my wife knits. But on the way to today's destination, I asked my wife to drive while I outlined the book and bounced ideas off her. By the time we got where we were going, I had what I needed in order to begin researching. (I've sung my wife's praises before, and I'll do it again. She's the best sounding board a guy could have.)

Not that I actually can just drop everything and turn my undivided attention to this new project, which I'll call "E.F." I'm still reworking James and want to get it finished and submitted to an interested editor. Just yesterday I did a phone interview with the daughter of a labor organizer whose threatened deportation played a key role in James' life, and early this morning, before E.F. took hold, I e-mailed interview requests to another couple of potential sources.

But E.F. is not going to be denied, I don't think. It seems like the perfect next step for me professionally, a world of fun to research, an important topic for its audience to know about, and a timely one to boot. It's all I can do to go to bed tonight and not stay up late to start my fact-gathering.

Class act

I missed Mr. V's book-signing debut last night, as I had a debut of my own. I made my first visit to a class -- Austin Community College's Writing for Children -- as a children's writer. I was astounded at how fast the 45 minutes went by, and by how much I enjoyed myself. I was especially tickled by one student's bulging eyes when I mentioned that my first submitted version of The Day-Glo Brothers was 6,200 words long. Obviously, the class had already covered the minor fact that most picture books are under 1,000 words.

I'd started to become a little resentful of the time eaten up by my preparations for the class, but this morning I'm so glad that I did take that time to get ready. And now it's a two-way race between my ACC honorarium check and the first half of my Day-Glo advance -- one of them will become the first cash money I've received as a children's writer.

I know I wrote a couple of weeks ago that my manuscript had gotten its sign-off from the powers-that-be at Charlesbridge, but I'm delighted to report that earlier this week I got word from my editor that we'd worked out the last two lingering editorial details. "We are officially done," she said. Nothing could have sounded better.

Meanwhile, an editor interested in Smith has asked me for some supporting information to help convince potential doubters at her house that Smith was a nationally significant figure, rather than one who would resonate only regionally. So, this a.m. I spent a chunk of time pulling together market research -- yes, market research. Of the "people who care about Smith's work are 129% more likely than the average US consumer to read The New Yorker" variety. I could have told her what kind of coffee they prefer, but didn't.

At lunch yesterday I continued working on a new version of my James manuscript, and also got caught up on some recent back issues of Publishers Weekly. I found a couple of editorial staff changes I'd missed, which may come in handy at the end of the year. Come the last week in December, I aim to get back on the submitting-to-editors train if there hasn't been progress on the agent front.

Plop, plop. Fizzle, fizzle?

I've made some headway in my third attempt to write a picture book about James. While running the other morning I came up with an opening line I'm really happy with -- "The blah-blah in the blah-blah blah of Taos, New Mexico, was blah blah blah blah-blah of blah [James' name goes here]."

From there grew a page and a half about an episode that I'd given just a paragraph to in my first version. Again, things seem to be going well -- rhythm's fair, voice is OK, James' youthful flirtation with Communism (intriguing, but tricky and irrelevant) has been avoided.

But now I've plopped in a couple of big chunks of text from each of the first two versions, two different tellings of the same key episode in James' life. The danger now is that my momentum will fizzle, that I'll slip from writing with a fresh eye and clear focus on this approach into squashing together and shoehorning in what I've already written for those previous versions.

However, assuming that 21-month-old F -- attempting to raid my bag at this very moment -- doesn't make off with my writing implements, I'll be armed with three red pens on my lunch hour today. Those should be enough for me to purge what didn't work in those previous versions and focus on the details that ought to carry over.

The King of England, Babe Didrikson, and Taos Pueblo

What could possibly tie George VI, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, and Taos Pueblo together? My research on James, a fact which amazes me to no end, especially considering that none of these elements were anywhere close to being in the picture when I began work on this project.

Taos Pueblo is the latest to come up, and I'm not sure how much I'll be able to find out through books, DVDs, etc. "Our people have a detailed oral history which is not divulged due to religious privacy," they say, which means I may have to visit in person. And that would be just too bad, wouldn't it?

"Eureka!" times two

On Friday, I found it -- the moment in the life of James, one of my biography subjects, when inspiration struck and he realized his mission in this world. The best part is, I got to read about that moment in his own handwriting, because he documented it in his journal at the time it happened.

He couldn't possibly have known the significance that moment would have for him over the next six or seven decades, but he was utterly moved by it. And so was I. I don't think I actually got goosebumps, but that was probably because I knew that passage in the journal was coming -- I'd read that segment in a book that dealt extensively (but not exclusively) with James' career.

But I didn't know how that moment fit into the broader context of his life at that time, and that's what was most thrilling about seeing the original source for myself. It took lots of willpower to keep from jumping ahead in the journal to the part where James had his epiphany, but it was rewarding -- the anticipation of his "Eureka!" moment, sharing his thoughts in the days and weeks preceding it, and getting to know him better through those less momentous moments made for a bigger payoff.

I have two "completed" picture book manuscripts that try to tell James' story but don't quite get it. And now it's tempting to just keep on researching and put off the effort of beginning my third approach, because while I know I've struck gold in that journal passage, I don't have the first idea what I'm going to do with it.

Must be time to let my subconscious earn its keep. Goodnight, all.

A day for the books

Yesterday will be hard to top.

For starters, news came that my manuscript for The Day-Glo Brothers -- stop me if you've heard this one already -- may actually be finally, finally finished. Or at least ready for release to the art director, which will mark the beginning of the illustration phase. It'll be exciting to finally have the art for this story exist somewhere other than just in my head. Anyway, I should know on Tuesday whether the manuscript requires any more fixing. I submitted my latest fixes at 11:00 Thursday night.

On to the Austin SCBWI conference. I arrived at the Austin airport just before noon to pick up agent Stephen Fraser (Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency). When I got there, to our mutual surprise, Frances Hill and Brian Yansky were there to pick up art director Cecilia Yung (Putnam). A few moments later, more surprise -- Mark Mitchell showed up to pick up art director David Caplan (HarperCollins). Our guests all arrived, along with editor Mark McVeigh (Dutton), so we headed en masse to the hotel, and then en masse minus one to a terrific lunch. I never cease to be surprised by how smart and clever and kind and fun children's literature people are.

Then I had time to do a little more research on James at the Center for American History and to browse around Book People (is there any kind of writing that M.T. Anderson can't do well?) . After that, I resumed my chauffeur duties by giving a few of the out-of-towners a ride to an evening get-together honoring them and the locals involved in making the conference happen.

Last night I joked that there will be more volunteers at today's conference than there will be regular attendees. And that's an overstatement, but not by all that much. If you've never volunteered to help pull one of these off, you and your local chapter are both missing out. There's plenty of work to be done, and there are payoffs galore for you. This morning, I already feel like I've gotten my money's worth, and the conference is still three hours away.

Hands-on, in-person, beyond books

I resumed my research on James today, after a hiatus of a month or more. Found some insightful stuff that helps explain how he became the man he was. I just love the opportunity that UT's Center for American History provides for me to do some hands-on research. Ah, the joys and benefits of living in Austin...

Speaking of hands-on research, I did something yesterday I should have done long ago as part of my work on The Day-Glo Brothers: I bought a black light. (The brothers' early experiments were with UV fluorescence; their development of daylight fluorescence came later.) My six-year-old loves it, as do the rest of us. We all crowded into a tiny closet, just us and the lamp with a black-light bulb, to see what would glow. I have a feeling we'll be scavenging through the house to see what else we can find that lights up under UV.

And speaking of Austin, last week I found a powerful picture book about Austin I'd never heard of: The Tree That Would Not Die. Published a decade ago, it tells the story of the land and the city that grew here from the perspective of the Treaty Oak, the historic tree famously poisoned in 1989. The book addresses the poisoning in simple, chilling fashion, but ends on a hopeful note borne out by the tree's continued survival.

Can you believe that I've lived in Austin since shortly after the poisoning, but have never been to see the tree? I'll be correcting that, soon as the high temperatures drop below 90.

All revising, (almost) all the time

When I finished a critique of a friend's novel at 6:45 Saturday a.m., I officially cleared my other projects out of the way as best as I can so I can focus on my Day-Glo revisions. At least for now. I've got my Smith manuscript to touch up a bit more and send off, but only after I receive a couple more critiques. Aside from that and the occasional blog post, I'm all about revising.

But... but... but...

I couldn't resist replying this morning when I heard from a would-be source for my James project -- a guy I'd contacted over a year ago but had never been able to get in touch with. (Let's hear it for long-term projects!) But it was just a small e-mail, and surely whatever conversation that develops -- by phone or otherwise -- won't take up too terribly much of my time.

Oh, and I also picked up, um, four novels today at the library (during a lunch hour otherwise devoted to revising, I swear): Avi's The Mayor of Central Park, Dan Gutman's Honus & Me and -- to my surprise and bewilderment -- Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak and Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now. Wasn't I just telling someone over the weekend that I couldn't care less about YA right now? I guess by "right now," I meant Saturday afternoon, because here I am Monday evening, totally absorbed in Speak.

All hail the transformative powers of the Don Cossack Choir!

Until my lunch hour today, I had never heard of the Don Cossack Choir. But when I was researching James at the Center for American History at UT, I came across a 74-year-old letter suggesting that they may have played an instrumental (or at least a capella) role in shaping the life of my Texas-born subject.

It's things like this that make me wonder why anyone bothers to make stuff up...

From here to taciturnity

This morning I finished a draft of Chapter 4 in a chapter-book biography of a fellow I'll call Smith. It's been slow going, and not just because I'm a poky writer. I've got a knack for stringing quotes together, but Smith -- as fascinating a character as he was -- never said much. He was taciturnity personified. I don't know that he ever wrote a letter. He was in the public eye from his early 20s until his mid-80s and didn't even give a published interview until he was in his 50s. After that, what he did have to say was not terribly introspective, and fairly inarticulate.


Contrast that with another biography subject I've been working on. We'll call this other guy James. James wrote, and wrote, and wrote. Also in the public eye from his early 20s to his mid-80s, James came in writing and kept it up until nearly the end -- books, magazine articles, radio shows, documentaries, and massive amounts of letters. Lately I've been reading letters he wrote as a teenager -- the actual letters, not reproductions -- and feeling infinitely more like a historian than I ever did while pursuing my B.A. in history at the University of Texas.


What's most interesting to me is how spending a lunch hour researching James seems to fuel me up for writing about Smith the next morning. I just wonder how, once I finish writing about Smith, I'll ever