Launch party recap for Two Truths and a Lie: Histories and Mysteries

Bookstore window display

I want­ed to share some of my favorite pho­tos from the Two Truths and a Lie: His­to­ries and Mys­ter­ies launch par­ty last Sat­ur­day at Brick and Mor­tar Books:

Bookstore window displayThis is the win­dow dis­play that greet­ed us when we arrived at Brick and Mor­tar Books! So nice!!

Bookstore table displayThey had loads of books ready for sale!

book signing The sign­ing line starts to form.

Laurie Ann Thompson signing a bookFun sign­ing books!

signing lineSign­ing line in progress.

Bookstore endcap displayBrick and Mor­tar even had a full end cap display!

What a great day! A huge thank you to Brick and Mor­tar Books for being such an amaz­ing host and to every­one who was able to make it. Brick and Mor­tar Books still has signed copies of all of the books, so feel free to stop in if you need any for your col­lec­tion! =D

More good news from Brooks Global and Emmanuel’s Dream

Sev­er­al weeks ago I wrote about a school in North Car­oli­na, Brooks Glob­al Stud­ies, which had select­ed Emmanuel’s Dream as their all-school read and then had Emmanuel come vis­it them in per­son! (If you haven’t seen it yet, please go check out the video. It’s pret­ty amazing!)
Recent­ly, I came across this addi­tion­al piece of the sto­ry, which I had­n’t been aware of… In addi­tion to the shared read­ing expe­ri­ence and the inspi­ra­tional vis­it from Emmanuel, the Brooks Glob­al Stud­ies school com­mu­ni­ty took things one step fur­ther by orga­niz­ing a char­i­ty bike dri­ve and were able to col­lect 210 donat­ed bicy­cles! The bikes will be shipped to Ghana, refur­bished by a repair shop oper­at­ed by peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, and then put up for sale there.
What an inspir­ing, reward­ing event for every­one involved. Way to go, Brooks Glob­al Stud­ies! Click here to read the full arti­cle, and be sure to scroll through the pic­ture slideshow!

H. Scott Hoffmann/Greensboro News & Record

Summer 2015 roundup

The days are (final­ly) get­ting cool­er and damper here in the Pacif­ic North­west and most of the kids are back in school, so it seems like a good time to reflect on the summer.
I typ­i­cal­ly don’t get to do much writ­ing-relat­ed work over the sum­mer, since the kids are home from school and the sun is shin­ing, but this sum­mer was filled with fun and excit­ing author events!

2015-07-11 Andersons Bookshop kids books extravaganza 2First, I got to par­tic­i­pate in a huge author pan­el at Ander­son­’s Book­shop in Naperville, IL. The kids’ books extrav­a­gan­za on July 11th includ­ed some of my best friends in the indus­try, includ­ing Chris­tine Hayes, Ruth Bar­shaw, Lyn­da Hunt, Keyan Atte­ber­ry, Jen­nifer Cham­b­liss Bert­man, Tara Dair­man, Janet Fox, and Amy Finnegan. It was even more won­der­ful because I got to meet the very spe­cial some­one who wrote one of my all-time favorite reviews Emmanuel’s Dream, Kee­gan Knott, and it was her birth­day, too! I got a hug. It’s a day I won’t soon for­get, let me tell you. Thank you Ander­son­’s and Kee­gan for the won­der­ful mem­o­ries! =D

EMLA costume partyNext I head­ed to the Erin Mur­phy Lit­er­ary Agency client retreat at The Abbey Resort at Lake Gene­va. I can’t even begin to explain what a pow­er­ful, amaz­ing this annu­al event is for me, and this year was no dif­fer­ent. We do lots of fun, sil­ly things like the cos­tume par­ty, but we also do a lot of learn­ing, net­work­ing, shar­ing, con­nect­ing, grow­ing, and more. I feel so blessed to be a part of this community!
2015-07-12 Mustard Museum2015-07-12 St LouisIMG_2675From there I con­tin­ued on down to St. Louis to sign books at ILA and con­duct a research trip. Our first stop was the Nation­al Mus­tard Muse­um.

What am I research­ing there, you ask? Well, you’ll just have to wait and see! St. Louis was beau­ti­ful, ILA was a lot of fun, and I even got to go to
Cyn­thia Levin­son’s book launch par­ty for Watch Out for Fly­ing Kids while I was there. Plus, the research trip was a huge suc­cess. I can’t wait to get back to work on that manuscript!

I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to appear at sev­er­al sum­mer camps, includ­ing one on being a change­mak­er and anoth­er on ear­ly lit­er­a­cy, which I loved, and I did inter­views on two dif­fer­ent live radio programs.

IMG_2956Last but cer­tain­ly not least, I also spoke at the Pacif­ic North­west Library Asso­ci­a­tion (PNLA) annu­al con­fer­ence in Port­land with two of my favorite non­fic­tion authors, Mary Cronk Far­rell and Eliz­a­beth Rusch, and I did my first sto­ry­time for My Dog Is the Best at Uni­ver­si­ty Book­store in Bellevue.
It was a busy, ful­fill­ing sum­mer, and now I’m look­ing for­ward to some qui­et writ­ing time!
 

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