The Emu’s Debuts launch party for Be a Changemaker

Emu's Debuts bannerOne of the most reward­ing expe­ri­ences of being a debut author has been par­tic­i­pat­ing on the Emu’s Debuts group blog (for clients of Erin Murphy Lit­er­ary Agency who are in between deal and pub­li­ca­tion). Last week, my fab­u­lous friends and fel­low Emus threw me THE BEST LAUNCH PARTY EVER to cel­e­brate the upcom­ing release of BE A CHANGEMAKER! (They went a week ear­ly, since Lind­sey Lane’s EVIDENCE OF THINGS UNSEEN is releas­ing at the same time. I’ll be help­ing them cel­e­brate that launch next week!)
They were all so gen­er­ous, authen­tic, and hard-work­ing in bring­ing the dai­ly posts to life (as they are with every­thing they do!), and I was thrilled anew every morn­ing to see what they had put togeth­er. In case you missed them, please go check out their posts. They’re fun, infor­ma­tive, and inspiring!
Here’s the roundup:
On Mon­day, Lind­sey Lane (with some back­up sup­port from Tara Dair­man), post­ed Wel­come to the World: BE A CHANGEMAKER by Lau­rie Ann Thomp­son!, which includ­ed sto­ries of and inter­views with five oth­er Erin Mur­phy Lit­er­ary Agency authors who are chang­ing the world in their own mean­ing­ful ways:

Tues­day fea­tured sev­er­al videos com­piled by Megan Mor­ri­sonBE A CHANGEMAKER: Words of Wis­dom. The clips con­tain con­tri­bu­tions from fel­low Emu Debuts blog­gers offer­ing their own words of wis­dom, shar­ing quotes that moti­vate and inspire them, and giv­ing advice they wish they’d got­ten at the begin­ning of their jour­ney. Great stuff, and so per­son­al! It’s a great way to get to know these won­der­ful peo­ple a lit­tle better.
For the Wednes­day post, BE A CHANGEMAKER: Cel­e­brat­ing with Quotes!Jen­nifer Cham­b­liss Bert­man com­piled and cre­at­ed a col­lec­tion of gor­geous images fea­tur­ing quotes that inspire and moti­vate the mem­bers of the Emu’s Debuts blog team. If you want to spice up your Face­book or Pin­ter­est feeds (or your office walls!), there are some fan­tas­tic finds here. Plus, they includ­ed the expla­na­tions behind why the quotes are so mean­ing­ful for them, mak­ing them even more special.
For Thurs­day’s post, Pen­ny Park­er Kloster­mann, gave read­ers a sneak pre­view of Be a Change­mak­er with excerpts of the first 25 pages as well as the event plan­ning chap­ter. Her post, BE A CHANGEMAKER: A Tool for Change, gives a sense of how the book can be used as a tool by indi­vid­u­als, teams, and classrooms.
On Fri­dayTama­ra Ellis Smith closed out the par­ty with Music to Be A Change­mak­er By, an inspi­ra­tional and moti­vat­ing Spo­ti­fy playlist of songs rec­om­mend­ed by the Emu’s Debuts blog­gers, along with the expla­na­tions of why they includ­ed them. Span­ning gen­res and emo­tions, you’re sure to find some­thing of inter­est here–I know I did!
I’m so grate­ful to the awe­some authors at Emu’s Debuts! Thanks to them, the Be a Change­mak­er pre-launch week was bet­ter than I ever could have imag­ined. I’m look­ing for­ward to each and of every one of their debuts–coming soon!

Why write Be a Changemaker for teens?

To cel­e­brate the Unit­ed Nations’ Inter­na­tion­al Youth Day, I wrote a guest blog for the Beyond Words blog explain­ing why I wrote Be a Change­mak­er specif­i­cal­ly for young read­ers. Here’s an excerpt:

We know that young peo­ple have always been at the fore­front of soci­etal change. Ado­les­cence is a time when peo­ple begin to ques­tion and cri­tique the morals and stan­dards of the soci­ety in which they are liv­ing. Teens and young adults start to appre­ci­ate the com­plex­i­ties of social prob­lems and the trade­offs that come with var­i­ous solu­tions to those prob­lems. In addi­tion, young peo­ple are known for cre­at­ing, adopt­ing, and cir­cu­lat­ing the cul­ture of their times, be it the peaceniks of the 60s or the hip-hop move­ment of today.

Mod­ern youth, how­ev­er, are more empow­ered than ever to shape the world as they see fit…

To read the whole thing, click here.

Goodreads giveaway for Be a Changemaker ARCs

Goodreads buttonGood news: There’s a give­away going on right now on Goodreads for two ARCs (advance read­er copies) of Be a Change­mak­er! This is a pleas­ant sur­prise, because a) I did­n’t know there were any ARCs left, and b) the pub­lish­er set this up with­out me hav­ing to do any­thing (thank you, Simon & Schuster)!
If you’d like to try to win a copy for your­self, just click here. Hur­ry, though… the give­away will close to entries on August 19th. Good luck!

It’s the Be a Changemaker launch party!

BE A CHANGEMAKER cover

Please come celebrate the release of my first book:

BE A CHANGEMAKER cover

Sun­day, Sep­tem­ber 14th, at 2 p.m.

Seat­tle Cre­ative Arts Center
2601 NW Mar­ket St
Seat­tle, WA 98107
(Click here for direc­tions and park­ing information.

Eat, drink, min­gle, hear more about the book from the author, and—best of all—meet some local teens who are already chang­ing the world!

I hope to see you there!

If you can’t make it and would still like a signed copy, you can order from Secret Gar­den Books here (please indi­cate how you’d like it per­son­al­ized in the “oth­er notes about your order” field and leave an extra week or two for delivery).

First reviews for BE A CHANGEMAKER

BE A CHANGEMAKER cover

BE A CHANGEMAKER coverI’ve had great feed­back from friends all along (you know who you are–thank you!), but I’ve been anx­ious­ly await­ing that first third-par­ty judge­ment of BE A CHANGEMAKER: HOW TO START SOMETHING THAT MATTERS. The first pro­fes­sion­al reviews feel huge to me, kind of “make or break” moments, where the tone gets set for all that may fol­low for that par­tic­u­lar book. I doubt that’s actu­al­ly true, as most review­ers prob­a­bly pride them­selves on bold­ly stat­ing their own opin­ions no mat­ter what oth­ers before them have said, but it sure feels that way me. If noth­ing else, you can always point back at those first pos­i­tive reviews if sub­se­quent reviews are less than favor­able, right? So, you can imag­ine my huge sigh of relief when that first major pro­fes­sion­al review land­ed in my inbox, and it was­n’t com­plete­ly dreadful!
For me, the first one to come in was from Kirkus, some­what noto­ri­ous for not pan­der­ing to authors’ frag­ile egos. I pre­pared myself for the worst and opened the email. If you’d like to read their full review, click here, but here’s an excerpt:

“Teens look­ing to make a dif­fer­ence will find inspi­ra­tion as well as real-world strate­gies for real­iz­ing their dreams of being the change they want to see in the world.… Inspi­ra­tional as well as prac­ti­cal.
Kirkus ReviewsKirkus header

That one was soon fol­lowed by a sec­ond pos­i­tive review, from Com­pass Book Rat­ings. Their full review can be read here, but here are some quotes from it:

“Thor­ough, com­plete, orga­nized, on-target–pick an adjec­tive, because they all apply in this case.…
A superb ref­er­ence book that should be a sta­ple of libraries, school coun­selors, and any­one who rubs shoul­ders with young people.”
Com­pass Book Ratings

I’m hon­est­ly grate­ful to any­one who takes the time to read and review the book, regard­less of his or her opin­ion of it, but it is extreme­ly encour­ag­ing to have great reviews like this under my belt mov­ing for­ward. Thank you, Kirkus! Thank you, Com­pass Book Ratings!
 

On overnight success (Surprise! It’s a lot like failure.)

I post­ed over on the Emu’s Debuts blog yes­ter­day about what makes an “overnight suc­cess.” If you missed it, here’s a lit­tle excerpt:

Both of last week’s posts here were about fail­ure, or at least the con­stant per­ceived threat of fail­ure that so often makes it hard for us to move for­ward. I’m going to con­tin­ue the theme, but on a slight­ly dif­fer­ent note. Our own Emu Empress, Erin MUrphy, once said some­thing along the lines of, “For every suc­cess, there is a wait­ing peri­od that feels like fail­ure.” And in a post on this very blog almost three years ago, she fol­lowed that up with, “But it’s NOT! It’s just waiting!”
Roosevelt quote about failure and successWhen she wrote that post back in 2011, I’d only been with the agency for a few months. One year from now, I’ll have three books pub­lished. That doesn’t seem like very much wait­ing, espe­cial­ly to those famil­iar with the pace of the pub­lish­ing indus­try. Many of my writer friends have walked up to me and said some­thing to the effect of, “Wow, you’re on FIRE!” Some say things like, “I guess you’ve been busy late­ly!” Oth­ers ask, “So, what’s your secret?” as if I’m hold­ing out on them. A few say, “Boy, did you get lucky!” nev­er think­ing that some authors might be a lit­tle bit offend­ed by that. (I nev­er am: Yes, indeed, I have got­ten very, very lucky!)
So, in the inter­ests of dis­pelling myths and keep­ing things real, I thought it might be help­ful to break down my “overnight success:”

You can read the rest of that post here.

Meet Changemaker Edward Jiang, founder of StudentRND

Edward Jiang

This is the sec­ond post in the series intro­duc­ing the amaz­ing young peo­ple who are pro­filed in my upcom­ing book, BE A CHANGEMAKER: HOW TO START SOMETHING THAT MATTERS (Beyond Words/Simon Pulse, Sep­tem­ber 2014). Today I’m intro­duc­ing Edward Jiang, founder of Stu­den­tRND, and giv­ing some behind-the-scenes details about our in-per­son interview.

Edward Jiang
Edward Jiang

Read more

Meet Changemaker Charles Orgbon III, founder of Greening Forward

Be a Changemaker cover

Today, I’m kick­ing off a series of blog posts that will intro­duce you to some of the amaz­ing young peo­ple who are pro­filed in my upcom­ing book, BE A CHANGEMAKER: HOW TO START SOMETHING THAT MATTERS (Beyond Words/Simon Pulse, Sep­tem­ber 2014). Each of the 18 chap­ters in the book includes a short piece about how one or more young peo­ple changed the world and their expe­ri­ences with the chap­ter top­ic, in par­tic­u­lar. I was able to inter­view most of them in per­son, via Skype, by phone, or by email, and I have so much more great stuff about them than would fit in the book–sort of like out-takes, only bet­ter! I hope you’ll enjoy “meet­ing” them here and read­ing more about them and their work.

Charles Orgbon III
Charles Org­bon III

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Exciting BE A CHANGEMAKER book news!

BE A CHANGEMAKER manuscript

I’ve had some recent excite­ment! In case you missed it over at Emu’s Debuts today (where I blogged about the duel­ing feel­ings of ela­tion and ter­ror that come with it all), here’s a quick recap…

  • I fin­ished the final author query round for BE A CHANGEMAKER:
BE A CHANGEMAKER manuscript
Not many tabs–yay!
  • I got per­mis­sion to share the cov­er for BE A CHANGEMAKER:BE A CHANGEMAKER cover
  • Friend and fel­low non­fic­tion author Mary Cronk Far­rell told me she down­loaded the advance read­er copy of BE A CHANGEMAKER from Net­Gal­ley, which means peo­ple are already read­ing it!

Things just got a lot more real, folks, in the best pos­si­ble ways. 🙂

2013: What a year!

EMLA Client Retreat group photo

I haven’t post­ed here for way too long, but 2013 turned out to be quite a year. I did man­age to squeeze in a few posts over at Emu’s Debuts, so I thought I’d share them here as a sort of roundup (and to par­tial­ly explain where I’ve been since the last post)…
In July, I had the amaz­ing expe­ri­ence of attend­ing my sec­ond Erin Mur­phy Lit­er­ary Agency client retreat, this time in Big Sky Mon­tana. Words can’t real­ly describe how won­der­ful these retreats are, but I post­ed a bit about it here.

EMLA Client Retreat group photo
The whole EMLA retreat gang (except me!)

Aside from that trip, I spent the sum­mer writ­ing, research­ing, writ­ing, inter­view­ing, writ­ing, revis­ing, writ­ing, revis­ing, revis­ing, and revis­ing to deliv­er the final man­u­script for BE A CHANGEMAKER. I wrote a bit about the process here.
A screen shot of the developmental edit
Tracked changes in the devel­op­men­tal edit stage

Despite the mad race to the fin­ish line, I feel real­ly good about how it all came togeth­er. And here’s a post about how it felt to get to THE END.
Done!
Then there was the dread­ed author pho­to, which actu­al­ly turned out to be sort of fun (and decent enough to share with the world, thank goodness!).

Laurie Thompson head shot

 
Oth­er news and high­lights from the year?

  • I got to see an ear­ly study for a scene from the pic­ture-book biog­ra­phy of Emmanuel Ofo­su Yeboah, illus­trat­ed by Sean Qualls.
  • The above book also FINALLY has a title, EMMANUEL’S DREAM!
  • I also got to see pre­lim­i­nary sketch­es for MY DOG IS THE BEST (sor­ry, I can’t share them here, but Paul Schmid’s illus­tra­tions are ADORABLE!).
  • I fin­ished anoth­er fic­tion pic­ture book man­u­script and it will soon be going out on sub­mis­sion (fin­gers crossed!).
  • I par­tic­i­pat­ed in and fin­ished PiBoId­Mo 2013.

Stay tuned for my next post on how I plan to tack­le 2014. 🙂

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