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Laurie Ann Thompson

appearances

What I’ve Been Up To This Month

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The month isn’t even over yet, but so much has been packed into the last few weeks it feels more like two months already! That’s not exact­ly an excuse for neglect­ing the blog, but, you know, life hap­pens. Anyway…

Beachside Nonfiction Workshop

I start­ed out the month at the Beach­side Non­fic­tion Work­shop with Can­dace Flem­ing & Jen­nifer Swan­son. It was amaz­ing! The fac­ul­ty were all stel­lar, the loca­tion was gor­geous, and the atten­dees were love­ly. It was fun hang­ing out with oth­er non­fic­tion geeks for an entire week­end. We all strug­gled to answer the “So, what do you write?” ques­tion, how­ev­er, since we can usu­al­ly just get away with “Non­fic­tion,” and have that be the end of it! I did­n’t take near­ly enough pho­tos, but here’s the view from my hotel balcony…

Yes, it was hard work. There were a lot of ses­sions, and they were most­ly mas­ter lev­el, plus net­work­ing and cri­tiques. I came away with so much use­ful infor­ma­tion and new ideas to apply to my works in progress. There were obvi­ous­ly some oth­er perks, too! 

Seattle Reading Council Appearance

In the mid­dle of the month, some of the mem­bers of my cri­tique group (and all agency-mates at Erin Mur­phy Lit­er­ary, as it turns out!), did an appear­ance at the Seat­tle Read­ing Coun­cil. It was a billed as a “Books and Choco­late” event… what could be bet­ter?! We each talked about our books and process and then took ques­tions. The crowd was most­ly teach­ers and librar­i­ans, so it made for a won­der­ful evening of shar­ing book love (and choco­late!) among like­mind­ed new friends. 

School visits

I had an ele­men­tary school vis­it where I got to talk to sev­er­al third-grade class­es about my writ­ing jour­ney, grit, and writ­ing with emo­tion, as well as sev­er­al fifth-grade class­es about eval­u­at­ing sources and spot­ting fake news. It was an awe­some vis­it with super-engaged audi­ences, but alas, no pho­tos. You’ll have to take my word for it!

I have anoth­er vis­it com­ing up ear­ly in June (the last one of the school year!), so I’ve been mak­ing sure every­thing is ready for that one, too. 

SCBWI-WWA Spring Conference

Final­ly, I attend­ed and helped with the SCBWI West­ern Wash­ing­ton’s spring con­fer­ence, Imag­ine That! It was a great week­end: hear­ing from inspir­ing speak­ers, get­ting feed­back on one of my works in progress from a pow­er­house edi­tor, and catch­ing up with author and illus­tra­tor friends in the indus­try. I’m still soak­ing it all up and pro­cess­ing what was said! Good stuff.

Book Releases!

Along with all of that I’ve been get­ting ready for the Two Truths and a Lie: His­to­ries and Mys­ter­ies paper­back release on May 21 AND prepar­ing for the upcom­ing new release of Two Truths and a Lie: Forces of Nature on June 25th! I’ve designed and ordered post­cards and swag, sched­uled social media announce­ments, and made oth­er plans to get the word out. 

TTL: Histories and Mysteries cover
TTL: Forces of Nature cover
 

Works in Progress…

And, of course, there are those works in progress, too! Ear­li­er this month I sub­mit­ted both a non­fic­tion pic­ture book revi­sion and a graph­ic nov­el pro­pos­al to my agent. I’m cur­rent­ly revis­ing a non­fic­tion pic­ture book, a fic­tion pic­ture book, and a mid­dle-grade non­fic­tion man­u­script. I’m also work­ing on a brand-new non­fic­tion pic­ture book draft and a young-adult non­fic­tion pro­pos­al. Busy, busy!

Yes, I do love my job. More so every day, in fact! =D

Upcoming appearance: Nonfiction Writing Workshop for Tweens

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I’m busy doing lots of pri­vate talks and appear­ances at schools and con­fer­ences this spring, but here’s one that is open to the pub­lic (espe­cial­ly tweens)!

On April 20, I’ll be pre­sent­ing a work­shop on non­fic­tion writ­ing for tweens (ages 8–12) in Both­ell, WA. Here’s the description:

Where do you find ideas and how do you decide what to write about? How do you get from there to the fin­ished prod­uct? This work­shop, pre­sent­ed by award-win­ning non­fic­tion author Lau­rie Ann Thomp­son, will answer those ques­tions and more! Thomp­son will explain the process of writ­ing com­pelling non­fic­tion, includ­ing research, plan­ning, draft­ing, revis­ing and edit­ing. The pre­sen­ta­tion will be inter­ac­tive and all par­tic­i­pants will have a chance to craft an engag­ing non­fic­tion piece of their own.

For more infor­ma­tion and to reg­is­ter, please vis­it the King Coun­ty Library Sys­tem’s event page. I hope I’ll see you there!

Summer 2015 roundup

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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!
 

Texas Book Festival 2015 authors announced!

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A record 300 authors will be appear­ing at the 2015 Texas Book Fes­ti­val, Oct. 17 and 18, and I’ll be one of them!
This is excit­ing for many reasons:
1) I get to talk about EMMANUEL’S DREAM!
2) I get to meet the illus­tra­tor of Emmanuel’s Dream, Sean Qualls, for the first time ever!
3) Many of my favorite authors and author friends will be there.
4) I love Austin.
5) I love readers.
I can’t wait!
Many thanks to the folks at Blue Slip Media and Schwartz & Wade/Penguin Ran­dom House for mak­ing it happen. 🙂

Indies First 2014, this Saturday!

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Indie's first logo
 
For the hol­i­day 2014 sea­son, best­selling author Neil Gaiman and musi­cian-author Aman­da Palmer called upon their fel­low authors to get behind Indies First and “vol­un­teer” at book­stores on Small Busi­ness Sat­ur­day (Nov. 29).
I could­n’t choose just one inde­pen­dent book­store to hang out in (we’re lucky to have so many to choose from where I live!), so I’ll be doing two shifts:

I’ll be sign­ing copies of BE A CHANGEMAKER and rec­om­mend­ing a few of my oth­er favorites, and I’ll be in great com­pa­ny with many oth­er local authors and illus­tra­tors. So, if you’re in the area, please stop by and say, “Hi!”
If you’re not in the area, be sure to check out the inter­ac­tive Indies First map to find a par­tic­i­pat­ing store near you!
 

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