First of all, Happy 2011!  Okay, I know I’m starting to sound old, but I can’t believe how quickly time is flying by.  It seems like only yesterday it was the ’90’s…and then the ’00’s and now the 10’s…when I was a kid we all thought we’d be zooming around in flying cars by 2011 because it sounded so space age.  Oh well.

Anyway, Christmas and New Year’s was a whirlwind as usual.  I’ve definitely been in my hectic mommy mode for a while now, not in my quiet, thoughtful writer mode, so it was fun to get my feet wet again by sending my own kids away for the morning so I could spend some time with a cool bunch of girls and their cool moms in Brooklyn, New York for a mother/daughter book club a couple of weeks ago.

The subject was Here’s How I See It/Here’s How It Is, my middle grade novel published a couple of years ago, now in paperback (handy for book clubs!)

It’s the first time I’ve Skyped for a book club.  Everything went really well.  I could see the girls right there on my computer and they could see me, and so it felt intimate even though we were at least 700 miles away from one another.  We talked about why I wrote the book and how I became a writer.  They had some great questions like, who is my favorite character in my book (a tie:  Junebug & Simon), and why I chose the plays I did for the book (they all had themes that were relevant to the story), and what other children’s books writers I admire (Patricia MacLachlan, Sharon Creech, Kate DiCamillo, Laurie Halse Anderson.)

There were lots of laughs, lots of smiles, lots of talk, lots of fun!

Here’s a picture of the group, and their email response after we’d said goodbye.

Heather, Thanks for talking to us. That was great. We loved your book!

Love,
Lola, Caitlin, Hannah Lola, Jesse, Juliana

Thank you, my cool Brooklyn girls and moms for reading my book and for making my first Skype book chat so much fun!  Have fun with the club, read lots of good books, and remember, always follow your heart and your dreams!