PUTTING WORDS DOWN ON PAPER: Celebrate Earth Day With Pictures

Come check out Kathy Stemke's book on tour - E :)

PUTTING WORDS DOWN ON PAPER: Celebrate Earth Day With Pictures: Welcome to the first day of award winning author Kathy Stemke’s book tour for TROUBLE ON EARTH DAY! Her charming picture book, which doubl...

SCASL conference update

Overall, I consider this is a successful event and we are planning on being at next year's event as well, which is on the calendar for March 6 through the 8. It will be held in Columbia and Sybil has already booked our hotels. Sarah and I will be staying at the Hampton Inn Vista and Sybil will be staying at the Embassy Suites (Sybil's husband works for the Hilton group of hotels, so she can discounted rooms for events like this - $29 or $39/night - yeah - who wouldn't take advantage of booking rooms a year in advance?).

I sold ten copies of State of Successes and two copies of Finally Home and maybe eight or ten bookworms. I did sell one extra chance for the afghan drawing in addition to the chances I gave away with each book sale. I also talked about the plan of going interactive ebook for the state series and the librarians all think this is a great idea.

Basically this is in the baby stage but Heather and I have talked about it and she is in the process of developing the prototype for the interactive ebooks. I'm not sure how much we would sell the apps or whatever we come up with for the ebook program for and not sure how we will market it but all that will happen as things develop.

We were right next to the Scholastic booth and they were a busy booth because the librarians were using all their "Scholastic bucks" to add new books to their libraries. Sybil came up with a similar idea for our group, "SC Author Connection", to help get us in the schools around the state of SC. We talked with the ladies in the Scholastic booth and they suggested that we try to get in the schools at the same time that Scholastic book fairs were occurring and that way we would feed off each other, and we can offer them something that Scholastic can't - authors to do book signings and presentations/workshops because the authors through Scholastic are very expensive and schools can't pay for them (at $5000/event, I guess that's a bit much). So we are going to start recruiting a few more authors to join our group and participate in book fairs. This will be a growth over the next year and we hope to build up to a group of ten authors from different parts of the state so that we would be available everywhere. We are going to create a flyer/order form and a brochure for our group to be sent to the schools in advance.

Sybil had great sales (last I heard was over 35, and could have been close to 40) and Sarah had pretty decent sales (I didn't ask her what her final count was but it seems she sold over 20 books over the course of the three days). I was the one who sold the least amount but I think in the long run the contacts and school visits will be worth it.

Anyway, I'll keep you posted on what takes place with the SC Author Connection and where the JGDS series goes. Stay tuned - Ma America :)

SCASL Conference

If you happen to be a school librarian and will be attending the SCASL conference next week (March 14 - 16, 2012), stop by booth 25 and visit the SC Author Connection (Elysabeth Eldering/Ma America, author of Finally Home and the JGDS, 50-state, mystery, trivia series; Sybil Nelson/Leslie Dubois, author of the middle grade level Priscilla the Great series and several YA novels; Sarah Renee, author of the middle grade level Saderia series).

Elysabeth will be doing a presentation on how to shelf faction, in particular the JGDS series, for the librarians on Thursday at 3:15.

Stop by and see what we have to offer. See you all there - E :)

Finis!

For those of you who don't speak French - that means finished. The afghan is done - all bordered up and ready for pictures. Unfortunately, daughter is in classes today so I'll have to wait until she gets home or when I get home from a meeting tonight for pictures to be taken and posted.

If someone else had made this afghan and was selling chances, I'd so be buying what I could afford. It is gorgeous. You can purchase your chances here or here - both under the events page. Chances are only $1.50 each or 5 for $6, 10 for $12 and 25 for $25 - the more you buy, the better chance you have of winning. Chances are on sale at live, in-person events as well and will be sold through the end of November with the drawing on December 1 and afghan sent out around the 7th of December. Tell your friends. Tell everyone you know. Thanks for your support - Ma America & the JGDS - :)

Afghan update (should be last one)

For all intents and purposes, the red/white/blue afghan is completed save the border. I have four rows (two white and two blue) left to do but each row is taking me upwards of 2 hours to complete since I'm double crocheting in every stitch around the squares (on the open granny squares, two double crochets go into the spaces and then a double crochet everywhere else; the corners get one double crochet, a chain and a second double crochet (closing up the holes a bit)). I've got the tickets, receipt books and everything but pictures of the afghan ready to go. My next posting on the afghan will be the finished project's pictures. As large as it has turned out, I'm trying to figure out the best way to take pictures to get full view of the afghan's size and pattern (the alternating open/solid squares and the red/white/blue alternating colors), so once all that is figured out, then pictures will be posted.

I've decided that in addition to purchasing chances for the afghan that for every book purchase either through the website or in-person, the purchaser will receive one chance with additional chances available for purchase. You can find the link to purchase chances on both websites, the JGDS one and Ms. Elysabeth's other writing site under the events link.

Good luck to everyone who enters to win the afghan. See you all in the postings - Mrs. E & the JGDS :)

Series update

I've been thinking of some ideas to make my stories more fun and interesting for the kids. With this technological age, I've felt that the stories are flat and are not really getting the participation from the readers as I had envisoned. So I'm talking with Heather and thinking we will go a different route for future books, so right now, new stories are on hold. I will keep you updated when I decide what route I'm going with the stories and changes as they happen. Until then, just keep reading and if you have any ideas to share that would make the series more fun for kids to read or how to incorporate the stories in your classroom, please don't hesitate to leave me a message or you can send me an email to eeldering (at) gmail (dot) com - thanks - Ma America :)

Afghan update

I've had all the squares for the rows sewn together for a whlie now and had two rows sewn together and another two row section started; well, this evening I got those two rows together. I have one more section of two rows to sew together and then to put the sections together. Add a border of red, white and blue all around and then it will be completed. I'm ready to post pictures of the completed afghan but am afraid it won't look good doing the whole thing - but I'll see what I can do to get some pictures posted here soon.

Don't forget this is a raffle - one chance = $1.50; ten chances = $12 and with any state book purchase you get a chance. If you need to find the pay buttons for the chances, you can find them on the events pages of either the JGDS website or on Ms. Elysabeth's website. Drawing to be held December 1 with afghan mailed out around December 7th.

Good luck to all who enter - Ma America :)