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Waiting for reviews to come in is always a scary process. With publication of Adventure at Simba Hill just weeks away, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the people who read the book will actually like it!
A couple of weeks ago, I saw that Kirkus had reviewed the book. Kirkus is known for what are often very negative, even sarcastic reviews, so I feared the worst. Fortunately, the worst did not happen. Their take on the book is hidden behind a subscription wall until publication date, when it goes online for all to see. Fortunately, a local library had a subscription, and I was able to see what they were going to say about the book. And it was quite a nice review! Not gushing, but definitely favorable. So that was a relief.
Over the past week I’ve been visiting some of the Hennepin County Libraries that had received advance readers copies of Simba for distribution to young readers. And the early word is that readers really like the book. Hooray! One of the things I’m hearing more and more is that young fans like learning about the international locations that Kari and Lucas visit. And some of them seem to be excited about the archaeological details included in this particular title.
So, fingers crossed, I may have a career as a novelist ahead of me after all!
Until a few weeks ago, the publication of the third Kari and Lucas mystery seemed a long way away. Now, March 3 is – yikes! – coming right up! I’ve even had the pleasure of holding my first copy of the hardback in my hot little hand.
The book will be in stores March 3, and I’m really looking forward to my two publication parties: the March 3 event at Once upon a Crime Mystery Bookstore in Minneapolis, and the March 5 party at Red Balloon here in my neighborhood of Saint Paul. I’m hoping to meet a lot of readers at both locations.
For those of you who may not be near an independent (or other) bookstore where the new title will be on the shelves in the first days after publication, take a look at both Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Both online booksellers have Simba Hill available for advance sale. Buy the book now, and it will arrive on the date of publication. And it’s now on sale at Target.com! Who knew Target was getting into the book biz?
What do you think?
The prize for most exotic place I’ve ever been, hands down, goes to the Maasai village I visited when I was in Kenya on safari. It was not far outside the Masai Mara game park, and it was known as a place where visitors were welcomed by Maasai residents. Perhaps there were other Maasai villages that accepted tourists and their dollars. I don’t actually know. All I know is that this was the one we visited.
(And yes, the differences in spelling between Maasai, for the people, and Masai Mara, for the game park, are intentional.)
I learned much about the Maasai way of life in this village. How they built their huts and the fence around the huts, the meaning of their livestock within their culture, their somewhat nomadic traditions, the effects of the ongoing drought on their way of life, gender roles within the tribe– those were just a few of the things we learned from the Maasai man with the astonishingly British accent who seemed to run the village.
Although the sights and sounds and smells we encountered were absolutely fascinating, I felt, as did most of those traveling in my safari group, that there was something very unreal about the place. Years after I was there, that sense was confirmed by Raza Visram, the tour operator mentioned elsewhere on this blog, who became my authority for all things Kenyan as I wrote Adventure at Simba Hill. He, a native of Mombasa, Kenya, said such villages are largely manufactured to cater to the tourist trade. That didn’t surprise me, but that’s not exactly the way I portrayed this little community in my book.
I am attaching a photo of a jumping contest performed for us by the young men said to be residents of the village. (Were they residents? Weren’t they? I’m not sure.) And that very exotic, very good-looking young man with the great hairdo who is jumping in the photo plays a vitally important role in the plot. As time goes on, I will post more photos from this visit, some featuring equally intricate hairdos on other good-looking young Maasai men.
As an extra added attraction, I’m attaching a photo of a boy wearing a lion’s head. Real boy. Real lion. This particular scene from the village also appears on the pages of the book I call simply Simba, the third installment in the Kari and Lucas adventures.
When I speak in schools or to other groups about the third book in the Kari and Lucas series, Adventure at Simba Hill, someone in the audience is bound to ask, “Have you actually visited Africa?”
The answer is: Have I ever!
My trip was in 2004. That seems a long time ago now, but it was only about 3 1/2 years before I started writing the book. I knew even before I left that I was going to write about it, so I took copious notes, and recorded almost everything I did and saw in photos.
I went with a group led by my sister-in-law Patty Fares. (My cousin Tom Runholt and his wife, Muriel, were also among the travelers, so it was something of a family event.)
We began in Kenya, where we visited the Lake Nakuru and Masai Mara game parks. In Tanzania we visited the Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti National Park. I chose to set my story on the Masai Mara, where our young sleuths, Kari and Lucas, solve a mystery involving the disappearance of artifacts from an archaeological site.
In common with probably hundreds of thousands of others who have visited Africa, I was left with a tremendous longing to go back. As their trip comes to a close, Kari and Lucas experience that deeply felt desire to return. I am hoping that those who read the book will be left with at least some small understanding of this emotion.
Because my trip took place several years before my writing, I leaned heavily on Raza Visram, safari and tour planning director for the multiple award-winning AfricanMecca safari travel company. (Very prestigious awards, including a designation as National Geographic Adventure’s “Best Adventure Travel Companies On Earth!” Find them at AfricanMecca.com). I can’t speak highly enough of Raza and the help he provided throughout my process.
Over the next weeks, I’m going to be blogging about some of my experiences and posting some of my favorite pictures from that adventure, including a lot of things that actually made it into my story. Since the book is called Adventure at Simba Hill – well, the starting point was obvious. Plus a shot of my closest encounter with an African animal. Nothing compared to what Kari and Lucas experience!
Anyone out there remember The Lucretia Project? It began in fiction when, at the end of The Mystery of the Third Lucretia, Lucas’s grandmother and, surprisingly, The Fair Camellia herself started raising money to help the women living in Amsterdam’s Quarter make better lives for themselves and their children. Fortunately, this fictional account does not seem to be the last were going to hear of this worthy effort.
As reported on this blog many months ago, The Lucretia Project has been brought back to life as Project Lucretia by Grace and Laurel, two Saint Paul Kari and Lucas enthusiasts. Conceived last spring, the idea is now taking shape as the two sixth-graders plan a fund-raising campaign to – well, let’s take a language directly from their PowerPoint presentation:
Project Lucretia is a non-profit organization that raises money for various charities that go to causes regarding preventing and treating domestic violence and abuse and helping women in tough situations turn around their lives.
The three of us plan to meet after the holidays to talk about exactly which nonprofits should benefit from their efforts, and how best to go about raising money.
I’ll keep everyone on this blog informed about what we decide and how you can help. Meanwhile, what an inspiration grace and Laurel are for all of us!
Supposedly, the Create a World/Create a Mystery curriculum is based on sound pedagogy: allowing children to tap into their vivid imaginations and fresh, exciting ideas can turn some reluctant writers into students eager to tell their stories. But I have an ulterior motive: I love listening to the kids read their creations to their classmates! And the part that never ceases to amaze me is that they come up with these incredible, often fully fleshed out ideas in only seven minutes!
As I will say in a later post, after I hear a lot of these little snippets, I have trouble remembering them. But let me give you an example. This was a story – actually, in this case, book jacket copy and an excerpt – handed to me by an enthusiastic Kinkaid student. She had created it in the seven minutes of time I give students to create a world of their choosing, and a problem, a puzzle, or a mystery within that world.
Kayleigh lives a not-so-normal life at a not-so-normal boarding school for girls. In fact, she is an elite spy in training! Halfway through her sophomore year, her father goes on a mission and never comes back. Desperate to discover the truth behind what was said to be her father’s death, Kayleigh discovers a shocking truth. In a story that takes place just north of Salida, Colorado, will Kayleigh survive her worst nightmare ever?
Excerpt: “Kayleigh, come to my office,” Mom ordered after dinner.
I followed her up the grand staircase. Inside her office, she said, “Kayleigh, Dad isn’t coming home.”
This gives you a sense of the fabulous stories fashioned by students at Kinkaid and Grace Presbyterian, the two schools I visited earlier this week in Houston, Texas. Indeed, it could have been written by a student at any of the schools I’ve visited.
· I loved the story set in an amazingly detailed world in the far future, where everything had been reduced to acronyms such as MNA: Morning Nutritional Allowance.
· A young woman wrote wonderfully of an entire culture (with names for both the world and its inhabitants) existing just beneath the surface of the earth, accessible only through fissures at the base of cliffs and in dry landscapes.
· A young man wrote some terrific book flap copy for a nonfiction work about the current presidential administration. I didn’t agree with his viewpoint, but the writing was splendid.
The award for most memorable probably goes to the Kinkaid student who wrote a compelling, extremely well-written short-short story beginning with “Cut!” – or some such exclamation from the world of filmmaking. In it, a director is trying to wring a good performance out of a young starlet, who, within the seven-minute writing period, manages to get her face chomped off by a paper raccoon!
There were many great first lines. I love those that, like the last example, bring us into the middle of an ongoing scene. But the very, very best first line I heard in Houston came from a student at Grace: “In the beginning, God created the heavens, the earth, and baseball.”
Another memorable line, though not the first line of a story, came from a young woman at Kincaid who wrote about a character who had just witnessed her mother’s murder at the hands of a mugger in Central Park. The line: “My throat hurt from the tears I was holding back.”
There were many stories vying for top honors in each of the two locations. A grizzly bear in Wisconsin. A futuristic story in which the hero is keeping a journal on the old-fashioned medium of paper. The cop at the murder scene on Broadway in New York. And so many more wonderful, vivid creations.
But if forced to choose, at Kinkaid the award would go to the young man who wrote so compellingly and so beautifully of the dog and its master, separated by thousands of miles, now searching for one another, “drawn together like magnets.”
And at Grace Presbyterian, I would have to single out the story that featured Cinderella, with a glass slipper that was Buzz Lightyear’s helmet; Sleepy, the dwarf from Sleeping Beauty; the rat Ratatouille; and the wand of Harry Potter that ultimately brings them all together.
Kids, you all did great!
UFFDA Revisited
I blogged earlier about my experience at Visitation, where the kids met me with signs saying UFFDA, a Scandinavian expression I had once named as my favorite word. Well, it happened again at Kinkaid. And the kids who put this Uffda campaign together had the idea before they read my blog. Once again I was treated to multiple recurrences of Uffda: the napkins at two lunches, huge signs at my assembly presentation, and even an Uffda mug as part of my thank you gift. I’m using it now for my coffee. Obviously, I’m never going to live this Uffda business down – but then, why would I want to?
So I’m Not the World’s Fastest Learner
Some time ago I blogged about a wonderful opportunity to work with fifth and sixth graders at Visitation School in Mendota Heights, Minnesota. That was my first experience using my Create a World/Create a Mystery curriculum. Maybe because it was the first time, maybe because I met with only one classroom full of kids, I remembered a lot of the stories the kids had come up with. There were so many good ones. Many more than I was able to relate in the blog.
Not long after that, I had a chance to work with fifth, sixth and some seventh grade students at Susan B. Anthony Middle School in Minneapolis. Awesome, vibrant kids, many of whom had great ideas and fashioned them into wonderfully imaginative stories. A few weeks later I had the great privilege of appearing as visiting author in conjunction with the annual book sale at Saint Paul Academy-Summit School, right here in my neighborhood. I spent a wonderful day there, once again treated to stories created and read aloud by terrifically inventive kids. Many of their tales made me laugh, a few grossed me out, and, as in the other schools before and after, a surprising number revealed true talent.
But can I remember them? No way. Between Anthony and SPA, there were so many pieces of writing that they all became a blur. Wasn’t there a terrific story about a land of cats? And who wrote the story about the frogs? Many set in the future were distinct at the time, but after hearing maybe fifteen stories set in the future in a single day, they blended together. There were variations on the theme of zombies, I remember, some set in Candyland, and one very gory tale about Elmo, of all things. One particularly vivid reading involved a girl who witnesses the murder of an old woman on a New York street and must now hide from the bad guys. Wasn’t there a historical mystery set in Sweden?
It took me two more schools, both of them in Houston, before I was finally able to figure out that I have to write these things down to remember them! Duh! So from now on, I visit classrooms with writing materials in hand.
Here’s a challenge to anyone whose class I have attended. If you’re a student, send me what you wrote, send me the fully fleshed out story that resulted from what we started in class, or send me just the idea of the world and the puzzle that you shaped into the story. If you’re a teacher, send me a reminder of the stories you found especially memorable, or send me the continued stories your kids are writing. I love these works created or begun in the classes I visit, and I feel terrible that I have lost so many of them!
This morning I had an absolutely awesome visit with fourth and fifth grade classes at Visitation School in Mendota Heights (a suburb of Saint Paul) where I was greeted by a sea of signs saying UFFDA. The kids had found a link to an interview in which I had said that Uffda was my favorite word. One of the kids asked me why it was my favorite. Well, why wouldn’t it be?
Anyway, the kids were totally epic. They had visited the Minnesota Center for Book Arts at The Loft yesterday, and had made their own gorgeous journals. So we used the journals to write a story. First step: create a world and a mystery. Unbelievable ideas from these kids. We had a ghost at a sleepover in a candy castle, an African chieftain kidnapped by his brother who wanted to take power, the theft of a covered wagon in the 19th century, a haunted bridge at a Minnesota campsite, a story with fairies and a character that was half spider and half octopus – well, you get the idea. I wish I could write down all of them. Every single one of them was great. Kids just have incredible imaginations.
We went through another step or two, then the students developed what they had into very short stories or first paragraphs of longer works, and the ones I heard were marvelous. One young woman started a story about vampires that was downright publishable. Two of the kids in the class were writing books and wanted to know how to get them published. Man, what a group!
Oh, and last night I got a message through my website from one of the students saying she was really excited she was going to meet me today. Only she had written the word really 140 times in a row. Priceless!
I love school visits! Bring ‘em on. The more the merrier.
THINKING ABOUT SCOTLAND
Later today I’m heading to Duluth, Lake Superior’s most prominent port. Piper and I will be there for a couple of days, looking at the lake, doing research for the book I’m working on, getting some more chapters under my belt. You would think I would be thinking about that, right? But no, I’m thinking about Scotland, and my travels doing research for Rescuing Seneca Crane.
This is probably in part because I have acquired quite a number of Facebook friends from Scotland in other parts of Great Britain, and when I see their posts, often about their own travels, I am reminded of my Scottish adventures. I was there twice within a year. One of those trips was exactly four years ago. Four years ago right now, in fact. First visiting the Edinburgh Festival at the end of August, then northward into what is still a somewhat wild land of islands and Highlands.
Scotland is a haunting place. The landscape is dramatic, the weather even more so. And its history, which even Scots will admit is soaked in blood, somehow inhabits the place.
The photo below gives you some sense of Scotland in all of its drama. This is a picture I took of Eilean Donan Castle, one of the most famous structures of its kind in Scotland. This was the model for the castle that plays such an enormous part in Seneca. Mind you, for the book I made a few architectural additions, like an outer wall.
In one of the scenes, I described the mist coming in and spreading over the castle in fingers. You can see it for yourself here.
Can you see why I want to go back and visit Scotland again? It gets hold of you. Or, at least, it has hold of me.
