K.A. Okagaki

I’m starting to recover from Nationals…It was a really great conference this year,with almost too much information. As I did last year, I made a list of books that speakers and others talked about during the various sessions. If I had notes about why these books were pointed out, I included them. In no particular order, here are the books:

When Marian Sang: The True Recital of Marian Anderson – excellent non-fiction

The Voice That Challenged a Nation – also on Marian Anderson, a similar topic but told in different way from “When Marian Sang” Compare the two styles.

You Are My Cupcake by Joyce Wan – from the general buzz from multiple people. Simple elegant boardbook, simple effective ending.

A Place for Butterflies

Quest for the Tree Kangaroo – MG non fiction, shows a bigger topic. Note how photos and design reflect the bigger topic

A Rainbow of Animals – example of trade mass market non fiction. (Note yellow animals, green animals, etc)

I’ll Be There” by Holly Goldberg Sloan

The Fault in Our Stars – much anticipated new book by John Green

The Disenchantments by La Cour(?) – not released yet, but highly anticipated

Stars  by Mary Lyn Ray – note tall layout

General Dr Seuss apps in itunes store by Oceanhouse Media. Focus on education and learning, not so much on pure entertainment

Song of the Magdalene

Alligator Bayou

Stitches – graphic novel autobiography of David Small

Caps for Sale – PB

No David!

I Am Papa Snap

We Are the Ship

Hole in my Life

Frog and Toad – early reader

George and Martha – early reader

The Phantom Tollbooth – Norton Juster

The Watsons Go to Birmingham

ModelLand – Tyra Banks’ YA novel

A Year Down Yonder

Ghosts I Have Been

Hatchet 20th Anniversary Edition

I’m getting myself ready to go to LA for the summer SCBWI National conference. I’m looking forward to seeing some old friends, especially my good buddy Graeme. He’s always working on something interesting and I can’t wait to hear all about his latest project. I am still working on my non-fiction book about my aunt, and it seems like every week there is a new twist to the story. I got my grandfather’s fbi file in the mail recently – 107 pages – something that I never thought they’d release, but they did. 21 pages are duplicates, but still, what remains is dense and kind of mind boggling.  I’m hoping to talk to some other non-fiction writers while in LA and sit in a a few workshops that might help me figure out some of my manuscript’s rough spots.

Our guest dragon-lizard left us, but the chirping coming from pretty much every room in the house reminds me why we have a rabbit as a pet. Rabbits are vegetarians.  Lettuce and broccoli do not escape from the refrigerator in the middle of the night to party up a storm in hidden crevices throughout the house.  Crickets on the other hand…

I don’t know how many crickets managed to escape their cricket bin while they were here, but from the chirping, I’d say there are still about 6 crickets still in the house.  They chirp and sing until you get too close and then everything goes silent.  It’s maddening to be outsmarted by a cricket.

All in all, Stumpy was a good guest, quiet and well mannered, with only his unusual dietary needs to worry about. His crickets had to be acquired at Pet Kingdom, from the desk at the back of the shop under the sign LIVE FOOD. Peculiar to me, considering the shop had a free-range rooster wandering the aisles.  Even stranger was being asked what sized crickets I wanted. I said, “about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch I suppose.” The kid gave me a puzzled look and replied, “Is that the size of your frogs?” What frogs, I wondered. I explained that I had a dragon at home that I was babysitting, and then the kid asked, “How big is his head?” I would never have guessed that cricket size was directly related to the size of the lizard’s head. I pointed out a similar lizard at the shop and said Stumpy was about the same size, at which point I was told that Stumpy needed to eat medium-sized crickets. Who knew that crickets were sized as small, medium or large? I sure didn’t. Life with Stumpy was quite an education.

Our guest is losing his skin. I suppose that it is a normal occurrence for a dragon, but the first time I saw what looked to be huge swaths of old Stumpy lying across his basking log, I kind of freaked out. Stumpy is called Stumpy because he’s got a deformed foot and has lost a toe. Or maybe it is a finger, I’m not really sure. So when the skin began to go, I figured old Stumpy was on his way to becoming a Stump.

And another thing – the skin around his mouth is turning pink. The sand in his habitat is pink, so maybe he stuck his face into the sand and the color rubbed off, but really, his face looks pink.

His appetite is fine. Many, many crickets go down his gullet at lightening speed. It is frightening to watch and I feel bad for the crickets. Fortunately Stumpy also eats lettuce. It’s hard to feel bad for lettuce, but I digress…

I want our guest to be happy while his people are away, but how does one know when a dragon is happy? He watches me vigilantly when I’m in the room, but doesn’t seem to move much unless I put a cricket in his habitat, then he goes nuts. The pink face thing has me concerned, as does the potential that he may lose another toe while he is with  us. So I watch him and wonder what he’s thinking, how he’s feeling, and feel like there should be more that I could be doing for him.

Maybe he’d like to go to Legoland.

Our bunny is an only pet, or so he’d like to believe.  He loves people, but hates other bunnies and other critters.  So when we welcomed a new guest to our house in the form of a lizard, we kept the two apart in hopes of maintaining some sense of peace.  But the lizard, Stumpy, eats other critters, crickets to be exact, and our bunny doesn’t recognize crickets as food.  He thinks we have acquired several dozen teeny tiny pets and he’s not very happy about it.

The mistake was mine. My husband had put the cricket cage into the garage because he said they’d soon by all over the house if we weren’t careful, but I didn’t believe him. The cage seemed pretty cricket proof to me, and the garage was sweltering in the heat.  So I put the crickets into our guest room.

Two hours later, we saw the first cricket hop across the living room carpet.

Four hours later, there was something rustling in my office.

Six hours later, a symphony of happy cricket noises broke out throughout the house, and I finally banished the remaining cage crickets  to the patio.

The problem is that the bunny is convinced that we have replaced him with loud-voiced new pets, and worse, they are allowed into the computer room without supervision – something he is not allowed to do.  He is beside himself.  I’ve tried to tell him that Stumpy and the crickets are only here temporarily, but he doesn’t believe a word I say.  Meanwhile, Stumpy is surrounded by delicious noises that he can’t quite find and seems really ticked off about it.

My house is a zoo.

It’s boysenberry season and the canes are in full  production. My pitiful backyard boysenberry thicket produced maybe two full cups of berries, so I had to raid a friend’s garden today. I picked eight cups, enough for jam and maybe a buckle if I’m lucky.

I like to wash my boysenberries and stand them upright to dry. They freeze better that way. It also helps me to organize them according to ripeness, size, and overall appeal. The best jam is made from perfectly ripe berries, which are more black than red and feel heavy in hand.  I save the more reddish ones for buckle.  The very small ones sometimes go into ice cream or oatmeal if they aren’t otherwise perfectly ripe. I can sit and organize boysenberries all day, but there are jars to sterilize and jam to make. It’s time to get busy.

I recently went to the old Marcy Elementary school with a friend so he could reconnect with his childhood. Marcy i’s now a very nice Montessori school, very spacious with some killer canyon views.  The playground is also nice, lots of blacktop space with two basketball hoops, tetherball, and several hopscotch “courts.” For some reason, it seemed like a good idea to try to play hopscotch, which is when I realized that I no longer have the ability to play.  It’s not that I couldn’t remember how to play the game – that part is indelibly etched into my braincells – it’s that my legs no longer have the ability to hop. When did my knees start to hurt so much? When didI get cankles? And why don’t my muscles work the way they did 45 years ago? Seriously, I need to get to the gym.

I went to Room to Write last weekend, fighting the downtown Petco Park traffic. I’d forgotten there was a ballgame.  Luckily there was parking across the street, but of course I forgot I could park for free in the loft’s parking lot and ended up paying $5 for 2 hours of park time. The loft itself was very nice,with lots of power strips to plug-in.  I arrived a bit after the top of the hour, so it was “quiet time” and time to write. It’s surprising how noisy velcro can be, and how loud a laptop can whir at startup. But I eventually settled in and wrote, getting about six pages written before the break.

Lots of interesting writers, working on interesting projects.  Wish I had time to talk with everyone.  But, soon enough, break time was over and it was time to write again.  The next hour was much more productive for me. I easily got through my chapter outline and  got a paragraph or two into the next.  At the break, I packed up to leave as did one or two others.  Room to Write is a great resource for SD Writers. Wish it could be a weekly thing.

I had not been to the zoo in ages, but a friend came to town and it seemed like a good excuse to go. It was a rainy kind of day, cool and breezy, just about the most perfect zoo day ever.  The animals were out and active well into the afternoon hours.  Of course, I forgot my camera, so I didn’t get a picture of the flamingo egg (huge) on top of a mud nest, or a picture of the day-old gazelle, or a picture of the 4-month old giraffe.  Oh well.  Some days are like that.

Getting the one-year membership is the way to go if you live here in town.  You can bring a guest for free with one of the coupons they give you. Bus tours are 2 for 1, and the Skyfari is free.  I don’t know of any other place that has a running sky-tram.  The one at Disneyland is long-gone. I like the Skyfari, though getting on and off is heat-pounding. Just close your eyes and leap. The basket swings for awhile but eventually stops.  The view from above is great, too.  You can see all of Balboa Park and all the way downtown.

About the best part of the day was seeing the cheetah with her dog.  The zoo has paired cheetahs with dog companions to help the cheetahs relax and adapt to crowds.  While we were there, a zookeeper came out to play fetch with the dog in the cheetah/dog habitat.  The cheetah seemed interested in the ball at first, then went for the dog.  But, I suppose since the dog and cheetah were buddies, the cheetah only half-heartedly clawed at him. Then the zookeeper put both the cheetah and the dog on leash and walked both out of the habitat and down the road to a show. A woman at one point crouched down to get a picture of the cheetah, and was immediately descended upon by zookeeper security, who warned her not to make herself small around the cheetah.  She must have looked delicious, because the cheetah craned her neck to get a better look at the crouching woman. The dog was completely oblivious, just happy to be going for a walk.

If I were a cheetah, I would enjoy having a dog for a pet.

SCBWI OC really knows how to throw an event.  Their Agent’s Day at Newport Beach was a really great day – fun, enlightening, and pretty much perfect in every way. I ran into three old, old friends, though admittedly we couldn’t really place each other at first. We all sat next to one another, not knowing exactly why except that it seemed familiar. After a few hours of huddling next to one another, we slowly remembered and reconnected. I love it when stuff like that happens.

Agent’s Day is like that. Stuff happens. It’s  a chance to meet and network with a group of agents and hear what they have to say.  There is so much information to absorb that it’s no wonder that sometimes things get mixed-up t in the translation.  One agent gave a great  talk about revision, suggesting the use of storyboarding as a revision technique. It was amazing at the number of people who thought they heard her say something along the lines of “draw pictures that tell your story” even though she clearly didn’t, and even funnier was that some thought she meant to draw their  book  synopsis.  Maybe it’s just me, but I would totally love it if an agent really did require a hand-drawn book  synopsis for submission. It’s so hard writing a good one, maybe drawing one would be easier. Especially if it could be done in stick-figures.

If I were ever lucky enough to live in Newport Beach, I would walk along the water every day, and I would never say “What’s up with this weather anyway?” I love the gray skies and how the pelicans have to fight through the wind.  And if Newport Beach is this fantastic when it’s cloudy and gray, just think how fantastic it must be when it is sunny.