Picture Book Summit and Halloweensie prize

What a busy month it’s been! Some fun things happening! Let me tell you all about it🙂:

In October, I participated in my first Picture Book Summit. It’s an all-day on-line picture book conference with amazing guest speakers, which included Tomie dePaola , Carole Boston Weatherford, and Adam Rex, WOW! It was a great experience, and I learned lots of important tidbits of writing info that I’ve scribbled down on several pages of notes. (In theory, I hope to copy those notes here on the blog at some point when things settle down, so hopefully that will really happen). If any picture book writer is considering taking this course in the future, I would definitely recommend it – aside from the valuable advice and straight talk about how to have writing success, another perk about attending the summit is that you can submit your manuscript to participating agents and editors who are usually closed to submissions.  So at the moment, I’m going through my stories and deciding which ones to send to who! If you're interested in attending next year's Picture Book Summit, here’s a link for you to learn more: http://picturebooksummit.com/.

Also in October, I submitted my picture book story to Susanna Leonard Hill’s Halloweensie writing contest (see below), and out of 244 entrants, ended up winning 2^nd place! I can’t tell you how honored and grateful I felt to have received this news! I got to choose from a pretty amazing list of prizes and ended up picking a one-on-one Skype session with Penny Parker Klostermann, author of THERE WAS AN OLD DRAGON WHO SWALLOWED A KNIGHT and A COOKED UP FAIRY TALE (Random House), both adorably charming and hilarious picture books! Check out her website here: https://pennyklostermann.com/. So now I just need to send her one of my picture book manuscripts and then I get a 30-minute critique from her. How cool is that! (which one to send? WHICH ONE TO SEND!) Not only am I a fan of her books, I also love her poetry blog – check it out on her website, it’s called “Blog a penny and her jots”😊. Again, for any of you picture book writers out there (or those who want to try it out!) Susanna is holding another writing contest around December 8^th. They are sooo fun, so I definitely think you should give it a try! The rules should show up on her blog sometime in the near future. Here's where you'll find it: https://susannahill.com/blog/.


Hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!