Texas Library Conference: Taking Texas By Storm

 

Texas Library Conference

Austin, Texas

April 14-17, 2015

 

That's Naomi Bates (on right) and me, Pamela Thompson (on left) right before we sit down to interview the keynote speaker,  New York Times best-selling author David Baldacci! What a thrill!

You can find David's books at any bookseller and almost always on the Top Ten list. David has recently entered the YA market with the release of his first YA title, The Finisher. I reviewed it last year and interviewed David with a group of librarians and book sellers.

Naomi filmed the interview at TLA and  that I'll post it  to the blog soon.

David Baldacci is a practiced speaker. In the keynote, he was entertaining and witty. A crowd of 4,700 librarians attended the conference this year and everyone enjoyed the keynote. He talked about writing and being a famous author and how it's not that different from anything else. He admits he often wrote his finest fiction when practicing law (big laughs from the audience). A case of mistaken identity where a woman mistook him for the other lawyer turned writer, John Grisham, also got big laughs. Baldacci spends his time writing and in charity work. His charity "Wish You Well" donates books to food banks. Baldacci says we all need food to eat in order to survive, but "we can do better." Books are food for the soul.

As for the rest of the conference, it was equally entertaining. Whether networking with other Texas librarians or chatting up the authors, the conference was a blast! I stopped by to see Nikki Loftin, (author of Wish Girl)  and congratulate her on a fantastic book. She was Texas sweet. She jumped up and hugged me and thanked me for my review. Wish Girl is the BEST middle grade book I've read in years and I told Nikki that I see many awards in her future. Nikki said that she was turning the guest bedroom in her house into the "Pamela Thompson suite" and invited me to stay with her any time I'm in Austin. How Texan is that?!

A road  trip to Austin would never be complete without bluebonnets. They were blooming everywhere! The hill country sure came out for me. Bluebonnets as far as the eye could see! Like Wish Girl, the bluebonnets are a love letter for Texas.

YA Cover Reveal and Sneak Peek: The Keeper

Cover reveal just revealed March 27, 2015
The Keeper, book 2 in the Vega Jane series

Read an excerpt here


From the publisher:

About The Keeper:
Vega Jane was always told no one could leave the town of Wormwood. She was told there was nothing outside but the Quag, a wilderness filled with danger and death. And she believed it - until the night she stumbled across a secret that proved that everything she knew was a lie.
Now just one thing stands between Vega Jane and freedom - the Quag. In order to leave Wormwood and discover the truth about her world, Vega and her best friend Delph must find a way to make it across a terrifying land of bloodthirsty creatures and sinister magic. But the Quag is worse than Vega Jane's darkest imagining. It's a living, breathing prison designed to keep enemies out and the villagers of Wormwood in.
The Quag will throw everything at Vega Jane. It will try to break her. It will try to kill her. And survival might come at a price not even Vega Jane is willing to pay.
Master storyteller David Baldacci unleashes a hurricane of action and adrenaline that takes readers to the breaking point.
Happy reading!

A Conversation with Author David Baldacci

Conference Call with author David Baldacci and editor Rachel Griffiths
May 21, 2014
Topic: David's new YA novel The Finisher

I was invited by the publisher to phone in for a conference session with David and Rachel. There were 15 other librarians, bloggers, and  independent booksellers on the call. The first twenty minutes or so, Rachel introduced the book and asked David some preliminary questions. After that, anyone who had a question for David about the book or writing could chime in.

I asked, " Vega Jane is a finisher and the title of the book is The Finisher, will she finish off all the problems?"

To which Baldacci responded, "Vega is sent out to make things right. More worlds will be revealed, and Vega Jane carries this story forward."

Baldacci usually finishes a book within eight months, but it took him almost five years to write The Finisher. His agent submitted in under a pseudonym--Janus Pope. The editor thought it might be Baldacci's work because she knows his agent, but when she realized it was a YA book, she ruled out the idea that it came from him. When asked why he submitted it to a publisher keeping his identity out of it, he said he wanted people to like the book for the content itself and not due to his name being connected to it. For that, I love David Baldacci.

Baldacci paid  homage to librarians and independent booksellers. He shared that in his youth, his librarian allowed him to check out many more books over the number usually  allowed, but she knew he would read them all, enjoy them and return them. It is because of reading, that he eventually became an author. Even though the public thought he was a lawyer for his first ten years of adult life after college and law school, he was always a storyteller.

When asked by a bookseller from Seattle what titles he would  recommend to YA readers as they wait for book two to be published, he responded that he thought many of the books he would recommend are likely to have already been read by them. His short list included: the Harry Potter series, The Hunger Games series, the Divergent series and Jasper Fford's  Thursday Next books calling them, "real page turners" and saying that, "Kids will love them."

Baldacci revealed that, "First lines, first pages, first chapters are extremely important." He agonized and "obsessed" over his first line. The first  line of The Finisher is, "I was dozing when I heard the scream." Baldacci admits it was not always the first line. It was always a line in chapter one, but he moved it to be the first line after many readings.

Throughout the interview, Baldacci gave thoughtful, insightful and clear answers. It was a pleasure to speak directly to an author in a small group setting. He told us several times, "I'm a storyteller." He left us with this thought, "If everyone was a book lover and we were all book readers, what a great world we would have" to which I applaud and say BRAVO!

Thank you to John Mason from Scholastic for allowing me this opportunity. Thank you Rachel Griffiths and David Baldacci for a fun hour!
Pamela