This is a picture of both my grandmas from the 1970s. That's Grandma Grosso on the left who must not have seen the photographer in time to sprint out of the room and my mom's mother, my Grandma Hersey, is on the right.

known as The Queen, and so it feels a little weird knowing that our queen is no longer with us. I thought I would take a few minutes to share some facts about our family’s matriarch.

Grandma had an almost pathological hatred of cameras. It’s a good thing she was born when she was, because I don’t know how she would have survived in an era of camera phones and Facebook. She was not an athletic woman in any way, but the minute someone pulled out a camera, you should have seen how fast she ran out of room. It was like she suddenly morphed into Jackie Joyner Kersee.

The only other time I ever saw Grandma move that fast was when insects were involved. She hated creepy crawlies almost as much as cameras. I recall one time in my cousins’ backyard when someone spotted a bee. My grandmother (who is not allergic to bees, by the way) jumped out of her lawn chair and made a mad dash for the house. She fell and scraped her knee on the concrete patio, doing more damage than the bee would have.

There’s also a story about a bee getting in the car when she was learning how to drive and allegedly she nearly killed herself and her driving instructor in her panic. Of course, the story my grandfather always told about grandma learning to drive was during her driving test when she kept tugging down her short skirt while she was driving. The man giving the test told her not to worry about the skirt, and my grandfather always joked that she passed that test because she showed some leg.

My grandmother never wore pants, and just to clarify by pants I mean trousers or jeans or whatever and not underpants. Those, she wore. She would only wear skirts or dresses. Of course, thanks to her fair Scottish skin she never had to shave her legs. Her legs were perfectly, smooth and hairless. Unfair, right?

Grandma was a highly opinionated person and held some interesting views on a range of subjects. Thanks to Grandma, I’ll never drive a green car. Why? Because according to her green cars are bad luck. I’ve since learned that this is a superstition that comes from race car driving, but as far as I know Grandma was not into racing cars. Well, unless a bee happened to fly in the window.

When my grandmother was in high school she decided to change her last name. Her last name was McKay. She had born in Scotland, but moved here with her family as a young girl. When a friend’s motherpassed on her own version of wisdom that spelling a name Mc meant a person was Irish and spelling it Mac meant a person was Scottish, my grandmother changed the spelling of her own name. She and her brother were in high school at the same time, and classmates didn’t even realize they were related because their last names were spelled differently.

In fact, I have my grandmother to thank for the fact that there is no wrong way to pronounce my last name. It’s an Italian last name and should be pronounced like the word “gross” but with an “o” at the end. Grandma didn’t like the way that sounded so she changed the pronunciation. She changed the first “o” to a soft “o” vowel sound. The result is that I’ve always mispronounced my last name, and of course if someone says it the other way, the right way, I’m not going to correct them.

Grandma may be gone, but her legacy will live on in an entire family who can’t agree on how to pronounce their last name and who avoid driving green cars and a million and one other personality quirks that The Queen has bestowed upon us. Goodbye, Grandma. We’ll miss you.

We took New York by storm with group events at libraries and book stores and even one night club. Here we are at our mega group signing at Books of Wonder:

It was no coincidence that our events in the city coincided with the huge BEA conference that took place last week, and some of our members were signing copies of their book or advanced copies at the expo. I was signing copies of Popular on Thursday morning:

So in addition to getting the chance to meet all my Class of 2K11 friends last week, I also got to meet a bunch of book bloggers, librarians and book sellers, and just like my friends from Class of 2K11, everyone was super friendly.

I’d like to say that since saying goodbye to everyone Thursday night, I’ve been kicking back and relaxing, but who has time to relax?

Right now, I’m in the middle of a blog tour hosted by the Teen Book Scene (Don’t forget to leave comments on any of the tour blog posts to be entered to win a signed copy of Popular.) To make things more interesting, my internet has been a bit flaky the past few days. Let me tell you, that’s not so helpful when you are in the middle of a blog tour.

Saturday’s relaxing bike excursion turned into a bit of an adventure when my boyfriend and I decided to take an alternate route back, and promptly got lost. We did not get lost on flat roads, but instead rode up some really, really steep and really, really long hills. Then we rode back down them when we realized we were going the wrong way. Our alternate route led us miles and miles out of our way. Probably not the smartest thing to do on the first bike ride of the year! We did eventually make it back, though it was looking a bit dicey there for a while.

Right now, I’m getting set for the New Jersey SCBWI conference at the end of the week . It promises to be fun and exciting, and perhaps a tiny bit exhausting, but after a week trekking around NYC and that extra long bike ride, I think I can safely say that I can handle it.

*This is the Reader’s Digest condensed version of our Class of 2K11 events. For a more detailed explanation see Gae Polisner’s blog post or Amy Fellner Dominy’s blog post. By the way, I do find it interesting that both ladies mention tater tots in the title of their posts. At least, we know they’ve got their priorities straight!

It comes from the term chick lit, which to tell you the truth I was never crazy about anyway. Chick Lit, in case you’ve spent the past decade or so living in a cave is fiction that centers on young women of which Sex in the City is a pretty good example. No not all chick lit is Sex in the City, some of it’s way more complex and some of it’s way more vapid. Generally, though, these are light-hearted fun books. They’re not really my cup of tea and for some reason whenever I heart the term Chick Lit I translate it to Chiclet which makes me think of that gum my grandmother always had at her house.

Still, there was always something cute and fun about the term Chick Lit. Plus Chick sounds like Chic which is a good thing, and since most of the characters in Chick Lit books are all about being Chic it sort of works. There is something slightly demeaning about the term if you think about it too much, but these aren’t books you are supposed to think about too much anyway.

But now I am seeing the term Hen Lit all over the place and it is really, really annoying me. It’s a stupid term. It doesn’t really fit the type of books, and when I hear the term all I can think of are, well, hens.

The term Hen Lit doesn’t make me think of gum. It doesn’t make me think of French words that describe the act of being stylish and trendy. The term only makes me think of a bunch of not very intelligent birds ambling about in some farmyard. It’s hard for me to not see the term as demeaning and a put down to the books that it describes, which again, for the record, I don’t usually read, but still it seems like these books deserve better.

So, here’s a challenge to you, if not the dreaded Hen Lit, what should we call these books?

The first rule is to link back to the blogger who gave me this award. The link to Angie’s blog is above, but in case you missed it, click here to visit Daydream Believer. Like me Angie is a reader and a writer. Well, I think it’s a rule that all writers have to be readers, too! Anyway, if you have a chance please stop by her blog and say hi.

The second rule is that I need to share seven things about myself. I always have trouble with these lists so to make it even harder on myself I have decided to make mine a numerically based list. What does that mean? Well it looks like this:

One, the number of siblings I have.

Two, grade I was in when I decided I wanted to be a writer.

Three, the number of names I have. The middle one is Carin.

Four, the number of pets I have.

Five, the number of kilometers I ran regularly in high school. (Astute readers might be able to figure out that I was on the cross country team.)

Six, the number of places I have worked, not counting temporary jobs or really, really short-lived ones.

Seven, the number of cars I have owned.

Okay, now that my brain was officially fried coming up with those seven things, it’s time for the third rule, which says that I need to pass this on to 15 bloggers. This is where I plan on doing some big time bending. I mean, if I’m listing 7 things about myself, wouldn’t it make more sense to list 7 recipients? Especially if my brain is already fried from coming up with those seven things about myself? Yeah, that’s what I thought too. So here, in no particular order are 7 versatile bloggers worth checking out:

1. My virtual world and real world friend Sam.

2. The newly agented and kayak-rolling Terry Lynn Johnson*.

3. Fellow story lady and 2011 debut Kathy McCullough.

4. Reader, writer and fellow 2011 debut and fellow Fluxian (or whatever the appropriate adjective is to describe authors whose books are published by Flux) Medeia Sharif.

5. Another one of those reader and writer types, Heather McCorkle at Heather’s Odyssey.

6. Writer and reader Paul Greci whose nature-inpired writing advice posts are always a delight.

7. . . . and finally, YOU! That’s right, if you are reading this consider yourself awarded.

To take part, feel free to write your own blog award post and bend these rules any way you see fit.

* Terry is also a 2011 debut, but as I believe I mentioned my brain is fried and I couldn’t figure out a way to work that in without it sounding too clunky.

The strange case of book promotion

by Jeff Widmer

For many writers, the publishing business resembles the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: It presents ahandsome face during creation and a monster after that. Once we’ve experienced the passion of writing, the rest seems like a slog through the dark alleys of Edinburgh.

The rest, of course, is called marketing.

Some people believe the latter has gotten easier with the advent of social networks. But a Twitter account is like a handbill in an alley at night: if you can’t drive traffic to it, few people will see the message, let alone pass it on to others.

That means whether the work is published by you, a university or a commercial house, marketing is still a challenge that requires a dose of strategy, a lot of time and a bit of luck. With apologies to Robert Louis Stevenson for the liberty I’ve taken with his theme, here are three areas to consider when tacking the job.

Traditional networks
By far the best way to promote your work is to take charge of the process. Consider yourself a business and marketing an essential part. Create a plan and a budget. Then you can:

· Work with your publisher’s publicity department. Help write the release. Go on tour with other writers.
· Hire your own publicist. It’s expensive but might pay if the publicist can put you on TV.
· Do it yourself. Distribute releases, schedule signings and submit articles to trade publications. Make presentations to professional and civic organizations. Position yourself as an expert source in your field. Sign up for Help a Reporter Out. HARO connects journalists with sources. Register for free daily e-mail messages.

Digital networks
Create a brand for you and your work by creating:

· A website with your name as the domain name.
· A blog on that site. A cheaper alternative: create a blog with free software like WordPress.
· Video interviews for your own YouTube channel.
· Book-related photos for sites like Flickr.

Social networks
According to consumer measurement service Nielsen, social networks and blogs now account for one in every four-and-a-half minutes online. And three of the world’s most popular brands online are social-media related—Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia. (The most popular? Google.)

Joining the conversation has become de rigueur for writers. Unfortunately, establishing an account on Twitter and Facebook doesn’t guarantee followers. You have to cross-promote your brand, using one network—traditional, digital or social—to promote the others.

Some suggestions:

· Post updates about your writing process, your characters or your life to all of your sites—blog, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Bebo, Orkut, Tumblr, Flickr, YouTube and others.
· Post interviews with authors on your blog.
· Invite other writers to guest-post on your blog, and ask them to return the favor.
· Comment on websites and blogs and link comments to website or blog.
· Establish a community on a free site like Live Journal or a paid site like Ning and encourage visitors to post their own material.
· Use a service like Twitterfeed to automatically feed your blog posts to Twitter.
· Use applications that port your Twitter feed to Facebook and LinkedIn.
· Use a dashboard like TweetDeck to monitor social media from a single screen.

That should help you keep Mr. Hyde in harness.