Lyn Miller-Lachmann's Blog

Hudson, New York was a whaling town in the 19th century, which led to the adoption of the whale as the town's symbol. For several years I have exhibited at the Hudson Children's Book Festival, and in its early years authors and volunteers received a lovely t-shirt with the iconic whale. The giant aquatic mammal has a huge smile and is happily "spouting literacy."

As I wore this t-shirt over the years, it never occurred to me to question what a happy whale was doing, swimming in a river more than a hundred miles upstream from the Atlantic Ocean. Then, at last weekend's workshop with Christopher Cheng, workshop organizer Nancy Castaldo explained for our visitors from Australia, and for us as well. Hudson was a center for processing whales that were towed upstream.

No, the whale was not smiling, or spouting.

The whale was…dead.

Most likely, the unfortunate critter would have been floating on top of the water, towed by a slow-moving vessal, and stinking mightily by the time it arrived at Hudson's docks. I imagine the people rejoiced, however. This was their livelihood, and without a steady supply of dead whales, families would go hungry or have to move away from their homes and community.

After posting about the "shoulds" of social media, I had the good fortune to attend a Toolbox Workshop given by the Austrialia children's author Christopher Cheng. The 20 workshop attendees in Hudson, NY were treated to three separate workshops concentrated into one day, beginning with a morning session on creating books in a digital age. This hour and a half session introduced the fast-changing world of e-books for young readers and concluded with an e-book Cheng made in one evening using photos from the SCBWI conference in Los Angeles earlier this month (Cheng is one of SCBWI's hard-working board members) and a cute teddy bear, Teddy Eddie, who accompanied Cheng and his wife on their global journey.

After lunch, Cheng covered book trailers, social media, and other marketing topics. Again, he used examples from his own work and gave the audience useful do's and don't's. Don't #1 was "Don't go over one minute--30 seconds is even better," advice I egregiously disregarded when making the trailer for Gringolandia. (But I loved that song so much!)

When I was in middle and high school, I wanted to be popular, more than anything else in the world. However, my weak social skills rendered that goal pretty much unattainable. With the exception of a brief period in high school when I unwittingly served as their drug courier, the popular kids acted as if I didn't exist. Whatever efforts I made to put myself on their radar usually ended in complete humiliation for me.

In sixth grade, one of the popular girls told me that if I cut my hair short, I'd have a better chance of getting into the popular crowd because short hair was coming into fashion. So I begged and pleaded until my mother let me get my hair cut short--real short, like a boy's. I showed up to school the next day, ready to take my place at the pinnacle of the social order…and all the kids laughed at me. I was the only girl who had short hair. Several months later, the popular girls told all the girls to wear their hair in two pigtails. Well, short hair doesn't grow out that fast, but I did my best and showed up to school with two stubby pigtails. More laughter. In science class that day, a popular girl said she felt sorry for me and wanted to give me advice. She told me to stop trying so hard to be popular, that I shouldn't do what everyone else was doing, but be myself.

In my first two months on Instagram, I've gotten to know a lot of Lego builders and photographers, and I'm honored that some of my favorite Lego people there have chosen to follow me. This morning, one of the most popular ones put out a call for advice on reorganizing her city. Right now, it's a hodgepodge--a clump of buildings here, a transit station over there, and a railroad track surrounding it all. I suggested choosing a center--something that her city now lacks--that can provide a focus for everything else.

When I write a novel, I have a "center" in mind--a protagonist who has a strong external desire and acts to achieve that desire. Underlying the protagonist's external desire and efforts to achieve it are powerful internal desires and beliefs. These should drive all of the action in the story. All of the scenes should relate to this center and should end with the protagonist closer to or further away his or her goal.

An effective Lego town also needs a center, and I told the builder that whatever center she chooses will set the tone for the entire city. For my Lego city, Little Brick Township, I chose Town Hall as the center.

For the past six years, I have served as the assistant host of "Los Vientos del Pueblo," a bilingual program of Latin American and Spanish music, poetry, and history that airs every Sunday on WRPI-FM from 2-6 pm Eastern Time. But this past spring, the RPI students in charge of the radio station changed their policy to allow additional community members to host their own shows. As a result, I am now one of four rotating show hosts for "Mostly Folk," the folk-music program that airs from 6-8 pm on Sundays.

My joining "Mostly Folk" is a liaison of convenience, as I'm not as plugged into the local folk scene as the other hosts. In fact, I'm not really part of the scene at all, as my interest is more in roots music from around the world. However, the show needed another person, and I wanted to play a wider range of music that Mario and I play on "Los Vientos del Pueblo" (although I also play many of the artists and songs we feature there as well).

I began hosting my "Mostly Folk World Tour" in June, and today was my second time. I was a lot less nervous and a lot better prepared, and for the first time, I got fan calls today. Three people called in my two hours to tell me how much they liked the show and to ask for more information about my playlist. Since fans only encourage me, I've decided to list my songs here so people can look for them. This way, people will have the correct spelling, as most of the songs are not in English. I've listed the artist, the song, the album where I found the song, the nationality of the performer, and the language of the song.

Although I've been busy trying to promote Rogue, I also have a new YA novel that I finished and sent off to my agent last November. Titled ANTS GO MARCHING, it's about an academic superstar from a hardscrabble mobile home park, the only person from the park in an elite honors program at his suburban high school, whose dreams of escape are crushed when a fight with classmates leaves him with a severe concussion.

My agent loved the story and the writing but felt the story was too dark, so she asked me to find ways to lighten it up. I procrastinated in getting the specific comments from her because I was so wrapped up in marketing efforts for Rogue that it was hard to concentrate on anything else. I felt that to turn away from my full-time promotion would be kind of like walking away from a book in which I'd invested so much of myself.

Finally, though, my agent sent me the comments along with a gentle nudge to move on. I'll have to say, the comments were both inspiring and revealing. Inspiring because both she and three separate readers loved my writing and said they could not pull themselves away from the story. And revealing because of the crushing negativity of the book.

I had my first school visit for Rogue today, at a week-long summer program for college-bound students at Hackett Middle School in Albany. The 36 students have been reading the novel in class. They're up to Chapter 6 and will be finishing it on the bus to Boston tomorrow, where they have an overnight field trip. (Some are finished already and sworn to secrecy on the ending.)

In part because I lost my voice because of a cold at ALA and still haven't gotten it back completely, and in part because 90 minutes of talking to seventh and eighth graders does not make for a good program, I invited the students to become part of the novel through an activity in which they gave advice to Kiara. Before handing out the four scenarios, I asked the kids how many think Kiara "needs help." Every hand went up. I asked them if they ever go to the Internet for help the way she does. About half of them do go to places like Yahoo! Answers to find information, but none do so to learn how to make friends or get along with other people.

When I registered for this summer's American Library Association annual conference, I was excited to see that one of the main speakers was none other than … Temple Grandin! I've been familiar with her work for a long time and admired her because she's someone like me who has distinguished herself professionally and made a major contribution to society through her work with farm animals. In fact, in an early chapter of my novel Rogue, protagonist Kiara receives the gift of one of Temple Grandin's books from a family friend who seems to be the only person aware of how--and why--Kiara is different from the other kids her age. Kiara reads the book reluctantly--she isn't much of a reader except for X-Men comics and the Internet--and the book's first chapter describes how Grandin was sent to a school for children with emotional problems. However, Kiara realizes that "...if Temple Grandin wrote a book, she must have turned out all right"--a reassuring thought for a young teenager who struggles to find her place in the world.

My experience with social media began when I signed up for Facebook the year before Gringolandia came out. I was fortunate at the time to have some friends and colleagues from MultiCultural Review who "friended" me immediately and help me get acquainted with the site, so that it became a huge advantage when I found myself having to handle a large chunk of the promotion for that novel.

When I entered the MFA program at Vermont College, Facebook became an important way for me to keep in touch with my classmates, friends in other classes, and faculty members during those long months between residencies when we  were scattered throughout the world and dealing with our various writing/confidence crises. We have continued to keep in touch through a private class group and the group for our VCFA program. Facebook has also been a great way for me to post my Lego creations and get feedback from people.

In March, my editor at Penguin signed me up for Twitter. I haven't found Twitter as friendly as Facebook--to this former social outcast, it seems more like a high school cafeteria, where certain people are fawned over, and people like me get talked over and ignored. When I've joined discussions, none of my comments has garnered a response of any kind. However, I have managed to make connections through people I know at VCFA, and they've put me in touch with reviewers who've read and loved Rogue such as the lovely Melissa Mantovani @YABookShelf in Canada and the equally lovely Crystal Brunelle @RichinColor in Wisconsin.

I've been busy with interviews and guest posts for the past month or so, but things seem to be quieting down. Not sure whether or not that's a good thing, but I'm hoping to meet people and organize another blog tour when I go to the American Library Association's annual conference in a couple of weeks. This time, I'll pack comfortable flats. I learned my lesson three years ago when I wanted to dress up for an event organized by the Young Adult Library Services Association to honor those whose books had appeared on YALSA's distinction and awards lists, in gratitude for Gringolandia being included. Unfortunately, on my way to the event, I fell off my high-heeled shoes and badly sprained my foot.

I did find some time to revise the 16-page short story that I wrote for my Portuguese class in the spring. The good news is that my professor liked the story a lot and gave me thorough and useful comments, not only on the grammar and word usage but also on the story itself. The bad news is that she suggested I not continue writing the rest of the novel in Portuguese but switch it to English. Here is the reason why: