Friday, lord Friday - BEA

So much happened today, it moved so quickly, it was all so good. I didn't capture pictures of it all there was too much to do, but I did get a view shots. I'm just going to post those pictures below and you can leave a comment if you want me to explain them in detail. What I really want to do is talk about what I see as the best part of my day, Quinn. I had coffee with one of my oldest friends. We unknowingly gave our son's the same first name. I guess that doesn't seem odd until we tell you the boys are both named Drake. I have been hardcore going to the festival not trying to miss a beat, but I had to take a second for her. She picked me up and we went to coffee. It was private, it was good, it was genuine, I don't want to say more.

BEA - Tired Thursday

I am so tired that I'm pretty much gonna let the photos tell the story tonight. I went to a breakfast moderated by Chelsea Handler with three amazing, storytelling authors. Left there and went to the ABA author's award luncheon where I was sat next to my best bud Caldecott winner Peter Brown. He and I made fun of anything that could be made fun of. Best part of the luncheon was watching Mac Barnett, another bud of mine, and Jon Klassen turn their acceptance speech into a stand-up comedy bit. Then came time to get serious, I went to a very intimate talk with Journalist, author, documentary filmmaker, Jeremy Scahill. If you don't know who he is, google him, and go see him movie Dirty Wars, coming out in June. I got on the shuttle back to the hotel and chilled for a sec. Got dressed and just as I was about to leave my partner in crime Sunny came in from her day's adventures, she met Dr. Ruth, I was super jealous. I waited a half hour for a taxi which made me super late to Suzanne Collins and Walter Dean Myers event. So I could only choose one of them, met Suzanne got her to sign her new picture book for my son, and got my request in for her to visit our store. Flew out of there grabbed a cab and headed over to the Disney party where all the cool kids were. Met Kareem Abdul Jabbar, got an advanced copy of his new book and sat next to Elizabeth who wrote one of my favorite new books Code Name Verity. Made it back took a power nap and wrote this mini-blog. See you tomorrow, new adventures to come. 

Storytellers - BEA - Wednesday

 

So, Sunny and I got up bright and early because for some reason we had it in our minds that the author breakfast hosted by Chelsea Handler was this morning. We were wrong. We arrived at Javits Center only to discover that it was a ghost town and most things were not starting until tomorrow. So it's 8am and our meet up with the other booksellers for the Illustrators tour is a little over an hour away. We grab some starbucks and Sunny discovers in her purse the magical paper that would have allowed us to sleep another hour. 

We go down to find our groups, sadly Sunny and I are in separate groups for the tour and will be seeing separate illistrators. Before our groups are to load onto the busses we have time for the ABA talk with John Sargent that is being covered by C-Span. John Sargent serves as Head of U.S. Operations of Macmillan Limited. More than that he is the booksellers champion. He alone led the resistance to try and stop Amazon from controlling 90% of the market share on e-books by lowering it's prices to exclude all other retailers. He has been in an embittered battle with the Department of Justice.  Many publishers started with him along with Apple but when the going got tough he stood, and still stands alone. The story is far more in-depth than this short blog can express but just know the room was filled with his faithful followers, believers ready to follow him anywhere. He spoke with great pride, strength and hope. It was one of those moments when you knew the voice your were hearing would one day be remembered in reflections of heroism. He believes we should not buy into the artificial acceleration of digital media over the printed word and so much of what he said resonated with me that I was ready, instantly, to stand by him and fight the good fight. Starting the day with him made me proud to be a bookseller and set the tone for the rest of the day. 

 

Once John's talk wrapped I met up with my small group, there was four of us, and we headed out to the shuttle bus. Our group consisted of a couple, married 45 years, who co-own an indie book store in a small Wisconsin town. It also had, obviously me, and Andrea our fearless leader who heads up SCIBA, The Southern California Independent Booksellers Association (SCIBA). We loaded onto our bus along with a few others groups and pulled out. Behind me I heard two women having a conversation, one of them said "It's hard to have cohesion in my store when I have one full timer and the rest work part time. Even if they all have the best intentions, which they always don't, it's still hard." It was so sad to hear her say this coming right off the empowering lecture with Mr. Sargent. Even more so because our store is the complete opposite. With just two full-timers and a mix of part-timers there is still cohesion amongst us. We are also all committed, dedicated and innovating in our company. We have created so many programs that support the community, our brand, and the success of the store. I thanked God on this ride that our little shop and little family could never make those types of comments, not if we're being honest. The bus stopped, let us all out in a neutral place, and we headed for the subway.

Our first stop was with Pop-Up, author, illustrator, engineer, extraordinaire Matthew Reinhart. An award winning genius, who sells great in our store, his pop ups are like none you've ever seen. The great part is, for what you get, I'd say they are reasonably priced. We had the honor and distinction on our first stop with Mr. Reinhart to hang out in his studio and have him explain to us his work process. 

He even gave us a sneak peek of the Transformers Pop-up that he just finished, set for distribution next year. 

He and I hit it off great when I showed him the intricate Reinhartesque Mother's Day card my son made for me, via pics on my phone. He offered me a free book from his desk but it was one my son already owns. 

Matthew was great but I was not prepared for who came next on our tour. We headed back to the train which lead us to the studio of Anita Lobel. 

Anita Lobel is well known and well loved. She received the Caldecott Honor for her illustrations in On Market Street, and her memoir, No Pretty Pictures: A Child of War, was a finalist for the National Book Award. She has illustrated nearly 100 books over the decades and was married to Arnold Lobel most know for his series Frog and Toad. 

It was a question I asked, "Where did you grow up", that opened up an intimate discussion. She went on to tell me that she didn't grow up, she survived. Right there on the spot she told us of how she and her brother survived the holocaust. I told her about my family members who were in the 761st Tank Battalion, Black soldiers who fought as tankers in WWII. The room disappeared, my group, her staff, the publishing rep, they all vanished. It was a private, intimate conversation about race between just Anita and I, we both cooed over each other and our storytelling. And just as quickly as they had vanished when we both felt totally fed from the conversation the rest of the room reappeared and we drank the glasses of wine Anita insisted we have. As we were leaving she gave us each an original hand drawing she had done, this is mine above. She personalized it, looked at me and said "It was a pleasure to meet you my dear, you were the right person for me to tell my story to". I fought back the tears hugged her and we left as we were already very late to get to our last illustrator on the tour. 

We were so late that Chris Rashcka was leaving his studio when we got to his building. He saw our BEA passes, explained to us he had another meeting but agreed to take us upstairs for a quick convo. Raschka, as we call him at the Little Shop, has created more than forty books and is a Caldecott Medal winner. Above he's showing us his process, as he paints instead of draws like most illustrators. 



We wrapped up with Rascha and headed back to the hotel. 

Sunny arrived at the hotel shortly after me toting the goodies from the illustrators her group has seen and we did some fast freshening up and changing to get ready for the evening's parties. First stop Divergent with Veronica Roth. This party was held in an actual speakeasy, no signs on the door just a lady outside to direct us. We found a spot out back, drank their free licquor and made friends with some cool ladies from a bookstore in Northern California. A rep from the publisher went to grab someone she thought might find my stories fascinating. I told a few of my normal crazy Kim true tales and this woman was into it. When I left Sunny laughed in the cab about how I had no idea the woman was the main attraction Ms. Veronica Roth herself, too funny. We left that party and headed over to a shin dig hosted by our illustrator buddy Peter Brown, whom I jokingly call my boyfriend. He just also happens to be this years Caldecott winner. He signed a book we needed him to personalize, an after that we mingled and drank a little. One of the people we mingled with was awesome children's author/illustrator Jon Klassen, the 2011 Caldecott winner. Yeah, yeah this day was epically awesome. The crazy part is my slight buzz combined with exhaustion is preventing me from going into detail about all the detailed moments that brought me tears of joy and falling to the ground laughter. This blog is written in broad strokes, take how exciting these strokes are, and multiple it by 10. 

#GALLEYSNATCHER - BEA- TUESDAY NIGHT

My trip to BEA has been all I could think about for at least a month now, maybe longer. So the day comes today and I am joyfully bouncing around my house with anticipation. I imagine myself hugging Kareem Abdul Jabbar at the Disney Publishing dinner. I also fantasize that Walter Mosley finds me so captivating that he doesn't want to speak to anyone else in the room when I go to his event and that he corners me at a table and we talk for what seems like hours. Well, that is until I have to fly across town to the Disney party where Kareem hugs me. In my head everyone is overwhelmed with the genius work we are accomplishing at Little Shop of Stories and Sunny and I are the toast of the publishing world, she and I have officially left a lasting impression on everyone and the President of Harper Collins charters a jet to send us back to Atlanta, where a driver with our names scribbled on an Ipad awaits us at the airport. In my fantasy Sunny has millions of dollars in checks in her luggage that people have donated to On The Same Page, our city wide reading initiative. This is the idea in the mind of a girl who grew up loving books and now gets the pleasure of working in the book world as her actual real job.

 

Instead we land and head merrily over to check in to our beautiful room and fastly get ready for the Random House mixer we fear may be coming to an end. We jump on the elevator, go down from our 28th floor view, exit the elevator and casual slink into the mixer. Like all other books nerds we spend some time talking only to each other until  a marketing person from a Washington D.C. bookstore comes over and engages us in conversation as we sip on our wine. Then I see her, a woman walks by with a tag on her dress that says #GALLEYSNATCHER. I whip around and grab her by the arm. "Hello, I've been trying to ready you tag, I see it says Galleysnatcher and I'm the Galley Club Coordinator at Little Shop of Stories", I say with the first bit of confidence I've felt all night. Upon further conversation I discover, Donna is the Vice President and Executive Director of Marketing The Crown Publishing Group. Galleysnatcher is her pet project and when she's here's what we're doing at Little Shop she's as excited to meet me as I am to meet her. The Little Shop Galley Club allows kids to read the advance readers sent to us by publishers in exchange for a 5-7 sentence review of the book. Our Galley Club members also interview authors who appear for in-store signings. Donna goes on to tell me she can get our kids reviews in front of 90,000 viewers. She hands me her card and I walk back over to Sunny feeling really good about my first half hour at BEA. My reality is better than my fantasy. My reality may not be hugging my literary idols, although I plan on accomplishing some of that on this trip too, but my real life motivates young people to do exceptional things. My real life is spinning around to people like Donna so the quiet little galley club member who's writing I love gets seen all over the country. In that moment my real life felt heroic, and I had a totally new vision of why BEA was going to be so exciting for me. The moment I realized it was not about what I could get, but what I could give, boy did my plans change. 

Almost 30

So if you have the type of personality that likes Real Husbands of Hollywood and The Office this show is for you. The great thing about it is, it's a web show. It's not going to take up too much of your time and you can watch it at your leisure. You don't have to comb for it OnDemand, watch old episodes on Netflix or pay for HuluPlus only to discover they don't have it. You can watch it on any internet device whenever you like. This show was not produced by any of my friends, I don't know these people. My business partner Alvin sent it to me in an email and I just fell in love with it. My honest take on it was in episode 1 the writing was better than the acting but I liked the way it was shot. By episode 2 everything jelled and it is probably the best Black web show I've watched. Enjoy!

Kevin Bryant

As most of you know nothing makes me happier than bragging about the awesome nature of my fabulous circle of friends. I've never been a crab, I rejoice in my friends successes and push for the redemption of the fallen ones. So once a month I think I'm just going to "spotlight" one of my dearly beloved. First one up to bat International Dance Music Star Kevin Bryant

View all Atlanta events on Eventful

Go get it!

It's time we pulled ourselves up by our boot straps and stopped all this complaining. It's too hot, I'm tired of no good men/women, everyone's hating on me, blah blah. Your attitude determines your altitude and right now I'm flying too high to digest anymore of  anyone's junk. 

This week I cut off a guy I really liked, said what I had to say via text, and deleted his response without reading it. Why, you ask, because I really was done so what difference does what he said make. It was only going to upset me or rope me back in, either way it was worthless jibber jabber after his actions had already shown me how he really felt. And honey I'm feeling too good about myself right now to let anyone else's issues have an effect on how I feel about me. It's my time! I moved on to the guy who was genuinely invested in me and my happiness because that is what I deserve. 

I'm enjoying my job at Little Shop of Stories, growing my Learning Groove business, working on a TV show with my good friend Henderson Maddox for his online network Signal23TV, developing a film with a Grammy nominated buddy of mine, doing well in school, working on my BS in Child Studies, living it up this summer with my healthy, happy, child. I'm getting a chance to go to my church FaithWalk ministries and laughing a lot with my friends and family. My family has started a weekly prayer conference call and it's been going strong for over a year now and only getting stronger. I'm going hard for my blessings!

So stop complaining, thank God for it being as well as it is, recognize that your time is now and GO GET IT!