I just finished the first meeting of my new critique group. I’m sooo excited to be in the company of this talent. From left to right are author/illustrator Don Tate, nonfiction book writer Donna Bratton, picture book writer Carmen Oliver and me. I can’t wait to see all of their amazing stories in print!

As most of you know, the Texas coast and some of its libraries took quite a beating this past year. I hope you’ll join the Texas Library Association Disaster Relief Fund in helping these libraries recover. Please consider purchasing one or more $5 raffle tickets. You just might win illustrator Don Tate’s painting “Duke Ellington.”

Don is the award-winning illustrator/author of more than 25 trade and educational books for children. Plus he’s a super nice guy. As Don explained in an interview on the Cynsations blog, “The piece I donated is actually a character study of jazz great Duke Ellington for a book to be published by Charlesbridge, tentatively titled Duke Ellington’s Nutcracker Suite, written by Anna Harwell Celenza.”

With each raffle ticket you buy, you’ll be supporting the Fund’s efforts to help libraries hard hit by Hurricane Ike. To learn more, read interviews with TLA librarian Jeanette Larson and Don Tate. You may purchase tickets at the TLA Conference in Houston on Thursday April 2nd or you may print your raffle tickets and mail them with a check to the TLA office prior to March 20th.

The Texas Book Festival was incredible. Seriously!

Before the event opened to the public, there were a variety of parties and activities so that authors and moderators could meet and mingle. I went to the tour of the LBJ Library, but as soon as I met David Ebershoff and Paula Yoo, I dropped poor LBJ like a hot potato. I mean, he’s not really that interesting compared to this:

David, author of The 19^th Wife, told me about how he spent four years shuttling between his home in New York and Utah, where he researched polygamy for his highly-acclaimed book.

And when someone asked the tour guide whether it was legal for LBJ’s staff to tape his telephone conversations, author Paula Yoo was fully equipped with the answer. Come to find out, Paula not only released a novel for young readers titled Good Enough, but also wrote for the hit TV show The West Wing.

The next day, Saturday, the Texas Book Festival was officially underway. Let me tell you, it was truly an honor to sit on a panel with Shelia P. Moses, author of Joseph and several other award-winning novels, and Austin’s own Varian Johnson, author of My Life as a Rhombus.

The topic of the panel was how we create protagonists different from ourselves. Our thought-provoking moderator was Don Tate, a children’s book illustrator. Don posted a detailed account of our panel discussion on his blog.

The next day, Sunday, I raced out of the house bright and early. I wanted to make sure to get a good seat to hear Kathi Appelt, a beloved Texas author whose book The Underneath was recently nominated for the National Book Award. Kathi and I had a chance to chat before her session, and I immediately understood the buzz –not just about the book but about Kathi.

During her session, Kathi made several excellent points about writing, but if there’s just one I’ll remember years from now, it’ll be this: Writers are like crows. We fly around looking for the shiniest objects we can find. We bring them back to our nests and weave them into our stories. How beautiful! How true!

After the talk, I went out to the children’s tent where I finally got my own signed copy of Kathi’s book. While there, I saw fellow Austinite author Philip Yates working diligently to sign A Pirate’s Night Before Christmas for a long line of folks.

Then my husband and son met me in the Children’s Entertainment Tent, where we listened to the most rocking band—I’m not kidding—Super Pal Universe. All the band member are in middle school or high school. There were a hoard of three to five-year-olds grooving in the mosh pit up front. In between songs, band members took turns reading to the audience from P.D. Eastman’s famous picture book, Are You My Mother?

Without a doubt, this year’s Texas Book Festival offered something for everyone, big and small. A huge thanks to Clay Smith, the Festival’s organizer, and the legions of volunteers who came out to make sure everything ran smooth as butter.