The 2019 Colorado Teen Literature Conference

Saturday I got to go to the Colorado Teen Literature Conference! It was a lot of fun, I learned a lot, and I plan to go back next year (Mackenzi Lee will be speaking). This year, Sandhya Menon and Bill Konigsberg were the speakers.

Ms. Menon gave the first keynote speech, right after breakfast. So, for these things (because I plan on going to more in the future) I have to go out of my comfort zone. I didn’t know anybody there, so I had to ask someone if they’d let me sit with them. Fortunately, they didn’t pull a Forrest Gump and say “Can’t sit here.” Phew. I think the majority of the people there were librarians and teenagers that love books. I met one librarian who was writing a book, and one librarian that works in my library district.

So Ms. Menon’s speech was really good. She spoke about having doubts as a writer. She evidently had to rip apart From Twinkle With Love a few times before coming up with the final product (which, although I haven’t read it yet, I’ve heard a lot of good things about it). Very timely, since I decided to delete several chapters from my book yesterday. She also talked about self-publishing a book and expecting the masses to flock to it and… yeah, that doesn’t really happen all that often. But it did help her get an agent.

Then we went to a couple sessions. There was at least one workshop in each session that were of interest to writers, and I went to them. I first went to “Writing the Real” hosted by Anne Eliot and Ginger Scott, and they talked about how to write about difficult subjects and how to make your books relate to people (just because I’m writing a fantasy book doesn’t mean I don’t touch on real topics). They were great people and even gave me a book.

The second session I went to was “Make Your World Come ALIVE” hosted by Laura Resau (rhymes with see-saw). There, we went through a couple exercises to learn more about our characters (if you didn’t have a book you were working on you could work with pictures that she provided). I learned that Lila (from my book) is a lot like a Mama bear. I should really do those exercises with Alexei (from my book) because I don’t spend a lot of time with him and I really need to get to know him better. It was a great session to work on bringing more sensory descriptions in your work.

After lunch, Bill Konigsberg spoke. I haven’t read any of his books, and I don’t think any of his current books will rise to the top of my TBR any time soon, but he spoke of a book that he’s coming out with in 2020 called The Bridge that I definitely want to read. Two teenagers meet on the George Washington Bridge to commit suicide and then it splits into three timelines. In one timeline, the boy commits suicide. In the second, the girl commits suicide. We see what happens to the survivor and to their families after that. In the third timeline, they both decide to live. Just hearing him describe the book made me want to break out in tears. He spoke about his journey to become an author. Although he wasn’t as good of a speaker as Ms. Menon, it was really interesting.

For the third session, I went to “Building Better Beginnings” with Todd Fahnestock. This is where I decided to delete a few chapters from my book. We went through a few beginnings to books and analyzed how they use character, plot, and setting to capture a reader’s interest. Also, how you get readers to ask questions and reward them with a few answers (but not all of them, at first). Although I now am going to cut out a few chapters, which will mean changing several other chapters to make sure the missing information is eventually put back in, it’s going to be a better book.

The final session was a Q&A session where teenagers asked the two authors various questions. I thought it was quite interesting (and sad) when Ms. Menon said that Target initially didn’t want to carry When Dimple Met Rishi because the photograph on the cover was “too ethnic” or something like that. They offered various advice and insight for the attendees.

I thought the way they did the author signings was genius. Everybody had an animal on their name badges. After the author Q&A, they put a bunch of books on the table where the panel of authors and teens had been sitting. When they drew your animal, you had 30 seconds to go up to the table and pick out two books. Since I’ve spent a lot of time reading people’s book blogs, I had an idea of what sounded interesting. I already had read most of the fantasy books on the table, so I ended up picking up two contemporary books: Always Forever Maybe and Listen to Your Heart. They drew a cat (which just happened to be on my badge) first.

So why I said that the way they did the book signings was genius is because there wasn’t a huge line for getting your books signed. There was actually no line after I picked up my two books, and I was wondering if they were even ready to sign their books. Since I picked up When Dimple Met Rishi last week and read it (my 5 star review will be out in a few hours), I had her book signed. She liked my phone case that I designed myself (in case your wondering, here’s a link to where you can get a personalized dolphin phone case like mine).

It was a great day and I definitely plan on going back next year.