Twitter!

Hi everyone! Spring has sprung here in Virginia, and everything seems to have almost instantly come alive with colors, and lovely smells. This really is my favorite time of year.

I wanted to add a little update on my agent search. A lot of agents are at the Bologna Book Fair in Italy (lucky ducks), so things are on hold until they get back. For those of you who are also searching for an agent, I thought I'd pass along a little tip. Many of them have Twitter accounts, and aside from reading interviews online, following their Tweets is a great way to get to know their personalities and tastes, which will help you make better decisions on who to submit your work to.

Let me get on my soap box just one moment....I promise you this: if you work very hard, to the best of your abilities, study other authors and illustrators you love and practice your craft, you WILL get published. It's often a long road, but well worth the journey. They only way you won't get published is if you give up. If you get discouraged, ride it out. Cry, eat chocolate, whine to friends, shout at the kid's lit gods for being so unfair and often brutal, cover your bed in wet boo-hoo tissues--then get back on that horse (that's an order, and not a suggestion).

Keep that tough skin on too, I have had my fair share of rejections. Rejection is inevitable. And if someone knowledgeable in the business gives you a detailed critique, hold onto it like gold debloons off a sunken pirate ship.

Learn all the rules of writing and illustrating, and throw some (or many) out as needed.

As an aside, my twitter account is paigekysr. Hope to see ya there.

Get back to work! ;)