Tanya Egan Gibson's Blog

• The Monster at the End of This Blog

  August 7, 2009

  • One Little Golden Book on my daughter's bookshelf is not like the others.  The protagonist starts talking before the copyright information is displayed.  He talks about the wordy copyright page.  He calls attention to the fact that he is, indeed, in a book.  And then... he talks directly to the reader, warning, "There is a monster at the end of this book!"The protagonist is Grover, ...
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• Take Joy, Go Play, Be Kind

  August 2, 2009

  • More than anything, you want to be published.  You know how important it is to understand the "business" side of things, so you do everything you should.  And more. You read agents' blogs. You subscribe to Publishers Marketplace.  You post on three boards for writers.  You have an Excel spreadsheet devoted to tracking the comings and goings of agents and editors, which you dutifully ...
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• The Three P's of Conference Attendance (Or Why a Writer's Conference is Not a Reality TV Show)

  July 20, 2009

  • Ah, conference season!  You walk in, pitch memorized, nametagged, and first five pages in hand, ready to......berate Very Famous Editor during a morning one-on-one for not recognizing your manifest talent?  ...interrupt lunch conversation between your roommate and Very Famous Agent about their mutual adoration of labradoodles to "unobtrusively" slip in a plug for your novel? ...
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• Redux

  May 26, 2009

  • Long after I'd made the last major revisions to How To Buy a Love of Reading--the Advance Readers Copies already printed, the copyedits completed--I began creating the "books" on the virtual bookshelf of my website.  By providing interested readers with additional material, (photo albums, a journal, excerpts from fictional books mentioned in the novel), I wanted to extend the world of ...
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• “Breast Lady” (a.k.a, The Perils—and Pleasures—of Research)

  May 19, 2009

  • "Oh, right.  You're the breast lady," said the staffer at the fourth floor paging desk of the San Francisco Public Library as I handed him the yellow request slips.  Breast Lady.  The phrase evoked, for me, a grotesque cartoon bosom mounted atop spindly legs.  When he called my name fifteen minutes later to hand me books unearthed from the catacombs of the library, I felt compelled ...
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• Reading (With Children)

  May 12, 2009

  • It's hard for me to believe that until five years ago, I could just skim The San Francisco Chronicle's weekly guide to literary events, read about which authors were doing events at Book Passage, my local independent book store, and blithely decide to go hear them speak.  I'd go because I love books.  I'd go because I love being read to.  I'd go because I idolize writers the way some people ...
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• Mama Hope

  May 9, 2009

  • Tomorrow, a stranger might hand you a rose.  "We honor you today..." the card attached to it will read, "...because mothers are a scarce resource."  Across the United States (and especially in the San Francisco Bay Area), volunteers from Mama Hope, a non-profit organization founded by San Francisco resident Nyla Rodgers in memory of her mother--writer and teacher Stephanie ...
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• How Did Reading Save You?

  March 20, 2009

  • My daughter, who is four, sleeps with books.  The little corners  somehow don't wake her up when they poke into her ribs.  She can't read yet, but by nightlight she gazes at their pictures, and holds them close, and imparts to them the same talismanic, scary-noise-and-shadow-vanquishing qualities that she does her stuffed animals.  They make her safe. I know how she feels.  And if you're a ...
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