Ratha's Courage - Good Stuff Happening

Alien pipe-cleaner critter steals brownies while oblivious author signs Ratha's Courage at Northern California Independent Booksellers Association conference, Oakland, CA, Nov 5, 2008
Picture by JC Simmonds of Beagle Bay


Ratha's Courage has been making various appearances at different events and online sites. Previous posts on this blog have followed Courage's torturous road to publication and final and welcomed refuge at Sheila Ruth's Imaginator Press.

Sheila kindly invited me to attend KitLitospshere08 in Portland Oregon. This was a conference for children's and young adult book bloggers, including book reviewers, librarians, writers, illustrators and other publishing professionals. Since other KidLit08 bloggers have described the conference in detail and with greater wit than I could here, I'll just hit some of the personal high points. I had to scramble a bit to get all the arrangements in place and without conference organizer partner Jone McCulloch's aid in getting registered, it would have been harder.

I went up on the Coast Starlight Amtrak train and enjoyed the ride, especially along some of the inland Oregon coast, where I watched bald eagles soaring out over the estuary. As soon as I figure out how to get the picture out of my cellphone, I'll post it here. My clunky old road-warrior of a Sony Mavica digital camera decided to take a vacation, so the phone was a backup. I hope I can fix the Mavica or get it fixed. It has been a real workhorse.

Being a compulsive note-taker at conferences, I filled up several pages with notes on the sessions. I decided not to post them here. Instead they are in the Yahoo KidLitosphere group files, and are available to anyone in that group.

Just for the heck of it, I took along some stuff for display, including a pipe-cleaner alien critter that I made. I thought it would be an eye-catcher during the Meet the Authors event. Actually my little friend got more attention at the hotel bar. I suppose folks decided that they could explain it as a booze- induced hallucination. Here's Betsy Bird mugging with the critter, and a bit from her SLJ Fuse#8 blog (scroll down her blog page).

After the conference, I stayed in Beaverton, OR, spending a delightful few days with the family of a young Ratha fan who is a writer, photographer, and an artist, then returned home on the southbound Coast Starlight.

More good things continued to happen once I got back. Joan Druett, a New Zealand literary blogger, wrote about Ratha's Courage and the rough road to publication in a post called “Fantasies and Miracles”

I had sent Imaginator Press an article of how science fiction writer Andre Norton helped get Ratha's Creature published. Sheila and I decided to use it as a press release, and she sent it out. The result, among other things, was another Joan Druett post, “An Inspiring Story of Sponsorship”. Thank you, Joan!

Since pipe-cleaner critters were part of the story, here is another pic of the little brownie raider in closeup. He's not a kitty, but a strange little beastie called a "chumat", which is sort of the alien equivalent.


I knew that since Courage appeared this year, the book was eligible for the kidlit blogging community's Cybil awards. Scarcely had nominations opened, and before I could wonder if Courage would be chosen, a devoted Ratha fan had dashed in (at a speed that would make Thakur the Named herding teacher dizzy), to nominate it in the Science Fiction category. I think more than one reader wanted to name it, but the Cybil rules say one nomination per book. Even if Courage just makes it to the Cybil short list, I will be very pleased, and if it gets a Cybil, I will be knocked over backwards and all the Named clan cats will have to lick my face to revive me. There are so many other deserving books out there, but one can always hope!


CB

ClanChirps - Ratha on Twitter

Twitter, according to many Internet experts, is the next hot item for promoting people and their creations, including books. Twitter is a microblogging service that limits posts to 140 characters, thus challenging its users to generate intriguing and provoking messages within that format. In that aspect, it resembles short forms of poetry. In answering the question, "What are you doing right now?" Twitter lets users give peeks into their lives and engages them in what kidlit blogger Mark Blevis (http://www.JustOneMoreBook.com) calls "short, snacky conversations".

I was peripherally aware of Twitter, but most Tweets (Twitter posts) I'd seen seemed to be either totally obscure or completely boring. Sheila Ruth of Imaginator Press (publisher of Ratha's Courage!) and Wands and Worlds told me she was using Twitter, so, encouraged by her example, I decided to give it a whirl. Hearing that another writer had given her characters Twitter identities and had them Tweet each other several times a day, I thought it could be fun to have Ratha, Fessran, Thistle-chaser and the rest of the Named gang make their little snacky comments about their world, our world and each other.

So why ClanChirps? Well, for one thing, I hadn't quite figured out how to make multiple user identies on Twitter, and I wanted to get going, so I just decided to preface the clan cats' Tweets with a word that would distinguish theirs from mine. Cats, however, don't tweet, which is one reason why the Twitter logo is a bird. Cats make lots of other sounds, however, and they use short high calls that are described as chirping or trilling. Yes, cats can chirp. Listen to a mom kitty calling her babies. Big cats do it too. As Bira says in one of the earlier posts, " Ask any cheetah."

So, once given Twitter access, the Named have left their tracks all over it. From Ratha's first online chirp in response to the care of monarch butterfly caterpillar waste removal ("Can't you teach your caterpillars to use a litterbox?" ), through a clan variation of a 4th of July barbeque:

ClanChirps - Mondir: "Why are we dragging this toward the firepit? You aren't going to throw it in and let it burn up, are you?" 06:06 PM September 01, 2008

ClanChirps - Cherfan: "That's what a barbecue is, dung-for-brains! You grab the meat out before it burns. Makes it tastier..." 06:12 PM

There's Fessran's garbled attempt to participate in "Talk Like a Pirate Day", and baffled feline comments on human election year politics:

ClanChirps - Ratha:"I'm peeking into the future human world. What's a 'sarah palin'?" 01:44 PM September 15, 2008 from web

ClanChirps - Fessran: "I don't know, but I see a really scary thing called a 'mccain'. Poor humans." 02:05 PM September 15, 2008 from web

ClanChirps - Fessran: "I don't think the sarah palin would like me. I'm in a book, I'm sexy, and I think I'm in love with Ratha... 02:16 PM September 15, 2008 from web

Fessran: "I'm not really. I just wanted to claw-poke the palin, who doesn't think us females should love each other." 02:56 PM September 15, 2008 from web


As you can see, the Named have been romping around, making absolute Twits of themselves.

The Chirps also include a little ongoing tale, done in dialog, which is a prequel to Ratha's Courage. Featuring Bundi, from Clan Ground, and Mishanti, from Ratha and Thistle-Chaser, this little Twitter-playlet relates how the rumblers (indrotheres) Grunt and Belch came to be among the clan's herdbeasts and how they got their names. Composed directly on Twitter, this Named Twit-improv (Twitprov?) is coming directly from the kitty's mouth, so to speak, and not even the author knows what the Named will do or say next.

Mishanti, warning Bundi to be careful while getting a threehorn milch-doe from the herd to provide milk for the rumbler babies:

ClanChirps- Mishanti: "Not get kicked in head, else you talk like me and Thistle. Kicked in furry butt, maybe OK." 10:18 PM September 04, 2008 from web



Join me (Twitter ID"rathacat") and the Named bunch and "whitetip" (follow) us through the interlinked paths of the Miocene and the present day.

As Ratha says, "Yaaaarrr! Chirp!"

ClanChirps - Ratha on Twitter

Twitter, according to many Internet experts, is the next hot item for promoting people and their creations, including books. Twitter is a microblogging service that limits posts to 140 characters, thus challenging its users to generate intriguing and provoking messages within that format. In that aspect, it resembles short forms of poetry. In answering the question, "What are you doing right now?" Twitter lets users give peeks into their lives and engages them in what kidlit blogger Mark Blevis (http://www.JustOneMoreBook.com) calls "short, snacky conversations".

I was peripherally aware of Twitter, but most Tweets (Twitter posts) I'd seen seemed to be either totally obscure or completely boring. Sheila Ruth of Imaginator Press (publisher of Ratha's Courage!) and Wands and Worlds told me she was using Twitter, so, encouraged by her example, I decided to give it a whirl. Hearing that another writer had given her characters Twitter identities and having them Tweet each other several times a day, I thought it could be fun to have Ratha, Fessran, Thistle-chaser and the rest of the Named gang make their little snacky comments about their world, our world and each other.

So why ClanChirps? Well, for one thing, I hadn't quite figured out how to make multiple user identies on Twitter, and I wanted to get going, so I just decided to preface the clan cats' Tweets with a word that would distinguish theirs from mine. Cats, however, don't tweet, which is one reason why the Twitter logo is a bird. Cats make lots of other sounds, however, and they use short high calls that are described as chirping or trilling. Yes, cats can chirp. Listen to a mom kitty calling her babies. Big cats do it too. As Bira says in one of the earlier posts, " Ask any cheetah."

So, once given Twitter access, the Named have left their tracks all over it. From Ratha's first online chirp in response to the care of monarch butterfly caterpillar waste removal ("Can't you teach your caterpillars to use a litterbox?" ), through a clan variation of a 4th of July barbeque:

ClanChirps - Mondir: "Why are we dragging this toward the firepit? You aren't going to throw it in and let it burn up, are you?" 06:06 PM September 01, 2008

ClanChirps - Cherfan: "That's what a barbecue is, dung-for-brains! You grab the meat out before it burns. Makes it tastier..." 06:12 PM

There's Fessran's garbled attempt to participate in "Talk Like a Pirate Day", and baffled feline comments on human election year politics:

ClanChirps - Ratha:"I'm peeking into the future human world. What's a 'sarah palin'?" 01:44 PM September 15, 2008 from web

ClanChirps - Fessran: "I don't know, but I see a really scary thing called a 'mccain'. Poor humans." 02:05 PM September 15, 2008 from web

ClanChirps - Fessran: "I don't think the sarah palin would like me. I'm in a book, I'm sexy, and I think I'm in love with Ratha... 02:16 PM September 15, 2008 from web

Fessran: "I'm not really. I just wanted to claw-poke the palin, who doesn't think us females should love each other." 02:56 PM September 15, 2008 from web


As you can see, the Named have been romping around, making absolute Twits of themselves.

The Chirps also include a little ongoing tale, done in dialog, which is a prequel to Ratha's Courage. Featuring Bundi, from Clan Ground, and Mishanti, from Ratha and Thistle-Chaser, this little Twitter-playlet relates how the rumblers (indrotheres) Grunt and Belch came to be among the clan's herdbeasts and how they got their names. Composed directly on Twitter, this Named Twit-improv (Twitprov?) is coming directly from the kitty's mouth, so to speak, and not even the author knows what the Named will do or say next.

Mishanti, warning Bundi to be careful while getting a threehorn milch-doe from the herd to provide milk for the rumbler babies:

ClanChirps- Mishanti: "Not get kicked in head, else you talk like me and Thistle. Kicked in furry butt, maybe OK." 10:18 PM September 04, 2008 from web



Join me (Twitter ID"rathacat") and the Named bunch and "whitetip" (follow) us through the interlinked paths of the Miocene and the present day.

As Ratha says, "Yaaaarrr! Chirp!"