Friday, November 6, 2015

Hurricanes and fire alarms vs. SCBWI conference

On 10/24/15, I had the privilege of speaking and mentoring fellow writers at the SCBWI Mid-Atlantic 2015 conference in Virginia. I spoke once to the general assembly and met with ten aspiring writers for 15 minutes each to discuss their picture book manuscripts.

I had it easy.

The only thing that went wrong for me was that the PowerPoint was glitchy due to a temperamental connection. It got to the point that an event organizer and a hotel rep had take turns manually holding a cable in place or else the screen would go blue or go bust.

Meanwhile, keynote author Kathi Appelt had valiantly tried to get out of Texas only to be thwarted by the historic Hurricane Patricia. So she turned around from the airport, went home, and delivered her charming keynote by Skype...


...during which the hotel fire alarm went off. And stayed on for longer than any fire alarm I recall—must have been five minutes and felt even longer due to the piercing sound. (This was the second time I’d been at an author event dramatically interrupted by a fire alarm…)

Kathi weathered that snafu like she’d weathered the weather, and the audience loved her more.

During my talk, I show a photo of Bob Kane’s grave, and an eagle-eyed attendee noticed that it happened to be his 100th birthday. I asked that we not sing “Happy Birthday” to him. Everyone understood.

Thank you to Erin Teagan, Val Patterson, and everyone else who enabled me to be there and who overcame these stressful surprises with grace. Good show!


Some reaction from the attendees:



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