I am back home, had a great time at the KidLitBlogCon. That is not the official name but that is how I like to think of it. It was great to meet so many of the amazing folks who make this community what it is. This is dumb, but somehow it didn’t occur to me until Jen Robinson’s presentation that most of these very passionate and dedicated and prolific blogging advocates and lovers of children’s literature, like, have day jobs. And kids, and all kinds of other responsibilities, and they really do all this for the love. For the love, people!

The biggest take away for me was that if I blog tour for my next book, it will be completely different than the one I did for Sweethearts. Someone made the point that publishers are new to putting together blog tours, and they still sort of think of it like an actual tour and each blog stop is a city. But it’s not, and you need to approach the medium in a totally different way. Next year’s conference is going to be in DC – Keep your eyes open for details! Hopefully as the conference gathers a bigger following in the coming years, there will be more publicists and marketing people joining in the conversation.

Among other fun things in Portland, I had great Cuban food, amazing Peruvian food, some decent airport sushi, saw the Rose Garden and the Japanese Garden, rode the choo-choo all around town, marveled at the many green waste management innovations, spent quality time with longtime LJ friends, made new friends, read good poetry, wrote bad poetry, and watched the planes come and go from the runway that happened to be so conveniently and loudly located right under my window.

Glad to be home. RIP Cool Hand Luke and Dow Jones.