Cameron Dokey's Blog

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Can you feel it in the air? Summer is almost here! And what better way to enjoy it than a trip to camp. Boys Camp, that is.

Please welcome this brand new series, specifically designed for beginning chapter book-reading boys. (Though really, any adventure-minded kid will have a great time at Camp Wolf Trail. No "girls keep out" signs here!) I had the very great honor to be asked to write the launch book for the series, which I entitled Zack's Story in honor of the son of my good friends Jennifer and Denis, who progressed from camper to camp counselor over the years. Then, in a happy twist of fate, the book's illustrator, Craig Orback, turned out to be from Seattle, as well. So I guess you could say it's a local affair.

Both the age range and subject matter of Zack's Story are departures for me. It's always good to stretch once in a while. So, pack your duffel, grab some snacks, and let's go have some adventures!

On Saturday, March 2nd, I had the very great pleasure of signing copies of my new title, KISSED, at my neighborhood bookstore, Magnolia's Bookstore. As always, my thanks go out to store owner, Georgiana, as well as my store co-worker, Amy, who came to fill in my spot behind the counter so I could sign. The bookstore staff have been incredibly loyal over the years. I've signed my books at the store since I first began to write--and long before I became a part-time employee. But they're not the only ones. Last Saturday's signing saw some old, and some new fans show up at the store. Not only that, they brought their own stories ...

In the "new" category, there are my wonderful neighbors, the Westerns, the Gregorys, and the Maifelds. Thanks, you guys. They are the counterpoints to Lauren, who lived next door long before I ever began to write. We're several blocks away now, but I think she's come to every single signing. I always sign a book to the whole family, including husband, John, and kids Benjamin and Emily, both of whom are all grown up now.

Long-time friends Janice and Greg, accompanied by Kay, arrived. I always forget that Janice and Greg want their own copies, although they are husband and wife! By the time I remembered (actually, they had to remind me) I had already signed one to them both. But since that one said, "Janice and Greg" I signed the second one to, "Greg and Janice." They have a good relationship. They'll figure it out. Kay had driven back from eastern Washington in time for the signing. Thank goodness for no snow!

But my favorite two stories, I must admit, are the tales of Dana, and Jennifer and Denis. Dana is a loyal bookstore customer who bought a copy of ONCE when it came out. Everybody who works at the store just adores him. He always has such a funny, positive outlook on life. So imagine how my outlook improved when he approached my signing table and said he needed four copies this time around! He'd loaned his copy of ONCE to three friends, all of whom had loved it and said things like ... "If she ever does another one ..." "I am not giving them my book this time!" Dana declared. So he bought a copy for each of his friends. Thank you, Dana. So thoughtful for all of us!

And last, but not least, we come to Jennifer and Denis, whom I have known for longer than I will choose to recount! They, too, have been incredible over the years--I think they've come to every signing but one, when they were out of town. They arrived toward the very end of this one. Jennifer was positively roaring with laughter the moment they hit the door. Denis, always a little quieter, had a decided twinkle in his eye. Their tale: They had set out from neighboring Queen Anne to head to Magnolia for the signing. Say, fifteen minute drive. But on the way, their car broke down! They had it towed to the shop, got it fixed, and still showed up at the signing! If that's not friendship, I sure don't know what is. Thanks, you guys. And it makes me even more happy that the main character of my next book, Zack's Story (Boys Camp #1) is named for their son. Even if he does spell his name Zach.

Thanks to everyone who came to the signing. I appreciate your support!

Yikes! I've been ... KISSED. Not a bad way to start 2013, huh?

Seriously, though, Happy New Year everyone! And please allow me to introduce my newest title (the name of which you surely know by now). It's a collection of three of my fairytale retellings, Belle, Sunlight and Shadow, and Winter's Child. I'm proud of all my fairytales, but I must confess I have a particular fondness for KISSED as it includes one of the stories I was most delighted to be given the opportunity to put my own spin on, Mozart's fabulous opera, The Magic Flute. Better known to you as Sunlight and Shadow. Not only was it a wonderful tale to work on in and of itself, it also brought back memories of one of the happiest times of my life: the days when I had first become a member of the acting company at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and moved to Ashland, Oregon.

I was 20 years old. The youngest person ever hired to be a regular member of the acting company. And I was absolutely thrilled, and absolutely terrified.

Fortunately for me, I lived for a period of time with Hilary Tate, who had a small house in a town just north of Ashland with the remarkable name of Talent, Oregon. (This is true, you know. I am not making it up.) As I recall, we were pretty much broke all the time. We lived on the oatmeal bread I baked non-stop, jam, and smores. And we listened to The Magic Flute and I totally fell in love with the story and the sound. Years later, still at the festival, I lived with yet a different friend who remarked that she could always tell what kind of mood I was in by which section of the opera I chose to put on. Because, just as my title suggests, there are happy things and not-so-happy. There is sunlight and there is shadow. Getting to reimagine that world was a very great joy. My ongoing thanks to my then editor, Lisa Clancy, for giving me the chance to do so.

But KISSED is just the beginning of 2013. There will be many new things coming down the road this year. Come back and visit this site to see what they are.

It's November. How on earth did that happen? What happened to August, September, and October along the way? I don't know what you've been doing, but I've been writing like mad. Net result: 2013 will see some out-of-the-box works from me. Here's a snapshot of what's upcoming.

Boys Camp #1, Zack's Story. In a departure from my usual young adult age range, I am delighted to take part in a series for readers 7 - 10. I think the series title pretty much says it all. Know a young reader interested in adventure? Send him to Camp Wolf Trail and let the fun (but not the fur) fly!

Amish Seasons, Summer Promise. Yet another departure, this time for Lancaster County, PA, for a romance for readers 16+ set in the Pennsylvania Amish country. In a further change of pace, I'm part of a writing team for this title. Not only did my partner and I create a story, we gave ourselves a new name. Look for Summer Promise under the name Marianne Ellis.

Finally, the success of Once, the first collection of stories from the Once Upon a Time series has inspired a second collection, Kissed. If you thought the green dress on the cover of Once was to die for, wait until you get a load of the red one for Kissed, just in time for Valentine's day.

Keep watching the site. I'll post covers and provide additional information as we get closer to publication dates. 2013 is already shaping up to be an exciting year. Guess it's time to get back to writing!

So, I've just filled out the questionnaire. That would be the Award Submission Author Questionnaire to be precise, recently sent to me by my wonderful editor at Simon & Schuster, Annette Pollert. As an author with a work published in 2012, I answer the questions so that the marketing dept. can determine whether or not there are any awards for which my book might be eligible. I've actually done pretty well with this in the past. Several of my Once Upon a Time titles have received positive recognition from the American Library Association. Nice. But the process sort of got me wondering. What would a questionnaire look like if I made up the questions? Only mine would be for my readers, of course.

Such as:

1. What made you pick up one of my books in the first place?

2. Do you think you'll put it back, or will you actually buy it?

3. What's your favorite part about reading? What does reading do for you that nothing else does? (Ok, two questions in one.)

4. Which of my books is your favorite? (Hey--there's nothing wrong with thinking positive.)

5. What makes me your favorite author? (Ok, let's not go overboard.)

6. If you could only read one book, ever, what would it be? (All right. You can have a second one. What the heck. Go for top five.)

7. What one book have you always meant to read but somehow never get around to?

8. Do you want to be an author, yourself?

9. If so, what would you write?

10.  What question have you always wanted to ask an author but thought you'd never get the chance?

Bonus question: What should I have asked, but didn't?

Oh, come on. Go for it. You never know. You just might win an award.

It was with genuine sorrow that I opened the newspaper last week and read of the death of Maurice Sendak. It's really just the simple truth to say that I cannot imagine what my childhood would have been without him. As I think I confessed in an earlier post, I still have the copy of Where the Wild Things Are that my brother and I shared growing up. At one point my mother, who taught kindergarten for many years, brought home a big poster of one of the pages of the wild rumpus. For years, it adorned the wall above my bed (and believe me, I wish I knew where it was now). I can actually recite the first several pages from memory. (Though here the Wild Things take a back seat to the Grinch. I can do almost all of that one, cold.)

Then there's the Nutshell Library, containing such wonderfulness as Pierre the boy who only said," I don't care". And What Do You Do Dear?/What Do You Say, Dear? still the most delightful books about manners that I know. And long after my own official childhood had ended, my love of Sendak kept right on going. Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present, with Mr. Sendak's illustrations and text by one of the other giants of children's literature when I was a girl, Charlotte Zolotow, became the favorite story of one of the kids on the block where I still reside. (Though the little girl, herself, is all grown up and long gone.) You could never tell when Emma would decide to make the three-house trip between her home and mine. But you could pretty much bet on the fact that part of her visit would include a reading of that story.

And I've always been so interested in the fact that Sendak was considered controversial because he showed childhood's dark side. There was even one commentator who remarked that while the illustrations in Where the Wild Things Are might be remarkable, the book itself should probably not be read by actual children. They would find it too frightening and it would keep them up nights. But I have no recollection of finding Sendak's works scary as a child. Instead, they were fascinating--filled with detail and texture and sly humor. They might not depict scenes that were familiar, but they were, nevertheless, worlds that I recognized. I don't think I was alone.

I even met him once. The year that what has now become Pacific Northwest Ballet's signature version of the Nutcracker, featuring Sendak sets, was in the planning stages he came to Seattle. (Actually, he no doubt came more than once.) I didn't even work for the ballet, but for a computer ticketing service. A staff member was needed for the lone computer terminal we had in the PNB office, and somehow I ended up with the job. The PNB staff was great, as I recall. They treated me as one of their own. And so it was that I got to watch a bit of a rehearsal, and there he was. And the first thing I thought was--he looks just like the people he draws! Not too tall, with a moustache and a nose you might notice. It was one of the most wonderful moments of my life. (Right up there with meeting Julia Child, a story for another time.)

So, goodnight, Mr. Sendak. Thank you for the wonderful worlds you created for us all. Thank you for not being afraid to acknowledge the fact that sometimes there are wild things. But also that sometimes, if we are very lucky, we can find our way back from their homes to ours, where we will find our supper waiting for us ... still hot.

True confession: Much as I love to read, I am also a (gasp) television watcher. Now, don't get me wrong.I have my limitations. Situation comedies mostly make me want to run screaming from the room. But I have a remarkably high tolerance for cheesy sci-fi. This is directly related to the large amounts of it I watched as a young person. (Angry Red Planet, anyone?) But mostly, I'm an old movie kind of a gal. So currently, there's rather a lot of jubilation going on in my little house.

Yesterday, the Roku followed me home.

You know about the Roku, of course. The little black box that, once you've figured out how to hook it up, never gets turned off because it updates itself. With it, I can stream to my TV, not my laptop. This is big news, as I've been strictly a "disc in the machine" gal until now. Now I can watch things like old Kolchak, The Night Stalker episodes whenever I want. You may think this is no big deal. You'd be wrong.

So what on earth does all this have to do with writing? Well, nothing, I suppose. Except that I am occasionally inspired by other media when it comes to my writing projects. How Not to Spend Your Senior Year was inspired by Blithe Spirit, and My Favorite Wife. Love Me, Love Me Not was my take on Death Takes a Holiday--and this was before Brad Pitt got his hands on the idea in Meet Joe Black. Sunlight and Shadow is actually inspired by an opera. I know people who shun TV, and they're very proud of it. Me, I let my "I watch the small screen" flag fly. Not only that, my TV is right there in my living room (though there's really no place else to put it, given the size of my house ...).

So there you have it. A rather short blog on nothing particularly earth-shattering at all. A break from saying thank you (though I'm thinking about this all the time). And a way to say, you never know what's coming next. That's why we keep reading, isn't it? 

Well, I knew it had to happen. I just didn't expect it to happen so soon. "Be consistent," Matt, my web designer told me. "You don't have to blog every week, but do it on a regular timeframe. That way, people will know when to come back to the site."

Ok, I thought. I can do that. Every other week sounds about right. And, since my first post was on a Wednesday, that translated to every other Wednesday. I actually managed it for three weeks running. Then came last week--and this one too, if it comes to that. The weeks when If I Take On One More Thing My Head Will Explode. And the blog went down the drain. But the trouble with not doing something you've told yourself you absolutely will is that then you feel guilty about it. So instead of feeling relieved that I gave myself permission to take something off the list, I beat myself up. I mean, let’s face it: What kind of person puts off saying thank you?

So, finally, here I am, desperate to redeem myself. This week is all about picking up where I left off last time. And that means it's really all about thanking one person: James Edmondson.

My guess is that most of us have someone in our lives like Jimmie. The person not your parents to whom you would say, "Without you, I would not be the person I am today." And you would mean this in a good way. In the best possible way. In the late 1970s, I pretty much changed the entire trajectory of my life to go and work with Jim at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival when he offered me the role of Jo in Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey. I would end up spending four years in Ashland. Of course I learned all kinds of things, and made friends who are still close today. (Don’t worry guys. Your thank yous are coming.) But it was what I learned from Jimmie that has formed the core of so many things that followed.

It was Jimmie who taught me that that life, and the creative endeavors with which you choose to fill it, are collaborative, even if you work alone. He taught me to listen, both on and offstage. Even more, he taught me to want to, to recognize that sometimes your best choice is to step out of the light rather than to always insist on standing center stage. From Jimmie, I learned to strive. Not in a competitive way, but in a way that made me want to be more in the next moment than I am in this one. The plain and simple truth, I guess, is that he taught me how to grow up.

Now—did I/do I always live up to all the fine statements I’ve just made? I’m the woman who put off doing the blog even when she knew she shouldn’t. You figure it out. But the thing is, I always want to. And I think that counts. I have never forgotten the lessons I learned during those years, even on the days when putting them into action is a struggle. On the day we opened A Taste of Honey, as is often traditional, Jimmie wrote me a card. On it is a drawing of a red geranium, just like the ones he always used to grow in his garden. And inside are the following words: Remember to give it with love.

I think that pretty much sums it up, don’t you?

And the next post really will be on Wednesday, May 2nd—two weeks from when I was supposed to post this one! I promise …

You want to get to the good stuff, and I understand. But before you dive into that book you’re clutching in your hot little hands, let me just encourage you to make one small stop along the way. On the acknowledgements page.

This is the place where the author of the work you can’t wait to get started on gets to say thanks.  Sometimes, it’s a very personal thank you—to a partner and/or children for putting up with all the weird hours it took to get the book finished.  Not to mention all those red-eye flights to Iceland. Or maybe to another writer or a writers’ group for inspiration and support. If the book you’re looking forward to is non-fiction, you may encounter this great big list of scholars and scholarly institutions. This can seem daunting, I admit. I encourage you to read it anyhow.

How come? Because every single thank you tells a story. Put them all together, and they help to tell the story of how the work you want to read came to be born. Sometimes, who an author thanks just might surprise you. So all this got me thinking: If I were going to write an acknowledgements page for my entire writing career, who would be on it? What story would it tell?

There are some obvious choices, of course. My parents for a start. My mom was a kindergarten teacher who loved to read to my younger brother and me. I still have my childhood copies of Do You Know What I’ll Do? How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Where the Wild things Are, and The Tomten.  (Actually, I think that copy of The Tomten really belongs to Todd, my brother. Am I giving it back? Dream on.)

My mother may have done the reading, but my father told the world’s best bedtime stories. Some right out of his imagination (the San Leandro Forest Stories—for the record there IS no forest in San Leandro. But it was the cool-sounding town where my aunt and uncle lived and hey—it sounded like it ought to have one!) Others were drawn from classical literature. I knew the stories of the Trojan Horse and Odysseus and the Cyclops by the time I was five. I’m pretty sure those bedtime stories inspired a lifelong love of Greek mythology. I almost switched my major from English to Classics in college.

My father is also a writer. Every single weeknight throughout my childhood, while my brother and I did our homework, my father went to his study to write. This was after teaching high school English all day. I’m talking year after year, every single weeknight.  I think it was this as much as anything else that inspired me to become a writer. So, Mom and Dad get thank you number one.

Thank you number two goes to Uncle Jack and Aunt Mary Ann. I addition to living in exciting San Leandro, they gave me a book of short stories called The Princesses for my eighth birthday. Not all my stories for Simon and Schuster’s wonderful Once Upon a Time series feature princesses, but I am absolutely certain that my love of all things magical began with that volume of short stories. And that love directly affected what I love to write about--and how I want to write it. Not only that, my aunt and uncle had a cat named Claude. When I was eight, that seemed pretty danged funny.

Now we get a big jump forward in time. High school, senior year. Paul Barnes, the director of the high-powered theatre department where I went to high school, takes me and a group of classmates on a field trip to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon. There, we meet James Edmondson, actor and director. And it is no exaggeration at all to say that meeting Jimmie, as his friends call him, changed my life.

How? See, here’s where  the acknowledgements-page-as-story comes into play. If you check out my title for this blog post, you’ll notice that I called it Part One.  And this is where Part One ends. With a life-changing event, and a whole lot of thank yous still to come.

Want to know how the story ends? Guess you’ll just have to come back for more.