Let's give a big welcome to YA author, Judith Graves to Kid Lit Frenzy. Judith's debut book UNDER MY SKIN is a favorite of mine from this year. In addition to being an author, Judith is also an elementary librarian. She is stopping by today to kick off my September Back-to-School feature.

So Long to the Dog Days of Summer

As both a library technician, working in an elementary school library, and a young adult author, I freely admit the September BACK TO SCHOOL buzz is a favourite time of year. And I’m not the only one working in education as my husband is a high school social teacher and basketball coach.

Let me put this in perspective for you. We have summers off together. Just us and our two crazy labs. All summer long. Yes, there can be too much of a good thing. Don’t get me wrong, I love my hubbie, fur kids and summers off. More time to chill. To renovate. To write. To procrastinate. But, and maybe I’m a sicko (more than likely), I relish going back to school.

There are the school supplies lining store shelves. The cool notebooks! (I have a coil notebook obsession, don’t you?) Even when I worked outside the educational world, I used to envy the get-new-clothes, get-new-school-stuff frenzy. September is like January (without the diets). It’s a time to embrace the future – the possibilities in life.

Now, I know this means a return to alarm clocks, granola bar lunches eaten while on supervision, stacks of books to catalogue and shelve, finding rotten bananas squished in said books, choir practice to organize, and drama club kids to recruit. But it also means hanging with the amazing staff at my school, finding out the summer gossip, meeting new students and families, feeling the “we’re back!” charge in the air, setting goals for myself, and planning a ton of cool things for my library world – plus, checking out all the new books and generally being inspired.

While I will mourn the sleepins, lazy days on the beach throwing sticks for the dogs, the travelling and doing whatever I want, whenever I want, I know I wouldn’t be half the writer, or the person, without my fantabulous job that surrounds me with opportunities to grow and learn.

So here’s to those fancy new highlighters and notebooks, bring on the morning announcements, staff meetings, and professional development workshops. But please let us have a few extra snow days this year.

You can find out more about UNDER MY SKIN and Judith Graves on her website: www.judithgraves.com

Thanks Judith for stopping by and kicking off my Back-to-School Month Posts.

Stopping by Kid Lit Frenzy today are authors Adam Jay Epstein & Andrew Jacobson. Their first book, The Familiars, will be released on September 7, 2010. Thanks guys for stopping by the blog.

Distractions. Every writer knows that their biggest enemy to putting words on the page each day is their own mind wandering. It's so easy to find yourself staring down at your iPhone or Googling that it's a miracle you get anything written at all. Take a sample morning for the two of us. First, we discuss if either of us saw any good movies this past weekend. Oh, you saw Inception? Who was that guy playing Eames? I'm not sure, let me IMDB it. Tom Hardy. Ooo, he's going to be Mad Max in the Mad Max remake. And he has a dog named Max! Let's wiki him and learn everything about his entire life.

Fifteen minutes later. Back to the book writing. But before getting through even a paragraph, the topic wanders to whether either of us has purchased Rick Riordan's The Red Pyramid yet. No, but it's at the top of Andrew's to-read list. I wonder how many copies he's selling of this book. Twenty minutes pass, as we don't find the answer to that, but instead are led to browse Publisher's Weekly's list of 100 top selling books from 2009. How is PC Cast selling so many books? Who is PC Cast and why have we never read any of her books? Back to Riordan. Somehow we find ourselves on his official home page, learning everything there is to know about him. Did you know that in high school, he wrote an underground newspaper that criticized his school and especially its losing football team? But the football team got their revenge by egging his car.

Maybe we should get some writing done. No can do, it's time for a snack. Many delays will arise during out 9 to 5 workday. And many delays will arise for you as well. Let's be honest, you're reading this blog post right now! You should be writing. But we know how it is. We're probably doing something other than writing, too. Reading a tweet or watching a Youtube video. The key is just to stay focused. We have to cut through the swath of information we're constantly being bombarded with. For a couple hours a day, unplug the Internet. Turn off the wifi and put your iPhone on airplane mode. Adam's asking me right now how to get on Dooce.com some hot new blogger and tastemaker. I just want to finish this guest post and get back to writing.

ADAM JAY EPSTEIN spent his childhood in Great Neck, New York, while ANDREW JACOBSON grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but the two met in a parking garage out in Los Angeles. They have been writing for film and television together ever since. The Familiars is their first book.

One day, Adam asked Andrew, "Are you familiar with what a familiar is?" And from that simple question, Vastia was born, a fantastical world filled with the authors' shared love of animals and magic. They wrote every word, sentence, and page together, sitting opposite each other.

Adam Jay Epstein lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Jane, their daughters, Penny and Olive, and a black-and-white alley cat who hangs out in their backyard. Andrew Jacobson lives with his wife, Ashley, and their dog, Elvis, four traffic lights away.

The Familiars will be produced for film by Sam Raimi and Sony Animation.

You can learn more about The Familiars at www.thefamiliars.com.

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