Laura Ruby comes next week as part of our Fantasy Fall. She’s
the author of a middle grade fantasy series including The Wall and The Wing and The
Chaos King. She also writes young
adult contemporary novels like Bad Apple
and Good Girls.
I first met Laura over a year ago when I attended the
Highlights Foundation Whole Fantasy Novel
Workshop. Highlight’s whole novel workshops are a week long program, where
you get to submit a novel you’ve written for critique and then spend a week in
Pennsylvania, with instructors and other students, making your novel better.
Laura was my instructor, and in one week I learned more about writing from
Laura than I’d learned in my whole life. I’m not quite as old as dirt, but still – my whole
life has been a pretty long time!
On first meeting, Laura’s intimidating. She has long wavy
red hair. She’s smart, articulate, and funny.
When she talks every part of her body gets into the story. Her hair
moves, her face twists into new shapes, her hands fly about. I was scared of
her – and I wanted to be her. I’ve been
an irritated, frustrated, occasionally angry, and annoyed person most of my
life – but Laura makes irritation and annoyance look entertaining. She can do
angry and make it funny, which is a real art form.
Whenever Laura tells a story – which is often – about something
that annoyed her, she does this thing. She holds her right hand like she’s
gripping a knife and then she pounds it into her left palm, likes she’s
stabbing something; the whole time saying “stabby, stabby, stabby.” This is
actually one of the best things I learned from Laura. Now whenever I feel “stabby,
stabby, stabby,” I think of Laura and I can usually laugh, rather than actually
stabbing things!
Laura will be giving a talk here on Oct. 17th at
7:00 pm, entitled Magic, Myth, and
Monsters: Why not to be Scared when Kids want to Read Scary Stuff. Whether or
not you like fantasy or horror, odds are you know someone who does. So come
find out what the fascination is and why what scares us might not be so bad. I
don’t think Laura will actually scare you – but maybe you’ll get to hear “stabby,
stabby, stabby.”
