Bringing Betty Boop home with me

My grandmother passed away when I was nine—a tragic death on Halloween eve.  My favorite uncle, her son, passed away before my son could meet him—another terrible death with reverberating consequences.  I think of Grandmom and Uncle Danny all the time—the succession of paintings (the girl with the braid) up the stairwell of her Philadelphia row home, the unending parade of absurd gifts and fanciful tales that traveled always with him.  I never questioned their love for me.  I always felt safe when they were near.

And so I miss them.

My name is Beth Ellen Kephart.  No Elizabeth.  Nothing to shorten to Liz, Lizzie, Libby, Eliza, Betta.  Just Beth, and then the Ellen, but my grandmother and my uncle called me Betty Boop.  They called me Betsy, too, and other things, but what took hold in me was Betty Boop.  When I go somewhere and Betty Boop is there, I bring her home with me.  Look, I say, to the clouds above.  You are still alive to me.

Today, in Jim Thorpe, I found this one, sitting on a swing.

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Three-dollar Diamonds

I have so very little time to do my own work (I steal the hours; I beg for them) and so today, when it seemed I would have the afternoon to write, I decided to be a girl instead. To not try to pound something provable out of every single minute—a book read, a line written, a house cleaned, a meal cooked, a paper graded, a dance step learned—and to go, with the rest of the world, apparently, to the mall.

I found the big earrings for my way cool artsy friend, Denise. I found a three-dollar diamond ring (the size of an elephant's eye) and a pair of black above-the-elbow gloves (Halloween stores are the best when you are shopping for your ballroom dance showcase). I found a pair of jeans (I was down to just one) and some new socks, because I've decided that, come Autumn, you really do need more than four pairs of socks.

It was, all in all, an exhilarating afternoon of doing nothing that will add up to much of anything in the end. And sometimes that matters most of all.

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Betty Boop, Jill Santopolo, Phoenixville, and the (famous) Melissa Walker Blog

Yesterday, post storm, the air shimmered, and Bill and I set off for Phoenixville, a former steel mecca that fell on hard times and has lately begun the long process of dusting itself off—fitting out old thick-walled buildings and cute Victorian structures with book stores and urban barber shops and trendy restaurants. It's the same town that Alice Sebold chose to skewer (along with human nature in general) in Almost Moon (she chose to see its ugliness; many of us prefer the sunny side).

The point is, Bill and I walked along in the shimmer and stopped at the windows and then we came to Betty Boop, who goes back with me a long, long time. My dancing maternal grandmother called me this (she also called me Rosie, hence the protagonist's name in House of Dance) and whenever I see Betty, I think of her. I have Betty Boop Christmas ornaments and Betty Boop cards and a little Betty Boop light-up, laser-into-glass replica, sent to me by my dear friend, Andree (you might have met Andree in my second book, Into the Tangle of Friendship).

Seeing Betty made me happy yesterday. Being in the shimmer always does. And when I woke this morning, I was in that happy mood all over again.

Which just got even happier, because the amazingly talented, perpetually generous Melissa Walker just posted the cover story that I wrote for her blog. This story talks about the genesis of the Undercover cover (what it might have been, where it might have gone), and a little bit about the genesis of Undercover itself.

http://www.melissacwalker.com/blog/2008/09/cover_stories_undercover_by_be.html

The story also mentions Laura Geringer, the editor who invited me to start writing young adult books in the first place and set me off in this new and unfathomably fulfilling direction. Sadly, Laura left Harper just three days after I finished the all-day, all-night-for-days-and-weeks marathon that yielded the second draft of my fourth YA novel, The Heart is not a Size. I have, as you can imagine, been living in literary limbo ever since.

(Note to self: Best not to combine your only child's flight to college with the loss of your editor with the loss of two major client projects (due to internal client issues) all in the same week; it can do damage. It can set you off doing all kinds of odd things like, say, vlogging.)

Late last week I learned that I do have a future at Harper with Heart. Jill Santopolo, also mentioned in the story on Melissa's blog, is taking me forward under the Harper imprint Balzer & Bray. She's whip-smart, reliable, funny, and promises me a night out on the town, if only I'd drink mojitos.

Who knows. If anything else happens here, I might just have to drink mojitos.

(For the record, you can meet Jill in my third novel, Nothing but Ghosts. Or you can meet the character she inspired — a good-looking, curly-headed blond guy named Danny Santopolo.)

For now, I'm raising my literary glass to Miss Melissa Walker, who has promised me an interview for my blog soon. Can't wait for that!

And I'm raising my glass to Jill. Yes. Absolutely. We are kicking butt with Heart.

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