Mel is Mel Boring, moderator of this interview with Russ Nelson, and Web Editor of the ICL Web Site.

Mel: When I heard Russ Nelson at a recent SCBWI conference, I knew you would enjoy him as a chat guest. He has a soothing Southern lilt-which you might even be able to hear tonight! And he speaks so simply and humbly about his life and his writing, and about his VERY successful first novel for young adults, Teach Me--which has gone up 150,000 rating notches at Amazon.com just since yesterday! There have been a record number of questions submitted for Russ Nelson tonight, and I hope we can get to them all; and most importantly we'll be taking your questions for Russ now as we begin the interview with some general interest questions. Russ Nelson, we are honored that you have made time—what with your full-time job, your writing, and this being the Christmas Season—to come and talk with us about your writing, and about how in the world you do so much with only the 24/7 that all of us writers only have. A WARM WELCOME to our ICL Chat Room, Russell A. Nelson!

Russ: Hello, everybody! Thanks for the kind words and the invite, Mel, I'm very glad to be here!

Mel: Russ Nelson, are you the FIRST writer ever in your family, or were there others?

Russ: I'm the first, Mel. In fact, we didn't even have many READERS in our family when I was a kid. I'm kind of the black sheep in a family of engineers, math people, computer folks.

Mel: Tell us about your wife and children, will you, please? How have they helped you in your writing, or made it difficult?

Russ: I'm married to a wonderful lady from Maine and we have 4 kids, ages 21, 18, 14, and 12. As with anybody with a family, we've had a lot of ups and downs. A lot of my writing was done in the wee hours of the morning because so many family responsibilities got in the way. But I'm sure they have given me some great material.

Russ: Small world, inky! Welcome

Mel: How many books did you write before you were published?

Russ: I can think of at least three that I completed, and by completed, I mean got all the way to the end of at least one draft. Like most people, I have tons of unfinished stuff sitting around in closets, etc. I probably have something like 2 million words in storage that will never see the light of day.

Mel: How did you come up with the idea for Teach Me?

Russ: I had been working on a novel for three years that didn't sell, called The House of Novembers, and after working so long and hard on it, I wrote another 150,000 words or so over the next 15 months after Novembers failed to sell, and finally just kind of ran out of steam. I had pieces of three books and was despairing of continuing at that point, so I just put everything aside for a month or two and gave myself a break. Then one day I started writing about a character, a girl, from her point of view, and the writing felt kind of experimental, almost like poetry, and I really liked the character, but I had no idea where I was going with her. So after about 5,000 to 7,000 words I just put the book aside and didn't pull it out again for about three months. Then I impulsively showed it to some writing friends online and they loved it and told me to keep going. But I had no storyline. Normally I start with an idea and go from there but I had no idea what this girl was going to do. At some point I resurrected an old idea of a young girl stalking an older man, sort of a flip-flop of the usual scenario, and I thought maybe I could do that with this new character. But then a friend of mine said, "She's angry! Why is she angry?", and then burst out saying, SHE'S SLEEPING WITH HER TEACHER!

Mel: Ha, LOL! Do you work from an outline?

Russ: Normally I don't work from an outline, Mel. I love to be as surprised as the reader as to where things are going, though now my editors have me prepare a synopsis in advance. Though I try to keep it as simple and open-ended as possible to give myself plenty of room for the book to grow organically.

Russ: Merry Christmas to you, too, Vijaya! I don't have a daughter, thanks for the compliment. I like to approach characters the way an actor approaches a part. I love to completely "inhabit" the character, just let her take over completely so that I can kind of begin to think with a different mind. I don't really worry about slang or what I sound like; I just become the character as much as I possibly can and then start speaking through her voice, much as someone would who was suddenly playing a role like an elderly man when they might be a young girl, etc. But, nope, we have four boys, so they weren't much help!

Russ: A famous writer once said, "Writers are failed actors." And I believe this. There is nothing really auto-bio in the book with regards to situations, etc., other than using things like my knowledge of science, history, etc. Of course, Nine has a personality that borrows a lot from my personality—though I am certain she is better at math than I am! But I've never been a teacher or anything. My dad worked on the Apollo moon program, so I'm sure I used some of that writing about her father. As for the romantic stuff, I'm very romantic myself, and I feel like you can tap into that sense of obsessive love, no matter what your gender is.

Russ: Oh, I agree completely! I think they dovetail in many ways. And quantum physics is teaching us that the universe is essentially very spiritual, which is the place I feel all good art comes from.

Russ: I love eggheads—my favorite character on Gilligan's Island was the Professor. I wanted to be just like him; but see, who IS like the Professor?? He knows about EVERYTHING, whereas most science types these days are so absurdly focused.

Russ: Some people have asked about that, Vijaya. Thanks! I'm not sure, though a sequel would be a lot of fun. Schuyler was a fun character to work with, there is a good bit of me in him as well. Lots of people have asked me what Nine does in college and whether she will ever meet Mr. Mann again.

Mel: A sequel seems a NATURAL for Teach Me!

Russ: Hi, writersbock. When my friend said Nine was sleeping with her teacher. I said, I CAN'T WRITE THAT! And my first thought was, God, I live on a street with seven churches! They'll burn me in effigy! But my friend said it was a great idea and kept coaxing me to do it. I think maybe it helped that I was able to approach it that way with a lot of sensitivity and a little trepidation, so that it wouldn't just be a sensationalistic novel that is just out for sales. I tried my best to infuse it with love.

Mel: I LOVE your quantum spiritual physics—with the seven churches and all! How in the world did you write in the first person point of view of a teen girl?

Russ: Again, it was the acting thing, Mel. I've heard writers say they watch their characters as they write. But I have to BECOME the character. For me, that is the only way to write. I don't worry so much about readers being able to identify with my characters on a surface level, you know, the latest slang, TV shows, etc. I feel like when you completely inhabit the character and pour it out straight from your heart then the identification with the reader comes at a much deeper level, an identification that doesn't really have anything to do with gender, age, etc., but universal human truths.

Mel: That is a SUPER insight, BECOMING the character—even one of the opposite gender—thank you, Russ!

Russ: If you read much about Dickens, they say his family would pass by his writing room and he would be in there making the most outlandish faces into a mirror literally, becoming Peggotty or Wackford Squeers or David Copperfield, etc. And Dickens did a lot of acting in amateur productions, so I guess it came to him naturally.

Mel: You are not only well spoken, Russ, but well READ!

Russ: Ha, thanks, Mel, but I feel like there are a lot of gaps in my writerly education. I've never read many Russian authors, for example.

Russ: I began writing in the second grade. I wrote a 2-page play called “The Mummy's Tomb” (or something like that). I still have it in a box somewhere. I've been writing ever since, though I had periods here and there where I let it slide for a while or tried other things. Like most writers, I'm an unrepentant generalist fascinated by so many different things. So I tried other things as well, though continually coming back to the writing. I wrote for MANY years in tremendous isolation without knowing any other writers or that it was even respected as a way to use your time. It was looked down on, so I kept it a secret for the most part.

Mel: Besides being an unrepentant generalist, you're also a PERFECT typist!

Russ: J I'm fumbling along, thanks!

Russ: Hi, eggmay (what neat names)—oops, there you go Mel, a typo.

Mel: Hey, you're NORMAL, friend!

Russ: Ha, anybody who knows me would beg to differ. Okay, I try to do a set amount of words each day when I'm writing a book and I just do them when I can, basically. It's not really an option to sit down and say, okay, four hours of work. You'd be surprised how many little pieces of time you can find in even a busy day, though I suppose it helps that I'm not very social, though I would love to be! I love meeting new people, etc., but it really is a discipline thing, not to mention, I wrote at lunch, mornings, all kinds of time whenever I could grab an extended period to work on something. Though I must admit, it goes better when I have at least an hour or two or more consecutively. But it really is a thing of just finding a way to get that quota done for the day.

Mel: Do you do any writing at work, at NASA? (I promise NOT to tell Uncle Sam—or Uncle George! (-:})

Russ: Yes, sometimes I do, Mel. I just make sure all my stuff is done. And technically, it is job skill stuff since I am a tech writer, not to mention, over the years I have put in TONS of overtime at my job without pay, like most salaried people do.

Russ: The working title was this: Teenage Girl's X-Ray Vision Baffles Scientists. J I swiped that title from the internet; it was from a newspaper article about a Russian girl who purportedly can see inside the human body and diagnose illness with only her eyes. At the time I was thinking of my book as a rollicking, wacky, funny novel, so I thought it needed a title like so many books I was reading at the time, like The Earth, My Butt and Other Big Round Things. I was quite surprised when my agent and editor started calling my book raw and edgy and powerful. I thought it was really silly—but probably that is before I really got the storyline down. I thought of Nine as a prankster in the beginning—I didn't know where it was headed.

Russ: Wow, classic, thanks, Amuda! Oh my gosh, masterpiece...whew.... Hard to respond to such a delightful question and do justice to so much praise, but I'll try...ha!...okay, I mainly wrote the most linear book I possibly could. My Novembers book had a ton of threads, subplots, etc., and that was AFTER I had trimmed something like 50,000+ words, which is probably the reason it didn't sell. Editors were saying they were "overwhelmed," which made me feel good until no offer was forthcoming. J So I realized with this book that I wanted to make it very linear; it begins with a kind of "flashforward," but then Nine goes on to explain how the whole thing started. Originally I had intended to give the love story part of the book about one chapter, say, 1,000 words, but it kept GROWING. I was afraid after starting off with Nine crashing the wedding, that it would slow the momentum of the book to get into the whole love story thing too deeply. But the more I did, the more I realized how much it helped humanize the character of Mr. Mann, who could have very easily been a stock "cad" or "predator.” Instead, it gave me a chance to paint him as a flawed, sympathetic human being, and once I realized that, it was mainly keeping the story completely linear from there, going with Nine's obsession wherever it took her. So even though the writing is jumpy with quick transitions, choppy sentences in places, it was still moving forward toward the conclusion. I think that was a big lesson learned between Novembers and Teach Me.

Russ: In all, the book that sold took about seven months, then another month to revise. The revision process was a whirlwind. My editor at Razorbill, Liesa Abrams, wanted the book to be the lead title for fall 2005, so we had to work like crazy to get it into galley form fast enough. Mostly she wanted MORE, wanted some scenes fleshed out between Nine and Mr. Mann, and gave me some wonderful suggestions. She is a delight to work with.

Russ: As a kid I jumped straight from very young books to books by people like Jules Verne, Mark Twain, H.G. Wells, Ray Bradbury. I became very interested in science fiction. We didn't have any books at home for a while. I was reading those Volume A encyclopedias that you would get in the mail—you know, those freebies—so I read Volume A, about Air and Space, the Audubon Society, etc. etc., all sorts of A books. So I was well grounded in things like anteaters, arachnids, aviation, etc. At some point I discovered the wonderland of the library and read sci-fi like crazy. I tried writing it for many years, but ultimately got bored. I wanted to write about REAL things, the world and experiences around me. It wasn't until many years later that I discovered poets like Emily Dickinson and other writers like Hemingway, Shirley Jackson, Anne Sexton, TS Eliot, Dylan Thomas. I didn't even know YA novels existed. I had just read stuff like The Hardy Boys and Tom Swift. It's hard to say who has influenced me the most. I LOVE great writing, simply love it, and I'm sure I pull from all sorts of sources. Poetry was a big influence for this book. I even tried my hand at poetry for a while, WONDERFUL practice for any writer, teaches you just how powerful a very few words can be. Believe it or not, technical editing helped my writing a great deal. I learned how to cut and pare and stuff like the importance of clarity in writing from doing tech editing of HORRIBLE engineer-speak stuff.

Mel: Was your Novembers book sci-fi, Russ? Or what genre was it?

Russ: Novembers is hard to classify. It began life as a Harry Potter-like mid-grade fantasy. But then after 40,000 words, I knew something was wrong, so I junked the part where the MC goes into the fantasy world. I was more interested in what she was doing in this weird old house in Alabama with a lady named Hannah November. You might could call it magical realism; there is what SEEMS to be magic in that book, but by the end, was it really magic? It holds a very dear place in my heart. It's also hard to call it contemporary fiction because it doesn't take place in the suburbs or a gritty urban environment.

Mel: That's a great term for a genre, magical realism!

Russ: Hi, Alicia! Back in 1999 I was feeling bad about where my writing was going. I had tried sci-fi, thriller type books, literary novels, all sorts of things. I wondered what in the heck was wrong with me. I can remember standing in book stores after two hours of searching the stacks, almost feeling literally sick to my stomach surrounded by all the books out there and not being able to figure out where I fit in. I was even having trouble READING at that point—it seemed everything bored me. Then one day I decided out of the blue to write down my 50 favorite books, and it took several days because I kept remembering books and adding them. Then I pored over my list like a crazy person trying to find some connecting thread, but here I had everything from Watership Down to Huckleberry Finn and it was driving me nuts until it suddenly hit me: 37 of the 50 books were CHILDREN’S books! Or books like Huck Finn that could be read at any age. This was a real revelation and may have explained why I was having such a hard time relating to adult fiction.

Russ: I'm not sure, William. It's just something that came from inside me. I feel like writers really fly "below the radar" when it comes to making a living. You and your family have to eat, so you adapt in whatever way you can, though whatever work you take as your day job doesn't necessarily define who you really are. The real me is so much LARGER on the inside than all that stuff. I like to range all over the place. I see nearly every situation I encounter from the point of view of story, even if it's something as mundane as spotting a chewed up pen on the ground next to the gas tanks when you are filling up. I wonder who owned that pen, what they are like, why the teeth marks? Did they drop it out of anger? Carelessness? What led up to that moment—even thinking, how does the pen feel about this? Is it sad? (See what I mean about not being normal? But I can sure fake it!)

Russ: Thanks, you three!! Gosh, I need to come here every week! What a boost to the self esteem!

Mel: They are well deserved compliments, Russ!

Russ: Thanks, Mel! The thing about romance, char, is that I feel it is everywhere. This is kind of my take on spirituality, too, like I feel much closer to God in the woods or a meadow than I do in a building. But I feel God—or whatever She or He or energy the universe is—flows through EVERYTHING. So that you are never away from it, never away from the romance, passion, spirituality, that are inculcated within all things. And that's what keeps me going whenever I'm sitting in some dull meeting or staring at my cube, I look at the acorns on the ground outside my window and start dreaming.

Russ: Wow, I am very interested in India—I would love to read it, charweb!

Russ: Teach Me is available in libraries, yes—not sure in all of them, but I see it a lot of places on the Web.

Russ: Just finding the time wherever I can, and not worrying about it as TIME, but in terms of WORD COUNT. So on days when it seems impossible to write, I just write faster, even if what comes out turns out to be pure crap. That way you maintain your momentum. I think one of the BEST things a writer can do is to learn to get out of his or her own way. By this I mean TRUST YOURSELF and let yourself go. You would be amazed at how quickly the words pile up if you just trust yourself and let it rip, knowing you can go back later and fix it—though I do edit some as I go, depending on how much time I have. Also, I have learned to type very quickly.

Mel: You do for sure!

Russ: You're welcome, this is fun! A nice break. The first draft took about...let's see...I guess about five months or so. At one point I sent it to a friend and then addressed her suggestions for about another month before I sent it to my agent.

Russ: Hi, charweb! I wrote Teach Me in 2004. The first several thousand words were in fall 03, but most of it was done between April and August of 04.

Russ: They didn't know anything about it, they never knew what I was working on. They didn't really know much of anything about Novembers, either. So I never knew if they were supportive of Teach Me's storyline.

Russ: Hi, luv, none of my kids have read Teach Me...maybe someday! Our oldest boy is autistic, and our 18-year-old has really gotten away from reading, unless it is wild sword and sorcery/fantasy stuff. Some people have asked me if I would let my 12-year-old read it, and I would. Mainly because the sex stuff is soft-pedaled, but also I know Joseph very well, and know that it wouldn't freak him out. He might not CHOOSE to read it...you know boys, caught up in Harry Potter and Eldest and Cirque Du Freak, etc.!

Mel: AMEN and AWOMEN to that, Russ!

Russ: Hi, cosmos, thanks!! As Goofy would say, awwww, gaawwrsh! I hope I never disappoint you! I really throw myself into my writing. And believe me, I can be quite dumb, too! I have dizzying pits of stupidity sometimes. (Did anybody say the word "boolean"?)

Mel: Yes, I did say it—no foolean!

Russ: J Mel, you are a punster par excellance!!

Mel: Thank you!

Russ: The original seed of the book—at least the stalking part—came way back in probably 2000 or 2001 when I was casting around for ideas. (I have lots of ideas, sometimes too many.) That was the idea of turning the stalking situation on its head. Then I did a few days or weeks of writing in fall 2003 for that first batch of 5,000 words, then another five or six months the following spring and summer.

Russ: I've written a lot of sci-fi short stories, V. It really was my first love in a lot of ways. I still love writers like Philip K. Dick—simply mind-blowing. I've never sent out any short stories. I have boxes and boxes of stuff, handwritten, typed, etc. I like short stories. A VERY tough form to write and do well in.

Russ: I revised for roughly one month. I got a two-book contract around Thanksgiving of 2004, then did all the revisions that December. It was pedal-to-the-metal stuff. I was in daily contact with Liesa, mostly hundreds of e-mails, but also many phone calls. She is amazing—a rising star!!

Russ: I queried my agent first when I had about 30,000 words done. I sent her a very brief synopsis and she asked to see the book. So I sent it to her, I think, on October 1, 2004. I never sent it to any editors.

Russ: I have only subbed one time to an editor—that was my book the House of Novembers. I've hardly ever subbed anything. I'm a HUGE believer in making the writing the best you can possibly make it first. I think that helps so much. I think a lot of people just want to get it out there, think it's all a numbers game, but I truly believe you can make those numbers work in your favor by doing a bang-up job and not subbing until you are SURE it's the best you can make it. That's why I have so many hundreds of thousands, millions of words that will never see the light of day. You REALLY have to get to where you believe in yourself. And I feel that comes from writing, writing, and MORE WRITING. So, to answer your question, I'm not sure how patient I would have been to keep subbing to editors.

Russ: By subbing, I mean submitting a manuscript to an editor or agent, jolie.

Russ: I sent it to Rosemary Stimola, my agent, in October 2004, and she responded that November, saying she really wanted to do something with it, but wanted to test the waters first because of the controversial subject matter. She told me this in an e-mail in November 04. A couple of days later she had lunch with Liesa and pitched my book, and then two days later Rosemary had negotiated a two-book deal.

Russ: Yes, I couldn't believe it--it happened so fast. Two other editors wanted to see it, but by then it was already sold. I'm not sure my feet touched the floor for days.

Russ: Ummm, I'm not sure, Jolie. I'm a very visual thinker. First I become the character—it is so important to find the right voice, the voice that feels FRESH, somehow different. And then when I can truly think that character's thoughts I walk around inside her, experiencing what she experiences and "reporting" on it in her words as accurately as I can. If I get stuck at a certain point, I sometimes jump ahead or jump to a different place chronologically in the book and just have fun with it. I always try to do what Elmore Leonard advised: "Leave out what readers skip." Simple advice, but wonderful, especially in these Attention Deficit Disorder times when people simply don't give books the time to build the way they used to.

Russ: Tech stuff can be very tough, eggamy, because sometimes you are so "roped in" as to what you can do with it. There is even a kind of “government speak” that you need to follow so that the engineers will be comfortable with it, using lots of words like, "enhanced," "utilization," "impacted," "processes," etc.

Russ: I've never really taken much in the way of writing courses. I once took part of a semester of a creative writing course at Memphis State. Mostly it consisted of my teacher rushing in 20 minutes late telling us his car was on fire, and then sitting cross-legged on his desk saying stuff like, OMMMMMMMMM. He was flabbergasted that I was coming to his class directly from a microbiology class. But by the end of the class he let me give everybody their grades—haw! (That'll teach that smug SOB in the back row—he deserved that B I gave him—hee-hee!! J )

Mel: We have received a VERY special Christmas gift tonight in the ICL Chat Room. Russ Nelson is here to chat about his hugely successful first novel for Young Adults, Teach Me. Russ wrote this novel while working his full-time job for NASA, and is now at work on his second novel. Teach Me was published by Razorbill Press, and is a cutting-edge novel about a high school student who has an affair with her English teacher. Russ Nelson is bylined as "R.A. Nelson" on the book, since potential readers may not have believed that a man could write so sensitively about such an edgy topic. Russ and I are really tickled that you came tonight!

Russ: Hey! Hello, tg! Good to see you--thank you for the compliment! Really I just approached that from the point of view of passion being kind of universal, and just "lived" it from a girl's POV. Liesa had me tone it down a little. For instance, she wouldn't let me use the word "hard" in the big scene, even though it had nothing to do with...er...you know. I was careful to make it more EMOTIONALLY explicit than sexually explicit. I love the idea of being in love, falling in love, so this came very naturally to me.

Russ: I think it can when the feelings are universal, Amuda. Also, when you are working with teen fiction you can really blur the line between teen and adult. I'm kind of an impatient reader, I never seem to have very big blocks of time to read in, you know, where you can really wallow in a book. So it needs to be well-paced and immediately interesting to me. I keep saying some day I will read all these umpteen hundred classics, but I'm not sure how many I'll ever really get to at this rate. Maybe after the kids are grown and if I ever can quit my day job.

Russ: I think dealing with it with an overriding sense of love is the only way to approach subjects like that. I really believe that love infuses everything and that you can bring it out in all sorts of people and situations, so that you handle it with sensitivity and care, rather than trying to shock.

Flowwolf: Did you say why you write children's material, and not books for adults?

Russ: I really tried hard to write for adults, Flowwolf. A LOT of words. Maybe some day I will try again. I think the wolf was at the door a lot of those years and it is certainly possible to put TOO much emphasis on sales and marketing, etc. I would go like gangbusters for a month or two, and then realize that writing a novel is WORK, long, hard, sometimes even tedious work. And I want to LOVE what I am doing. So, again, writing for kids/teens just feels fresher to me, somehow. There seem to be more possibilities—you don't have to do so much explaining the way some adult books seem to do, gobs and gobs of uninteresting exposition. I would much rather "lard in" the exposition and backstory-type stuff within the forward motion of the action. It just bugs me to get to page 40 in a book and they are STILL telling you what a character is like, what her world is like, etc. I always try to remember that a reader JUST WANTS TO GET ON WITH IT. Very few readers notice lyrical writing, notice extremely nuanced characterizations, etc., they want STORY.

Russ: Thank you, nadia! I really think that characters are the bedrock of any story. If you have fascinating characters, stories will always be more interesting. I like to think of what I try to do as not being character-driven or plot-driven, but what I like to call story-driven, meaning the best story you can tell blended with the best characters; but as always, it begins with a great character, character(s).

Russ: I heard my agent speak and LOVED her presentation, so I queried her and told her exactly what I thought, she would be a perfect fit. Rosemary is a jewel. I call her Mary Poppins sometimes because she is "practically perfect in every way." She is a fantastic combination of realist and enthusiast with energy and wit! I love her to pieces.

Russ: Oh! Good question. Please, if you do NOTHING else, PLEASE go online and meet people! Just like you are doing right here! I wrote in amazing isolation for many years and it was VERY tough—thank goodness for the web!! Go out and find people...you can Google writing sites, sign up for ICL, etc. I got my first agent from a referral…people will help you if you get to know them, befriend them. Also, attend as many conferences as you can. Go somewhere where your passion is RESPECTED. There are wonderful people out there; I can't tell you how much finding them online has meant to me. It's like finding your tribe at last. People like Mel and all the wonderful folks at SCBWI-Iowa—like my home away from home.

Russ: I don't have a Web Site yet, though I do have a domain name. It's Razorbooks.com. Hopefully I’ll have a Web Site soon—just been too busy doing everything else.

Mel: Russ, your warm and personable manner have made the time FLY by tonight, and I can't believe that our two hours with you have passed by already. THANK YOU for such willing sharing of yourself and your writing with us here in the ICL Chat Room! You've given us such a clear and honest idea of what it takes to write full-time and work a day job full-time as well. Congratulations on your nomination for the ALA's Best Books of 2006 award! We can understand why it was nominated, and we'll be hoping for you that it will make the top ten list in a few months. Since we've really only scratched the surface on ALL that we could learn from you, would you be willing to come back someday in the future and continue chatting with us?

Russ: I would love to come back again, Mel! I've had such a wonderful time, fantastic questions, and you have been the PERFECT host! Thanks everybody!!! Would love to talk more. So nice meeting you all, and thanks for your hospitality, all the wonderful interest in my books and kind words.

Mel: As our very first Chat Guest of the New Year 2006, Judy Bradbury will be with us on Thursday evening, January 5, to get us excited as she always does, about what books for children are best to read as helps in our own children's writing. Judy Bradbury is an instructor for ICL, who may be YOUR instructor, and was last with us here in January 2003. She is the author of One Carton of Oops!, and many other books for children, as well as articles for parents and other adults about children's reading. We will be sure to ask Judy about her four-book series entitled Children's Book Corner: A Read-Aloud Resource with Tips, Techniques, and Plans for Teachers, Librarians, and Parents, recently published by Libraries Unlimited. Will you please come back in 2006, two weeks from tonight, and join Judy Bradbury and me?

Mel: Russ Nelson, our writing hats are WAY off to you, Sir, at your being able to work full-time in a day job, and still give full-time to writing Young Adult novels! We SO appreciate all you have taught us tonight. And I have more than a feeling that MANY people here tonight who have wanted to write a young adult novel know a lot more about how it should be done now. Thank you again, Russ, and the HAPPIEST of CHRISTMASES to you from all of us here!

Russ: Happy Christmas to you all, too!!

Russ: You've really made this an incredibly fun night. You are all so very welcome. I would love to come again.

Russ: Hey, lisa! Good to see you, thanks!

Mel: Thank you ALL, and HAPPY CHRISTMAS, everyCHILDREN'Swriter! GOOD NIGHT!