My blog has moved

As of April 24, 2018, my blog has moved here:

Stacy DeKeyser's blog

Thanks! Hope to see you there.

--Stacy

Bibliography for THE RHINO IN RIGHT FIELD

Here's a list of the major source materials I used while researching and writing The Rhino in Right Field:

Printed material:

Veeck, Bill, and Ed Linn. Veeck—As in Wreck. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001.

Buege, Bob. Borchert Field: Stories from Milwaukee’s Legendary Ballpark. Madison, WI: The Wisconsin Historical Society, 2017.

Winter, Darlene, Elizabeth Frank, and Mary Kazmierczak. Images of America: Milwaukee County Zoo.Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2014.

Dickson, Paul. Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick. New York: Bloomsbury, 2012.

Gurda, John. New World Odyssey: Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church and Frank Lloyd Wright.Milwaukee: The Milwaukee Hellenic Community, 1986.

Gurda, John. The Making of Milwaukee. Milwaukee: The Milwaukee County Historical Society, 1999.

Saloutos, Theodore. “The Greeks of Milwaukee.” Wisconsin Magazine of History, Spring 1970.

Wesley, Charles I. “Story of Milwaukee’s Zoo and its Sponsor, the Washington Park Zoological Society,” The Washington Park Zoological Society, 1947.

Online:

Michaels, Chance. Borchert Field (blog). 

Milwaukee County Historical Society website.

Milwaukee Journal historical archives.

Milwaukee Sentinel historical archives.

In person:

Milwaukee County Zoo Library and Archive
Milwaukee County Zoo
10001 W. Bluemound Rd.
Milwaukee, WI 53226

Washington Park
1859 N. 40^th Street
Milwaukee, WI 53208

Summer 2018

My next novel has a tentative publication date!


It's a middle-grade novel about a kid (who very closely resembles my dad) growing up in a city that very closely resembles Milwaukee in the late 1940s.


As part of my research, I've been collecting images over at Pinterest, if you want to take a look.


And I'll be posting details of the publication schedule over on my calendar page.


Check back occasionally to see what's new.

Handout from Wisconsin SCBWI Conference, October 2016

If you attended my conference workshop, "The Connect-the-Dots Novel Outline" (or even if you didn't), here is the link to the PowerPoint presentation and handout.


Connect-the-Dots handout


Feel free to copy it for your personal use.

Happy writing!

Turning Points

A few weeks ago, I talked about turning points at the New England SCBWI spring conference.

The main point was this: As you write (especially a first draft), you may not know everything about how your story will unfold, but you DO know some things.

For example, you may know:

Who your protagonist is

What he/she wants

Who the main antagonist is

What obstacles will get thrown in the way...

Maybe you know the initial premise, and how your story will end. (When I started my first draft of Jump the Cracks, that's all I knew.)

But the thing is, you don't have to know your whole story to start writing. You only have to know ONE thing about your story, and you can write your way to that point. Or write THAT scene: the one you KNOW will have to happen at some point in your story.

Then, fill in the blanks as you go. Because once you write SOMETHING, other things will become apparent to you, and then you can write THOSE things.

It's a lot like walking through the woods. There may be several possible paths, but once you decide you are hiking the blue trail and not the orange trail, that's a start. You walk along, watching for the next blue blaze. And when you get there, you know you have to look for the NEXT blue blaze.

Writing is so similar. Write a scene--ANY scene--that you KNOW has to happen in your book. Then think about another thing that will HAVE to happen as a result...and write that. Repeat.

Look for the blazes. You can write a whole book that way, or at least a good underlying structure.

Happy trails!

Mapping a Reader's Life

Here's a link to my post at the Nerdy Book Club on how I became a reader (and why I became a writer).
xo

Workshop Outline: "Demystifying the Editorial Process" at the Mark Twain House, April 18, 2015

Here's the whole thing, if you didn't get a handout.

It's a Google doc. If you can't open it, email me or leave a comment, and I'll send you the Word document directly.

Thanks for attending!

Workshop Outline: Demystifying the Editing Process