One of the things I love about conferences is hearing the stories behind the books. Nobody tells these better than editors/agents/publishers. Authors are fun to listen to too, but we’re too close to our own stories to tell them and there’s nothing like the industry’s point of view.

When I interviewed Egmont USA’s vice-president and publisher Elizabeth Law a few weeks ago. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLiQXw8T7Jc ) I told her how much I loved these stories. Then I took a deep breath and asked her quickly if she would consider talking books with me again. She say she would and this video is the result of that.

Elizabeth also wants me to give away a free galley. I’m going to let Elizabeth choose which galley to send to the winner and I’m very envious that I cannot be included in this drawing. I’m pretty sure it will be one of the books featured. I’ll collect comments from this blog entry and my facebook too. I’ll give you until Sunday, September 5th, 2010, midnight-Arizona time to enter. I’m bad with numbers and lots of other things, so I’ll let you figure that out. Then, the following Monday, I’ll draw a name from slips in a bowl and post the winner.

I’m also going to ask you to leave some love for Elizabeth while you’re here. She took time to do this and she had one of those days when it seems that all things made of technology were working against her. You’ll see in this video the technological trials we were run through and in the end we lost audio completely. You will also see what a great sense of humor Elizabeth has, you will be simultaneously charmed and solidly cracked up. You have to see her reaction when I pitched a picture book manuscript to her!! FUNNY! She then followed that up with some really sweet advice about interacting with her at conferences. This is a special lady who wraps her heart and soul around the books she acquires for her company. She is exactly who we want to choose the books that will offered to our kids to read!

Enjoy this video of Elizabeth talking books!