“Mamas Don’t Let You Babies grow up to be Twit-less!”

Yesterday, I had a twitter chat with my editor, Cheryl Klein of Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic and stumbled upon some unexpected drama.

The hashtag we used–#CMchat (for Cleopatra’s Moon chat)–was being used by country music aficianados. #CMchat was a fairly busy twitter convo before we came along and crashed their party for an hour.

It took us a while to understand what was happening. We ended up keeping the hashtag because well, what else could we do? This was the hashtag we’d told folks to use for more than a week. Plus, we were only going to be using it for an hour. We apologized as best we could.

But it turns out some country music fans aren’t too “in-ner-es-ted” in the process of writing and publishing a novel.

Who knew?

Which, actually, I find surprising because I think that country songs are the last bastion of story-telling in the modern music industry. I don’t always like the “sturm und twang” of some the songs but I can’t deny that the storytelling is often compelling and full of emotional resonance.

And who knows, some country music fan may yet take pity on our hapless-hashtag-wrangling and check out my book.

If you missed the chat, Cheryl put the transcripts of the 140-character-at-a-time exchanges on her blog. In one section, she identifies the four essential elements she looks for when considering whether to purchase a manuscript.

Another interesting tidbit–Cheryl says she can “shut off” the editor in her if the pleasure-book she is reading contains those elements she seeks for her own manuscripts. If they don’t, she puts the book down, which she says happens about once every three or four books. 

Also, you can find out what her Roman name would have been.

So check it out.  And thank you, pard’ner!