Okay... so what book did Meg Cabot read?!

Her quote on the back cover says "Laugh out loud funny and way twisted!" Um, not exACTLY the viewpoint I got from The True Meaning of Cleavage by Mariah Fredericks. This book had its humorous moments, certainly, but the true meaning of the word 'cleavage' is not what the cover of the book implies -- that it's about a girl and her high school world, and her boobs. It's about cleavage -- as in being reft in twain. As in separation, and parting. It's about losing a friend.

(I wonder if Fredericks chose the title herself? Why don't I get ideas like that?)

This book has more than excellent characterizations going for it. It has a flawless tone. Fredericks captures the intensely flavored world of high school, where so much is going on -- and so much of it is completely pointless but held as if it's life or death -- that it boggles the mind. The unapologetically ordinary narrator, Jess, realizes that her friend Sari is moving faster and farther than she is in the high school cesspool, and while she is troubled, she is also very well aware of the realities of high school -- that it's filled with evil people and it's all just a freakin' game. Did I mention that Jess is a tad cynical?

It could be argued that the narrator was simply too cool and her best friend too -- self-destructive to be believable. I find myself cheering for Jess in those odd moments she realizes that she can just stop censuring and judging everyone and have fun. I might have added more embarrassing moments for Jess, but I can't detract from the truth of her characterization. She plays her cards close to her chest, is wary and sneering in her own silent way, and is just like hundreds of other high school students: if you can't join 'em, hate 'em. I do think it's positive that Fredericks introduces a foil to Jess' overly-avid cynicism.

A. Fortis, who suggested this book to the WritingYA crew, mentioned a tank top ad.
My copy had no ad (alas!), but I did feel like the writing was really skillful and this wasn't a waste of time. Check it out -- Meg Cabot be darned.

Does blogging count as writing?

I finally finished my first YA novel--did anyone hear the huge cry of relief emanating from New Jersey? :) I would like to go and edit it because lord knows it needs it, and then send it out, but between my new editor job, freelance writing, and general mayhem, very little writing is accomplished. So back to my initial thought: does blogging count as writing?

Summer Reads: Sorcery, Correspondence, and 19th century England

Bon jour!

I'm supposed to be reading books of short stories, in preparation for my potentially good idea to hoodwink a few friends into writing a book of YA short stories while we're at the SCBWI L.A. Conference this summer. Of course, it being JUNE, it's also supposed to be almost summer, and it's raining. So, I'm to be excused for my lapse back into novels -- and definitely I'm to be excused because my novel finds this week have been such a kick!

One of the best things about the Harry Potter hysteria, in its heyday, anyway (which certainly isn't now -- enough with the disposable characters already, J.K.!), was that it made a lot of publishers go racing back to their slush piles and give a lot of good fantasy a second look. Sorcery and Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot: Being the Correspondence of Two Young Ladies of Quality Regarding Various Magical Scandals in London and the Country was one such novel. First published in 1988, this lengthily titled novel was reprinted in 2003 to much greater acclaim.

Think Jane Austen on pixie dust, and you've just about got the gist of this unique story. Amusing on so many levels, this book was the mastermind of two authors, Caroline Stevemer and Patricia C. Wrede, based on a game played in childhood. Apparently, during summer break, friends would write letters to each other based on assumed storylines, and become duchesses, movie stars, etc., and have 'adventures.' Caroline and Patricia set their adventure in 1817, and came up with a remarkable book.

This is a great mental frolic. There's danger - from nasty wizards and overbearing aunts. There's mistaken identities, curfew breaking, misunderstandings and midnight waltzes. Paced sedately, with descriptions of clothes and carriages, and laced with subtle jabs at English manners (so very Austen), this was really a surprising and enjoyable find. Better still, there's a sequel!

Though I have yet to read it, it is hoped that The Grand Tour : Being a Revelation of Matters of High Confidentiality and Greatest Importance, Including Extracts from the Intimate Diary of a Noblewoman and the Sworn Testimony of a Lady of Quality is as funny and elegant as its predecessor.

Now, lie back with a cup o' tea, luv, and think of England.

Summer Reads: Dead Sisters and Plague mysteries

Enough said on the topic of me hating badly written ghost stories -- I have to admit that a couple have caught the eye of some of us skeptics. First, for the YA spooky beach bag is Dead Girls Don't Write Letters, by Gail Giles

Allowing for the fact that I hate gratuitously "spooky" novels, think most mysteries are anything but, roll my eyes at so-called "true crime" thrillers, and think most horror stories are fairly stupid, Giles' dead girls are - surprise - kind of interesting. And yes, there is more than one, you'll be intrigued to find out! But only one writes letters... I was able to stay the course in my reading, 1.) because this novel's really short [I don't think the plot could stand up to many more pages] and 2.) because this is more of a mystery more than an actual thriller.

So - if your sister, whom everyone had doted on, and who had been the center of the universe, had died... and then you got a letter from her saying that she'd been nowhere near the fire that supposedly killed her, how would you feel? How would you feel when it turned out that the girl who came to your house the day and hour that she said she would WASN'T YOUR SISTER? How would you feel if it seemed like your mother thought she was? Hmmm! This is all very...suspicious... I give this book a good solid B+. The ending was simply too confusing to give it a better grade than that, but for a mystery-within-a-mystery, it worked fairly consistently well.

A. Fortis reviewed middle grade historical novel,The House on Hound Hill, and it seems like another good candidate for the beach bag. Says Fortis, According to the cover, this is the author's first book published in the U.S.; if this is indeed the case, then we've been missing out.

I randomly picked up this gem of a mystery/suspense novel while browsing in the YA section of the library, and I'm having this feeling that it's one I'll be checking out over and over if not caving in and buying. It's got everything I want from a thrilling read, and many of the characteristics I want in my own novel: a compelling, likeable, and normal main character; a creepy setting with secrets to hide; a historical component which impinges on the present through supernatural means; tight plotting that makes it impossible to put down; and just a hint of the gross-out factor.

In this novel, the main character moves with her mother and brother, post-divorce, to an old house in a very old area of London. She senses something strange about it from the beginning, but isn't able to put her finger on it. As she gradually encounters strange and ghostlike figures in her house and around the neighborhood, and gets to know its unsavory history during the last Great Plague in the 1600s, she finds out just why the area (and her house in particular) seem so creepy to her.

I wholeheartedly give this one an A.

Check 'em out!

Summer Reads: Of High School Cliques and Tank Tops

I've been doing a bit of housekeeping, and ran across this wee book review from A. Fortis on a book I've yet to read: The True Meaning of Cleavage by Mariah Fredericks. Into my beach bag it goes! A. Fortis says:

I picked up this book assuming it was going to be total trash. Sure, I was drawn in by the title, but after reading the comment on the front cover by Meg Cabot, author of The Princess Diaries (“Laugh out loud funny and way twisted!”), I assumed it was going to be at worst sappy and at best drearily generic. The back cover didn’t help—the blurb indicated your basic school novel: friendships changing upon entering high school, crushes, cliques, etc. Plus there was a “True Meaning of Cleavage” tank top offer. None of the signs pointed to a meaningful reading experience, but I thought, what the hey. Let’s see what’s considered a trendy teen read.

I was actually pleasantly surprised. It was not “way twisted,” whatever that means to Meg Cabot, but I enjoyed it. There wasn’t an overabundance of deep meaning, but there was much more going on than I expected. The characters were believable and quite well written, although I felt that the narrator, a pre-geeky girl named Jess who’s interested in sci-fi and art (a girl after my own heart!) was a little too wise for her age. Most of the time she seemed at least sixteen to me, with hardly any awkward ninth-grade moments; if she had them, she was somehow too self-aware about them to seem believably a freshman.

But the writing was surprisingly good. I didn’t expect that. The narrator was endearing and funny, and I winced along with her as her friend Sari has various misadventures and becomes susceptible to the high school clique atmosphere. It was a quick, easy, fun read—and I came out of it caring about the characters.

B+

Stay tuned for more books suitable for porch swings and mint juleps.

When did you know you were a writer?

Reading the SF Chron this morning, I came across a crystalline description of the moment it comes together - the moment that you know that you want to be a writer; when the world is somewhat of a formless blur around you, and you find yourself groping inarticulately, but you know that if you could just get a grip, just find handholds somewhere, you can spin that sphere in the direction you need it to go.

This gem is from Alicia Parlette, and I urge you to read the entire piece because it's important and focused writing, and it will no doubt impress you like it did me, and make you briefly jealous and aware of a shapeless longing to push more deeply into your own undiscovered boundaries of your art. I hope to have my thoughts, much less my writing, someday distilled in this way -- but Parlette's depth and skill are so much more immediate than simply wanting to hone her craft. Parlette wields her metaphorical pen like a scalpel because she is 23, and has learned she has cancer.

When the doctor came in, I started focusing on the room. The mauve curtain. The computer in the corner. The crunchiness of my gown. He sat there calculating how rare my cancer was ("Let's see ... uh ... huh ... 1 percent of ... right ... and ... well ... 1 in 50 million, maybe?") and the limited options I had ("We usually don't use chemotherapy because it doesn't work, but you'll have to talk to someone else about that"), and I felt myself weaving in and out of panic. One second I felt like I was going to pass out; the next, I focused on his gray-blue tie. The details seemed increasingly important.

I was set up to see other doctors and with a plan to meet again, but no treatment. No concrete options. I noticed myself stepping back and thinking of it as a play, not my life. This was too horrific to be my life.

As I sat there, I could feel myself detach. And in that moment I thought, "What a great story this will make."
That's when I knew I was a writer. When things were more frightening than I could ever imagine and my tiny little existence was spinning and careening out of control, my first reaction was to think about recasting it as a drama, as a struggle, as a way to share my little existence that didn't seem so little anymore.

I am still in awe of the way life's puzzles fall into place. I think this is because, right now, God is giving me a bigger look at how the jigsaw is mapped out. Not much bigger, but big enough for me to see that even tragedies are linked with blessings, and that among my many blessings is the chance to write my story. Right at the time when my world is upended – and right at a time when I'm aching to be more creative, to find an outlet, to finally write – God practically drops this opportunity in my lap.

If I get through this, this story will help me remember the important moments along the way, the details, the dizzying emotions. And, in the worst of all circumstances, if I go through this life-changing ordeal and my body just wears out and I die, I will die a writer. The one thing I've always wanted to be.

Read the whole piece. You'll find that Parlette is young, maybe idealistic, but a beginning writer who looks steadily at her world, and who writes it true. Then go forth to your world and look at it with new eyes. You'll find your handholds. Give that world a whirl, and watch it spin.

Well, if we're going to talk the talk...

...I suppose it means we have to walk the walk. Translation: It's time again to try and submit -- AGAIN -- something for the Glimmer Train's short fiction contest. The deadline is the 31st... I've submitted so many stories to them in the last couple of years that I'm beginning to doubt that they actually read them! I suppose I haven't much else to lose but my sanity, and that's an arguable possession anyway. I really do love the magazine, I'm just not sure I can actually write a.) short/flash fiction b.) anything really readable for adults. You people with your Tin House contacts and actual adult street cred will have to show me the way. Meantime, I'm trying to make sense of a story I dreamed - something to do with outdoor showers, laundromats, the smell of Tide, and seagulls. Summer camp in my subconscious.


Weird.

Fourteen Years Later, A Whole New World

Ursula K. Le Guin. At age 74, she is still one of the best and freshest voices in YA fantasy/sci-fi bar none. Recently, Le Guin has come up with another universe that isn't Earthsea, and, it having been fourteen years since her last strictly YA novel, her readers are doubtless hoping for more.

Her quiet and deep writing style brings to her novels characterizations of depth and emotion, individuals embroiled in day to day struggles, failures and triumphs, and just some really solid storytelling. Le Guin's Gifts is a welcome addition to her readers.

Life is hard, but idyllic, in the Uplands, where Orrec lives with his gifted father and his Lowlands mother. The Uplanders are considered witches by the Lowlanders, who live in a seaside village in some comfort. In the Uplands, there is magic, which is passed from father to son. They are tribal and poor, but their lives and fortunes are made more secure by their gifts.

They are a society divided by these gifts; Orrec's friend, Gry of the Barre tribe, can call animals, and her mother's place in their society is to be hired out to help with the hunts. The Drum tribespeople have the power of the slow wasting; and the Rodds have the gift of the knife. The Caspro gift is that of the unmaking, and Orrec, son of the brantor (headman) of the Caspro, is both proud and fearful of his father's gift. When his own is slow to mature, he is worried. Later, the power and permanency of 'unmaking' makes him afraid. Then the uneasy truce between the gifted tribes breaks down, and Orrec is pushed into thinking more deeply about gifts, and how they are used.

The novel's contemporary and universal question asks readers to consider what their gifts are, and how to make the best use of them. A heavy topic, but this book is lightened with thoughtful storytelling, sympathetic characters and the rich details which make Le Guin such a great writer.

Talk Yourselves Up, Writers!

I’ve read in more than a few sources the dubious assertion that a writer should not spend a lot of time talking about her work to "outsiders." When you say things like "I’m writing a novel," some seem to think that this is an activity reserved for wanna-be starving artists or people who want to look snooty and over-educated. Plus, your friends and family, they say, your co-workers and your random acquaintances--they don’t want to hear all the boring little details about your plot struggles or your character inconsistencies. In short, these sources seem to say, if you start talking about your writing you risk boring people to death. They don’t want the mystery, the illusion of a great artist at work, ruined for them.

Well, as someone who just finished writing a mystery, I can tell you for sure that this is not the case. When I say I’ve written a mystery, quite a few people want to hear about it. They want me to summarize the plot for them, and when I say, "Are you sure you want to know how it all turns out?" they say "Yes!" They think it’s intriguing. (This is not universally true, but it happens more often than I expect.)

Moreover, there’s an even more compelling reason to talk up your writing to every random person you meet, and take that risk of boring them to death. That reason is: You never know whose brother’s sister-in-law’s uncle might be an editor or agent. You never know which random co-worker might be a published writer with contacts in the industry.

Lest you be doubtful, this has happened to me a couple of times now. I was at a Welsh language class a couple of years ago (one of my hobbies is learning languages, though I don’t get to do it very often) and, that summer, I was mid-grad-school and right in the thick of writing my novel. At least two people cajoled me into giving them a synopsis of the novel. A third person said he had a good friend who had published books for teenagers, and he e-mailed me her contact information in case she could help me with publishing leads. After two rejections on my novel, I recently took advantage of that contact information and sent her an e-mail. I don’t know if it will lead anywhere, but I was glad to have that tiny spark of possibility. Not quite a Plan C, but it’s a start.

And today I was talking to the receptionist at my temp job, Alicia, who, like me, moved to the Central Valley from the Bay Area a few years ago. After commiserating about the time it took to get used to the change in atmosphere, she started asking me what I do when I’m not temping. I told her, and she said, "Did you know that there’s a woman in the department who just published a fiction book?" She kept getting rejected—until she talked to this otherwoman in the department whose sister-in-law happened to be an editor. They were able to hook up, and now, this person has a seven-book contract. Then, Alicia offered to mention me to both the writer and the woman with the editor in the family. Maybe, she said, they could help me out.

And maybe they can. Even if the editor doesn’t do YA, she might know someone who does, someone who is looking for new writers. Never underestimate the power of networking. The moral of this story is, don’t be afraid to talk up your writing to anyone willing to listen. You never know who might be able to pass on advice or connections.

Midweek: Notes and Errata

Whew!
Greetings this sticky/hot/balmy Wednesday! I've just proudly had my first brain freeze of the season from a really cold tofu and frozen-watermelon-bananas-and-berries slushy I whipped up after lunch. I hear it's raining and cloudy in NY and Jersey... MeiMei, you lucky pup! I keep asking myself where the much-vaunted SF Bay fog is!!! However, my garden's growin', my novel's FINISHED (thank GOD -- cue the "Hallejuah Chorus") - so really, what've I got to whine about?

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Want a window into the lives of other YA authors? Here's a cool opportunity in cyberspace: YA Author's Cafe has live chat interview types of things every Tuesday evening with YA folk! Check out their schedule, and the rest of their site! A good chance for some networking.


Our silent partner, J.R., is back, and catching us up on NPR's recent report on gay-themed children's books. Nathalie op de Beeck,an assistant professor at Illinois State University tells NPR's Jennifer Ludden about the recently reported upswing in demand for books depicting same sex parents. Take a listen!


In more book news, according to Publisher's Weekly, the biggest sellers for the upcoming fiscal year will be school books -(creative nonfiction types used in conjunction with texts and/or textbooks themselves) and 'religious' books. While that might seem a little grim, remember that PW tends to report on the major trends, while giving less importance to other things that continue to sell, like mystery novels and what I call "tech texts:" popular culture novels that capitalize on the in-thing of the moment. (Think novels in text messaging hieroglyphics.) While fiction with a spiritual theme isn't necessarily a bad thing, religious fiction as understood in the publishing world seems to include pulp like the dubious Left Behind series (you'll notice that I'm NOT including the link to that. None for me, thanks.) and some other really scary stuff favored by people who like to control the behavior of others by whatever means necessary. Bad karma! Bad karma!

We need more good writing with spiritual themes like the middle grade books of poet and author Nikki Grimes (you must read her fabulous middle grade book Come Sunday), or the irreverent and thought-provoking middle-grade novel of religious exploration, Preacher's Boy, by Katherine Paterson (whose first sentence reads, "On Decoration Day, while everyone else in town was at the cemetery decorating the graves of our Glorious War Dead, Willie Beaner and me, Robert Burns Hewitt, took Mabel Cramm's bloomers and run them up the flagpole in front of the town hall..."). We need more books like the hilarious and sometimes wistful Maya Running,by Anjali Banerjee, whose whose father picks his nose as he drives, whose sari-wearing cousin is thought of as "exotic" and much cooler than she, who gets teased at school (and called the n-word) and who earnestly prays that Ganesh can help her be thought of in her school as normal. We need more books like Mitali Perkins' thoughtful and recently reprinted The Not-So-Star-Spangled Life of Sunita Sen, in which a church-going family's religious life just blends in with how they live, and how they treat others. We need to have more of THIS type of writing, and less fear-based, platitude mouthing, sanctimoniously-promoting-discrimination-in-the-name-of-God type of tripe. Somewhere it's out there... Let's hear it for people with real spirituality - hopefully they'll read this and take the challenge to WRITE SOME REAL BOOKS with themes like forgiveness and hope and love and acceptance!

(All right. Descending the soapbox. Blistering screed now complete.)

Hey - if you're interested in YA author's blogs, you might want to check out the blog of award-winning children's/YA author Cynthia Leitich Smith. Smith is the author of RAIN IS NOT MY INDIAN NAME (HarperCollins and Listening Library)(ages 10-up) She has also published middle grade short stories in Harper anthologies. Most recently, look for "Riding With Rosa" by Cynthia Leitich Smith in Cicada literary magazine (Vol. 7, No. 4, March/April 2005).


Happy Midweek, y'all. Be safe over Memorial Weekend, and we'll catch ya later.

Nowhere Land

I'm just a bloggin' maniac today. If you go check aquafortis or ReadingYA you'll see what I mean. It's procrastination at its finest.

Anyway, what I'm posting here is a totally random piece of musing that I apparently wrote while I was in the early stages of my Olwen novel, which was my first YA novel. Yet I have no recollection of writing it, nor can I fathom what purpose I might have had in mind. But it still contains some semi-interesting thoughts on craft. I thought this might be an appropriate forum for the thing, since I can't figure out what else I might have intended to do with it. So here it is:

To be perfectly honest, from the moment I started my novel I've felt a bit like the Beatles' Nowhere Man, "making all my Nowhere Plans for Nobody." After all, none of my characters exist except in my head. I, of all people, have to decide, even dictate, what they do, what they want, and why. I must do these things utilizing only my brain, words on paper, and occasionally a thesaurus. And most baffling of all, I've been faced with the Herculean task of CREATING AN ENTIRE VILLAGE. The things writers are asked to do, I swear.

Figuring out what my characters want and why they do what they do may seem like the most basic task of a writer, but I had to set the bar really high by choosing to write about teenage main characters, for a teenage audience. Who the heck knows what teenagers want, or why they do what they do? I sure don't, and I definitely didn’t when I was a teenager, that's for sure. Life has not turned me into the wise panopticon that adulthood seemed to promise back then.

And this nonsense referred to as "setting"—don't even get me started. Having chosen to set my young adult novel in a fictional town, I also had to create fictional residents, shops, pubs, dry cleaners, surly recluses, and so on. I nearly forgot to put a school in there, which I'm sure the fictional teenagers in my novel would not have minded. I've devoted pages in my notebook to this "village-of-the-mind," including a hand-drawn map full of arbitrarily placed streets and houses outlined in true elementary-school, triangle-atop-square fashion.

Then there was the whole ordeal of coming up with a NAME for the darn place. I couldn't just call it the Village O' Closed-Minded World-War-II Evacuee-Housing Unnecessarily Mean Folks; though accurate, that would be mighty unwieldy. In addition, the name had to be something simple enough to translate well into Welsh, as the village is located in Wales. Eventually I settled on Quiet Valley, which sounds like a very dull place to live, but luckily, names can be deceiving. I guess this means you shouldn't hire me to name any real-life towns, lest you end up with something like Boring-Suburb-in-the-Smog.

Many of these writerly tasks are small steps that add up to a coherent whole: an integrated and (one hopes) believable world in which the reader can solidly place herself along with the characters. I wasn't sure I was up to the undertaking--me, a young upstart, a spring chicken of a writer, still in graduate school, someone who can still clearly remember large parts of my own teenage years (at least, the parts that I haven't exerted major efforts to block out). Writing, after all, is WORK, and there are many tasks to be faced in the creative process. At the beginning, they seemed endless and insurmountable. In the end, I've created much more than I ever thought possible.

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray

When I came to the end of Libba Bray's Victorian-themed novel of the supernatural, I was a little disappointed. Loose ends hadn't been tied up to my satisfaction. I had just fallen in love with some of the characters, and it had taken me much of the book to learn to sympathize with them.

And then, I was gratified to find out that yes, this book has a sequel.

I liked so many things about this book. Though it raised some minor questions in my mind, in the end, it was truly a fun and compelling read that has made me anxious for the next installment. Firstly, it's a playful look at tradition--the literary tradition of the ghostly Victorian tale, in a direct line from Henry James's somewhat stuffy classic The Turn of the Screw, and another Victorian literary tradition of the young woman who defies convention yet remains within societally safe boundaries, à la Bronte. Whether or not you actually enjoy Victorian literature, there's something about the setting that is strangely attractive. Bray has depicted that setting in loving detail that no doubt required a ton of research and reading, and I commend her for that. It's certainly a believable and vivid look at how society worked at the time.

The beginning is set in colonial India--another subtle allusion to the Victorian obsession with their "strange and exotic" colonies--already setting a tone for the unusual life of the main character. This is where I started asking a few questions. Bearing in mind that Gemma Doyle has had an unusual life in an unusual family, is recently starting to experience unearthly visions, and recently lost a mother whom she's just found out is involved with the supernatural, is it still believable that she'd be so outspoken and daring? Was her character too anachronistic, too much a modern-day woman?

What I decided was that I liked the idea that there were extraordinary women here and there in the Victorian age--maybe more commonly than the male-authored books documenting the time period might have us believe. I liked Gemma Doyle, and her fiery, smart personality, and the fact that she was not without her own weaknesses. I liked that all of her new friends at the strange Spence Academy boarding school started off surprisingly unlikeable, and then had to earn my sympathy. That was a great technique for keeping me on edge throughout the whole novel--I never knew if or when one of the friends might betray Gemma, because they all had their own problems, their own fears and weaknesses. And lastly, I am a sucker for the supernatural angle and the idea of grand shadowy conspiracies.

If you like the Victorian setting, if you like reading about strong women who truly defy convention, and/or if you like stories about supernatural powers getting out of hand, then you will probably enjoy this one. Though I occasionally wondered if a Victorian girl could possibly ever be that sassy, I thought this book was a lot of fun, and I look forward to reading more.

Monday Detritus

Good grief. Caribbean...YA...Sci-Fi?! Can we get any more specific!? Still -- what a cool concept. Maybe. I'm hearing steel drums playing "Under the Sea" in a space station elevator, and envisioning dreadlocked fauns prancing on the beach. Shudder.

~~~

The Commonwealth Club has announced the California Book Awards, honoring the exceptional merit of California writers. Awards are presented to books in the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction, First Work of Fiction, Poetry, Californiana, Notable Contribution to Publishing, and Young Adult. As listed by The San Francisco Chronicle:

Walt Whitman: Words for America, by Barbara Kerley for the Juvenile award, and Worth, by A. LaFaye for YA silver medal. Three cheers for both writers, and you can see all the hoopla at the 74th annual California Book Awards ceremony, which will be held June 14 at the Commonwealth Club, 595 Market St., San Francisco.

[Point of interest - San Bernadino author A. LaFaye is also Alexandria LaFaye, who has written a number of series books for middle grades, including the well received Year of the Sawdust Man and its less acclaimed sequels.]

---

Sadly, my first attempt at securing an agent has been a bust -- Tina Dubois of ICM reports that she is unable to 'resonate emotionally' with my protagonist, Lainey. However, she admits to being tempted to try some of her recipes. Sigh. I think I'd feel worse if I wasn't halfway convinced that she's right... but then, you know me, I'm always questioning the raison d'etre of my characters anyway. I'm not sure where I am mentally with this story except that I'm millimeters away from setting it down permanently and moving on.

Wait. I hear gasps: One the word of ONE AGENT!? An over reaction, then? Input, anyone?

~~~

Meanwhile, in what can only be termed ENTERTAINMENT NEWS, since it's certainly not WRITING news, Anne Rice has gone completely over the edge. It isn't wasn't enough that the dorky mistress of the dim (that is, the not really dark) has lent her deathless prose to untold volumes of speculation on the lives of a certain blonde vampire, nor were her soulless forays into erotica, B-Movie plots ("Exit to Eden," anyone? Rosie O'Donnell in a thong...) and horrifying opera (Elton John's "Lestat, the Opera?" Oy, enough! Enough!) enough to satisfy her quest for ethereal Authorial Immortality. She's done interviewing vampires. Now she's interviewing a new man: Jesus. Or so she says.

Yes, it's "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt," (please note there is NO link to this here. If you want to find and buy it, you're on your own, good people.) belched forth in a stream of sulfurous fire by Random House this upcoming November. Sources indicate that this novel will be a tell-all about Jesus' childhood and adolescence, in His own words. Which will be some neat trick, since Christians since the apostle Peter and other bigwigs have never found or published any of Jesus' little boy, clay tablet journals. Unless Rice is the illegitimate love child of Jerry Fallwell, another notable personage who claims direct conversation with God, I'm not sure just how she's going to swing this...

The Chronicle's irrepressible Neva Chonin adds, "Considering Rice's views on editors, I am impressed by her willingness to accept input from the Almighty and his son. Last year, she was so put out by negative reviews of her final "Vampire Chronicles" installment, "Blood Canticle," that she posted a 1,200-word rant on Amazon.com accusing her critics of using the site 'as if it were a public urinal to publish falsehoods and lies.'

She went on to clarify her views on the sanctity of her text: 'I have no intention of allowing any editor ever to distort, cut, or otherwise mutilate sentences that I have edited and re-edited, and organized and polished myself. ... For me, novel writing is a virtuoso performance. It is not a collaborative art.'"

Whoooosh! That's the sound of an editor spontaneously combusting. I can hear them sputter: "No intention of allowing and editor to ever..." and then, in a tower of greasy smoke and flames, they're gone. Um. So, Ms. Rice is going to be self-publishing now?? Do writers really EVER get to where they can say this type of statement, and not have people waiting for them to fall flat on their faces?

Wow. Didn't know you were doing a virtuoso performance, did you, when you sat down to your keyboard this morning? Well, heck, I had no idea either... at any venture, my dears, let me let you get on back to yours... On with the show!!

Happy Monday.

Need a Break from Writing?

Or is it just that the horrible white void of the blank page is getting you down (see below)? Well, why not visit a few links to purge that nasty (choose one) laziness/lack of motivation/writer's block/feeling of inferiority right out?

First, we've got a call for submissions. Do you now, or have you ever, written any YA sci-fi or fantasy with Caribbean themes? Joanne Johnson of Caribbean Children is accepting submissions for Macmillan Caribbean. From the SCBWI newsletter:

Caribbean sci-fi/ futuristic/ fantasy/ folk lore with contemporary interpretations etc. Full length novels. Must appeal to both boys and girls ages 12 to 15. Writers need not be from the Caribbean, but the work must have strong Caribbean themes and content. Do not send full manuscripts. Submissions: 2- 3 page synopsis of story, with three or four sample chapters; include shory bio about yourself and your work. Please indicate if the work is an exclusive submission. Include your name, email address and phone number. Email submissions to: Joanne Johnson - sarena@tstt.net.tt Snail mail: Joanne Johnson #6 Mace Place; Haleland Park; Maraval; Trinidad; W.I. Submissions will not be returned. Only those of interest will be responded to, within 6-12 weeks. No phone calls please.

Secondly, go check out the information about YALSA's Teen Read Week 2005--Get Real. If you or someone you know is a librarian or educator, you might be interested to know that people who sign up for Teen Read Week before September 15 will receive a free biography courtesy of Lerner Publishing Group. You don't even have to be a member of YALSA.

Lastly, and also courtesy of the SCBWI newsletter, there is a new Yahoo Group for kids' writers who are Latino/Hispanic or interested in Latino/Hispanic markets and topics. Just go here!

A Door Near Here, by Heather Quarles

Good literature is supposed to be ageless. One of the better examples of this timelessness is Heather Quarles' A Door Near Here. Though this Delacorte Press Prize winning novel is slanted for YA, Quarles' book resonated hugely with me as an adult reader because I sensed its truth. The first time I read it was the first time I seriously contemplated completing an MFA. Why? Because the book convinced me that it was worth it to write. Good pacing, realistic dialogue and an appropriately enigmatic ending are just the sprinkling on the donut here. This book's excellence stems from the truth it tells about the life of a family where reality and responsibility have become irreparably entangled. Fifteen-year-old Katherine and her siblings, Tracy and Douglas, hope to shield their youngest sister from the fact of their mother's alcoholism. They try to keep the house clean, keep things repaired, and food on the table. But five months of silence and sleeping hasn't got anyone fooled. Even little Alisa knows that Mommy drinks bad smelling stuff that makes her not bathe, fall over a lot, lose her jobs, and sleep. Mommy doesn't kiss her goodnight. Mommy doesn't read her bedtime stories. Mommy doesn't even read her mail. She hasn't signed a permission slip, tardy notice or a sick note in months. Everything falls to Katherine, and that means everything is falling apart. Alisa, a fragile eight year old, seems to be losing her grip on reality. She repeatedly runs away from school, trying to find a door from her mystical Narnia books. She insists that if she just finds Narnia, Aslan will make all of her mother's troubles disappear. Her older siblings are worried. They can't talk to their father, who, on his second wife and family, doesn't really care about Alisa - she isn't his daughter, and if he comes and saves them what does that mean for her? Most teens would love to prove to the world that they can run their own lives, but it's not the walk in the park Katherine, Tracy and Douglas expected. The very real fear of DSS and the police splitting them up prevent them from asking for help, 'til there's nowhere left to turn. The sink overflows, the family gets the flu, the dishes keep piling up - but they keep on thinking they've just about got everything worked out... until the unexpected.

The end of everything, when it comes, is swift. Then Katherine does everything she can to keep her family together, including turning on the one person who is genuinely trying to help her.

This meritous book was Heather Quarles' MFA thesis, and what a tremendous sense of accomplishment it must have given her to publish it, and to reassure herself that yes, she was right -- she did have talent and it had been worthwhile to get that MFA. However, from such a promising beginning, there hasn't been anything more written by Heather Quarles in the YA world. Maybe she's working on something now, but it always saddens me a little to be unable to find anything else of hers. She has published, according to the book flap, short stories and essays as well - if anyone else runs across something of hers, let me know.

Whenever I'm feeling like I can't write worth crap, and there's no point to any of this, I take a look at this book. The truth is found in the writing -- the dialogue breathes life into fear and anger, the chronic feelings of helpless love and suppressed rage the main character feels. The first person narration gives a true immediacy to the piece, and drags readers into the painful places with the family. I look at this writing, and know that these are the truths still worth being told. And after reading this book again, I hope we're up to it.

Because I really can't write worth a brass farthing.

How much is a brass farthing worth?

Is it just Mondays that bring this? This wondering why I'm doing this work, this query as to whether I have any talent at all? Mondays bring out the Horrible Writer Why Don't You Just Get A Job syndrome in spades.

I think it's the rain, too. Maybe JR in Portland is feeling it too. The thunder and lightning was a rare treat, enough to worry me about my computer's surge protector -- but mostly the dull greys of falling water aren't doing my psyche any favors. Monday blahs, rain blues, and writer woes. I flipped through Thoreau - but his ascetic snobbery was no help. And then... I read...

Who will teach me to write? a reader wanted to know.

The page, the page, that eternal blankness, the blankness of eternity which you cover slowly, affirming time's scrawl as a right and your daring as necessity; the page, which you cover woodenly, ruining it, but asserting your freedom and power to act, acknowledging that you ruin everything you touch but touching it nevertheless, because acting is better than being here in mere opacity; the page, which you cover slowly with the crabbed thread of your gut; the page in the purity of its possibilities; the page of your death, against which you pit such flawed excellences as you can muster with all your life's strength: that page will teach you to write.

Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, at 58-59 (1989).

I had to read Dillard as an undergrad as part of a Nature Writer's course, and I didn't really 'get' her. She's one of those writers you have to sort of digest piecemeal... and in my present state of mind I more 'get' the beauty and the starkness of that 'eternal blankness' she mentions of the page than much else she says. Yes, I am ruining the sanctity of that page as I blot it with my fitful and stunted observations on the universe, but it's part of fulfilling the possibilities of that other life within me -- and my secret self goes scouting down the ways of a vast myriad of other possibilities as I sit at this keyboard again and again.

I'm torn between laughing at myself for such hubris and saying 'Gah, how depressing!' I don't feel any better. But, this too shall pass.

Write on. Tuesday's coming.

One More Reading List

Hear, hear on T's post from the brainbox--great news for those of us who can't seem to keep elements of our lives from sneaking into our fiction on a relatively constant basis.

Anyway, interested in what the brainy young adults will be reading this summer? Check out the latest unofficial list of UC Berkeley Summer Reading 2005. This is a list that the school sends, each summer, to incoming freshmen--not as a requirement, but simply for enjoyment and enrichment. This year's theme is Great Discoveries, Voyages, and Adventures, with books recommended by professors in departments from Near Eastern Studies to Geology. There is also a page of past reading lists. I couldn't remember if they sent me one when I was a freshman, and they don't have one posted for '93, sadly enough, so I guess I'll never find out what I was supposed to be enriching my pre-college summer with.

This IS Normal! Julie Anne Peters' Define "Normal"

A recent family gathering elicited reminiscences of the first time my family met my husband. The story was told to wide-eyed guests, "He was this huge hulking boy, all dressed in black, with this eye liner, and this black lipstick and nail polish, and dyed hair - you should have seen his hair... and he didn't say anything, and she just walked in with him like he was perfectly normal!"

Well -- okay. Goths aren't normal to everyone, and admittedly I knew that my family's studied non-observance was going to be pretty strained. But I was bringing home a friend, and when they gave him a chance, they found that he was a nice guy... and anyway, what's with the labels? Define "Normal!"

The only drawback to this tightly written piece of realistic fiction by Julie Anne Peters is that I wished that it would have taken place in a high school setting -- but Middle School is probably brutal enough. There are kiss-ups and squids, dorks and jerks aplenty by the end of elementary school, well on their way to being Wallflowers and Plastic People in high school. This story takes place in that in-between world where there's still time to choose who you want to be. (Actually, there's always time, but not everybody's convinced of that.)

Jasmine - or Jazz, as she prefers to be called, is one of those girls who has a posse just like her. They're loud and proud, dyed, pierced and tattooed. They're riot grrlz with a cause, and they make their mark on every school. Antonia is quiet, dressed neatly, and respectful. She even has a prissy name, and she doesn't have a nickname. A member of the math club, she's a little proud of her abilities to be resourceful and maintain an even keel in the world of junior high. She plans to go to a good school, and volunteers to do peer counseling. She meets Jazz -- and dislikes her at once. How's she supposed to help someone like that? And -- what's her problem, anyway? Why won't she just quit staring, and talk?

Opposites attract, as Jazz and Antonia eventually get to know each other. Antonia is shocked to discover that Jazz isn't some lowlife trailer-trash -- her thrashed and pinned together outfits were once designer clothes. Jazz is a little shaken to discover that Antonia's math club mentality is driven by seeing her mother struggling to pay the rent. When Antonia's home life tanks, she relies on Jazz to help. But can she? And will she? Who's supposed to be helping whom, here?

Peters crafts the quintessential character-driven story, motivating intense interest in the novel's outcome merely by devising deeply felt, dimensional characters and supporting cast. Antonia's first person narrative on the joys and trials of peer counseling, Jazz's constant attempts to shock and disgust her, and the escalating tensions in Antonia's personal life are presented with no fluff, backstory or excess filler. Additionally, the inclusion of discussion on mental illness creates a new dimension of realism that will be welcome to young adults struggling with clinical depression within their families.

This is one of those look-and-learn books, dear writers, and one for the personal library. Julie Anne Peters rocks, as usual.

Detritus from the Brainbox

Bon jour, good people,

I have the dubious privilege of going to guest lecture at my alma mater on the state of publishing. The lecture is not for a Children's Lit. Course (those are on even years), but a regular Creative Writing class. It's amusing for me, because for the most part these allegedly "Easy A," basic undergrad courses are not filled with English majors, but with ...PreMed students. Which should be an education in itself. Anyway. In researching what I'm going to say to these august persons, I always find myself having to further clarify what I do, who I want to write for, and why it should interest my listeners.

I ran across a good bit of information on trends in YA publishing on YA librarian Kelly Milner Halls' website. As both a writer on YA writing and a YA librarian, Halls does a lot of key research that we as writers would do well to appreciate. Halls suggests checking out "Connecting Young Adults and Libraries", a book by Patrick Jones, another librarian. Jones identifies seven developmental needs of young adults in order to help YA librarians understand and so better serve their target audience. Because YA writers should be striving to meet that same goal, the list is invaluable to them too.

Probably the most important thing Halls mentions in conjunction with her reading of Jones' book is that YA readers want a chance to read the truth -- your version. As YA novels become more inclusive, the stories that are told are no longer solely stories about Anglo-Saxon characters, upwardly mobile or upper middle class characters, or characters with single gender identities or only subtly dysfunctional families. The thing that keeps me excited about writing, and talking about writing, (even to pre-Med students) is that the truth of one of my stories that might someday resonate with a young adult -- my truth. I'm not sure there's any other line of work where my truth has that kind of value.

Back to the keyboard.

The Pants No Longer Fit

No need to duck, TadMack! On Wednesday, I "rewarded" myself after an intense job interview with the purchase of Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares. Let's just say that the girls have outgrown their jeans.

I was initially attracted to the first two Pants books because of the over-used-yet-never-tired theme of girl friendship. As someone who has a solid group of four women friends (friendships lasting over ten years), I connected to Pants on a deeper level that probably is more than the books deserve. I agree with TadMack's lament that Chick Lit is a double-edged sword. Why do books that focus on girl power only succeed in enforcing stereotypes?

I found some magic in the first two books. While the writing overall was uneven at best, there were certain moments that spoke true to me (In Sisterhood, Lena flies to Baja to comfort and confront Bridget. While the idea of a 15-year-old girl changing her flight from Greece to Baja without any parental concern is laughable, the moment when Lena finds Bridget huddled under the covers spoke true volumes to me. How many times did I live that moment--when only your best girlfriend can say and do the right thing and get you out of bed, making you realize that life isn't going to end and that you were melodramatic? Or in The Second Summer of the Sisterhood when Carmen introduces Lena to her friend/step-brother Paul and has one of those moments when you see the future because you know the two people standing in front of you so well. I've had those moments of clarity.) I enjoyed the Sisterhood and Second Summer like one enjoys Snickers bars after a five-mile run. So bad they're good.

This is not true with the rushed, forced tone of Girls in Pants. Character development takes a back seat to un-necessary, cutesy scenes of hand-holding, crossing legs to trip each other (yeah, amusing to whom?), plunging into the surf together, eating too much junk food, and lots of i's dotted with hearts. Like her first two books, Brashares relies on stereotypes to emote. There is heavy emphasis on this being the last summer for the Septembers; even the stoic Tibby cries at the thought of their separation. Normally the indication of a last summer in teen-land means something grand and life-altering. The greatest disappointment with Girls in Pants is that nothing changes. Oh, sure, Carmen's mom is pregnant. Tibby realizes she loves Brian. Bridget sees Eric again after two years. But Lena is still Lena--big feet and beautiful face. Bridget still has her glorious hair. Carmen still throws gigantic tantrums that no one notices. Tibby still mopes in her bedroom wearing cute tank tops and plaid jammies. The girls are no wiser than the first book. We are lead to believe at the end of the second book that they learned something their mothers didn't: you're stronger together than apart. But that doesn't necessarily make you smarter.

Brashares seems to favor fast moments over carefully crafted scenes that allow the reader to savor the magic. The best example is Tibby's story. Brashares establishes a potentially wondrous moment between Tibby and Brian, only to deflate the plot trajectory with nonsensical Tibby reactions that are supposedly obstacles to her relationship with Brian. I think I read this before. Oh yeah, I did. In Sisterhood and Second Summer.

I'm not going to throw anything at anyone who voices her opinion about the Pants book. But I may throw the actual book across the room, which is what I normally do when I'm disappointed.

Wonders Never Cease: $500K book deals AND Hahvahd?

Busy Mills woman Likhaari took a moment to point out this NY Sun article on a Harvard woman who just hit the big time in publishing. 17-years-old, no agent, unpublished, her H.S. diploma still blank in the printing cue. Wow. Pomp and Circumstance must seem like nothing after getting a call from The William Morris Agency.

This topic is really germane to the conversation we had at Chat last week about 'Chick Lit,' and how that genre itself has proved so capitalistically viable as to have spawned its own imprints, including Harlequin's Red Dress Ink, Pocket Books' Downtown Press, Random House's Harlem Moon, (a small romance imprint for women of color now trying hesitantly to expand into new avenues-- anytime you read the word 'Harlem' it's only gonna mean one thing in marketing, yo.); the imprint Strapless & the now defunct HarperCollinsUK imprint, Flamingo. A large part of the rousing success of the pastel, mass-marketed paperbacks publishers surmise, is purchase by readers who formerly didn't like to read, but are finding that it's not as bad as they thought, especially when often their novel is followed up by a blockbuster film. You can bet the film options are going to keep coming, strengthening once again the link between Lindsay Lohan and literature. Uh, yeah. Fashionistas and Gossip Girl to the rescue again.

While I wish Miss Viswanathan every success, I'm a little terrified for her. $500K and a two book deal for the germ of an idea on a college application... a plotline that's part of a trend that may or may not be in its ascendancy by the time she's through... It's really risky for the publishers, and perhaps for Viswanthan's future publications (although, to be fair, she had determined that she was going to be an investment banker when she grew up.) Also, 'Chick Lit' as a sub-genre seems to be written mostly for and about the young, white, urban, upwardly mobile career woman -- and the YA equivalent about the children of same. Will an Indian woman find a way to fit, and retain her East Asian roots?

Stay tuned. This may be a story worth writing.

Just A Story to Frighten Children: The Hollow Kingdom

The Young Adult Library Services Association's (YALSA) list of Best Books for Young Adults 2005 includes an absolutely FABULOUS book by Clare B. Dunkle called The Hollow Kingdom. From the very first page, I was hooked, as a sort of benignly malignant force kidnapped a very frightened and very desperate girl. Unlike most henchmen, the hooded villain didn't sneer. Much. He was almost genteel. And, unlike the kidnappings in most novels, there was no rescue. The nameless girl just...vanished.

Young girls have been disappearing in Hallow Hill for thousands of years, and sisters Kate and Emily, their parents lost to them, have been landed at the old house and are forced to live with spinster aunts and a miserly bachelor guardian. But something quite odd is going on, between getting lost in sight of home, "helpful" gypsies appearing in the dark, and Something watching them from the woods. When Kate learns the name of her fear, no one believes her, at first. Her guardian summons the psychiatrist. But there really are goblins under Hallow Hill. They're merciless. They're patient. And they've got plans for Kate.

From its mildly spooky beginning to its end, this is a thoroughly enjoyable tale, and I am especially smug that I read it before I knew it was a Junior Literary Guild pick, or a YALSA favorite! It truly deserves its kudos, however, as a quirky, humorous story of self-reliance, compromise and determination against daunting odds. The multifaceted characters are immediately engaging -- even the 'bad guys' are given a highly polished patina (that one of my favorite characters is a metal snake gives you an idea of just how skilled Dunkle is!), and the 'good guys' don't win all in the way you might expect. The detailed and sumptuously intricate world gives a tiny nod to a less Disney-fied castle of Beauty & The Beast, but it's only a shadow of that simple story plus a whole lot more.

And the best news yet? It's another trilogy! What a great treat for the reader! Close Kin is the next in the series, followed by In the Coils of the Snake , which is due to be released October of 2005.

This series was my favorite find so far this month. Check it out!

Book List Extravaganza

The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) has released its list of Best Books for Young Adults 2005. Also, the American Booksellers Association released its list of 2005 Book Sense Book of the Year Award Winners in Adult and Children's literature. Not surprisingly, Nancy Farmer's new one made it onto both lists.

Children's Book Conference in the Pacific NW

Shy but lurking contributor JR brought to our attention the 6th Annual Pacific Northwest Children's Book Conference, July 11-15, on the campus of Reed College in Portland. Academic credit is available, and manuscript/portfolio reviews can be scheduled for an additional fee.

Newbery Two-fer

As a younger reader, I didn't really have my eye on whether a book won a major award or not. In fact, sometimes I'd see "award-winning" and automatically equate it with "boring and preachy." Fortunately, I think we're long past the time when that may have been true, and well into an age when award jurors see the merit not only of tales which readers can learn something from, but also tales in which the reader happily gets lost. After all, it's by tasting what the world has to offer that you really learn its lessons—being told what to do and what not to do doesn't quite cut it. Of course, one of the most enjoyable ways to vicariously experience someone else's world is through stories, and the last two years' Newbery Award winners—one realistic, one fantastical—created worlds I was happy to get lost in, and left me with messages of hope and tolerance that I was hardly aware of absorbing along the way. (And that's the way I like it!)

I found myself eager to read Kate DiCamillo's The Tale of Despereaux soon after hearing about it on NPR, and wasn't disappointed. This book about a mouse who falls in love with a princess is one which I will not hesitate to describe as charming, and I mean that in the most non-patronizing way possible. It is a charming story, with funny twists, scary turns, and appealingly goofy-named characters. With names like Chiaroscuro, Miggery Sow, and Princess Pea, how can you go wrong? Its skewed-fairy-tale aesthetic will appeal to readers looking for something a little deeper and less trite than your average retold Grimm or Andersen story; something that's a tiny bit more Roald Dahl than Walt Disney.

Plus there's DiCamillo's amusing take on the Victorian convention of addressing readers directly within the writing—with "Dear Reader, take note" and so forth. It's a device that was often used to draw the reader's attention or signal overt moralizing, something that I've already mentioned disliking. In this book, it has a surprisingly disarming effect, and is, of course, used to full humorous advantage. I immensely preferred this novel to her previous one, Because of Winn-Dixie. Though I did enjoy Winn-Dixie, I felt Despereaux had much more depth of story and craft, and I definitely agree that it's a winner.

This year's Newbery Award winner was vastly different in every way possible, but no less of a good read. Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata chronicles a story of a family's loss of one of their daughters to cancer, and its effect on the remaining family members, through the eyes of the younger daughter, Katie. Running through the whole book is the theme of growing up Japanese-American in the 1950s and 60s. This world was unfamiliar to me but described in such loving, down-to-earth detail, vivid and bright and glittering, echoing the meaning of the title word kira-kira.

In the end, it is a world that seems brittle, but is ultimately strong, like Katie herself. It is a world that is funny and tragic at the same time; a world of contradictions where there isn't always a happy ending, but there is always room for hope. This last message is one present in both Newbery winners—that life doesn't always present you with a fairy-tale ending. People die. People fail to fall in love, marry, and live happily ever after. And life doesn't always seem fair. But the struggle, in the end, is so often worthwhile just the same, thanks to the small moments of friendship and family, love and adventure.

Typing Down the House

There's the merry whine of a saws-all whirring downstairs, accompanied by the clatter of falling wood and plaster dust. Random thumping and hammering blends harmoniously with the assorted grunts of workmen. And I, trying valiantly to sit and create in this mess, am getting a headache. Yes, this is the I'm-trying-to-work-here,-people rant.

You'd laugh if you saw where I am -- desk shoved back into a corner and half-covered by plastic sheeting. It's chaos and drama, but I just had to sit down and write today. Aside from the really good reason of finally having an agent show interest in my work (what am I saying "finally?!!" I've finally contacted one! My fault no one showed interest prior to that!!), I wanted to write today because I realized that if I don't write I feel... Disconnected. The 'wrestling match with my Muse' that began so long ago has become second nature. Email, essays, something -- I've just got to write.

And -- no! This isn't meant to be one of those write-every-day things they tell you in Grad school that you sort of go grey just thinking about. I'm not trying to say that I never have a bad day -- far from it! I think I've just slowly come to realize that a bad day writing is better than a good day... doing a whole lot of other things. I've had to enlarge my definition of what writing is, and what it does for me, and let myself be a part of the process of writing -- which sometimes means reading, sometimes means thinking and letting my thoughts range wide into dreams.

And now I sound all esoteric and crap. So I'm going to stop.

Meanwhile, my creativity isn't exactly sparking at this moment (due to the fact that it feels like one of those sledgehammers is crunching right between my eyes), and I have a bunch of files I'm supposed to go through for one of my many part-time jobs, but I'm here. Still hanging in there.

Hope you are too.

Series Magic: Beyond the great Harry

J.K. Rowling makes it look easy. Each of the Potter novels ends with a feeling of completeness -- and although the last one left a lot to be desired, it was still technically complete, a finished 'episode' of sorts. Readers read it, and though knowing there was more, didn't feel like they might die in the intervening years it would take Rowling to produce another. There is good character interaction, realistic (well, real enough, anyway) tension, and a modicum of closure, until the next novel and the next great battle.

Many fantasy series writers fail to write episodically and struggle to achieve that balance between ending a story with future developments still unfolding, and ending a story with unexplained and bedeviling loose ends flapping. One novelist who succeeds in pulling off a good balance is Amanda Hemingway. Her semi-YA novel The Greenstone Grail, Book I. of The Sangreal Trilogy, is complex and nuanced, and filled with surprises that remind me a little of A. Fortis' Olwen novel, but the danger is certainly darker and the adults in the novel play a more complicated part.

I think the characters really bring this piece the most to life, because it is in many ways a strictly Lore-driven mythical tale, with almost stock characters, scenes and events, including a night of Destiny, a seeking after three items of Power, an innocent Woman, a mystical Child, and an inscrutable but kindly Guardian. That the fierce Companion is a little girl, and part of the deadly evil is held at a museum, and stolen by a troll is only a side note. Part sci-fi, part fantasy, and wholly intriguing, I'm anxiously awaiting the second installment, due out in November '05, entitled The Traitor's Sword.

I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has read any other Hemingway novels, or have read this one. I like the modern setting, and the various genre twists it produces. What say you?

New Angle, Old Story

and sometimes why, by Mame Farrell.

I admit it - I'm a sucker for a happy ending, and this book doesn't exactly provide "happy," but I think the angle of the story is refreshing enough for it to be forgiven its, at times, uneven narrative and aggravatingly sly and knowing 'wink,wink' in-jokes. Like it or hate it - it's a good shot for a boy-and-girl-friendship novel.

Chris and Jack are best friends. Chris is a better swimmer, tennis player, and runner than Jack, but that doesn't bother them. Chris had to teach Jack what vowels were in the first grade. This still isn't a problem for Jack. What becomes a problem is when Chris starts to grow into her birthright of being Christy - a girl with beautiful eyes, long legs, and boyfriends. This is not your typical 'Pretty in Pink' scenario when the ugly duckling grows up and gets the hunky boy, loses him, and goes back to her best friend. (Okay, so that probably doesn't happen in the movie either. Sue me.) In those scenarios, boys don't faint, and girl's don't knock them out with their fists. But, Farrell has a bittersweet, ambivalent story of growing up that is quirky and funny and all about the 'tween' years.

The theme of resisting change is a good one, and Jack resists change with all his might. He does some truly brainless things in order to, in his mind, Keep Things The Way They Are. And his meddling is not appreciated. Chris's reaction to Jack's last attempt to hold back change might surprise you -- but then again, it might not.

The unevenness of the book shows more towards the end, because Farrell's characterization of the way a boy thinks and might react don't ring quite as true to me, and at some points, the misapprehensions of what is really going on vs. what only seems to be going on appears to be stretched just a tad. However, I did like the refreshing idea that sometimes romance is overrated, and that a solid friendship is really well worth the effort. And the scenario which places Christy's dad, a former construction worker into the role of a professional hair stylist-- who is straight -- just blows yet another stereotype all to hell and back.

Read it? Comments?

The 'C' Word: Chick Lit, and those Traveling Pants

It's time. I've stalled and stalled, but it's time to put up my review of The Second Summer of the Sisterhood, the companion novel to Ann Brashare's The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. I have to, because the third novel, Girls in Pants, is coming out, and someone needs to read and review that one, too. The problem isn't the books, as much as the genre... yeah, I'm talking about Chick Lit.

(And NO, I don't mean the cheerfully low concept slideshowI found on Slate, which is HYSTERICAL, but those chicks are not at all what we're talking about.)

Go into any bookstore, and you see them: stacks and stacks and stacks of pastel books with skinny models on the covers. It's wildly popular, and it's everywhere. This postfeminist's women's marketing niche is SO trendy right now that it would be really easy to jump on the passing bandwagon, and ride. It's now, it's hip, and it's a big box into which publishers are scooping all women's literature, and labeling it. Even YA fiction for girls is being labeled and packaged into neat and attractive junior league stacks of Chick Lit. This publishing phenomenon (because you know it's not a real writing trend, we've been writing about women and women's issues for years) started in the mid-90's, and there seems to be no end in sight. (Marketing people everywhere breathe a huge sigh of relief.)

I'm all for breathless and spunky twentysomething heroines, maintaining their professional and love lives by the skins of their teeth, having adventures and rushing all over Paris and Greece. I'm even all for neurotic protagonists, obsessing, as we all do, about our teeth, our weight, our hair, our bums, our guts, and our male friends. But I do wonder about the women who aren't "chicks," and about the writers who want to go a little deeper in their writing for women and young girls, who aren't cut out for this cookie-cutter 'Chick Lit' thing. Is there room for any of them? Are we still allowed to write women's literature if what we write isn't necessarily trite? Can we imagine characters who are not emotionally stunted, gushing, 'sassy' or attractively eccentric? Can we write about real girls and not Barbie clones? I think so. I hope so. An article I discovered in The Utne Reader says it's time to challenge Chick Lit. Maybe we do need to learn the difference between entertainment reading and a trite storyline. Maybe it'll be you who changes the so-called 'Chick Lit' for the better.

Ann Brashares' The Second Summer of the Sisterhood was slightly more coherent than her first book, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Many of my objections to the first novel stemmed from the use of the pants as a 'device' to keep a disparate group of girls in contact, and to keep the story moving among the characters. I felt like the original Sisterhood was a novel about girls of a certain class or region that was attempting to make a universal statement on girls and the friendships among them. It didn't succeed. Can all of us really jet off to Greece? Does breaking and entering somehow become cooler because it's a place where our mother's did yoga when we were in utero? And then there were the niggling little racial and ethnic problems. Why is it Carmen who buys the pants? Do only Puerto Rican girls thrift shop? I think Brashares spends an inordinate amount of time on her "big mouth" and her obsession with her "big" rear end. However, because the emotional truths in the novel outweigh the very obvious convention of the pants, the reader reads on. That's what Brashares has really captured -- emotional availability in writing. Readers truly feel with each character, whatever is going on with them, and that is what saves the Pants novels, over and over again.

The Second Summer has this magic as well, and thankfully a slightly sturdier plot. Bridget is not the sex-crazed soccer player of the first novel, and is, in fact, overweight, although there is not much time spent with the idea of eating to fill an emptiness, or any of the psychological ramifications of someone gaining so much weight in so short a time. (Of course, this minor flaw in Pretty Girl Land must be allayed by the end of the book -- no one would actually want her to --eww!-- be really fat, or anything, but for a brief moment she flirts with that Ultimate Disaster.) Brashares allows Bridget to be anonymous as she pursues the truth about her family, and more than any of the other characters, Bridget seemed to lack a 'need' for the magical pants to make sense of her life. Tibby, at film school for the summer, fares less well, and waffles between being the character to whom we were introduced, and someone reeking of desperation, and over-eager for popularity. This seems a little thin to me plot-wise, as Tibby has ample opportunities to be bigger than life, as the friend of the gorgeous Lena, and the popular Bridget, at the very least. Her turning away from old friendships is surprising, and gives us less insight into her character than I wanted. It could have made more sense, with just a few more sentences about some internal process. Finally, Lena... remains Lena. Everytime Brashares reminds us of how beautiful Lena is supposed to be, I find my eyes rolling. Yes, yes, beautiful, skinny Lena, all right, enough already. Her emotional trauma over maintaining perfection and finding safety in the 'perfect' boyfriend feel tiresome and unbelievable, yet the Pants girls rally around her and mother her up until her flawless complexion is tear free. Puh-lease.

Unlike in the first Sisters, there seems to be less emotional energy invested in Carmen's tale. Carmen's first date is so important to her that it's a little disingenuous for Brashares to have us believe that she forgets all about the boy while trying to keep her mother in line. Her fears regarding her parent ring true, as her mother begins dating, and sucks all the air out of the room while doing it, but the stereotype of the fiery Latina looms again as Carmen's rageaholic tendencies destroy her mother's relationship with the man she's dating, and presents a cold war in their home. I found myself confused as to how Carmen manages to destroy everything without any adult turning a hair. I think that's one of the major weaknesses of the entire novel series. Brashares is writing a wish fulfillment novel -- adults with little control, who make obvious and avoidable mistakes, but who rally around old friendships with tears and bottles of wine. This seems the perfect foil for the Enduring Friendship motif that goes along with the Pants. Aren't you tearing up yet? It's like Beaches for a new millennium. Yeeuch.

What? You're ready to throw something? Okay. Fine. I know A. Fortis maybe has a difference of opinion with me regarding these books. I know there's going to be dissention in the ranks about them, so I will say this before I duck: YES, I enjoyed some parts of both novels. YES, I believe in women's friendships, and I think this book presented a facet of the jewel that makes them priceless. I do, however, also long for someone to write a novel about a girl who does better being friends with boys, and who wears HIS jeans, and plays football with him, and listens to his boring talks about the girl he likes without a.) liking the girl herself, or b.) feeling pangs for the boy, but I guess I might have to write that myself, since it won't quite be 'Chick Lit.'

All right, all right. You know you have something to say. Let's hear it.

I could really learn to hate Jeff Stone.

SCBWI reports that he's a first time writer. His degrees are in English and journalism. He has a movie deal and there was a five house auction on his first book. His first book. And Random House won, as in, tried hard and beat out the competition by offering him a seven book serial deal. With the money he sent his wife and kids to China for a month and a half. All this, because our man just happened to befriend someone who worked at Andrea Brown, someone who happened to be their second in command there. Where on EARTH is my writing muse/fairy godmother at times like these?
Oh, and check out the pictures of this guy's editors -- both of whom donned monk's robes and picked up ceremonial swords to pitch the series to their people. Can they BE any more enthused about him? Do you all want to slap him yet? Jeff Stone is probably a really nice guy. Let's hope so. It seems he's taking a page out of the book of so many writers and writing about... an ethnicity not his own. In the words of Leonard Chang, it's not that you shouldn't do it... it's just that you'd better do it right... So, good luck to the very Caucasian Jeff Stone and his seven-book series called The Five Ancestors, a story combining the disparate elements of adoption, Shaolin kung fu, and more.

Three For A Paranoid Nation: After, Feed, and Jennifer Government

In the worlds of science fiction and fantasy, there's plenty of well thought-out doomsday stuff for eschatologists and Orwellians to enjoy, but little of it is directed toward young adults, despite most of us having to struggle through books like 1984 as part of the high school reading requirements. However, I came across the following three books and they, with varying success, seem to fit that genre of 'this is how we'll all end up someday.' I know there are more, but these three are recent discoveries.

AFTER, by Francine Prose
Prose is a National Book Award Finalist and her satire has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, and so on and so forth. This is her first book for young adults. Her writing style is accurate for a YA book; the characters seem realistic, but somewhat shallowly drawn. I don't "see" them, which, to me is a minus, but since this book is less character driven that most, it's not necessarily as big a problem as it could be.

The premise of this book is that, after the shootings at Columbine and at another innocuously named Pleasant Valley, teens at Central High and all across America lose their constitutional rights, and begin disappearing. Teen violence is used as an excuse to wage war against teens. Schools send out massive emails about new school rules, etc., to parents, and expect the parents to read them, nightly, and share the contents with their children. Part Patriot Act, part Stalinist Russia, the school systems methodically weed out unsavory "outsider" profiled children who wear red, bring cell phones to school, and disbelieve the school district's version of American history. The high school becomes essentially an Orwellian re-education camp, and who knows what happens at Operation Turnaround, the place where 'outsiders' are sent?

The book is tightly written, and has the Fahrenheit 451 (or Fahrenheit 911) feel to it that makes it a fast-paced read, but there are some pin-holes in the plot that make me think this is just another book written by an adult to scare kids into thinking about their civil liberties in a post-September 11 world. Not that that's a bad thing, by any means, but it just disturbs me how some adults use 'worst-case scenario' to prove a point. When a book is so heavily plot driven instead of character driven, the plot has to be airtight, and this one isn't, at times fairly bizarre and sci-fi-ish instead of realistic, which it strives to be. It's a bit heavy-handed, and has fewer moments of humor than it should, so it comes across as slightly 'teachy,' which can be a real problem in a YA novel. All in all, it's a fairly good book, but I'd give it a B- for lack of subtlety.

"We went to the moon, and it totally sucked." What a hook! That's such a fun first line. It's from FEED, by M.T. Anderson, which is one of those really frighteningly brilliant books where you're not sure if you like it at all, but it's just so -- good. By now, it's one of the more talked about books, so I'll keep my comments short. Basically, Anderson has created a world where there's a different language, and 'everyone' who is anyone has the feed -- the 24/7 personal ad service which is basically a computer chip in your head, telling you everything you ever need to know. No one reads, or writes, because they can't -- and don't have any interest in doing so. The feed gives you everything you need to know or think anyway.

There are some classically funny things in this book about consumerism and brand distortion that are just on the bare edge of scary, in light of the brainwashing that ever takes place via the web, TV, radio and every other outlet. (Even the word School is trademarked, which cracked me up.) As technology advances, there's this feeling of "have to have it" that ramps up higher and higher, and teens as well as the adults in the protagonist, Titus' world, are in an ever tightening spiral of government control that very few of them can see. Who tells you what you want, what you need? Who tells you what is cool, and what is no longer an option for the upwardly mobile? To how much of this do you listen?

JENNIFER GOVERNMENT by Max Barry became known to most people by way of a game -- which was the snazzy advertising gimmick Barry thought up to go with this novel. Likely because of this gaming connection, this novel is listed in MY library as a young adult book, but I'm not sure about the thought that went into that choice, as it's not just the under-18 set who play. Anyway. This novel is funny, punchy satire, but it's also violent on a mindless and large scale, with splatters of gore that become so commonplace that the reader stops recoiling and simply reads on. This book would certainly engage and interest older teens, but the hypercorporate-speak, and the lack of engaging dialogue early in the novel will bore slower readers early on.

Barry's world is divided into megacorporations. Employees take the last names of the companies for which they work, and only the French are the holdouts from the massive free-market 'capitalizm' which has taken over the world. Even the Police and the NRA are publicly-traded security firms, and the Government can only investigate a crime if they can find someone to bill.
Hack Nike is a low-level cog in the Merchandising wheel for his company, who runs into the company brass from Marketing. He is pathetically grateful to both John Nikes for offering him a job, until he realizes what it is... building street cred for a new $2500 a pair Nike's line by killing teen agers.

Buy Mitsui, a stockbroker who is golden and on-fire in his employment life, but who is haunted by the sterility of his world, is lonely and desperate internally. In an effort to make a difference by changing someone else's life, he gives a random teen $2500 to make her Nike's shoe dream come true... and then crumbles himself as he sees the results.

Enter Jennifer Government, a stereotypically street-tough U.S. agent who bends the rules, has something against 'bad guys' and lives in a very black-and-white world of me-against-them. Like the typically hardboiled detective type, she has a soft side, and a tattoo, and her job is to rid the world of John Nike. Legally, if possible. If not...

From there, it gets dicier, with characters like Billy NRA, Theo Pepsi, BILL NRA, and more. It's twisted, it's amusing, and it's been optioned for a film by Stephen Soderbergh and George Clooney's Section 8 Films, so that should give you the gist of the depth of the action. There are no deft and brilliant flashes of insight from this book, and the writing isn't at all deep, but it's an entertaining satire. Paranoia-as-fiction is a very 'now' literary theme, and happily, the absurdities of the corporate world are now grist for more mills than Dilbert's. In my mind, this is not necessarily a topic for your typical YA novel, but it works well enough for that other post-teen group of 18-25 that publishers are trying so hard to define.

Thoughts on any of the above? Do tell.

A New Age in Fiction

Can I just say OY, *!@#$ Daylight Savings Time? Right now, I'm completely jealous of Arizona.

Fantasy writers, creepy mystery novelists and 'ghostwriters,' you've got to check out Llewellyn Worldwide, one of the oldest publishers dealing with the paranormal -- they opened up their publishing line to YA stuff about three years ago, and they're likely one of the more open-minded about "creepy" fiction and paranormal mysteries than the average publisher. They claim that they publish stories on the 'edge of teen culture.' What struck me most about them is that they claim to prefer to deal with unagented writers -- PREFER, my dears. Possibly they feel this is more authentic? I have no idea. Their YA guide is here, and is very, VERY specific, including a detailed questionnaire to be immediately forwarded to their marketing people. Efficient. If my fantasy novella weren't in such a snarl, I'd get chattin' with them immediately. As it is...

...back to the keyboard.

New Links Added

Check out the sidebar under "Writers' Blogs" for some new linkage. Wanting to add to the lonely single entry, I googled "YA writer blogs" and found a very nice, helpful blog devoted to exactly that topic. I've posted it there in the sidebar, along with a few favorite authors whose blogs I found on the list after giving it a quick scan.

More Thoughts on Agents

I mostly just wanted to laud T's posting below and say Go! Go! Go!

I also wanted to clarify that my active collecting of rejection slips is due far more to impatience than moxie. Simply put, I do not want years and years to go by before my first novel is published. But I guess the important thing is to be persistent, regardless of where your motivation comes from. However, I find persistence to be very difficult, and the submission/rejection process to be very discouraging, whereas I excel at impatience; so I figured I might as well use the one in service of the other. So my advice for the day is to find what motivates you to keep writing and submitting; even if that's something as lowly as frustration, or as lofty as hubris, just keep at it!

One more thing. Though I would love to say that I made confetti from my rejection slips, I'm too afraid to destroy them in case I get audited one day and have to prove that I was sincerely trying to pursue a writing career. I'm also not masochistic enough to make wallpaper out of them. Basically they just sit in a file folder, holed away in a drawer and out of my immediate awareness. They also get logged on a spreadsheet with date of receipt, because I'm anal that way.