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Whenever I talk about my book TIME OUT FOR MONSTERS! I always mention that the story is really about imagination. The students at St. Thomas More School really get that. Along with their librarian, the wonderful Lori Lucas, they let their imaginations run wild on these amazing wall murals. Thanks for sending me the pictures!!!

In this fast-changing world of publishing, we hear about a future where writers will directly post content for digital downloading—no costly binding, no "middle-men," no meager 10-15% cut of a sale, no lengthy turnaround time until our next book is consumable.

Sounds great, right?

Not to me. Take TIGER BOY, for instance, coming in 2014 from Charlesbridge.

A year ago, I was in the doldrums of a newly-empty nest, wondering what to do now that I'd been fired as a Mommy. A mother-writer hyphenated vocation had been a good gig for years; how was I going to weather this transition? I had no creative spark, and when students asked the inevitable question during author visits—"Where do you get your ideas?"�my honest answer should have been: "No clue. Got nothing here."

That's when the phone rang. Yes, I got an old-school call. Not a text, not an e-mail, but an actual call on our landline.

I picked it up and grunted into the receiver, expecting a marketing robo-voice. Who else called that number these days? "Mitali? This is Yo. How are you?"

It was Yolanda LeRoy Scott, my Harvard-educated, drop-dead gorgeous editor at Charlesbridge. "I want to take you to lunch and talk about your next book."

"Okay, Yo, I'd like that." How am I going to tell her about my creative constipation? Get ready for the shortest working lunch ever, Mrs. Scott.

We met at Not Your Average Joe's in Watertown, right near Charlesbridge's offices, a mile or so from my house.

"I'm stuck, Yo. I got nothing." I soaked up parmesan cheese and olive oil with freshly baked bread.

"Just throw out some topics for me. Is there anything you've always wanted to write about? Or a new genre you want to try?"

Yolanda passed me the bread bowl, and I helped myself to another chunk of carb comfort. "Well, there is something. I've always wanted to write a picture book, and I've been thinking about Bengal tigers—how beautiful they are." I didn't add that one of our sons' walls was covered with posters of the creatures, because that would imply I was mooning around his empty room.

Her face lit up. "That sounds lovely. I'll write up a contract and send it to your agent."

"Really? Sight unseen?"

"I know you can do this, Mitali. This is your story to tell. Now let's talk babies. Mine isn't sleeping all that well. Got any tips?"

I slipped easily into my role of seasoned veteran and we talked mothering for the rest of  lunch.

The contract came. I signed it. Somehow I eked out a picture book manuscript and sent it off. Yo's editorial letter came quickly: "I love it, but as usual you've got the start of a short novel with great potential here, Mitali. It could be the perfect companion to RICKSHAW GIRL." The letter continued with a list of brilliant questions and suggestions.

I felt a sudden spark in my latent imagination. A character leaped to mind—a skinny brown  boy, like hundreds I had seen in the villages of West Bengal. Years ago, my own father had been one of them. Immediately, I named him: Neil. He loved tigers.

Yesterday I sent Yolanda a second revision of TIGER BOY, the novel. Thanks to her insights, it's become a real story now, with plot, characters, theme, place. It's going to need another round or two of changes and honing to make it a satisfying story, but my imagination needs the breathing room of this back-and-forth collaboration.

Here's my question: will the future be a world without publishers like Charlesbridge who champion stories across borders, without editors like Yo who encourage and cheer for broken-down mid-career writers, without the time a story needs between revisions to improve?

If so, I'm never going to make it.

Can we be proactive and keep the best from the old publishing model as we explore new ways to deliver content to consumers? One non-negotiable is the input of an excellent editor who doesn't work for me, but with me.

Thanks, Yo.  And thanks, Charlesbridge. Now on to the next story.

Come visit me on the Fire Escape!

It's Halloween, and I just interrupted my first-time-in-five-years reunion with candy corn to realize what that means. Tomorrow begins November. November. Unfreakinbelievable. Elections. Veterans Day. Thanksgiving. That November. Yes. Holy cow.... Read the rest of this post

Many writers plough through a first draft of their fiction in a heat of creative energy.  There may be a focusing theme, often a central protagonist, or perhaps a group of central characters,  and a framing of the place, or setting, of a story.

Pencil Sketch on Drawing Paper

Color Wash of Sketch on Drawing Paper

Today, I'm offering some easy advice: Writers, don't forget Holidays and Seasons when you write.To get into the spirit, I'm sharing some of the pics I've amassed for Halloween.

We are feeling incredibly grateful here in the Krosoczka house to be celebrating Halloween this evening. The hurricane's fury avoided us completely. Our hearts go out to all of the folks in the affected areas. And I feel lucky to even be home. I had been in Austin for the Texas Book Festival. I had already canceled Sunday's appearances, but was scheduled on a flight out on Sunday morning. On Saturday afternoon, while signing books with Dav Pilkey, Lisa McMann and Mac Barnett, I glanced at my phone and saw that Massachusetts was in a state of emergency. I took off to pack my bags and head to the airport and got on the last flight of the evening. Sadly, many of my Northeast author friends are still stuck in Austin. Not a bad city to be stuck in, but I would far rather be home with my kids. Not only to shelter them from the storm, but to decorate pumpkins like this:

My three year old drew this. So proud!

Do you have an aspiring author in your house? A potential poet? If so, then the Thurber House Writing Wizards program is just what you’ve been looking for. Workshops, for students in grades 2-8, will meet each Saturday from January 26 through February 23, 2013. The classes provide an opportunity for young writers to develop their skills and have fun expressing themselves through the magic of creative writing. The deadline for registration is Friday, January 11th. Classes vary in time and will take place at Thurber Center, 91 Jefferson Avenue.

2/3 Graders
Express Yourself with Sylvia Jackson 10:00 – 11:30 am
How do you write about your favorite topics without copying someone else’s version? Learn how to make your favorite stories your own!

Is that a Story next to that Fish Lamp? with Sarah Magill 12:30 – 2:00 pm
Come rummage through a Thurber garage sale for items sure to spark your imagination in an unexpected way.

4/5 Graders
Imagine That with Paul Hammock 10:00 – Noon
Ever wonder what the bread thinks as it’s burned in the toaster? Explore the power of sensory details, point of view, and imagery.

Welcome to Ideatown with Val Cumming 1:00 – 3:00 p.m.
Welcome to Ideatown, population: You. We’ll take a trip to Ideatown, a fictional city inhabited by characters you create.

6/7/8 Graders
A Novel Idea! with Terese Houle 10:00 a.m. – Noon
From brainstorming to creating your protagonists, even through to publishing, this class has all you need when developing your novel.

Stoked on Steampunk with Kathy Matthews and Dan Mushalko 1:00 – 3:00 p.m.
Create a world where computers are powered by steam and adventure awaits around every corner. That’s the world of Steampunk– an exciting new genre of fiction that puts the future, in the past.

Financial Scholarships Available!
We have a limited number of scholarships available on a first-come, first-served basis for any young writer who may have financial need.

For more information or to register, check out our website or email Meg Brown at megbrown@thurberhouse.org.

Is it really Halloween?

And when did Halloween become work?

Julianna Baggott has a set of interview questions for writers (I’ve owed her my answers for a while now), and one of them is: “What’s your advice to a writer who’s looking for a lifelong partner?”

Easy: Find someone like this.

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I confess to approaching this book with trepidation: I don't 'get' selkies. Never have. Trolls and goblins; dragons and elves; imps and fairies--no problem. Mermaids, check. Monsters, zombies, vampires, check. I get all those. But selkies? The woman/seal thing just doesn't work for me. I can't explain it other than to say that it doesn't make 'sense' the way other fantastical creatures do. (Which I realize doesn't make sense either.) Much as I admired and enjoyed THE FOLK KEEPER, by Franny Billingsley, it did not convert me.

Shoulda known better. Shoulda guessed. This is Margo Lanagan, who doesn't merely weave straw into gold. She weaves rotted, manure-encrusted, half-digested and regurgitated straw into pure, precious, lustrous storytelling . THE BRIDES OF ROLLROCK ISLAND (YA/adult) is divided into chapters told by several characters' points of view. Already a challenge, right? And the beginning was compelling but also confusing; I had to hang in there and trust that the path would become clearer.

It did.

An island where all the children are boys. Mothers who are beautiful and strange. And the most memorable witch in modern literature. Read this book if you like weird and wondrous stories rendered in gorgeous writing.

I GET IT NOW.

I believe in selkies.

While the world is recovering from the storm (hurricane and publishing mergers) I thought I'd post some photos to lighten the mood. It is Halloween and my baby's a cupcake!

She's grown so much since the first time we read this book!

*Cutesy, Blinky, and Bob incognito*

If you like A Cinderella Story, Doctor Who, good books, good sports, behind-the-scenes stories regarding publishing and filmmaking, and creative people who are multi-hyphenates, then you should read this interview with novelist-screenwriter Leigh Dunlap. Allons-y!

What inspired your new book, Halifax?

Halifax was inspired by my love of sci-fi, stories about teenagers, and Doctor Who. I wanted to write a teenage Doctor Who.

Did it begin as a screenplay or was it a novel from the get-go?

Halifax started out as a screenplay. I had been dabbling in writing novels and hadn't quite hit on a story and a structure that I could really run with. I thought that Halifax would be perfect to turn into a novel and that it lent itself to the format. And since it was already a screenplay, I had a great template to work off of. Sometimes, for me, just getting organized is the biggest battle. So the organization was already done and then I had to move on to more important things --- like writing actual paragraphs! It was definitely a learning experience, but I loved the process.

At what point in the writing process did you determine this story was a trilogy?

I had envisioned the story at one point as a TV series, so in my head there was always more story to tell. The book is actually the beginning and ending of what would have been the first season. The second book is really what would have been the second season and the third book is planned along the lines of how the series would have ended. Of course, there was a lot to change along the way, but there is definitely a bigger story to tell and three books seems about right.

Which character in Halifax is the most like you? The least?

Oh no! The dreaded question! Well, every character is a bit like me, more or less. I can be like all of them. Maybe when I was younger, I was more like Nora, though certainly not popular! I'd like to think I'm more like Farrell now. He's pretty straightforward, gets things done, damn the torpedoes! Though I make plenty of mistakes like Farrell will in the future. I'm least like Rom. He's a unique little guy. He's smarter than me for sure. Also more naive.

Halifax is described as a mix of Torchwood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The Breakfast Club. (Now if we could only get Anthony Michael Hall, John Barrowman, and Sarah Michelle Gellar in the same project...!)

What a dream cast that would be...

Wouldn't it be fun? What do you think a good teen story - be it a film, a TV series, or a novel - has in common with a good sci-fi story?

Sci-fi stories tend to be about outcasts. Aliens are, of course, not like the rest of us. So there's that element to it, where teenagers feel different or lost or out of place. I think you feel that way if you're popular and pretty or a nerd and geeky. And maybe you still feel that was when you're an adult too. It's being different and trying to find your way in the world. Some times that's battling through school and in sci-fi that may be battling evil forces. Either way, you are trying to survive.

Upon learning that Leigh was a Doctor Who fan, I gave her a virtual high-five and informed her that I was still in mourning over the Ponds. She responded, "I loved Amy! So sad to see her and Rory go, but that is one of the wonderful things about Doctor Who: you get new companions, and when an actor wants to leave, he just regenerates into a new actor!"

Ahem. We now return you to our proper standard Q&A format...and continue to talk about those who travel on the TARDIS:

Who are your favorite Doctor Who companions, and why?

Rose was absolutely my favorite companion and the love story there was amazing. Though I have to say I also loved Donna. Just the idea of this person who didn't think they were worthless was actually the most important person in the universe was brilliant. I guess I'm going for a little bit of that with Nora in Halifax.

Who is your favorite Doctor? I'll go first: David Tennant. I think he's brilliant, not just in Doctor Who, but pretty much every role I've seen him tackle.

I, too, am a big David Tennant fan. Although I think Matt is great and the new seasons are wonderful, they don't have the same amount of heart as the David Tennant years.

Changing the subject from aliens to princesses: How long did it take you to write the screenplay for A Cinderella Story, and how long to sell it? Did you write the screenplay because you were fond of the fairy tale?

I was actually approached by some producers to write a "modern take on Cinderella" and went from there. It didn't take long to write originally but it took forever to sell. There were several competing Cinderella projects at the time. When Hilary Duff finally signed on that was that. She was the hottest teen star at the time and everyone wanted to work with her. It became a bidding war at that point and we almost immediately went into production. It was a total whirlwind.

How much of the original script made it to the screen? Were there a lot of changes, or very few, and were you satisfied with the final product?

Warner Brothers hired a million screenwriters to start re-writing the script and it was a very sad process for me. It's no fun to see what you've written destroyed and there's no one involved who thinks the finished script was better than the original. But that's what the studio wanted and they ended up with a huge hit, so you can't fault that. I think just enough of what I had, though, and the heart of it, was left and I like to think that's one of the reasons it worked. Writing books is a much more satisfying experience. What I intended is there on the page, for better or worse.

Not only did you write the screenplay for the film 16-Love, but you also served as executive producer. That's got to be both thrilling and nerve-wracking! What was the coolest experience you had on set or behind-the-scenes?

That was an interesting experience. The entire movie was made for what would have been the catering budget on A Cinderella Story. It was totally nerve-wracking, but exciting at the same time. It was a daily battle on so many levels, but I got to work with some amazing people who worked hard for very little money and were a joy to deal with. I loved going to the set. Loved helping to solve problems. It wasn't a perfect experience by any means and again a lot of what I wrote didn't end up the way I wrote it, but somehow we all survived and it's a sweet movie.

I was most proud to have Chandler Massey as one of the leads. I fought hard to have him cast in the movie and he's wonderful. Since then he's won an Emmy for Days of Our Lives. He's going to be a big star.

Many of your screenplays, including two of your pilot scripts, have sports-related storylines. Are you an athlete, or did play sports growing up?

When I grew up there wasn't a lot of opportunity for girls to play sports. I was invited on the tennis team but had to work after school so I couldn't participate. I probably would have been awful anyhow!

My dad was a big sports fan and I grew up watching baseball and football with him and we'd go to car races. Maybe my love of sports comes from wanting his attention. I don't really know. But I'm a sports fanatic and I think sports tends to have exactly what I look for in stories: underdogs, great characters, inspiration, action, comedy, heart. Sports is growing so much in media that it's only a matter of time before networks finally embrace it. I wrote a script about a female sportscaster and I hope I'm the first one in the door, but it's tough. But it will happen with or without me! Girls like sports too. We are the fastest growing segment of sports viewers, both on TV and in stadiums, and people are starting to recognize that fact.

Amen to that. Do you have any other screenplays in the works, or are you focusing on the Halifax trilogy for the time being?

Right now, all I'm concentrating on is the second Halifax book, which I'm having a blast working on. I love being back in their world. Although things get very though for all the characters in Halifax in the second book, both professionally (versus aliens) and personally (versus each other) I find their world a very happy place to hang out in.

Last but not least: Please name your ten all-time favorite books. Any genre, any age, any type.

Oh, you're going to get a bunch of sports books, I'm afraid!

"Money Ball" - Michael Lewis
"The Blind Side" - Michael Lewis
"Luckiest Man" - Jonathan Eig
"Opening Day" - Jonathan Eig
"The Soul of Baseball" - Joe Posnanski
"Ted Williams" - Leigh Montville
"Game Six" - Mark Frost
"Tim Tebow" - Tim Tebow
"Pistol" - Mark Kriegel
and because it's not all about sports....
"Bridget Jones' Diary" - Helen Fielding

Visit Leigh Dunlap's website.

Hope everyone is staying safe through Storm Sandy!  Here are the thumbnails are going to be submitted to publishers in the next week or so.  They're larger than the typical thumbnail sketch--about six per standard size piece of typing paper. And the drawings are tighter too (since this is going to be used in lieu of a dummy book).  Also added some color accents to show that black and red are the main two colors in the book.

Can't publish the whole manuscript of course, so the text is blurred out (sorry). :)

Flames from Burning Candles by: Photos8.org

CREDIT: NASA GOES Project

Gondola Ride on the River Styx

The Island of the Dead

In fact, the first year I moved into the house in Los Feliz, back in 1988 before it was properly furnished, my sister and I decorated every room with a different spooky theme: the coffin room, the fortune teller room, etc. and threw a huge party complete with sound effects and lighting -- I even got the Frankenstein monster from Universal Studios to come, since he was a friend of mine. It was all in good fun, and there was certainly nothing religious about it, more like a Disneyland Haunted Mansion theme. To me, any holiday that can inspire Serious White Men to get creative, dress up in costumes and loosen up a bit is providing a service to mankind. One of my favorite costumes was worn by a fellow who was normally very... uptight. He dressed all in white and carried a big black felt marker, calling himself "Graffiti Man," and had people sign his clothes all night. To me, Halloween in the States is more similar to Carnival in Venice than it is to the Day of the Dead.

I've been neglecting you! And I haven't posted winners of the contest yet. Sorry. I just sent off the latest draft of my unnamed YA book to my editor and am working on a short story for an anthology I'll annouce later. But first, Happy Halloween! And as has become a magnificent Squeetus tradition, here's a book pumpkin from carving wizard Laura Middleton.

There are no words.

Also, check out her ode to FRANKENSTEIN, from the picture book parody of MADELINE, written by Ludworst Bemonster, aka Rick Walton and Nate Hale.

Aw. The little demon looks so sweet. And celebrating Ally Condie's final book in the MATCHED trilogy:

Gorgeous! Thank you, Laura. Your talent rocks.

I’m passing this along, because it is brilliant and funny and easy for me to do.

My thoughts go out to friends & family & everyone else contending with the ravages of this past storm, so I’m not sure how to blog, exactly. A measured silence? A thoughtful response?

I decided to go with candy. And humor. Trade well, my friends.