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This week, we have Chris Rettstatt, the creator of Kaimira and co-author of the Kaimira book series (Candlewick Press and Walker Books). The first book in the Kaimira series, Sky Village, hits stores July 2008. In addition to writing, Chris has worked for the past decade as a specialist in the field of youth-focused virtual community. He lives in Chicago with his wife and twin daughters. (BTW, Chris is NOT a child author, but we couldn’t resist putting up this cute picture of him as a boy. Now THAT is an author-in-the-making. Check out the pose!)

First, here’s a little bit about KAIMIRA.

High over China, twelve-year-old Mei arrives at the Sky Village, an intricate web of hot-air balloons floating above an Earth where animals battle machines for control. Deep below the ruins of Las Vegas, thirteen-year-old Rom enters a shadowy world where he is commandeered to fight, gladiator-style, against hybrid demons for the entertainment of a mercenary crowd. Mei and Rom have never met, but they share a common journal — a book that allows them to communicate with each other and reveals that they carry the strange and frightening Kaimira gene, entwining aspects of human, beast, and machine within their very DNA. In this thrilling, intricately plotted novel, Mei and Rom must find the courage to balance the powers that lurk within — and overcome outside forces that seek to destroy them — if they are to survive and save the ones they love.

Now let’s start the interview, Chris. When you received your offer, you …

… nearly cracked a smile. Kidding. I was ecstatic. I had originally pitched Kaimira as a trilogy, and I was asked to rework it into a four- or five-book series. Naturally, I opted for five.

So now that you have a contract, what’s it like to be on the other side–on the verge of publication? What does it feel like to be official?

When someone asks me what it is I do, I no longer feel compelled to lower my voice when I answer that I’m a writer.

Tell us a little bit about your path to publication.

I started writing when I was eight, the moment I’d finished reading Where the Sidewalk Ends. By bedtime I’d filled a notepad with poems. Fast-forward a few years, and teenage me is reading series fantasy like it’s going out of style. Which it never does. Because two decades later, when I’m given an opportunity to pitch a book series for kids, my thoughts turn immediately to series fantasy with a bottomless well of world building.

And why do you choose to write fantasy?

I didn’t always. For a while I wrote exclusively realistic, blue-collar Southern fiction, because I was sticking to the tenet “write what you know.” But I’d never stopped reading and watching fantasy, and I finally decided to try writing it, but with the same grit and realism as my earlier writing.

Now here’s our favorite question. How many rejections did you receive IN GENERAL (not just for these books) before you landed your first major publishing contract?

• 0-10
• 11-25
• 26-50
• 51-100
• 100+
• I didn’t keep track because it was too depressing.
• I didn’t keep track because I am not that organized.
• They don’t make a number that big.
• I plead the fifth.

Tell us about one of your most heart-breaking rejections.

I once received a rejection from a French publisher that was so passionate, I wanted to turn it into an aria. Or a requiem. It felt like they wanted to burn me in effigy.

(Snoop says, Ouch, that’s bad. Try eating a moldy strawberry. Ew!)

How long did it take to sell your books, from putting the first words on the page to receiving an offer? Here are your choices.

• 0-3 months
• 3-6 months
• 6 months to 1 year
• 1 year - 2 years
• 2 years - 3 years
• 3 years+
• The manuscript has been around longer than I have.

Prior to selling your books, what were you doing, Chris?

I worked (and still work) full-time at an entertainment company. The work involves writing but is largely creative development. Part of my job now is working with BBC Worldwide to develop Kaimira into other media, such as gaming and television.

Now that you’ve sold some books, you plan to …

Work twice as hard.

Tell us about a typical day in your writing life.

The phrase “typical day” left my vocabulary on the day my twin girls were born. When living with aspiring toddlers, who seem to feel that every moment of the day is of insurmountable importance, it’s hard not to feel that my own days, hours, and minutes are decidedly atypical.

(Snoop says, Twins? That’s nothing. My cousin had octuplets.)

What are some of the new things you worry about now that you have a contract?

Umm… the fact that I have to write four more 400+ page books?

What is one of the biggest myths in children’s book publishing that you wish aspiring writers would just forget about?

The myth that it gets easier. Publication does open doors, but you’re basically back at the drawing board with every new project. That, and you are trying to market your last project while you work on the next one. It’s fun work for sure, but you have to hang on to that eye of the tiger that fueled and haunted you on your way to publication.

Any inspiring quotes you live by?

“My indirection found direction out.” –Theodore Roethke

‘Tain’t no sin, to take off your skin, and dance around in your bones.” –Walter Donaldson

Finally, do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

My advice is somewhat schizophrenic. On the one hand, you have to understand the business side of publishing. Browse the shelves, talk to librarians, teachers, and booksellers. And most importantly, read what’s out there and think, as objectively and non-defensively as you can, about how your book fits in. On the other hand, you can’t let the business of the business push your buttons or unhook your anchor. Publishing is ultimately about getting great content into the hands of readers. You have to be fiercely loyal to your creative vision. If you aren’t, nobody else is going to be.

This concludes our interview with our latest author celebrity Chris Rettstatt. We wish Chris much success with all FIVE books in the Kaimira series. (Woah.) Snoop is sending you a truckload of diapers for the twins, and he’s looking forward to munching the entire Kaimira collection.

If you’d like to see what’s up with Chris lately, visit his website at http://rettstatt.wordpress.com, and if you want to see Kaimira’s very own website, check out http://kaimiracode.com.

Tune in next week to learn about our next Author on the Verge, middle-grade novelist and picture book author Meg Medina.

If YOU are a debut children’s book author with a major trade publisher and would like to be featured on AOTV, please contact me.

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I recently had the opportunity to read and review an advanced reader copy of Sweethearts and interview the author, Sara Zarr. Her first novel, Story of a Girl , was a 2007 National Book Award Finalist, and I predict her second novel, Sweethearts, will win even more. It's truly amazing...See my review here.

A special thanks to Sara for so thoughtfully answering my questions:
The Well-Read Child (TWRC): In Story of a Girl, Deanna is an outcast at school, and in Sweethearts, Jenna and Cameron were both school outcasts when they were younger, all for different reasons. Why have you chosen to make your main characters unpopular kids who've faced some very tough situations in life? Are you basing these characters on people you've known in your own life?

Sara Zarr (SZ): The older I get and the more conversations I have with people about the experience of adolescence, the more I realize that virtually everyone feels like an outcast at some point in their childhood or teen years---even the kids we look at from the outside and identify as popular or as fitting in. I definitely felt that way, even though I didn’t personally experience any prolonged or extreme ostracizing. That feeling, whether or not it’s based in reality, seems so universal…almost biologically innate. I’m interested in exploring that feeling, so my stories tend to externalize it to make it more concrete. From the concrete I can delve into the more abstract and emotional parts of it. So to answer the latter part of your question: yes and no. I based those feelings of isolation on my own experience and what I’ve observed in others, but neither Jenna/Jennifer nor Deanna were based on anyone real.

TWRC: How did the idea for Sweethearts come to you?
SZ: I did have a little boyfriend in grade school---Mark---who left a ring and note in my lunch bag one day. Years later, when I was an adult, he found me online and we got back in touch via email. Considering how young we were when we knew each other, I found (and find) it strange and mysterious that we still share a meaningful connection. It got me thinking about that inexplicable kind of bonding that can happen between some children, and I wondered if Mark and I had gone to the same junior high and high school if that bond would have held---if we still would have been friends, if we would have dated, and just how strong that loyalty would really be in the face of the normal changes friendships go through between childhood and adolescence, but we never had because we lost touch between second grade and age thirty. So the book started by exploring that “what if” and going from there.

TWRC: As I was reading Sweethearts, I felt that I was peering into Jenna's soul and actually feeling what she was feeling. I felt a lump in the pit of my stomach as she relived that terrifying day at Cameron's house, and I could actually feel her anger and confusion and heartache when Cameron came back. As you were writing the book, how did you manage to so successfully convey her thoughts and feelings?

SZ: First of all, thanks, because that’s a great compliment! Every writer hopes to draw readers into the character’s world and let them experience the emotions, too. Second, I have no idea how I did it. It’s just something that happened in the process of rewriting and rewriting, and my editor kept pushing, saying that for the bond to be believable the reader really, really had to feel it with Jenna or else the whole story wouldn’t work. So there was a lot at stake if I didn’t get it right!

TWRC: What is your favorite scene in Sweethearts?
SZ: I have a few, but the one that jumps to mind (maybe because it’s cold and snowy right now) is the scene with Jenna and Cameron on the porch in the early morning hours after a snowfall. I grew up in San Francisco where there was no snow, and even though I’ve lived in Utah seven years now I still think those first few snowfalls of the season are so magical and romantic. I wanted to set the book during the transition from fall to winter just so I could have a snow scene!

TWRC: Do you identify with any of the characters in the book?
SZ: Oh, definitely. There’s a lot of me in Jenna. I used food throughout my childhood and young adulthood the way she does, and I’ve always wanted to explore that in a story without making it a story about an eating disorder. And I’ve been the fat kid, and have lost weight, and experienced that dissonance of carrying around the fat emotions in a different body. Having grown up in a household with alcoholism, I also identify with her feelings of needing to be in control and feeling like something bad could happen at any second.

TWRC: What do you hope your readers get out of Sweethearts?
SZ: The most important thing is that they have a great and hopefully satisfying reading experience.

TWRC: Why do you write young adult books? Have you ever thought about writing for other age groups?
SZ: I don’t know, really. When ideas for stories come into my head, they’re always about teenagers. Even when an idea for a story with adults comes to mind, I immediately start thinking how to tell it with teen characters. It’s kind of a mystery. I do hope to have a long career during which I can try a lot of different things, so we’ll see.

TWRC: Where do you write?
SZ: Wherever…the couch, at a desktop computer, home, my office. I don’t tend to need a particular setting as long as I’m comfortable and clear-headed.

TWRC: What other books or authors have influenced you the most?
SZ: My favorite authors when I got into YA were Robert Cormier, Madeleine L’Engle, M.E. Kerr, Brock Cole, Han Nolan. I also love Anne Tyler and Jonathan Franzen and Nathanael West. I’d love to write a novel someday that is as heartbreaking and funny as something of Anne Tyler’s. I think I have heartbreaking down, but I’d like to be able to have more of that kind of “aren’t we humans stupidly funny?” humor that Tyler does so well, because that’s more true to my core personality. My books might leave people with the impression that I am carrying around a big old load of angst all the time, but the truth is I love to laugh and am fairly easy going.

TWRC: What can we look forward to seeing from you next?
SZ: I’ve got an essay in an anthology on body image coming out this fall. It’s called Does This Book Make Me Look Fat? and in my essay I explore some of the stuff I mentioned about my relationship with food and body. And I’m working on a third book for Little, Brown but it’s too soon to talk about that yet---don’t want to jinx myself!

Young Adult Pick of the Week:

Sweethearts by Sara Zarr

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown Young Readers (February 1, 2008)
• Language: English

Nine year olds Jennifer and Cameron are the outcasts at their school. Jennifer is overweight, shy, and withdrawn, and Cameron, who comes from an abusive home is just well—different. Both are endlessly teased, and they somehow find each other and form a deep connection. Until one day Cameron doesn’t show up at school, and the teacher says he moved. To say Jennifer is hurt because he didn’t say goodbye is an understatement. She’s crushed and just doesn't understand. Then one day the bullies at recess tell her that Cameron died. When her own mother doesn’t tell her differently, Jennifer is devastated and decides that the only way she can survive is to bury the person she is with him.

Eight years later, Jennifer is now Jenna, and she’s completely reinvented herself. She’s in great shape, goes to a different school, and has lots of friends, including a boyfriend Ethan, the handsomest boy in school. Externally, she seems happy and seems to have the perfect life. Internally, she struggles to keep “Jennifer” inside and is haunted by a terrifying experience that occurred at Cameron’s house on her ninth birthday. On her seventeenth birthday, she discovers that Cameron did not die and that he’s in her town. Memories and suppressed feelings come flooding back as she struggles to cope with this news.

Has their connection remained strong after all these years? Why didn’t he try to contact her before? Why didn’t her mother tell her the truth? What exactly happened at Cameron’s house so many years ago? Do Jenna and Cameron still have such a strong connection after all these years? Will Jenna leave Ethan for Cameron? Can she keep Jennifer inside? Sara Zarr’s second novel Sweethearts answers all these questions through a profound and gut-wrenching story.

Zarr does an exceptional job of drawing you in and make you FEEL Jenna’s emotions. As I was reading, I felt a lump in the pitt of my stomach as Jenna relived the horrifying day at Cameron’s house. I felt anger, confusion, heartache, and fear as Jenna struggles with Cameron’s return and all of the emotions that come flooding in with it.

From the very first chapter I was hooked as I read the following passage:

“Other memories stick, no matter how much you wish they wouldn’t. They’re like a song you hate but can’t ever get completely out of your head, and this song becomes the background noise of your entire life, snippets of lyrics, and lines of music floating up and then receding, a crazy kind of tide that never stops.” (p. 5, Advanced Reader Copy).

In addition to resounding passages like this one, Zarr is careful not to make Jenna “too adult.” She expertly reminds us that Jenna is seventeen through carefully crafted scenarios that take us inside the head of a teenager. Jenna grapples with friendships, her weight and self-image, boyfriends, the pressure to have sex, the pressure to drink—things that many young adults can identify with.

It’s evident that Sara Zarr poured her heart and soul into this book, and I can’t even remember the last time I read a book that resonated with me as much as Sweethearts did. If you liked Story of a Girl,you will love Sweethearts.

Note: Sweethearts goes on sale February 1, 2008. I got the exciting opportunity to interview Sara Zarr about this book, so look for this interview on February 4^th as I take part in the Sweethearts blog tour.

Sara Zarr is also going on a mini-tour to promote Sweethearts. If you live near San Francisco, Salt Lake City, or Phoenix/Tempe, visit her blog for dates and locations!