I am not a NYT best-selling writer. While my books have won awards and made lists, when it comes to publishing, I'm "mid-list". Sure, I hope that some day I will "break out" into the big time. There have been plenty of difficult and frustrating moments when I've thought "If I only could be inspired write about vampires/wolves/faeries/paranormal romance" or whatever the publishing phenomenon du jour happens to be. But alas, it doesn't work that way. I write best when I'm writing about a subject that fills me with passion. Maybe it comes from starting my professional writing life as a political op-ed columnist.
I've also been told that I'm hard to "brand" because the subjects of each of my books have been so vastly different. It makes it harder for readers to know what to expect when they pick up a Sarah Darer Littman book - unlike say a reader of Sarah Dessen or Ellen Hopkins.
LIFE, AFTER is my quietest book to date. It was well reviewed (well, except for Kirkus, but my reviews from Kirkus grow progressively worse with each book, so I'm expecting to be prostrate in bed with a chocolate IV drip after I read the one for WANT TO GO PRIVATE?) and was awarded a 2011 Sydney Taylor Honor. But it wasn't picked up by the chains and it hasn't set the world on fire.
Sometimes I get sad and discouraged, because I really love this book and it means a lot to me for so many reasons. But then, on Friday, I got an email from someone who had read it. She'd immigrated to the US with her family about five years ago* and identified so strongly with Dani, the main character in LIFE, AFTER that she thought that Dani's story was really my story, and asked me if I still kept in touch with the characters in the book, and how I dealt with my father. She told me that I was "a courageous woman" for sticking up for Jon with the bully.
It really touched me that anyone would identify with my characters that strongly. I wrote back to her, explaining that I was born in the United States, but having moved to another country and been teased for my accent and using the wrong words for things, I did draw on my personal experiences for Dani. I told her that my son had been badly bullied in middle school, and that I wished there had been a person like Dani who had the courage to stick up for him when other kids were mean to him. And I told her that I know both how it feels to be depressed myself, and how debilitating it is for the entire family to live with someone else who is depressed and angry and refuses to seek treatment. So while LIFE,AFTER is a complete work of fiction, I drew on all of those things to write it.
I also wrote to her: I hope that Dani's courage will always inspire you to stand up for anyone you see being treated unfairly. It's not always easy to do what is right, but it is so, so important. Edmund Burke, a famous British statesman and political theorist said: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." That goes for women, too. (He lived a long time ago, when women weren't as liberated).
I thought I was writing to a teenager. But she wrote back to me today and told me more about herself. She is working at a job she was told by her father was the job that was available to her. But her mother (who I want to celebrate and hug) has been encouraging her and her sisters to study and learn and be independent. So she is studying to get a degree in what she really loves, while working at the job she was told was told was the only option.
She wrote that her mother has told her that "educa
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By: Sarah Darer Littman,
on 5/15/2011
Blog: It's My Life and I'll Blog if I Want To! (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: why i write, life after, Add a tag
By: Sarah Darer Littman,
on 2/4/2011
Blog: It's My Life and I'll Blog if I Want To! (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: sexual abuse, hush, life after, Add a tag
I'm reposting here my column from today's Stamford Advocate, because I think it's one of the most important ones I've ever written:
When one of my kids became involved with a theater production run under the auspices of a local Catholic church, I offered to volunteer with backstage help. In order to do so, I had to attend a mandatory 3-hour workshop on child sexual abuse awareness called "Protecting God's Children."
I was pleased that the church was taking such stringent measures, but didn't think the course had much to teach me. As a victim of child sexual abuse myself and further, having just researched and completed a young adult novel about Internet predators, "Want to go Private," I'm quite knowledgeable about the warning signs, the grooming process, and the need for constant vigilance. In fact, due to my own experiences, I'm probably hyper-vigilant. There were times, particularly when my children were the ages at which I had been abused, that I had to seek therapy because my anxiety about being able to protect them from harm was so acute.
Yet I ended up learning things I wish I hadn't. I learned that there are still people who believe that a larger percentage of kids lie than the statistics quoted and who are more concerned about potentially destroying the life and reputation of an adult than protecting a child.
I wanted to stand up and scream, "What is the matter with you people?" I wanted to grab the microphone from the moderator and, instead of the actors and actresses that portrayed victims of sexual abuse in the church's video, have them hear about the impact of child sexual abuse from someone real, live, in their community, who has lived with the consequences: depression, bulimia and attempted suicide, but has finally through therapy, hard work, and determination, come through the other side.
But instead, I sat there mute. Because no matter how many years have passed (it's been decades), no matter how many years of therapy I've had (many), no matter how well I think I'm doing (pretty awesome, thanks) in certain situations I can be thrown right back into that feeling of paralyzing helplessness, of feeling like I'm a confused, scared child in the darkness, a child without a voice.
When I got home, I was devastated. I stayed up, distraught and sobbing, until 1 a.m. I was angry that people didn't understand how doubting a child's word makes them feel like they're being abused all over again. I was angry that despite all the hard work I've done for years to put this thing behind me, despite my thinking that I've dealt with it, all it took was watching a few videos and hearing a few people say insensitive things to bring me right back to the Me I Was Before. Such is the nature of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
But mostly, I was angry with myself, because I'm not that small, helpless, voiceless child in the darkness anymore. I'm a strong, successful, woman who worked damned hard to learn to use her words.
That's why, despite this being a deeply personal and difficult issue, I chose to write this column.
Recently, my book "Life, After" was named a Sydney Taylor Honor Book for Teens along with an incredibly important book called "Hush." The author writes under the pseudonym Eishes Chayil, or "A Woman of Valor," which indeed she is.
The main character in "Hush" is Gittel, who grows up in an unnamed Chassidic Jewish community (the author specifically intends it to be non-specific, because as she says, "all are guilty") and witnesses the sexual abuse of her best friend by a family member. For the sake of both families' reputations (critical to making a good marriage) she is told that nothing happened and she should be silent. Then her best friend, Devory, kills herself.
As she matures, Gittel struggles with the consequences of silence, both her own and the communal silence, where
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By: Melissa Walker,
on 9/11/2010
Blog: readergirlz (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: life after, sarah darer littman, rgz salon, lyn miller-lachmann, Add a tag
Rgz SALON member Lyn Miller-Lachmann has been the Editor-in-Chief of MultiCultural Review; the author of the award-winning multicultural bibliography Our Family, Our Friends, Our World; the editor of Once Upon a Cuento, a collection of short stories by Latino authors; and most recently, the author of Gringolandia, a young adult novel about a refugee family living with the aftermath of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. The book is now in it's second print run and available for order (if you have trouble finding it, don't worry--the second run is on its way)! And don't forget to read the fascinating Cover Story for Gringolandia.
We're honored to have Lyn here as part of the rgz SALON, a feature where four of the top kidlit experts clue us in to the best YA novels they've read recently. Today, she reviews Life, After by Sarah Darer Littman (Scholastic, 2010). Incidentally, Life, After also has a great Cover Story.
"When I went to Ground Zero several weeks after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and saw the tributes sent to New York City from all over the world, I thought of how this terrible event brought the United States into a global community that had suffered similar devastation. Here in our large, prosperous country, set apart from much of the world by two oceans, we are accustomed to feeling safe, above the turmoil that is a fact of life for most of the world’s populations, past and present. We never experienced in our homeland the devastation of two world wars, the dropping of the atomic bomb on a civilian population, the state terror visited upon the people of Chile following the 'other September 11' of 1973, and the regular terrorist bombings of buses, fast food restaurants, theaters, and nightclubs in places as disparate as Israel, India, Russia, and the Philippines."Through complex, realistic characters, Sarah Darer Littman makes that global connection in Life, After. Sixteen-year-old Daniela (Dani) Bensimon and her family have endured much in their native Argentina. When Dani was seven, her pregnant Aunt Sara di Add a Comment
By: Sarah Darer Littman,
on 8/22/2010
Blog: It's My Life and I'll Blog if I Want To! (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: storycorps, life after, the contemps, Add a tag
*dusts off blog*
It's been a while. It's been a crazy summer, and alas, this poor blog has been terribly neglected. But I hope to post more regularly, even if the posts are short and sweet.
Just wanted to let you know about a few exciting things going on. First of all, a bunch of us who write contemporary realistic YA have banded together to form THE CONTEMPS.
Here's our press release:
AUTHORS TEAM UP TO SPOTLIGHT CONTEMPORARY REALISTIC FICTION FOR TEENS
“The Contemps” are Keeping it Real with Outreach, Resources and New Releases
Twenty-one authors have banded together to put real life in the spotlight and to keep readers up-to-date on the latest in contemporary young adult fiction.
“There are so many wonderful authors writing contemporary realistic fiction,” said Contemps co-founder Lisa Schroeder. “As much as we love other genres, the marketplace can feel dominated by paranormal, fantasy and dystopian novels. We want to celebrate the unique way that contemporary stories help teens feel they’re not alone in this real world.”
“The Contemps” officially launched on August 17 with a mission to help teens, booksellers, librarians and publishers connect with books that feature real-life settings, characters and situations. Group members range from debuts to veterans with several titles on the shelves, and all have new releases coming out between September 2010 and August 2011. They hope to not just build buzz for members’ books, but to create excitement and appreciation for the contemporary realistic genre in general.
In an August 6, 2010 article in The NY Times about the rise of Young Adult fiction, historian Amanda Foreman said, "Good Y.A. is like good television. There's a freshness there; it's engaging." The Contemps write about real teen issues in real-life situations with the energy and grittiness and passion of that age.
That means that The Contemps' corner of the web (www.thecontemps.com) will be a little more self-disclosey than others. A number of activities are planned, including sharing from the authors' own teenage years, giveaways, spotlighting other contemporary realistic authors, and multi-author events. You might find a few naughty words thrown in (right next to the shiny clean ones). There may be stories about hanging out, making out, parents, best friends, sexuality, homework, high school bloopers, teachers, bullies, racism, parties, and pop culture. Look for some odd and lively mash-ups!
“We’re reaching out to a variety of audiences,” said co-founder Lindsey Leavitt. “We want readers, teachers and librarians to know about the wealth of awesome books out there. And we want the industry to know about the authors who create these books. There’s a strong market for contemporary realistic fiction, and we plan to demonstrate that.”
The members are: Brent Crawford, Hannah Harrington, April Henry, Kirsten Hubbard, Denise Jaden, Kody Keplinger, Jo Knowles, Lindsey Leavitt, Sarah Darer Littman, Michael Northrop, Sarah Ockler, Micol Ostow, Lisa Schroeder, Elizabeth Scott, Mindi Scott, Emily Wing Smith, Courtney Summers, Kristen Tracy, Melissa Walker, Sara Bennett Wealer, and Daisy Whitney.
I hope you'll head over to join in the conversation. We've also got a Facebook group and you can follow us on Twitter.
The animation of my son's StoryCorps interview of me, Q & A, is going to be on TV! Check out the listings of your local PBS station for this coming Tuesday. It will be shown at the beginning of the program POV. If you haven't seen the newest animation by Rauch Brothers Animation and StoryCorps, Danny and Annie, than you are about to see one of t Add a Comment
By: Melissa Walker,
on 7/17/2010
Blog: readergirlz (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: cover stories, life after, sarah darer littman, Add a tag
Sarah Darer Littman's latest novel, Life, After, came out this month. I've been looking at this gorgeous cover for six months, and I can finally share the story behind it. Here's Sarah:
By: Sarah Darer Littman,
on 7/6/2010
Blog: It's My Life and I'll Blog if I Want To! (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: teen author reading night, life after, Add a tag
Calling all New York area peeps! Come join an All-Star line up (and me) for Teen Author Reading Night tomorrow at the scenic Jefferson Market Branch of the NYPL 425 6th Ave, at 10th St
The fun starts at 6pm and goes on till 7:30 and as well as moi you can hear:
Jen Calonita, Reality Check
Sarah Darer Littman, Life, After
Kieran Scott, She’s So Dead to Us
Alyssa Sheinmel, The Beautiful Between
Jennifer Sturman, And Then I Found Out the Truth
Maryrose Wood, The Poison Diaries
Please come!! Even if it's supposed to be, like a zillion degrees.
By: Sarah Darer Littman,
on 7/5/2010
Blog: It's My Life and I'll Blog if I Want To! (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: life after, contest, Add a tag
(Drum Roll please)
Actually, I'm not going to tell you yet.
It was a tough call. There some great entries. I was tempted by @Cialina's
"#LifeAfter watching Rafael Nadal in Shakira's Gypsy video: watching tennis can never be the same."
Just in case you've missed this video (as I had, until Cialina alerted me to it's Rafa-y deliciousness) here it is:
Seriously Twihards - you don't KNOW the meaning of hot until you've seen Rafa in this video. Taylor, Schmalor.
But since I'd delegated my BF, the Webmeister, the duty of being Ultimate Arbiter, and what with him being a GUY and all, somehow Rafa's deliciousness didn't have quite the same...er...influence on him.
I was also a fan of @vleemahoney's entry "Hey, @mitaliperkin's BAMBOO PEOPLE & @sarahdarerlitt's LIFE, AFTER are birthday twins! #LIFEAFTER reading these will make you THINK and DO."
I just finished reading Bamboo People, and peeps, I think it's a Newbery contender. Mark my words.
But The Webmeister being a guy, he went for the GORE. Apologies to the #RebelsagainstMikesEmpire, but THE WINNER IS:
MIKE "No longer anyone's Cabana Boy but an AGENTED WRITER" JUNG with:
"There are bits of brain & skull everywhere, & that body over there smells like crap. #LifeAfter the zombie apocalypse sucks."
Your signed copy of LIFE AFTER will be on its way shortly!
Thanks to everyone who entered :-)
By: Sarah Darer Littman,
on 7/1/2010
Blog: It's My Life and I'll Blog if I Want To! (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: contests, trailer, life after, Add a tag
Alas my poor blog has suffered from the time demands of WTGP revisions, middle school graduations,new book proposals, my part-time job at wonderful children's bookstore, The Voracious Reader in Larchmont, NY and well, trying to keep food in the refrigerator and the house from looking like a complete bomb site. But today is a special day. Not just because it is my nephew, Big D's birthday. That in itself makes it extra special. But because today is the publication date for LIFE, AFTER, a novel I sat in my basement drafting two summers ago.
It's changed a great deal since that initial draft, thanks to the input of my wonderful editors, Jen Rees and David Levithan. But I'm very excited that today it'll finally be making its way onto the shelves, and hopefully into people's hearts.
Here's my directorial debut at trailer making. Need to work on the music fade :-):
To celebrate pub day, it's contestpalooza. Okay, there are two contests. Not sure if that exactly counts as a "palooza".
Contest #1 :
Head over to The Story Siren where THREE ("Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shalt be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three.") lucky winners will get a signed copy of LIFE, AFTER and (but wait...there's more!) a poster of the gorgeous cover art.
Contest #2:
A signed copy of LIFE, AFTER for the wittiest #LIFEAFTER tweet on Twitter before Midnight July 4th.
Go forth and enter! Tweet and Retweet! And good luck :-)
By: Sarah Darer Littman,
on 11/16/2009
Blog: It's My Life and I'll Blog if I Want To! (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: ergonomics, life after, want to go private?, Add a tag
My visits to the physio therapist continue, and my collection of torture devices wrist and elbow braces seems to be growing by the week. The latest?
This saucy little number. (Note my lovely "Plugged in Plum" nails - I went to a high school reunion on Saturday night so I had my nails done for the first time in like, forever.) What you can't see, is that embedded under my wrist going all the way up to the palm of my hand is a metal bar:
which, as I'm sure you can imagine, makes it an absolute JOY to type! And I have Major Freaking Revisions on WANT TO GO PRIVATE? to do this Month. MaFreReMo. Uh huh.
One thing about an injury affecting your livelihood is that it makes you take it very VERY seriously. I've been doing everything the physio tells me, including researching laptop ergonomics on the web, because after talking to the hand specialist at the physio place, we think perhaps my elbow tendon was weakened by my poor laptop habits on a repetitive basis and then it was all the tennis playing that just was the last straw.
So getting a new chair wasn't enough. On Friday I bit the bullet and went out and bought a wireless keyboard, mouse, and a laptop stand, so now my keyboard can be at the proper height for my wrists, but the screen is at a height were I don't have to bend my neck to look at it. Then I went and bought a proper foot rest, so that my arms and legs are now at 90 degree angles when I work.
Here's what it looks like:
The keyboard tray is still kind of messy because I was using it as a drawer before and I haven't figured out where to put all the stuff yet.
But take it from this injured Word Warrior. We writers spend a LOT of time on our butts in front of a computer screen, making the same repetitive motions. Take a good look at your writing situation and make sure that it's safe.
Because trying to do Major Freaking Revisions with a big piece of metal sticking in the palm of your hand is NO FUN AT ALL!
On a more fun note: I'm trying to think of a good competition to give away a LIFE, AFTER arc. Any ideas?
By: Sarah Darer Littman,
on 8/23/2009
Blog: It's My Life and I'll Blog if I Want To! (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: writing process, books read, life after, Add a tag
I've been very remiss on my blogging lately, but that's because I've been wrestling with the "sh*tty first draft* of a new book. After writing 11,000 words in third person past, I had this sudden insight that actually it needed to be in first person present, but with alternating points of view, in order to create more suspense, because then the reader will only know what the MC knows. It's also the first time I've ever written a suspense novel, so I leaped on the offer from an avid suspense book reader middle school friend that I reconnected with on Facebook whose kindly said he would read early drafts and help me with pacing. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
aprilhenry also sent me some useful tips, which I'm going to pin above my workspace.
So now I'm rewriting what I've done so far in first person, and it's amazing how the manuscript has suddenly come to life. It's like I've slipped into a pair of comfortable slippers after dancing all night in stilettos. I hate to think that it's because first person is what I'm used to, and that I'm just a one trick pony who will never have the ability to write effectively in third person. But I genuinely feel for this novel, it's what works - at least until my editors tell me otherwise!
Research for this book has been fascinating. I had to write to FBI Headquarters in DC for permission and send them all my questions in advance, but after months of waiting, I finally got the go ahead to meet with the supervisory special agent of my local FBI office in New Haven, CT. He was incredibly helpful, and gave me a lot of good ideas for the book, some of which required reworking what I'd done so far anyway and changing certain plot points.
Now I just need more time. Time without kids interrupting me to tell me that they're bored or need to be driven somewhere. As much as I love the lazy routines of summer, I'm getting ready for school to start so I have hours of lovely uninterrupted writing time to try to crank this thing out so I can then get to the part I like best, revising. Hands up if you would rather revise than write. (*ME! ME!*)
Meanwhile, LIFE, AFTER (July 2010) is moving ahead - my avatar is the cover, which I love, and I've just added a new page to my website about it. More to come in the near future.
I've read two wonderful books by LJ friends in the last two weeks: SAY THE WORD by onegrapeshy aka Jeannine Garsee and JUMPING OFF SWINGS by joknowles Both are highly recommended. Daughter has already read and loved Jumping off Swings (and apparently been book talking it to my neighbor) and is about to start Say the Word.
I also highly recommend the film JULIE AND JULIA. Daughter and I went to see it and we both loved it. Meryl Streep is amazing. She should get an Oscar for her portrayal of Julia Child. She made me want to come home and start sauteing everything I possibly could in mounds and mounds of gorgeous butter. I mean, I'm on Lipitor, so it's okay, right?
Fear not, dear readers, I am restraining my butter urges, although I did sneak a tiny but into the pan with the PAM when I was sauteing mushrooms and garlic, just for flavor the other morning. It made the omelette taste sooo much better.
By: Sarah Darer Littman,
on 5/22/2009
Blog: It's My Life and I'll Blog if I Want To! (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: life after, argentina, Add a tag
I've been living every day with my head in Buenos Aires, a city I've never visited, as I'm deep in revisions for my novel LIFE, AFTER. Part of my research has been watching news footage on YouTube of the bombing of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (A.M.I.A) building on July 18th, 1994, as it figures heavily into the background of my story.
So it was really eeiry and horrifying to read about the attempted bomb plots against two Riverdale synagogues. Fortunately, good intelligence and police work (note: not water boarding, but good intelligence and police work) foiled the plot and saved innocent lives.
At the same time, I read recently of a violent attack in Buenos Aires against Jews celebrating the 61st Anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel, plus bomb threats against synagogues in the Belgrano neighborhood.
Unfortunately, some things, like violence and anti-Semitism, refuse to remain in the history books.