Okay, so what a great chat on Wednesday, right? And you’ve been into the forum to participate in our Critique Partner Match-up event, haven’t you? Well, you should definitely do that. Like Maggie, Brenna, and Tessa said, there’s nothing like having the right critique partner for your work.
Anyway, now onto the winners! Without further adieu…
Signed copy of BLOOD MAGIC by Tessa Gratton: Joey!
Signed ARC of THE SPACE BETWEEN by Brenna Yovanoff: Jennifer Fischetto!
Signed copy of LINGER by Maggie Stiefvater: Tiffany Neal!
Please email us at writeoncon(at)gmail(dot)com, with your mailing address and we’ll pass it along to the Merry Sisters of Fate. Congrats!
And a big thank you to everyone who came and made the event such a success!
http://soundcloud.com/inkless-music/tippy-toes (Copy link into browser to hear a rough version)
Walking on Tippy toes
Watering the flowers
Hoping that your garden grows
Walking on tippy toes
Walking on tippy toes
Making up a song
This is how the song goes
Walking on tippy toes
Walking on tippy toes
Boppin' down the street
Peeking in the windows
Walking on tippy toes
Walking on tippy toes
Like a circus acrobat
Playing tightrope on the garden hose
Walking on tippy toes
Tippy, tippy, tippy, tippy, toes
Tippy, tippy, tippy, toes
Tippy, tippy try not to trippy
When you're on your tippy, toes
Walking on Tippy toes
Makes you feel taller
You can cheep and flap your elbows
Walking on Tippy toes
Walking on Tippy toes
Spinning in a circle
Close your eyes and try to touch your nose
Walking on Tippy toes
Walking on Tippy toes
Watering the flowers
Hoping that your garden grows
Walking on tippy toes
Walking on tippy toes
Making up a song
This is how the song goes
Walking on tippy toes
Tippy, tippy, tippy, tippy, toes
Tippy, tippy, tippy, toes
Tippy, tippy try not to trippy
When you're walking on your tippy, toes
When you're on your tippy, toes
When you're on your tippy, toes
Down in Mississippi
Ice cream's getting drippy
With a cup called sippy
With a little dog name yippy
It's getting kind of nippy
I wish my name were zippy
This song is pretty flippy
Hi. I suppose you were all expecting C.K. Volnek to be here today, but she was busy writing on her next book, so she asked me to step in and introduce myself. Said the readers might like to get to know the characters from her book a little better.
As she posted in the headline for me, my name is Jack Dahlgren. Jack, not Jackie, like my dad calls me. Geesh, I’m almost 13 and he still treats me like a baby. I’m the main character from C.K.’s ghost story for tweens, GHOST DOG OF ROANOKE ISLAND.
Dad moved us to this beach house on Roanoke Island about two months ago. I wasn’t too happy about it. I’d rather be in Ohio. That's home. Had lived there my whole life. But after Dad got laid off last year, things got pretty bad. I heard Mom and Dad whispering about the bank and someone taking the house. Then we got news my Great-grandma Ellis left us this house on Roanoke Island. I didn’t know Great-grandma very well. She’d had Alzheimer’s for as long as I could remember. She didn’t even recognize my mom the last time we'd visited her at the old folks home. Funny thing though, my mom didn’t know about the house on Roanoke Island. Guess Great-grandma had kept it a secret.
Anyway, Dad went to scope the beach house out. He found a job in nearby Manteo and that was all she wrote. He up and moved us, not even asking if it was okay by me.
Dad made stupid comments about how cool it would be to live on an island off the coast of North Carolina, like he thought he would change my mind about Ohio. Won’t happen. It’s not like Ohio at all. I don’t have any friends or anything. None of the kids at school want to have much to do with me. They’re always teasing me about our creepy house, saying it’s haunted. The beach house is pretty run down and Dad is either at work or repairing the house. Never has any time for me. He won’t even let me go exploring the woods or the bluff...especially since Kimmy’s accident.
(Sigh) Kimmy’s my little sister. She’s six. She fell off the bluff next to our house three weeks ago and is in the hospital. The bluff's not that high but she hit her head on a rock and has been unconscious ever since. Dad blames me for her fall. But I didn’t know she’d followed me up there! I’d do anything to take it back. Guess he’s got a right to blame me. I wasn’t supposed to be up there either.
Mom’s been with Kimmy at the hospital since she fell. I wish she’d come home. Seems like I’m always in trouble with Dad. He’s so mad at me. He promised I could get a dog when we moved to the island. Except now he won’t talk about…not since the accident. But I’ve got to find a way to make him let me keep that big Mastiff I found on the bluff. He’s a cool dog! And he must need a good home. He’s a great dog to have around. Already saved me from whatever that thing was I came across in the cave.
Dad would kill me if he found out…but I went back up the bluff. See, the hurricane was coming and I thought I’d heard Dad calling. But it wasn’t
You might say that Janet Taylor Lisle has writing in her blood: her father wrote stories as a young man, she has been a writer since childhood, and her daughter writes. Ms Lisle has built upon this seemingly natural inclination to write, and has worked hard to become the writer she is today.Ms Lisle's writing career began with a degree in English Literature from Smith College in 1969. She spent the next two years in Atlanta, Georgia, working for VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America). Her time with VISTA inspired her try her hand at journalism, so she enrolled in the appropriate coursework at Georgia State University. She then worked as a journalist for the next 10 years, before moving to New Jersey in 1981 with her husband and young daughter.Her foray into writing for children was sparked during a writing workshop she took after that move, where she was introduced to children's book editor Richard Jackson. Jackson accepted her first book, The Dancing Cats of Applesap, in 1983. It was published in 1984, and Jackson has worked with her ever since. Says Jackson: "Janet Taylor Lisle is drawn to the mystery of things, to the ambiguity of life that books for children often gloss over...her interest is in what's hidden. As well as why."
Janet Taylor Lisle was born in Englewood, New Jersey, on February 13, 1947. The oldest - and only girl - of five kids, she grew up in rural Rhode Island and in Connecticut, and spent her summers in Rhode Island. She now lives on the seacoast of Rhode Island with her two cats, Kayla and Roosevelt, and her husband, Richard.Sources:Birthday Bios: Janet Taylor Lisle (Children's Literature Network)Janet Taylor Lisle (Biography.jrank.org)Janet Taylor Lisle (Penguin.com)Janet Taylor Lisle (New England Independent Booksellers Association)Janet Taylor Lisle - Author Page (official site)An Interview With Janet Taylor Lisle - With Booksellers Baker and Taylor (via official site)The truth is never easy to define in this novelist's provocative and surprising stories - Riverbank Review Author Profile 2002 (via official site)
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By: Brianna Caplan Sayres,
on 7/8/2011
Blog:
The Paper Wait
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Recently, I began reading a mystery by one of my favorite "grown-up" mystery writers. The opening pages began with a chase scene.
I do not like chase scenes. I especially do not like them at the start of a book when I don't know the characters or their situation. Usually, these types of scenes at the beginning of a novel make me put a book down.
But this time I did not put my book down. I paid careful attention and waited for the story to make sense. Soon it did. Within a few pages it took off and it was quickly up to my favorite author's usual high standards.
This whole experience made me think about how much of writing is about trust.
Every time we write a book or a story, we must gain the trust of our readers. If an author has written many successful books, readers may give that author a bit more of a chance. Trust has already been established, just by the author's name. But, for the rest of us, every chapter, every scene, every word we write is critical to establishing that trust.
This made me think about First Page sessions and why that first page is so very, very critical How can I gain the trust of a reader with my very first words so that reader totally and completely enters the world I am trying to create?
Yes. It's all a matter of trust. Hopefully my stories are up to the challenge!
Back before he was a famous writer (check out the Travis McGee series), the late John D. MacDonald, like all of us, got tons of rejections letters.
Later, when he was famous, magazines started soliciting him for stories.
And I guess in a little bit of tit for tat, he sent this sarcastic rejection letter.
Which kind of reminds me of this letter to Knopf from Norman Maclean, which includes the memorable sentence: "If the situation ever arose when Alfred A. Knopf was the only publishing house remaining in the world and I was the sole remaining author, that would mark the end of the world of books."
 |
Elizabethan clothing
(or what gave bodies shape in those times) |
Last week, I attended
No Kidding Shakespeare Camp for the second year in a row. (
You can read about last year's rowdy adventures here.) This year was less rambunctious, perhaps due to the overarching theme (structure), but absolutely satisfying all the same. We heard from the architect who designed the lovely
Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton, talked trapdoors and lighting and costuming and rhetoric in the early modern theater, and saw a rehearsal of Hamlet and two plays---Shakespeare's
The Tempest and Oscar Wilde's
The Importance of Being Earnest.
 |
The structure of the ceiling of the Blackfriars Playhouse
in Staunton, VA |
As last year, I was awed by the actors' generosity, both in their performances and in their interactions with guests at the
American Shakespeare Center. Watching the rehearsal of Hamlet was like watching a fabulously scary and wonderful roller coaster assemble itself on stage. In addition to the complex characters being built from Shakespeare's twisty and highly structured language, the cast is also constructing the ride's special effects. The
ASC has no tech crew or elaborate sets; so when the ghost walks, it's the actors who create the supernatural atmosphere, from eery wind noises to the cock crowing to the trumpets that signal the change of scene. It was amusing and impressive to see the director call for someone who could do a cock crow and have the actors sort it out from backstage; ditto for the trumpet volley, which was offered vocally in three different riffs for the director to choose from. All the while, between these bursts of practical machinery adjusting, the actors played on, creating the emotional tracks on which the audience will rise and plunge. I can't wait to go back and
see this Hamlet, which previews July 10.
Actors
Ben Curns and
Allison Glenzer also came to our camp sessions on rhetoric and played out, on the spot, variations to monologues they had so securely in their heads and bodies that no matter what we threw at them, they absorbed it and reflected the change back to u
Posted on 7/8/2011
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Here’s my selection of interesting (and sometimes amusing) posts about writing from the last week:
(Read more ...)
If you’ve studied a market guide lately, you might have come away in total confusion.
These days you’re met with warnings like, “If you don’t like indies, don’t bother querying.” Or a company says it’s a “legacy” publisher.
What’s with all the new terminology?
Olden Days
When I started publishing thirty years ago, it was simple. You either went with a traditional publisher (they paid you, and they did 98% of the marketing) OR you got fooled into signing with a vanity press (you paid them to print your book, plus you had to do 98% of the marketing yourself.)
The choice was an easy one if you wanted to have a career where you made money.
It’s a New Ball Game
Today our choices are basically the same, in my opinion (except you have a few FREE self-publishing choices like Kindle). But the terminology has mushroomed as new companies tried to distinguish themselves with new titles. So you had independent publishers (”indies”) springing up, resentful of the old “vanity press” title. But for the most part, independent publishers require that YOU pay them and YOU do most of the marketing.
Are you confused by the terms e-pub, POD, Kindle, self-pub, Smashwords, and more? If so, Tracy Marchini has done a book called Pub Speak: a Writer’s Dictionary of Publishing Terms to clear up the confusion. While I haven’t read the book personally, I have seen several very good reviews of it. If I were starting out in publishing, I think I’d need a copy.
Pub Speak: A Writer’s Dictionary of Publishing Terms is a dictionary for both new and established authors that contains over 400 definitions, including:
- - contract and royalty terms
- ebooks and audiobooks
- fiction and non-fiction
- publishing terms
- retailers, book clubs, wholesalers and distributors
- social networking and collaborative publishing
- trade associations, events and publications
- writer’s organizations, awards and publications
This book just might bring an end to the confusion…for now, anyway!
"Each in his own way imagines Paradise; since childhood I have envisioned it as a library."
~ Jorge Luis Borges
Huck and Rilla are next to me on the sofa—it’s just past dawn here, and Sesame Street is on—a tangle of limbs and hair. Grabbing each other’s faces and shouting “Eee! Oh!” at each other, for no particular reason. This is one of my favorite sights in the world: small children rolling around like puppies. In my first La Leche League group when Jane was a baby, all the moms would sit in a circle with the babies tumbled on the floor in the middle. They were like lobsters in a tank—an inelegant simile, I know, but that’s what they always made me think of, including the wanting to eat them all up.
Bonus giraffe-in-a-blue-dress photo:
My friend Cheryl Rainfield asked about this comic, so here it is. :-)
This week! The books!
Another relatively quiet week in books this week, so just a few quality links for you. Also, on Monday and Tuesday I shall be away from the blog and will be posting blog posts of yore, which will possibly incorporate my new kick of including art from yore.
First up, the big news in the social media world is that Google launched Google+, its direct challenge to Facebook (disclosure: link is to CNET, I work at CNET). My first impression: Awesome! I'm a big fan, and you can find me on Google+ here. I also participated in CNET's hands-on look at Google+ using Google+. Add me to your Circles!
Though I'm also still kind of trying to figure out how to calibrate my Google+ presence. The people following me thus far are mostly techies, so I will probably be sharing mainly social media and tech-of-book posts until I can better target my posts. But so far I'm extremely impressed with the interface and am enjoying re-building my social network from scratch.
Speaking of social media news, the Wall Street Journal has a great article on the social media prowess of author John Green, whose unpublished novel is already #1 on Amazon & B&N. (via SideKick)
Major congratulations are in order to my former client Natalie Whipple, who just announced her new book deal with HarperCollins for her debut novel TRANSPARENT!! If you've been following Natalie's blog you know that this has been a long time coming, and having worked with Natalie for several years I can tell you the book deal couldn't have happened to a more deserving writer! So excited for her.
In other awesome former client news, Jennifer Hubbard has a really cool look at some first lines from great novels. (Jennifer also has a really cool cover for her forthcoming novel TRY NOT TO BREATHE).
Roger Ebert took to his blog to lambast an "intermediate level" version of THE GREAT GATSBY (via Rick Daley), whereas Jessa Crispin took a more measured approach and noted that comic version of great novels aren't so bad. I don't know, I'm in Camp Ebert. Turning this...
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning----
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
into this...
Everybody has a dream. And, like Gatsby, we must all follow our dream wherever it takes us.
Some unpleasant people became part of Gatsby's dream. But he cannot be blamed for that. Gatsby was a success, in the end, wasn't he?
...is, as Ebert says, an obscenity.
And riffing off my post about why you're getting rejections, agent Rachelle Gardner adds one more reason:
34 Comments on This Week in Books 7/8/11, last added: 7/11/2011
I recently got involved in a pretty sizeable clean-up project in our house, and discovered all kinds of “hidden treasures.” Including a copy of PROM NIGHTS FROM HELL, a paranormal short story collection by five young adult authors, Meg Cabot, Kim Harrison, Michele Jaffe, Stephenie Meyer, and Lauren Myracle. Glancing at the back cover (“Worried that prom is gonna bite?”), I realized despite my good intentions, I had never actually read it.
That error is no more! I spent the past couple days in the fiery pits of prom hell, and enjoyed every moment. In particular, this book gave me a first introduction to the sharp, funny Michele Jaffe, who contributed the short story, “Kiss and Tell.” I loved it and will be definitely be looking for more from her!
So how about you? Is summer a good time for you to catch up on books you’ve been meaning to read, too?
Tina
Tina Ferraro
Top Ten Uses for an Unworn Prom Dress
How to Hook a Hottie
The ABC’s of Kissing Boys
www.tinaferraro.com
a busy lady sometimes needs to keep her pets at home. shoe shopping, high teas, maybe a trip to the salon for an uplift. "-)a lil quickie but it's new! hooray! happy friday! "-)
Giveaway: First Day on Earth by Cecil Castellucci (Scholastic Canada, November 2011) from Steven R. McEvoy from Book Reviews and More. Deadline: Aug. 1. Note: North America/U.K. readers are eligible; see link for more details.
Barbara Lalicki on Breaking Into Children's Books from The Gatekeepers Post. Barbara is a senior vice president and editorial director at HarperCollins Children's Books.
Finding Your Wild and Precious Voice by R.L. LaFevers from Shrinking Violet Promotions. Peek: "...some writers do need to go in search of their true voice; others may only need to excavate or re-discover theirs. I suspect this may be especially true when writing stories for kids—we have to be able to reconnect with our child’s voice."
Roundup of Children's Literacy and Reading News by Carol H. Rasco from Rasco from RIF. Includes reading-related events, research, early childhood education and suggestions for growing book worms.
Writing Craft: Tension on the Page or Mico-Tension by Sarah Blake Johnson from Through the Tollbooth. Six techniques to keep readers turning pages.
Interview with Agent Barry Goldblatt from Alice Pope's SCBWI Children's Market Blog. Peek: "...children's publishing over the last ten years has gotten bigger and for the most part better, and it's meant there are more terrific writers to discover, and more great books to sell and champion!"
What's in a Name? (When Should You Use a Pseudonym?) by literary agent Miriam Kriss from Chuck Sambuchino from Guide to Literary Agents. Peek: "...what aspiring authors don’t tend to give a lot of thought to is whether they want it to be their real name on that cover and if not who it should be instead."
Thoughts on Post-Apocalyptic World Building from Stacy Whitman's Grimoire. Peek: "If you include newspaper clippings/stories as metatext to support the main narrative, make sure that it actually sounds like a news clipping."
The Deadly Fae
Ebook By
Terry Spear Published: July 07, 2011
Category:
Fiction » Young adult or teen » Romance Category:
Fiction » Young adult or teen » Fantasy Words: 51981
Lady Sessily is a dark fae, an assassin, and she intends to retire and take up some other occupation so she can have a normal life. Get a boyfriend. Visit the human world to hassle humans like many of her kind do. Attend fae kingdom parties, not as the mystery woman who is scoping out her next intended victim, but just to have fun. Until tall, dark, handsome, and deadly interrupts her plans.
Lady Sessily is on a mission to assassinate a fae lord who is the most evil kind of fae. But when she is thwarted, not once, but twice by another fae lord, she is ready to strangle him. And she'll do it for free.
Tall, dark, handsome and deadly Lord Fairhaven insists she do a job for him. Which she refuses. But the lord is not one to take no for an answer.
The crown prince of the cobra fae doesn't know what to think when he hires a master assassin who turns out to be a woman--not her father like he'd been led to believe. But can she eliminate one of the most powerful queens of any of the fae kingdoms without getting herself killed?
He soon rethinks his plan as he gets to know the woman he begins to think of as his angel assassin.
B&NComing to Amazon soon!
Terry Spear
www.terryspear.com
Bestest. Ramadan. Ever. by Medeia Sharif (Flux, 2011)
No pizza. No boyfriend. (No life.)
Okay, so during Ramadan, we're not allowed to eat from sunrise to sunset. For one whole month. My family does this every year, even though I've been to a mosque exactly twice in my life. And it's true, I could stand to lose a few pounds. (Sadly, my mom's hotness skipped a generation.) But is starvation really an acceptable method? I think not.
Even worse, my oppressive parents forbid me to date. This is just cruel and wrong. Especially since Peter, a cute and crushable artist, might be my soul mate. Figures my bestest friend Lisa likes him, too. To top it off, there's a new Muslim girl in school who struts around in super-short skirts, commanding every boy's attention-including Peter's. How can I get him to notice me? And will I ever figure out how to be Muslim AND American?
I noticed that Flux books are available in the Philippines, so I can't wait to buy this! :o)
Bonny Becker has a series of the popular bear books — A BIRTHDAY FOR BEAR, A VISITOR FOR BEAR, THE SNIFFLES FOR BEAR — and her latest, A BEDTIME FOR BEAR, which won the SCBWI Crystal Kite Award for Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota. Congratulations, Bonny! Here’s a little more info about Bonny. Guess where she wants to visit? I don’t think anyone I know has picked it.
Tea or coffee? Flavor? Milk or sugar?
Bonny: Definitely coffee. Double-shot latte with sugar. Many times.
Deciduous or evergreen?
Bonny: Even though I live in the Evergreen State, I gotta go with deciduous. They are just so graceful and complex.
What’s always in your fridge?
Bonny: Half-and-half. For aforementioned, latte.
Cat or dog?
Bonny: Woof! Woof!
Jeans or fancier?
Bonny: At home, my string tie pants. Out and about, usually a step up from jeans.
Short hair or long?
Bonny: Once upon a time, down my back. Then the uninspired but short and utilitarian “Mom” cut. Now chin or shoulder length.
Ideal vacation?
Bonny: The one I just took—a villa in Tuscany in easy reach of Florence (art, beauty, history) and a swimming pool (lazing around, reading, staring at a leaf.)
Favorite sport or form of exercise?
Bonny: Snow skiing.
Country you’d most like to visit?
Bonny: Antarctica.
Skill you’d most like to acquire?
Bonny: Can I have three? Fluency in French. Ability to memorize easily. Playing the guitar.
You can learn more about Bonny and her books at her website. Enjoy!
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Great post, Brianna. Those first pages are so important. You need the hook -- but you also must establish trust that the hours spent reading our words are hours well spent. Every word has to make the reader believe when they get to "the end" they will be satisfied, emotionally and logically.
I third the importance of the first page. If I think I'm in good hands, I'll read on.