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Review of Adam Schuitema's Freshwater Boys (Delphinium, HarperCollins dist. ) by Caitlin Horrocks

    This past semester, an independent study I was teaching on writing about place—the student’s place, my place, the city of Grand Rapids— sent me looking for fiction set in or around this part of West Michigan. As it turned out, Grand Rapids has produced poets, artists, nonfiction writers, and a lot of office furniture, but relatively little fiction. A “Reading Grand Rapids” wiki on our public library’s website lists two entries under adult fiction: Murder on Sacred Ground, and Death Goes Dutch. There are a lot of Dutch people here. There are fewer short stories.
       So I was especially excited to read Adam Schuitema’s debut collection, Freshwater Boys (Delphinium, HarperCollins dist.), not just because the book depicts places I know, but because Schuitema writes very good stories. He pairs graceful, precise, often beautiful prose with a devotion not only to landscape but to the realistic ambiguities of his characters’ lives. The eleven stories in the book, all about men and boys navigating through and between different stages of life—boyhood, manhood, parenthood, aging—also rove throughout the untamed, semi-tamed, sometimes overly-tamed landscapes of west Michigan, from urban Grand Rapids to an isolated island in Lake Michigan, where the protagonist tries, and fails, to escape mainland life. 
       That character’s battle with the state police is characteristic of the book: no one here has the luxury, or just the simplicity, of relating to their surroundings as pure wilderness. These places have to be lived in, negotiated with. Danger comes to Schuitema’s characters from sources as implacable as a winter storm (“The Lake Effect”) or as suburban as a speeding teenager’s truck (“Curbside”). Sometimes, pleasure and danger come from the same source, as in the title story, where a grieving father seeks healing in the same waters that killed his son, a “swimmer from birth.”
       In the story “Deer Run,” an architect on his lunch break cheers for a group of deer running suicidally through traffic, trying to break through the city that surrounds them: “And she’s probably still heading north, to live where I once saw myself living. I try not to think about what will happen when she comes to the Straits of Mackinac and can’t cross. Maybe she’ll wait for the winter freeze, running in place or in small, tight circles at the tip of the Lower Peninsula, waiting for the ice to become firm enough for her to race across the water, and then making the final leg into the deep woods, where all the trails are invisible, even to people like me who are looking for them.”
       Schuitema has his eyes open for the trails his characters stumble down, passing from childhood to adulthood and towards a more complicated understanding of the places they inhabit. Schuitema guides the reader, too, towards this nuanced understanding; Freshwater Boys is a moving collection of places and people that I recogniz

During Short Story Month 2010 we'll be taking some guest posts - it's not something that is frequent here at the EWN, at least not when it comes to book reviews, but I like seeing others discuss great short story writers, great stories, or great collections.

Review of Lori Ostlund's The Bigness of the World (University of Georgia Press) by Nicola Dixon

Lori Ostlund’s The Bigness of the World is the 2009 winner of the prestigious Flannery O’ Connor Award for Short Fiction; a remarkable collection equally distinctive in content as it is in construction. Ostlund’s bespoke approach to a theme one might idly file under “you can’t go home again,” raises the bar instantly (and frequently) throughout each piece. Masterfully fabricating a sense of diaspora without “fish-out-of-water” shortcuts, Ostlund is an artful “writer’s writer” who resists easy complicity as a means to author/reader intimacy in favor of a more commanding narrative. This extraordinary collection succinctly illustrates Ostlund’s intellectual and emotional reach; and serves to showcase her undeniable virtuosity. A most disciplined informant, Ostlund’s voice is just as evocative in a concrete classroom as it is in bed. Luckily, she takes us to both.

In “Bed Death,” we visit Malaysia, (an environment Ostlund is obviously familiar with - the piece drips with indigenous imagery) where a relationship erodes abroad as opposed to gasping its last breath Stateside, but dies just as provincially in the colorful albeit fetid streets of Malacca as it would at home. As bleak as the set-up sounds, this is one of Ostlund’s most humorous pieces. I laughed out loud three times while reading this story on the subway – a notable achievement considering the level of absorption such uninhibited outbursts require. American propriety being a fruitful theme here, Ostlund’s speculative moments sidestep postmodern observational snarkiness, and instead possess a wry but benevolent voice. She is an especially forgiving storyteller, perhaps because her characters hold such a sincere grip on their own personal sense of decorum. Her measured clemency is tastefully apparent in each piece, but especially so in “Bed Death,” where the intimacy of companionship stifles two lovers who become terminally immune to each other in such a singular way that to categorize them as simply “falling out of love” would be entirely amiss. Ostlund captures such moments beautifully:

She boarded the bus with her carefully packed bags, leaving nothing behind – not even a note, which meant that she had left without any sort of goodbye, and that she had considered the silence that reigned between us those last few weeks a sufficient coda. I sat on the bed and tried to determine the exact moment her deci

A guest essay this morning from Steve Gillis, co-founder and publisher at Dzanc Books, and author of a trio of novels and a short story collection, with another collection due out in 2010. 

Many of you by now have probably heard that Chris Anderson, Editor at WIRED, admitted to plagiarizing - a fancy word for stealing - vast amounts of text from Wikipedia - no less - which was then inserted as text into his book:  Free: The Future of a Radical Price.  My response?  ENOUGH!!  This sort of fraud has happened one too many times.  How can a writer do this?  How can someone simply lift another source of material and claim it as their own work product?  What sort of man does these things?  Anderson's excuses are not worth the time to repeat here.  They are at best weak and at worst psychotic.  http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/chris-anderson-apologizes-for-plagiarizing-wikipedia/?scp=1&sq=chris%20anderson&st=cse  Are we not as artists, educators, parents and writers, editors and readers, better than this?  Are we supposed to simply turn a blind eye - again - and ignore this as yet another example of the way of the world today?  Have we fallen so low and lazy as to treat this incident as nothing but entertainment to talk about and then forget?
    If Anderson is not fired, if we as a united group of writers and readers are not outraged enough to stand up and demand Anderson be held accountable for his actions which insult the very fabric of our industry then shame on us for allowing this latest incident to pass as simply something to be chatted about for a day. The problem is bigger than Anderson. This is not the first time such a crime – yes crime – and fraud has happened, and if we are apathetic and complacent, it will not be the last. Anderson quite simply must go. If he is not held accountable, we are all lost.

Steve Gillis

Some other places online to read about this:

http://www.edrants.com/chris-anderson-plagiarist/
http://www.vqronline.org/blog/2009/06/23/chris-anderson-free/

Have you been reading the fantastic commentary that Blake Butler has been providing as he goes story by story through  Brian Evenson's Fugue State (Coffee House Press, July 2009)?  You should be.  First off, he's talking about Brian Evenson's work and second, he's digging deep into each story, how it fits into the collection, how it fits into Evenson's entire shelf full of titles.  More later on where to find other posts.  We're just excited that he considered the EWN for one of them!

Story by Story: Brian Evenson’s Fugue State (8) 'Wander" By Blake Butler

Eighth in the order of stories in Brian Evenson’s Fugue State (forthcoming July 1 from Coffee House Press) is ‘Wander,’ which originally appeared in American Letters & Commentary.

Coming out of the collection’s previous story ‘Girls in Tents,’ thus far been the spare calm, more hopeful moment among the exquisite terror that is the book, comes ‘Wander,’ a story so black in its becoming that it can hardly even stand to contain itself.

The text begins with the words “And after many days of wandering…,” picking up midstride with an already forward moving evil, as if the light before now had been but a pause in the tape. We find here a group of men rummaging among a destroyed terrain populated with houses of the dead, a setting similar to the worlds of Evenson’s earlier books’ globes, as in Dark Property and Altmann’s Tongue, but the first iteration of such in this new collection.

Indeed, it seems, the safe haven of those lighter shores are already, so quickly, mercilessly, again gone--and perhaps even more gruesome than we’ve yet to touch, another testament to the masterful attention spent on the ordering of the stories here, creating not an assemblage, but a flesh.

Though clearly there are the softer, heartheld bones in Evenson’s body, they are only momentary, mirages maybe even. No punches will be pulled. The meat is black.

Again the men in this story are looking for something, anything, and finding only holes--here literally a hole, held in a house for some time to them thought to be safe,  only to find, among arcane symbols and the image of an eye, that things are likely even worse than before.

And yet the men are drawn to this. Again, like each of those in the stories before now, they circle the pit, unable to fully draw from it, even knowing it will undo them. Here is a circling set deep down in the spiral, and yet still mannered with the same behavioral wedge. The center is the destroyer. Evenson’s bodies are obsessed, inexplicably drawn to their own holes.

What is wonderful here, as in many of Evenson’s texts is the cold will of the narration--the acknowledgement of interior logic mashed with the human want to propel in one’s own line. It is by removing the narration of what others would want to call a heart, a center, a human tone, that the truly human voice, what is there under the folds of layers that others use to excuse themselves from darkness, the sacrosanct, is made.

Whereas some might criticize the heavy, seemingly unwavering want for destruction and apparent lack of empathy as these characters move among the dead and see their own destroyed, etc., what emerges seems to me more human than any wrapped tale laden with explanation, empathy, or other wreaths of more ‘normative’ texts.

Evenson’s great gift to the reader, it seems, is that he does not tax you with his own authorial masking or methods of trying to overinterpret the unwavering blank. Like Beckett and Bernhard, the text is its own reflection. It is--and there is no mode in the text asking that you would believe something about it that is not there, or is assumed, or is anywhere but set right in the human heart. This, to me, is more forgiving, more hand to hand, than any text labored with judgment or other mediation. The human is the meat.

And in the way the text opens already running, it also ends in the midst. The door is left open. Nothing is solved here, named, coined. The text is the text. It holds what it holds. In that, it becomes a node, rather than a fixed point, and by that way seems to possess, outside the trappings of the defined, an infinite position, a vessel wielding black light so heavy it can only act as sieve.

That the book contains this container in its enfolding, and all that terror, god. God damn.

To read his other reviews of each story in Fugue State, visit his blog: http://www.gillesdeleuzecommittedsuicideandsowilldrphil.com/search/label/fugue%20state)

Throughout the month, we hope to have many guest posts as writers and editors explain what short stories, or short story collections, they love, or photocopy and hand out, or buy as gifts for everybody they know, etc.

One piece that made an impression on me the past few weeks was a
short-short entitled "Moon Story" by Francine Witte in the latest issue of
Passages North. It was only about 300-400 words, but had everything I like
to see in a story: the extended metaphor, beautiful, isolated phrases, an
underlying plot that didn't beat you over the head heavily.

I used it as an example of fine writing in a class I teach. Next thing I know, the writer emails me and says thank you for using my story in your class; one of your students fondly emailed me. The writer sent me a chapbook she had published, and I consequently sent her a complimentary
copy of my magazine.

It's a pleasure when good little things happen such as this.

Joseph Levens
The Summerset Review

It's not often around here that the keys are tossed into somebody else's hands, but Joshua Henkin, whose excellent Matrimony has just come out in paperback release, has offered to do a signed giveaway next Monday here at the EWN, and will have a thing or two to say about the book and/or writing in general that day as well!

To get a taste of what to expect, wander on over to The Elegant Variation, where Joshua guest blogged yesterday and posted 24 times (which is approximately 3 weeks worth of EWN posts).

As classes have begun this fall, and at least a couple of the loyal EWN readers may be in MFA Workshops, I think this essay from Erika Dreifus about the ten things that really tick her off about others in workshops might be useful reading.

Hazard or bonus?  Being a person who somehow garners a bit of reputation as one with an opinion on writing.  One who develops friendships, both virtual and in-person, with writers both emerging and beyond.  Knowing that they are writing, and that they are quite possibly, but not necessarily awaiting comment from you on their own work.  Having had numerous conversations with them about the work of others, and for the most part agreeing, does that make it that much more difficult to pick up their work? 

For me, it does.  It probably took me longer to read Steven Gillis' novels than it does for me to read most new authors I think about reading.  That is, it took me longer to actually crack open the copies I had - not the actual reading of the novels, that went by extremely quickly as once I cracked them, relief came as I loved them.  He had already published two novels and many short stories before I met him and I let them sit for quite a long time before picking them up.  And while I think Walter Falls and The Weight of Nothing are both excellent, as is Giraffes, his short story collection, I can't resist once again suggesting everybody that reads this get a copy of Temporary People - a Fable, his latest.  Not a single person that has opened this one up and started it hasn't loved it to the best of my knowledge.

Aaron Burch was another one, though in a different manner.  He was publishing Hobart, and not really writing much when I met him.  Then a couple of years later, he begins publishing flash fiction all over the place, and again, I caught myself hesitating before reading it.  But once I gave in, I found myself loving stories like "Breakfast," and "There, There." 

Most recently, Matt Bell, and his writing, has slipped into this seemingly odd habit of mine.  He's been on a recent publishing streak, seeing excerpts of the novel he's working on published in juked, elimae and Smokelong Quarterly over the course of maybe the last month or so.  For reasons I'm not sure are coming across properly in this post, I avoided reading these pieces until this morning.  I shouldn't have, they are excellent, especially the piece in Smokelong, which is the most recent, and has an excellent interview attached. 

Fortunately it seems I'm still waiting for that day I worry about, the day I pick up a fairly new friend's work and don't love it, or even like it.  That day hasn't come yet, but I'm curious, do others out there handle this situation the same, or do you all just dive right into the work your friend tells you about?

Hey folks, it's rare around here to hear from anybody but myself unless it's an interview.  I think Jeff Parker's essay about George Saunders on Late Night with David Letterman just might be the only other occasion.  But, the following post, written by Unbridled Books' novelist, Tara Yellen, as suggested by Caitlin Hamilton Summie, seemed to fit right in with the thought process around here.  It's her take on mentoring in the writing world - something you don't always read about.  Hell, in many cases it doesn't even happen, which is a shame.  This was delivered to me a couple of weeks back, so the first two words should take that into consideration:

"Last week, at  New Dominion Bookstore in Charlottesville, when I stood up to give the first reading on my book tour, I didn’t have a planned opening speech.  Just a few things I wanted to say—thanks to John for the wonderful introduction, thanks to all who came out tonight.  Maybe a quick joke about tax day.

Mostly, I was hoping to avoid two things:

1. singing, which I’m always afraid I’ll do when faced with a microphone

and

2. spouting cliché.

I didn’t sing, which is good, because I can’t. 

But before I could filter it, there it was:

“I wouldn’t be standing here without you.”

It popped out.  I was addressing the writers John Casey and Chris Tilghman, both in the audience, both my professors at the University of Virginia graduate writing program.  I wouldn’t be standing here without you.  But it wasn’t just a line. Along with other wonderful UVa profs, they’d read my manuscript almost as many times as I had.  They guided and coached and coaxed me as I (somehow) extracted a novel from a jumble of character and idea. And there wasn’t just the writing itself that I needed help with. There was finding an agent, navigating the publishing process.  Figuring out how to make a living.

I’ve been lucky.  All through my life I’ve been able to find mentors, through grade and high school and college, each one of them willing to spend all sorts of time, reading my work, talking “shop.”  How do you choose point of view?  Is the tense working?  I’d visit Tony Ardizzone and Cornelia Nixon’s office hours—a little awed: they were real writers. 

I know, there are plenty of books out there that tell writers what to do.  Even books that inspire.  But there’s something about working with someone who is right there.  Someone who listens. Someone who has done it and survived. I think that’s a lot of it.

It’s certainly not all about getting praise.

At the University of Colorado, Lucia Berlin took me into her office and told me to “cut the cute.”  She wasn’t smiling.  She said I was trying to hard to be clever in my fiction. “Be real,” she said.

I wallowed all the way home.  But, that night, I sat down and wrote what would be my first publishable story.

Next workshop, Lucia’s response was short but meaningful: This, she wrote, is not cute.

I think I still have that piece of paper.

I’ve now served as a mentor myself, both as a teacher, and, some years back, as coordinator for the Young Women Leaders Program, a mentoring program sponsored by the UVa Women’s Center and Curry School of Education.  The program matches middle school girls with undergraduate woman, and the pairs work in groups to tackle personal and community goals.  It was a life-changing experience to see how excited and hopeful these girls became, how they reached their goals—and how the relationship between mentor and mentee is, in fact, symbiotic.  The mentors inspired and, as a result, they, themselves, were inspired in their own lives. With their own goals.

It’s the same with teaching writing.  It can be exhausting, yes, but there is nothing like seeing that spark, that thrill in someone else, to bring it back to my own work.

I happen to think that there are an infinite number of entrances into the craft of writing.  There’s not one lesson plan, one good way to teach.  More important than getting across information, is the simple act of engaging others in what you love. I remember watching my teachers hold books as we discussed them—open in their palms, held out a little, as if it took some effort to steady them—as if the books had extra weight from all that packed-in knowledge and adventure. It made me want to read. It made me write.

So, okay,  I popped a cliché on my first reading.

Many years ago, a writing mentor of mine told me that something that might otherwise come across as platitude won’t if it’s heartfelt—if you can make it real. 

I think that’s true.

And I wouldn’t be here without him."

After Hours at the Almost Home has been available in stores since April 15.  For a pdf file of the first two chapters, visit Unbridled's website here.

Here's another guest essay Tara wrote on the subject of mentoring, looking from the other side, at the always wonderful Booksquare!

STATUS: This week has been about meeting with editors and my authors who have come to town so no “this is what editors are looking for” stories to regale you with. Although I did have coffee with a children’s editor who is looking for anything multicultural. What a refreshing change as I love multicultural stories as well. And rumor has it that Grand Central is going to be starting a Latino/Latina line over there.

What’s playing on the iPod right now? SELF CONTROL by Laura Brannigan

I’m not sure why people think that agenting is a way to get rich quick.

Snort. I can barely type that with a straight face but there seems to be this misperception.

I opened my own agency in August of 2002. I had a small business loan and a five-year plan in place when I embarked on what is a risky proposition. (Actually, starting any small business is risky not just agenting).

When I launched, I truly believed it would take 5 years for the agency to be profitable (and if it weren’t by then, I was in trouble). I hit profitable (as in not operating in the red—salary plus all expenses) in year three by a slim margin. Still, I was quite proud. I was definitely ahead of schedule.

So in those early years, I tracked reimbursable expenses (such as photocopies, postage, the basic stuff) and was reimbursed by the client. But here’s the kicker. The reimbursement ALWAYS happened after the sale of the project to a publisher. If the project didn’t sell, I ate the cost. I repeat. The author was not responsible for anything if the project didn’t sell. Was not recuperating those costs hard to swing in those early years? You betcha but I was unwilling to do otherwise despite my red bottom line.

I have heard of perfectly legitimate agencies (with trackable sales) billing their clients for reimbursable costs at the end of each year regardless of whether a project has sold or not. It’s not against AAR regulations. It’s certainly not sketchy per se but for me personally, I don’t agree with that practice.

For me, the billing for “costs” before any sale has the potential of being abused by agents and agencies that are either ineffectual or operating pretty close to the margin of actually not being legitimate. For my agency, I wanted to make sure the boundaries where absolutely clear.

Now I’m in year five and enjoying solid success, so what did I decide to do (and I actually did this two Januaries ago when I was becoming profitable in year three). I did away with reimbursed expenses.

Yep, you heard that right. I don’t track expenses and expect the client to reimburse—before or after a sale now. The agency foots the bill as the cost of doing business.

There are two exceptions though. The agency does track costs associated with International postage or wire transfers (as those are unusual) and we also do track book purchases used in selling subsidiary rights (because that can get expensive very quickly). We always email the clients first to find out if they want to provide the copies and if not, to check if the cost incurred is okay with them before we proceed.

Perhaps we’re crazy but I find that ultimately it’s not worth the time and effort to track it.

Why do I bring this up? Well, I haven’t talked about fees or reimbursable costs in a long time and I think it’s wise to keep talking about this issue. As I mentioned, legitimate agencies might have this practice and as long as they have a long list of documented sales (where it’s obvious their reputation is impeccable), it’s probably not a worry.

However, I would ALWAYS approach it with caution as there are many marginal agents/agencies that are happy to be reimbursed for submission expenses but don’t have the corresponding sales. And if you are going to be billed for those expenses, it should ALWAYS be accompanied and documented by receipts.

Read through 15 subs over the weekend. 1 was author info only, so we requested a sample. The other 14 are all rejections.

Had messages this morning, so that was first on the list. Then the usual rounds of initial subs for new projects, followed by additional subs for other projects and follow ups.

Drank some coffee. Read Publishers Lunch (have to stay on top of that one, my little beasties, or else it piles up).

Having a good Monday, actually. Half through my sub list to send today, with only 100 pp of editing to do.

Other than editing over the weekend and reading subs, I read:

Playing for Pizza by John Grisham (not bad, especially considering I'm not much on football).

Black Water and Gravedigger's Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates.

Third Degree by Greg Iles.

Yes, I do read fast;)

I've also started my own writing again. Haven't focused on my own work since the agency started, so finding time and getting back to it are both challenging. What works for me? Setting aside the same time each night for my writing, immersing myself in alot of reads in the same genre I'm writing, and music (I have different sets of songs to listen to depending on which chapters I'm writing).

I'm old fashioned in my writing. I cannot work straight into a computer, but use 70 count spiral notebooks (college-ruled) and rollerball pens. The key is to keep up with typing everything into the computer. I once lost the first 20k of a story before it got into the computer (Ouch!)

It actually works well because I do the intial writing for that chapter, go back and reread and make notes (my margins often contain all sorts of scribbles and notes), then do the third edit when I type it in. Let it sit for a day, then print it out and read, then make changes. This process is repeated one chapter at a time. Then, once it's completed I do a final edit. So, five rounds in all.

Of course, sometimes 5 rounds doesn't do it (we all know that), so then it sits for more changes another day.

What do I write? Well, this one is a supernatural thriller with a literary bent. As always, this one's the best thing I've done yet. Like agenting, writing is a learning experience. We grow and evolve from one word to the next.

Stay literate;)

STATUS: It’s been a great week but I’m still glad it’s Friday!

What’s playing on the iPod right now? PROUD MARY by Tina Turner

This might go without saying but just in case, I want to point out here that my blog should come with a warning. Even though I do my best to share information that allows writers to get a good understanding of what happens in the agenting process (because I believe that writers should be as knowledgeable as possible), by no means is my blog a substitute for real expertise.

In other words, don’t use the information learned here in lieu of an agent. Or, god forbid, feel ready to take on agenting yourself. The very thought frightens me!

Seriously. There are some rare exceptions but for the most part, agents learned this biz from other agents who have been in the biz for longer (or was a former editor who learned the ropes from the other side of the fence). Even though I went on my own fairly early in my agenting career, I freely admit that I wouldn’t be where I am now without the incredible selfless mentorship by several powerful agents who, just out of the goodness of their hearts and because we had connected on a personal level, guided me through many a hairy situation where I needed more expertise than I had at that moment in time.

Even though I share a lot on this blog, it’s not even half of what you would need to know to be a good agent.

So please, keep that in mind!

Now on a lighter note, I just couldn’t resist sharing pictures of Chutney in her new holiday hoodie. Just add bling!

Hello and Happy New Year, my little beasties!

Well, today has been crazy insane as expected, but boy did I miss all this fun while on vacation.

Our literary prayers have been answered, and we snagged both literary works we were looking at. Other than a couple potential clients who may or may not come in February/March, we're finished.

We will not be seeking any Young Adult submissions during our next reading period (March-May), BUT if you do send some incredible YA our way, we just might send you away and have you come back in October.

We will be open to Adult, namely hard-edged thrillers, literary, horror (think less blood and gore), and suspense.

I'm back to the grind, but will return tonight or in the AM to post some info on advances: how they work, how to get paid, etc.

Stay literate;)

Morning, my little beasties. My day is just beginning. If all goes well, I'll have the last of my subs out today, then I can start to look over a couple of manuscripts clients have rewritten.

One thing about us-- we are firm believers in helping our writers grow, learn, and turn their work into something even better than they started with. I will never understand how scam agents get away with charging fees for helping a writer edit--it's part of the job!

One of my clients, David, has a fantastic Young adult adventure, The Stromling. In it Duncan, a ten-year-old boy (with the aid of his dog, Pookie, and a merry band of giant insects) must save the layers of the world, wears a special flying suit given to him during his training. As it turns out, there REALLY is a flying suit out there that looks exactly how I imagined Duncan's would. Check it out--

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/sports/othersports/10flying.html?_r=2&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1197561857-8RKdoEeZvk/t8nb0tPF7Ww&oref=slogin

We've lost Jorvit, probably losing Kazuo (yep, I'm still talking baseball. What's football?) and we received a pass on a client's manuscript. I'm always just as bummed as the client when it happens. In this case, we're starting from square 1 essentially.

For the weekend fare, it's work, work, work to gear up for being out during the holidays. Trying to get two weeks of work in by the 21st. We may be closing the 21st-25th, but my work never ends. I'll be spending my holiday poring over new submissions:)

Signed two Young Adult clients last week, one a Teen fantasy, the other with a Middle Grade urban fantasy, a Young Adult fantasy, and a children's non-fiction book.

It's always exciting marketing new work, but I am also amazed at how excited I continue to be about marketing all my clients work. Even manuscripts I've read dozens of times give me the same reaction when I read it again.

Which brings me to my one big point for today-- if you can't stand to read your manuscript the third time through, then I'm certainly not going to make it the first time through.