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Remember way back when people said they’d donate money to New York Public Library if I learned to lindy hop? I said that I would have my dancing verified by three YA authors approved by John Green who was the first person to offer money to charity if I learned to dance. Well, that’s not necessary any more.
Because Scott secretly shot video of some of our lessons. Utter, utter, utter bastard! He was going to make a video and put it up on youtube! Behind my back!
Fortunately, I caught him looking at some of the footage. But since he was nice enough to not shoot our faces, and we’re running out of time to gather up YA witnesses, I decided that we would make the vid together.
But just so you know, Scott, YOU ARE EVIL. ALL TRUST IS GONE.
Some disclaimers for people who know from lindy hop. We knows we has a long way to go. We’re working on bending knees, sticking out arses, holding frame, chasseing, pulsing and etc. The most recent footage included is from three weeks ago. We’re already way better than the vid demonstrates. Honest.
Many many people have been asking how I like learning lindy hop given how much I really really really really didn’t want to do it.
I love lindy hop.
[A minutes pause while you all tell me you told me so.]
It’s the most fun I’ve had in ages. I’m loving learning something that requires my full attention. When I’m dancing I’m not thinking about my novel or bills that have to be paid or anything except where my feet and bum and arms should be. While I’m learning to dance I’m not even slightly stressed. Scott feels the same way. We will be continuing our lessons. We both want to get good at it.
One of my objections did turn out to be true: I have to ice my left foot after every lesson. Lindy hopping is not kind to plantar fasciitis.
We got around my other fear—of making a fool of myself in front of total strangers—by taking private lessons. I honestly don’t think I would have made it otherwise. Also private lessons means learning faster and having all your mistakes picked up and corrected quicker. We have had two awesome teachers: Jessi and Stephanie. Thank you!
We have even gone out and danced in public. (Once.) Last Sunday under the stars on Pier 54. It was magical. Yes, we are addicted.
Here’s proof that I’ve been learning to lindy hop:
If you pledged money now’s the time to pay. You can donate to the NYPL here. Even if you didn’t make a pledge you can still donate to the NYPL or your local library wherever you may be. Libraries all over the world need our help.
0 Comments on Lindy Hop Report as of 7/16/2009 2:42:00 PM
Danah Boyd is an ethnographer who’s done a great deal of work on teenage use of the internet in the USA. Her work is absolutely fascinating and I think every writer of Young Adult books should be reading it.
If you are trying to connect with the public, where you go online matters. If you choose to make Facebook your platform for civic activity, you are implicitly suggesting that a specific class of people is more worth your time and attention than others. Of course, splitting your attention can also be costly and doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll be reaching everyone anyhow. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. The key to developing a social media strategy is to understand who you’re reaching and who you’re not and make certain that your perspective is accounting for said choices. Understand your biases and work to counter them.
While on tour last year I was sent to a number of very poor schools. At those schools the vast majority of students did not have access to a computer at home, let alone a computer of their own. They were able to use computers at school and at the library. At the poorer schools I visited I was asked if I was on myspace; at the wealthier schools they wanted to know if I was on facebook. I know that’s a small samples size—a handful of schools in northern California, Ohio, and Michigan—but it’s right in line with Danah’s research. I told them that it was better to get in touch with me via my website because a) while I have a myspace account I don’t use it and b) I don’t have a facebook one. Very few students contacted me and those who did were from the wealthier schools.
This year when I go on tour I will be giving the teens who want to contact me a business card with my email address and website on it. I know I’d have a better shot at communicating with them if I used my myspace account and joined facebook. First though I’m going to see if giving them a card works better than just telling them how to contact me.
I did not enjoy being on myspace. The walls around myspace and facebook freak me out much like walled communities offline do. I like having my blog where anyone can read it without having to log into a different space.1 I do not want to maintain multiple blogs and moderate multiple sets of comments.
Yet I want to be able to stay in touch with the wonderful students I meet on tour.
I’ll see if giving them cards works. If not I suspect I’ll have to suck it up and deal with myspace again.
How do you other authors deal with this? How many of you are on myspace and/or facebook?
How many of you having read Danah’s research would reconsider myspace?
Part of what I like about Twitter is that you don’t have to join Twitter in order to read it. You can directly link to an interesting Tweet from anywhere. However, there are very few teenagers on Twitter.
1 Comments on MySpace v FaceBook, last added: 7/16/2009
Remember way back when people said they’d donate money to New York Public Library if I learned to lindy hop? I said that I would have my dancing verified by three YA authors approved by John Green who was the first person to offer money to charity if I learned to dance. Well, that’s not necessary any more.
Because Scott secretly shot video of some of our lessons. Utter, utter, utter bastard! He was going to make a video and put it up on youtube! Behind my back!
Fortunately, I caught him looking at some of the footage. But since he was nice enough to not shoot our faces, and we’re running out of time to gather up YA witnesses, I decided that we would make the vid together.
But just so you know, Scott, YOU ARE EVIL. ALL TRUST IS GONE.
Some disclaimers for people who know from lindy hop. We’re knows we has a long way to go. We’re working on bending knees, sticking out arses, holding frame, chasseing, pulsing and etc. The most recent footage included is from three weeks ago. We’re already way better than the vid demonstrates. Honest.
Many many people have been asking how I like learning lindy hop given how much I really really really really didn’t want to do it.
I love lindy hop.
[A minutes pause while you all tell me you told me so.]
It’s the most fun I’ve had in ages. I’m loving learning something that requires my full attention. When I’m dancing I’m not thinking about my novel or bills that have to be paid or anything except where my feet and bum and arms should be. While I’m learning to dance I’m not even slightly stressed. Scott feels the same way. We will be continuing our lessons. We both want to get good at it.
One of my objections did turn out to be true: I have to ice my left foot after every lesson. Lindy hopping is not kind to plantar fasciitis.
We got around my other fear—of making a fool of myself in front of total strangers—by taking private lessons. I honestly don’t think I would have made it otherwise. Also private lessons means learning faster and having all your mistakes picked up and corrected quicker. We have had two awesome teachers: Jessi and Stephanie. Thank you!
We have even gone out and danced in public. (Once.) Last Sunday under the stars on Pier 54. It was magical. Yes, we are addicted.
Here’s proof that I’ve been learning to lindy hop:
If you pledged money now’s the time to pay. You can donate to the NYPL here. Even if you didn’t make a pledge you can still donate to the NYPL or your local library wherever you may be. Libraries all over the world need our help.
I did not select winners myself because too many of you chose dialogue written by friends of mine and I didn’t want anyone to think there was bias going on. The winning comments were decided by randomly generating numbers at random.org. :
7: Celia:
From Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens:
Eventually Crawly said, “Didn’t you have a flaming sword?”
“Er,” said the angel. A guilty expression passed along its face, then came back and camped there.
“You did, didn’t you?” said Crawly. “It flamed like anything.”
“Er, well–”
“Lost it, have you?”
“Oh no! No, not exactly lost, more–”
“Well?”
Asiraphale looked wretched. “If you must know,” he said, a trifle testily, “I gave it away.”
Crawley stared up at him.
“Well, I had to,” said the angle, rubbing his hands distractedly. “They looked so cold, poor things, and she’s expecting already, and what with the vicious animals out there and the storm coming up I thought, well, where’s the harm, so I just said, look, if you come back here there’s going to be an almighty row, but you might be needing this sword, so here it is, don’t bother to thank me, just do everyone a big favor and don’t let the sun go down on you here.”
He gave Crawly a worried grin.
“That was the best course, wasn’t it?”
“I’m not sure it’s actually possible for you to do evil,” said Crawly sarcastically. Aziraphale didn’t notice the tone.
Buckley followed the three of them into the kitchen and asked, as he had at least once a day, “Where’s Susie?”
They were silent. Samuel looked at Lindsey.
“Buckley,” my father called from the adjoining room, “come play Monopoly with me.”
My brother had never been invited to play Monopoly. Everyone said he was too young, but this was the magic of Christmas. He rushed into the family room, and my father picked him up and sat him on his lap.
“See this shoe?” my father said.
Buckley nodded his head.
“I want you to listen to everything I say about it, okay?”
“Susie?” my brother asked, somehow connecting the two.
“Yes, I’m going to tell you where Susie is.”
I began to cry up in heaven. What else was there for me to do?
“This shoe was the piece Susie played Monopoly with,” he said. “I play with the car or sometimes the wheelbarrow. Lindsey plays with the iron, and when you mother plays, she likes the cannon.”
“Is that a dog?”
“Yes, that’s a Scottie.”
“Mine!”
“Okay,” my father said. He was patient. He had found a way to explain it. He held his son in his lap, and as he spoke, he felt Buckley’s small body on his knee-the very human, very warm, very alive weight of it. It comforted him. “The Scottie will be your piece from now on. Which piece is Susie’s again?”
“The shoe?” Buckley asked.
“Right, and I’m the car, your sister’s the iron, and your mother is the cannon.”
My brother concentrated very hard.
“Now let’s put all the pieces on the board, okay? You go ahead and do it for me.”
Buckley grabbed a fist of pieces and then another, until all the pieces lay between the Chance and Community Chest cards.
“Let’s say the other pieces are our friends?”
“Like Nate?”
“Right, we’ll make your friend Nate the hat. And the board is the world. Now if I were to tell you that when I rolled the dice, one of the pieces would be taken away, what would that mean?”
“They can’t play anymore?”
“Right.”
“Why?” Buckley asked.
He looked up at my father; my father flinched.
“Why?” my brother asked again.
My father did not want to say “because life is unfair” or “because that’s how it is”. He wanted something neat, something that could explain death to a four-year-old He placed his hand on the small of Buckley’s back.
“Susie is dead,” he said now, unable to make it fit in the rules of any game. “Do you know what that means?”
Buckley reached over with his hand and covered the shoe. He looked up to see if his answer was right.
“My father nodded. You won’t see Susie anymore, honey. None of us will.” My father cried. Buckley looked up into the eyes of our father and did not really understand.
~”The Lovely Bones” by Alice Sebold
(sorry I chose such a tragic one! But it’s such a great scene.)
Having grabbed their towels and placed them in the proper position, Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent ar about to travel. Arthur wonders if it will hurt, etc.
Ford: It’s a lot like being drunk.
Arthur: I’ve been drunk before, it’s not so bad.
Ford: Tell that to a glass of water
This was the first book that ever made me want to highlight a passage, something I used to be very opposed to. This is from THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING by T. H. White.
“If I were to be made a knight,” said the Wart, staring dreamily into the fire, “I should insist on doing my vigil by myself, as Hob does with his hawks, and I should pray to God to let me encounter all the evil in the world in my own person, so that if I conquered there would be none left, and, if I were defeated, I would be the one to suffer for it.”
“That would be extremely presumptuous of you,” said Merlyn, “and you would be conquered, and you would suffer for it.”
“I shouldn’t mind.”
“Wouldn’t you? Wait till it happens and see.”
“Why do people not think, when they are grown up, as I do when I am young?”
“Oh dear,” said Merlyn. “You are making me feel confused. Suppose you wait till you are grown up and know the reason?”
“I don’t think that is an answer at all,” replied the Wart, justly.
Merlyn wrung his hands.
“Well, anyway,” he said, “suppose they did not let you stand against all the evil in the world?”
“I could ask,” said the Wart.
“You could ask,” repeated Merlyn.
“Get her,” Boots said.
“Preferred mode of driving,” Duke added.
“At least the cops won’t be able to see us in the dark without lights.” Norman risked another peek back.
“Give the kid a doughnut.” Duke casually teased a cigarette from a pack with his teeth. “Hey, miss?”
“The name’s Dee-Dee.”
“Miss Dee-Dee. Do you know where these tracks are headed?”
“They run for miles. Only people use them are farmers.”
“You don’t say.”
“I’m trying to help, you lummox.”
“Lummox.” Duke grinned back at Norman– an alarming action, as he wasn’t looking where he was driving. “You’ve picked up a live one there, boy.
Dee-Dee fumed. “He didn’t pick me up!”
“Say, he’s not boned you yet?”
“No!”
Boots turneed around to smirk. “He will soon enough. Normy can’t get enough. The guy’s a fucking love machine.”
Duke laughed. “That’s ’cause he’s been saving it up for years.”
“You’ve been so brave.” (Lily)
He could not speak. His eyes feasted on her, and he thought that he would like to stand and look at her forever, and that would be enough.
“You are nearly there,” said James. “Very close. We are…so proud of you.”
“Does it hurt?”
The childish question had fallen from Harry’s lips before he could stop it.
“Dying? Not at all,” said Sirius. “quicker and easier than falling asleep.”
“And he will want it to be quick.He wants it over,” said Lupin.
“I didn’t want you to die,” Harry said. These words came out without his volition, “Any of you. I’m so sorry-”
He addressed Lupin more than any of them, beseeching him.
“-right after you’d had your son…Remus, I’m sorry-”
“I am sorry too,” said Lupin. “Sorry I will never know him…but he will know why I died and I hope he will understand. I was trying to make a world in which he could live a happier life.”
“You’ll stay with me?”
“Until the very end,” said James.
“They won’t be able to see you?” asked Harry.
“We are a part of you,” said Sirius. “Invisible to anyone else.”
Harry looked closely at his mother.
“Stay close to me,” he said quietly.
Harry talking to his parents, Sirius and Lupin using the Resurrection Stone before he walks to his death.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling, pg 560-561, Chapter 34: The Forest Again, UK edition.
Congratulations!
If you won please send me your snail mail address here or DM on Twitter.
List which of these books you would like in order of preference. Select at least three. (I only have a few copies of some of these):
Advanced Reader Copy of First Kiss anthology signed by me and Scott
US paperback of Love is Hell anthology signed by me and Scott
US or Aus paperback Magic Lessons (sequel to Magic or Madness)
US or Aus paperback Magic’s Child (sequel to Magic Lessons)
HC Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction
0 Comments on Dialogue Giveaway Winners . . . as of 1/1/1900
You have until midnight tonight. Make sure you enter over there not here.
Six winners will be chosen randomly. They’ll all get a Liar sampler as well as their choice of one of these books:
Advanced Reader Copy of First Kiss anthology signed by me and Scott
US paperback of Love is Hell anthology signed by me and Scott
US or Aus paperback Magic Lessons (sequel to Magic or Madness)
US or Aus paperback Magic’s Child (sequel to Magic Lessons)
HC Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction
Now I return to the to finish-the-novel salt mines.
0 Comments on Dialogue Giveaway Ends Today as of 7/13/2009 6:13:00 PM
But first, Morgan, one of the winners of the last giveaway, still hasn’t contacted me. Please do so! Your copy of Love is Hell and the Liar sampler awaits!
Once again the giveaway is based around a post I’ve been meaning to write for ages on dialogue. Way back in January when I did my whole month of writing advice I promised I’d write a whole post about how to write dialogue. But it never happened. I have started such a post but I has not finished it. Sorry!
In the comments please share your favourite bit of dialogue from literature. I’m using that term very broadly, so, yes you can include an exchange from any genre: YA, crime, romance, sf, fantasy, even capital L Literachure if you must, or from a comic book or manga or manhwa.
But no movies or television—literature only. If you give an example from a movie or TV show you’ll disqualify yourself from getting a prize.
This time all winners will get a Liar sampler and their choice of one of the following:
Advanced Reader Copy of First Kiss anthology signed by me and Scott
US or Aus paperback Magic Lessons (sequel to Magic or Madness)
US or Aus paperback Magic’s Child (sequel to Magic Lessons)
HC Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction
I’m really looking forward to your responses.
Update: Please don’t leave your email address in the comments. Best to beware of spambots.
2 Comments on Another Giveaway—Favourite Dialogue (updated), last added: 7/14/2009
But first, Morgan, one of the winners of the last giveaway, still hasn’t contacted me. Please do so! Your copy of Love is Hell and the Liar sampler awaits!
Once again the giveaway is based around a post I’ve been meaning to write for ages on dialogue. Way back in January when I did my whole month of writing advice I promised I’d write a whole post about how to write dialogue. But it never happened. I have started such a post but I has not finished it. Sorry!
In the comments please share your favourite bit of dialogue from literature. I’m using that term very broadly, so, yes you can include an exchange from any genre: YA, crime, romance, sf, fantasy, even capital L Literachure if you must, or from a comic book or manga or manhwa.
But no movies or television—literature only. If you give an example from a movie or TV show you’ll disqualify yourself from getting a prize.
This time all winners will get a Liar sampler and their choice of one of the following:
Advanced Reader Copy of First Kiss anthology signed by me and Scott
US or Aus paperback Magic Lessons (sequel to Magic or Madness)
US or Aus paperback Magic’s Child (sequel to Magic Lessons)
HC Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction
I’m really looking forward to your responses.
Update: Please don’t leave your email address in the comments. Best to beware of spambots.
Justine said, on 7/14/2009 11:07:00 PM
Danah Boyd is an ethnographer who’s done a great deal of work on teenage use of the internet in the USA. Her work is absolutely fascinating and I think every writer of Young Adult books should be reading it.
If you are trying to connect with the public, where you go online matters. If you choose to make Facebook your platform for civic activity, you are implicitly suggesting that a specific class of people is more worth your time and attention than others. Of course, splitting your attention can also be costly and doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll be reaching everyone anyhow. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. The key to developing a social media strategy is to understand who you’re reaching and who you’re not and make certain that your perspective is accounting for said choices. Understand your biases and work to counter them.
While on tour last year I was sent to a number of very poor schools. At those schools the vast majority of students did not have access to a computer at home, let alone a computer of their own. They were able to use computers at school and at the library. At the poorer schools I visited I was asked if I was on myspace; at the wealthier schools they wanted to know if I was on facebook. I know that’s a small samples size—a handful of schools in northern California, Ohio, and Michigan—but it’s right in line with Danah’s research. I told them that it was better to get in touch with me via my website because a) while I have a myspace account I don’t use it and b) I don’t have a facebook one. Very few students contacted me and those who did were from the wealthier schools.
This year when I go on tour I will be giving the teens who want to contact me a business card with my email address and website on it. I know I’d have a better shot at communicating with them if I used my myspace account and joined facebook. First though I’m going to see if giving them a card works better than just telling them how to contact me.
I did not enjoy being on myspace. The walls around myspace and facebook freak me out much like walled communities offline do. I like having my blog where anyone can read it without having to log into a different space.1 I do not want to maintain multiple blogs and moderate multiple sets of comments.
Yet I want to be able to stay in touch with the wonderful students I meet on tour.
I’ll see if giving them cards works. If not I suspect I’ll have to suck it up and deal with myspace again.
How do you other authors deal with this? How many of you are on myspace and/or facebook?
How many of you having read Danah’s research would reconsider myspace?
Part of what I like about Twitter is that you don’t have to join Twitter in order to read it. You can directly link to an interesting Tweet from anywhere. However, there are very few teenagers on Twitter.
It proved absolutely impossible for me to choose from among all the amazing stalker song entries so I got Scott to pick six numbers between 1 & 116. (That’s how many entries there were: one hundred and sixteen!)
Scott went to Random.org for the numbers thus they are truly random.
The winners are comment numbers 49, 49, 109, 98, 4, 25 and 114:
Faint by Linkin Park:
“I am what I want you to want, what I want you to feel
But it’s like no matter what I do
I can’t convince you to just believe this is real”
“Sin miedo a nada” by Alex Ubago [translated to the best of my ability]:
“I die to beg you
That you don’t leave my life
I die to hear you
Say the things you never say
But I keep quiet and you leave
I keep hope
To be able someday
To not have to hide the wounds
It hurts to think
That I love you a every day a bit more.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l04TzdcdOU
Oh no, someone told me I posted a song that was already posted. I don’t know if that’s allowed
Just in case, I’ll post this one:
————
OKaysions- Girl Watcher
I’m a girl watcher, I’m a girl watcher…
Watchin’ girls go by, hey, my my
I’m a girl watcher, I’m a girl watcher…
Here comes one now…
I was just a boy when I threw away my toys
And found a new pastime to dwell on
Whenever I detects them there of the other sex
I play the game I do so well on
Mumble something female, my my, but you do look swell
Could you please walk a little slower…
Wonder if you know that you’re putting on a show
Could you please walk a little closer…
———-
My second creepiest song. He’s FOLLOWING her, it freaks me out xD Hope it creeps you out too!
Does a parody song count? My friends and I made a parody of Stop and Stare by One Republic called “Stalk and Stare” The chorus goes-
Stalk and Stare
I think about you all the time
I swear
You are mine and I will never share
oh oh ooooh
Stalk and Stare
When you are alone
I am always there
So tell your Boyfriend to beware
oh oh ooooh
Stalk and Stare
I love the way the moonlight
shines on your hair
Without you there would be no air
oh oh ooooh
It keeps going and gets pretty crazy.
But if it has to be song I would go with “Somebody’s Watching Me” By Micheal Jackson. This one of course is from the stalkee’s point of view. I want to know how no one thought of this song though!
When I’m in the shower
I’m afraid to wash my hair
‘Cause I might open my eyes
And find someone standing there
People say I’m crazy
Just a little touched
But maybe showers remind me
Of Psycho too much
That’s why
(I always feel like)
(Somebody’s watching me)
And I have no privacy
Whooooa, oh-oh
(I always feel like)
(Somebody’s watching me)
Who’s playin’ tricks on me
Then there is also “Kelsey” by Metro Station
So take one word you said
You put it in your bed
You rest your tiny head on your pillow
You wonder where you’re going next
You got your head pushed to my chest
and now you’re hoping that someone let’s you in
Well I’ll sure let you in
You know ill let you in
Oh Kelsey, you.
So don’t let anyone scare you
You know that I’ll protect you
Always,
now through the thick and thin
Until the end
You better watch it
You know you don’t cross it because
I’m always here for you
and I’ll be here for you
(I know x3) I know how it feels believe me
I’ve been there and
(I know x3) I know what it feels like
tell me Kelsey
And I’ll swim the ocean for you
the ocean for you
whoa, oh Kelsey
and I’ll swim the ocean for you
the ocean for you
whoa, oh Kelsey
(i hear you darlin’)
Find More lyrics at http://www.sweetslyrics.com
Now it’s gonna get harder
and it’s gonna burn brighter
and it’s gonna feel tougher each and every day
so let me say, that i love you
you’re all I’ve ever wanted
all I’ve ever dreamed of to come
and yes you did come
i want you so bad (so bad)
can you feel it too? (it too)
you know I’m so, I’m so in love with you
i want you, so much
i need you, so much
i need your, i need your, your touch
and I’ll swim the ocean for you
the ocean for you
whoa, oh Kelsey
x4
and you never ever let me in (let me in)
x4
Definitely Helen Hunt by Hank Green. Hahaha
http://wiki.dftba.com/index.php/Helen_Hunt
Um… Plain White T’s are very stalkerish… Hey there Delilah, You and Me, Write You a Song, and I could go on…
You Found Me by Kelly Clarkson, kind of the other person is the stalker here. I mean just read the chorus:
“You found me
When no one else was lookin’
How did you know just where I would be?
Yeah, you broke through
All of my confusion
The ups and the downs
And you still didn’t leave
I guess that you saw what nobody could see
You found me
You found me”
There is a song called the stalker song by the Australian comedy group Tripod. It sort of misses the point a bit because it’s meant to be a little (read: a lot) creepy. It is pretty funny, though.
Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxwNIyJ2mDM
So. Man. Very. Creepy. Songs. So glad so many of you realise that stalking is not a sign of love!
The first four get a signed Love Is Hell plus a signed Liar sampler and the last two get a Liar sampler.
Because of my post about the US Liar cover I have discovered some wonderful blogs, which as someone who follows the YA blogosphere closely, I’m ashamed I didn’t know about already. I have added all of them to my blog roll:
The Brown Bookshelf (which the fabulous and unbelievably talented Varian Johnson is part of. Have you read My Life as a Rhombus? It’s also on my to be read pile and from what I’ve been hearing is astonishingly good.)
I am still no where near working my way through all the mail the cover post generated. It may take me a few weeks. Sorry. But thank you everyone for your intense responses and for all the links and for continuing the conversation in so many different places. I’ve heard from several people that at least two YA publishing houses have been circulating my post to their staff. Awesome.
And extra special thanks to the people who emailed me with the typos they picked up in that post. As someone who’s not the world’s greatest speller, I really appreciate it! (Though am embarrassed that I still don’t know the difference between “effect” and “affect.” Aargh.)
I keep seeing new writers in search of an agent get hung up on the fact that many agents don’t have much of an online presence.
Newsflash: an agent’s website is irrelevant to how good an agent they are. Some of the top agents in the business barely have an online presence at all.
Think about it for just a second: what is an agent’s website for exactly? It’s not for editors, i.e. the people agents sell to. Good agents already have relationships with editors at all the big houses and many of the little ones too. Editors don’t need to look up agents’ websites. The people who most frequently visit an agent’s site are writers looking for representation. And the good agents do not need to advertise for clients. Thus they do not need a good website.
My agent, Jill Grinberg, doesn’t blog and has a website that’s been under construction since 2006. Yet somehow she manages to be an extraordinarily good agent. I am very very happy and grateful to be with her. Trust me, Jill does not lack for clients.
Time and time again I see newbies comment about how if an agent doesn’t have an uptodate website they must be a crap agent who’s clearly still using messenger pigeons to communicate. So not true. The vast majority of my communication with Jill is done via email. I send her all my manuscripts as attachments. She is entirely in the 21st century. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t communicate with their agent in the same way.
When I see newbies saying they’re not going to submit to Jill because of her luddite ways I have to laugh. The only person they’re punishing is themselves.
I think what many many new writers searching for an agent don’t get is that new clients are not the majority of agents’ priority. Newbies are so focussed on the searching part that they sometimes don’t think about how what they want from agents will change when they actually get one.
When you have an agent you don’t care about their website or how clear their submission guidelines are or whether they take electronic submissions. You care about how fast they get back to you about your problems and how good the deals they make for you are. The stuff that was hugely important when you were looking for an agent disappears from view. You don’t think about it again.
The top priority of an agent is looking after their existing clients. When a new writer finds the perfect agent they’re going to be very grateful for that. They won’t be giving much thought to the state of their agent’s website.
Update: I am not saying agents should not have websites. Or that agents with websites are bad agents. Merely that the fact of having or not having a website is irrelevant to how good an agent they are.
I am also saying that what seems important when you’re looking for an agent won’t be once you have one.
0 Comments on Agent Websites are Irrelevant (updated) as of 7/6/2009 3:39:00 PM
My last post generated quite a bit of discussion. Some people seem to be under the impression that I was saying authors shouldn’t reply to any reviews at all. In my capacity as lord god of the internets1 I only forbid responding to negative reviews or reviews the author perceives as negative.2 I have yet to see an author respond to a bad review in any way that didn’t make them look like a petty loser. Responding to positive reviews is a whole other thing and as Diana Peterfreund points out can lead to very interesting discussions.
Though I have seen authors respond to positive reviews in comment threads and unintentionally shut the conversation down because everyone panicked on realising that the author was watching. That’s why I no longer drop in to thank a blogger for a positive review. But I definitely don’t think it’s a terrible thing.
Walter Jon Williams talkde about how annoying some online amateur reviewers can be:
Some of them are just bad readers. They miss major plot points and then complain that the plot makes no sense, or they say that something is impossible when it’s something I’ve actually done, or they complain that a plot twist is unmotivated when I’ve foreshadowed it sixteen dozen ways . . . these guys I’m sometimes tempted to respond to. Not in abusive way, of course, just by way of information. (”If you would do yourself the kindness to reread Page 173, you would realize that your chief complaint is without foundation.”) That sort of thing.
Sad fact: most readers are crap at it. We read too fast and carelessly. We judge books by what we expected to read so often don’t see what is actually there. We get mad at books for not being the book we wanted them to be. We read when in a bad mood and blame the bad mood on the book. Most of us suck at noticing all the carefully laid foreshadowing, backstory, clues that the hardworking authors wrote for us and then we have the gall to blame them for our own stupidity in not seeing them. Damned readers!
Sadly, there’s zero percentage in going after them and pointing out their stupidity no matter how much we writers ache to do so.3 Because this is the biggest power imbalance of all. Amateur reviewers on good reads or Amazon or Barnes & Noble or on their almost zero-trafficked blog are the least powerful criticism that can be made. Sometimes authors do attack them. I heard from a blogger who wrote a negative review of [redacted well-known author] and had said author set their fans on the blogger who was inundated with hate mail for months. Authors, DON’T DO THAT!
Once I had a reviewer who had written a not very nice review in a widely read trade magazine approach me at a crowded event to tell me - in detail - what exactly she didn’t like about my book.
I had *no* idea how to handle it. I stammered out a ‘thank you’ for reviewing the book, which now sounds suspiciously like ‘thank you sir, may I have another?’, and hurried away.
How extraordinarily rude. While I’ve never (thank, Elvis!) had anyone tell me in person about their hate for my books I’ve had reviewers write me with their lack of love. I have no idea what these people want from us authors. To make sure that we read their review? Why does that matter to them? Reviews of books are not for the authors, they’re for potential readers. So leave us authors alone! Thank you!
I have to admit that I miss the era of loud, passionate, messy literary feuds, so have been pretty entertained by this whole mess. Norman Mailer vs Gore Vidal, Tom Wolfe vs Updike/Mailer/Irving, Dale Peck vs everyone…those were the good old days. (Authors — and it seems important to note that Hoffman’s reviewer is also an author in her own right — still have plenty of books and authors that we despise, we just do our despising behind closed doors.) And this morning I discovered that after Alice Hoffman published a horrible review of Richard Ford’s “The Sportswriter,” Ford got a gun and shot a bunch of holes through Hoffman’s latest opus. (http://s7y.us/uqr) So maybe she can be forgiven for her misunderstanding of “appropriate” behavior!
Sure. Feuds can be extraordinarily entertaining. I enjoyed those spats mightily. You’ll note that most of them were between equals with roughly the same reputation and access to media. Most of the flare ups in the past few years have been well-known author going after much less well-known reviewer and/or punters on Amazon. Which I happen to think it’s flat out awful.
And while I enjoy those stoushes between equals, I enjoy them in the same way I do seeing what hideous outfit Chloe Sevigny or Gwyneth Paltrow are wearing right now. Fun for me, sure, but embarrassing for them. I enjoy their sartorial mistakes mightily just as I enjoyed Mailer and Vidal etc posturing. But I still think they’re arrogant self-obsessed drop kicks. I will always advise other authors not to follow their lead.
Yes, that is a joke.
And that’s a whole other thing. I have seen authors go berko over a starred review that had one negative phrase in it: “while occasionally overwrought”.
And, boy, do we.
0 Comments on Some More Incoherent Thoughts on the Author/Reviewer Relationship as of 6/30/2009 5:32:00 PM
When you tweet, who do u think of reading it? Followers, followed, public, best friends, etc? Who do you tweet *to*?
I am very curious about the responses.
It made me wonder, too, about blogging. Recently there was a slight and fairly dumb article in the New York Times about the astounding fact that most people who start blogging don’t continue. Scalzi excoriated it most entertaingly. Cause the interesting question isn’t why do people abandon blogs but why do people continue to blog?
I could tell you that I keep on blogging day after day after day because my publisher likes me to have an online presence. Problem is that’s not true. Blogging has very little impact on book sales. You have to have considerably more than 1,500 hits a day for it to translate into book sales.
I can point you to many writers blogs that are way more popular than mine whose authors’ books don’t sell any better than mine and sometimes much worse. I can also show you very unpopular blogs whose authors are huge bestsellers. There really is no correlation.
People point to John Scalzi’s Whatever as an example of a popular blog that translates into great book sales. He will tell you himself that he is the exception that proves the rule. He will also tell you that he does not blog in order to sell books—that’s just a cool side effect for him. He blogs cause he’s full of opinions and loves to share them.
Me too.
I also blog because I love your comments. Take yesterday’s post some of the library stories you shared made me cry. I think that thread may be one of my favourites.
But that doesn’t answer the question above. Who do I blog for? Who do I think is my audience?
I don’t blog for my family and friends, which is why there is no personal news here, and very little about my health or mood. I primarily blog about the business side of my life, i.e. my writing career as well as my interests. So I imagine my audience to be people who find my rantings and opinings interesting as well as some people who are fans of my books. But I don’t really write for them—I write for myself.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled when what I write interests other people too. But I’ve don’t post stuff I know to be popular which I happen not to be interested in. Hence no photos of cats.
In other words, if I had no audience I would still blog. Indeed for the first two years of this blog I pretty much had no audience. Didn’t stop me.
Who do you blog for? Who’s your audience?
3 Comments on Who do you blog for?, last added: 6/16/2009
Good girls are boring and whingey even if they do look a bit like Jennifer Lynn Barnes who is not in the least bit boring and knows more about monkeys than you do.
Bad girls are cynical and sad and usually dead by the end of the movie and may wind up in the Addams Family.
Walter Matthau is a very bad man.
Elvis’ hair gets messed up easily, this means he is virile but not bad, even if he accidentally kills someone.
It is not a good sign for a movie with not many songs if all the bits when people aren’t singing are boring.
Movies that were your favourite when you were little may turn out to only have1 camp value when you watch them as an adult. This may not be a bad thing. Especially if the songs are good.
Rewatched any movies lately that weren’t the way you remembered them?
Yes, I split that infinitive on purpose. Because I can.
Justine said, on 6/14/2009 1:45:00 PM
Justine said, on 6/14/2009 11:00:00 PM
More than a year ago Cylin Busby’s most excellent anthology First Kiss (Then Tell): A Collection of True Lip-Locked Moments came out. And it was very good. Still is! I am now posting my story from that antho., “Pashin’ or the Worst Kiss Ever,” in its entirety to give you a taste of [...]
This is for the people who have been spamming my last post with ads for their boy-friendly books.
Don’t.
I am well aware you only landed here because you googled “boy books” and are looking for somewhere to post your spam. I don’t accept paid advertising which does not mean I’m going to let you advertise for free.
The comments on this blog are for discussion. By all means recommend a book that you think is relevant to the discussion. I’m all ears for passionate recommendations of books people love when it’s relevant. But do not comment with an ad for your own book. It’s tacky, it’s boring, it adds nothing to the conversation, and I will delete your ad. If you do it again I will ban you from my blog.
That is all.
2 Comments on Commenting with an Ad for Your Book is Spam, last added: 6/30/2009
This is for the people who have been spamming my last post with ads for their boy-friendly books.
Don’t.
I am well aware you only landed here because you googled “boy books” and are looking for somewhere to post your spam. I don’t accept paid advertising which does not mean I’m going to let you advertise for free.
The comments on this blog are for discussion. By all means recommend a book that you think is relevant to the discussion. I’m all ears for passionate recommendations of books people love when it’s relevant. But do not comment with an ad for your own book. It’s tacky, it’s boring, it adds nothing to the conversation, and I will delete your ad. If you do it again I will ban you from my blog.
Lately there’s been a huge increase in spam here. The result of my current methods of combating it is that heaps of your comments are winding up in the moderation queue. As I have a very heavy work schedule at the moment I’m often not getting to those comments for hours at a time. Not good.
I’m thinking of installing one of those anti-spam word thingies where you have to type in a random word or grouping of letters to prove you’re not a spambot. However, I kind of hate them when they’re on other people’s blogs. They definitely put me off commenting.
How about youse lot?
Would you hate it if I added such a plug-in? Would you be okay with it if the words it generated were amusing and/or related to this blog? Like “quokka” or “mangosteen”?
Anyone got any other brilliant spam combating tactics?
2 Comments on Combating Spam, last added: 6/6/2009
Lately there’s been a huge increase in spam here. The result of my current methods of combating it is that heaps of your comments are winding up in the moderation queue. As I have a very heavy work schedule at the moment I’m often not getting to those comments for hours at a time. Not good.
I’m thinking of installing one of those anti-spam word thingies where you have to type in a random word or grouping of letters to prove you’re not a spambot. However, I kind of hate them when they’re on other people’s blogs. They definitely put me off commenting.
How about youse lot?
Would you hate it if I added such a plug-in? Would you be okay with it if the words it generated were amusing and/or related to this blog? Like “quokka” or “mangosteen”?
Anyone got any other brilliant spam combating tactics?
Justine said, on 6/6/2009 11:10:00 PM
Late breaking news: Liar has sold to Editora Record in Brazil, who are also the home of the Magic or Madness trilogy there. And for the first time in my career a book of mine has sold in Turkey! Liar has found a home at Artemis an imprint of Alfa Yayin Grubu. Yay! Liar will now be published in seven different countries: Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Taiwan, Turkey and the USA. Not bad for a book that isn’t out until October.
A couple of readers have asked me what this means exactly. How do books get sold to other countries? How does it all work?
Basically the world is divided up into various different territories for publishing rights. Those territories (more or less) correspond to different countries. Though notoriously the UK is under the delusion that many other countries are part of its territory. Newsflash to the UK: Your empire crumbled decades ago. Get over it!
When my agent, Jill Grinberg, sells one of my books the first rights she sells are North American (USA + Canada) and ANZ (Australia + New Zealand). Those are sold directly. Thus my agent gets 15% and I get the rest.1
Translation rights to my work are sold by my agent working with different sub-agents around the world. Which means that they split the agents’ commission with both my agent and the sub-agent taking 10% and me getting 80%. Some sub-agents handle more than one territory. I know of one who handles Spanish and Portuguese language sales in multiple countries, but most sub-agents work only in one territory, which is usually their home country.
The larger commission is no big deal because without agents working on your behalf you would not sell in other countries. The sub-agents are the people who know which publishing houses are after what kind of book, and who has the best translators, and they’re the ones who sort out the labyrinthine tax laws and tax arrangements between your home country and the country you’re selling into. Also, I don’t know about you, but I am not fluent in any of the languages spoken in any of the countries I’ve been sold in other than Australia and the US.2
I became very interested in foreign rights after my first visit to the Bologna Book Fair, where I met some of my foreign publishers, and saw the world-wide business of buying and selling rights to kids and teen books up close. I was totally fascinated to learn that the Netherlands is not big on fantasy, Brazil loves chicklit, and most of Eastern Europe loves science fiction. The US market is notorious for buying almost no translation rights at all. I wonder what the Australian YA market is known for buying?
I hope that helps you understand a bit more what I’m talking about when I jump up and down because Turkey just bought my book. Did I mention that I just sold in Turkey?
Yesterday’s post got a pretty overwhelming not really from most of my readers. Most of you do not lie about those five things. (I was made very happy by all the teenage non-drinkers. Yay, youse!)
Judging from your comments and my own experience here’s my suggestion of a top five:
That you didn’t do the thing your parents/teacher/boss busted you for
That your friends’ clothes/appearance looks fine
Your health in order to get out of school/work
Height
Weight
I have lied about all of these. But not about no. 1 in a very long time. Or about no. 3 and no. 4 in ages. Haven’t lied about no. 3 since I had a regular job. Sadly my no. 2 areas of lies is still going strong. But I don’t think of no. 2 as a lie so much as a difference in aesthetics that there’s no point in going into. I will never like t-shirts tucked into jeans or formal shorts or the colour yellow or espadrilles or gladiator sandals.
Is that any closer to a list of things most everyone has lied about? How many have you lied about these? What popular area of lying am I still missing out on?
1 Comments on What Do My Readers Lie About?, last added: 5/27/2009
Yesterday’s post got a pretty overwhelming not really from most of my readers. Most of you do not lie about those five things. (I was made very happy by all the teenage non-drinkers. Yay, youse!)
Judging from your comments and my own experience here’s my suggestion of a top five:
That you didn’t do the thing your parents/teacher/boss busted you for
That your friends’ clothes/appearance looks fine
Your health in order to get out of school/work
Height
Weight
I have lied about all of these. But not about no. 1 in a very long time. Or about no. 3 and no. 4 in ages. Haven’t lied about no. 3 since I had a regular job. Sadly my no. 2 areas of lies is still going strong. But I don’t think of no. 2 as a lie so much as a difference in aesthetics that there’s no point in going into. I will never like t-shirts tucked into jeans or formal shorts or the colour yellow or espadrilles or gladiator sandals.
Is that any closer to a list of things most everyone has lied about? How many have you lied about these? What popular area of lying am I still missing out on?
My blog has no copy editor, no proof reader, and no fact checker. It’s just me. Occasionally I’ll get Scott or one of my friends to proof a post, but not often. They’re busy. Even more rarely my readers will point out errors. Yesterday someone wrote and told me I’d misspelt Count Basie’s name on my bio page. *Blushes*. I was extremely grateful. That mistake had already been there close to a year! Who knows how many more such errors there are all over this blog?
I’m not a great speller and I find proper nouns especially difficult. The copy editors on my last two books, How To Ditch Your Fairy and Liar, found I’d spelled various of the characters names in two or more different ways. I hadn’t noticed. Apparently that’s because spelling is linked to visual memory and mine is crap.1
There are very few blogs out there that are copy edited or proofed or fact checked. Something I frequently forget even though I have a blog myself.
This is just to remind myself to try and be a little bit less credulous.
That is all. Resume your Friday night festivities or Saturday morning frolicks.2
Note that I have no idea where I got that factoid from and no idea if it’s true. Told you I had no fact checker.
Half my audience is back home in Oz and the rest here in the US of A or Europe.
0 Comments on Fact-checking, Spelling and Blogs as of 1/1/1900
Just read a most excellent article “These Foolish Things On Intimacy and Insignificance in Mobile Media” by Kate Crawford, which is forthcoming in Gerard Goggin & Larissa Hjort’s Mobile Technologies: From Telecommunications to Media. Basically Kate argues that a large part of Twitter’s appeal is the intimacy it provides. Allowing people to stay in touch and connected. That while it may look like an exchange of inanities—”I am eating bacon!” “I am getting on a bus.” “The cat just chundered.”—communities are being built and maintained.
Twitter has allowed me to have more of an idea of what a handful of my Australian friends are up to. Thus I have a new category of Oz friends I stay close to: in addition to my Oz friends who IM, I now have Oz friends who tweet.
I joined specifically to keep up with friends who are far away. But I will admit I was also curious about some of the celebrities on Twitter and initially followed many of my faves. And stopped following the majority really quickly. Except for Stephen Fry they were boring and/or self-involved. I’m not sure why I was surprised. Actors! Will I never learn? Well, okay, it wasn’t just actors who turned out to be deadly dull. There are some shockingly boring well-known comedians, writers, designers and artists. I won’t name them cause I’m not rude.1
It’s natural that most of the people I enjoy following are people I know well because it lends context and nuance to what they say. The other group I follow are people who are passionate about the same things I am passionate about books, YA, politics, weird stuff, zombies. So my choice of people to follow is not very different from the blogs I follow. And Twitter isn’t really that different from blogs, it’s just way more condensed.
On my blog.
2 Comments on A few more Twitter thoughts, last added: 4/28/2009
As some of you know my next book is set in New York City in the early 1930s. I’ve been reading many accounts of the Great Depression, learning what happened. The why it happened is a lot harder to understand than the effects. But the current world-wide financial crisis means that there are many people speculating about what happened back then and how it relates to now. Great for my novel!
I was fascinated by Background Briefing’s recent documentary about the emergence of business schools and their effect on corporate culture and its relationship to the current crisis: “MBA: Most Bloody Awful“. This program is genius and you must all listen to it!
It’s always struck me as strange that someone could walk into an industry, like say publishing, armed with nothing but a degree in management and started managing people without knowing anything about that industry, or what it is the people in publishing do. Why, yes, I have seen this.
I came into the publishing industry knowing a lot about books and reading. I’d even hung out with authors and editors and other publishing folks for many years before I sold my first books. And, yet, I knew almost nothing about the industry. And frankly five years later I’m still learning. So colour me skeptical that a total newcomer to the industry can walk in and start running it. Selling books is not the same as selling sprockets.1
Ditto for any industry. In the olden days people used to start at the bottom and work their way up. It made for bosses who knew everything about their company and their industry. It made for good management. According to the doco bringing in people trained in “management” with no hands on experience has been a disaster.
Which is not surprising—most people in most industries learn how to do their job on the job. A friend of mine’s a doctor. She said she learned more in her first year as a residency then the many years of her medical degree. And she’s learnt buckets more working in ER and as a GP over the last few years. So is some wet-behind-the-ears MBA type going to suddenly know how to manage a business in and industry they know nothing about?
How does all of this apply to my book? The 1930s is the beginning of the era when business schools such as Harvard’s were beginning to make inroads into general business culture. Okay, slightly tenuous. But, trust me, is all grist to my mill.
Or maybe I just like ragging on MBAs . . .
That goes either way. Of course, now I’m wondering what a sprocket is.
Justine said, on 4/28/2009 11:45:00 PM
I was actually looking for “Brush Off Your Shakespeare” cause it’s brilliant plus it’s clearly inspired by Damon Runyon who published many of his best stories in the 1930s and is thus within the period of my next novel, which makes it vaguely research-ish. Not to mention Runyon’s stories are almost all set in NYC. A highly imaginary NYC, I grant you, but still.
(Er, for those who don’t know my next novel is set in NYC in the 1930s. I’m only reading and watching and listening to 1930s stuff until the novel is written. I’m being extremely strict about it except for sometimes my interpretation of “1930s” gets a teeny tiny bit elastic.)
Sadly, I could not find a version of that genius song that I liked well enough to share with you. I know for some of you this might have been the first time you’d heard “Brush Off Your Shakespeare” and that experience must be PERFECT! (Especially for the Corialanus line.) So instead I’ve opted for “Always True To You In My Fashion”.
It’s also from Kiss Me Kate and thus also written by the fabulous Cole Porter (who wrote many of his best songs in the 1930s) and I love it muchly. It’s relevant to my research on account of I do believe there might have been women who were occasionally unfaithful in the 1930s and, um, it was written in 1948, which is not that far off the early 1930s.
Oh, never mind just enjoy:
Aren’t Ann Miller and Tommy Rall darling?
And just to push this slightly closer to the 1930s: have some lindy hopping featuring Frankie Manning. Yes, this footage is from 1941 but the lindy hop was invented in the 1930s, okay?
Just in case you didn’t see the link in the comments thread, I thought I would repost Cristina’s very droll reworking of the cover for Maureen Johnson’ Suite Scarlett.
Because I find it deeply disturbing I place it below the cut:
0 Comments on Cristina is funny as of 4/15/2009 7:08:00 PM
I started using Twitter in earnest at 9:16 AM on the 5th of April, 2009 (Eastern Standard USian time).
And it was good.
Since then I have tweeted around 15 times a day. And that’s only because I was restraining myself. Why did no one warn me how addictive the world of Twitter is? Damn your eyes!
I admit I was dubious. I signed on at first solely to follow two friends of mine back home in Sydney. Neither of whom blogs and we’re not very good at writing each other. It worked. I feel much more in touch with them than I had previously. Though, ironically, I’m now tweeting way more than they are. See? Even on Twitter I am verbose.1
Lots of bigclaims are being made for Twitter’s power of social networking. It can certainly spread news faster than sound. Yesterday’s amazonfail being an excellent example.
Turns out I like the 140 character constraint. Forces you to edit for clarity, which is an excellent skill and something I rarely practice here on my blog. Watch those extraneous prepositions, adverbs and adjectives disappear.
But mostly I like that it’s a huge roaming multi-threaded conversation. A multi-country, slowed down, many person IM conversation. The trick is remembering that it’s every bit as public as this blog.
So questions for those of you who Twitter:
What’s your take on Twitter? Why do you tweet? If you blog has it meant you blog less? Is that because it satisfies your blogging urge? Is it something you check in on every so often? Or do you follow it all day long? Are you in a field where you have to be on Twitter to keep tabs on what’s going on?
I is dead curious about your responses.
Look at me now: discussing Twiter in way more than 140 characters.
0 Comments on A Week of Tweeting as of 4/13/2009 11:30:00 AM
I know I said a while back that I would no longer be linking to reviews of my books. I’m making an exception today for the the very first review of Liar because I’m so grateful that Jenn Hartley’s review contains no spoilers. Bless you, Jenn.
Liar is the most complicated book I’ve written to date. It’s my first attempt at a psychological thriller and contains many twists and turns. I’m convinced that reading it will be a lot more interesting if you don’t know any of them ahead of time. I’d be really grateful if those of you who have an advanced copy would keep those reversals and surprises to yourself. If you’re bursting to talk about it you can always email me. Or Maureen Johnson she’s read it.
I know some people love to be spoiled but maybe you could just whisper a few spoilers in their ears rather than post it on your blogs? I really would be ever so grateful.
Thank you!
1 Comments on A request for those with Liar ARCs, last added: 4/14/2009
Thanks to everyone for playing along with mine and Scott’s joke yesterday. It was very kind of you.
Here’s how it happened:
Ever since I showed Maureen Johnson the US cover art for Liar she has taken to pushing her hair across her month and making her eyes go wide.
So I took a photo. A very bad photo. Then I thought it would be fun to make it look like the Liar cover and post it here claiming that my publisher had decided to change the cover. Sadly, I does not have photoshop on my computer so I gave it to Scott to do.
He ignored my instructions and invented the new Maureen Johnson book Weasel. Naughty Scott!
I laughed my arse off. Then I sent it to Maureen for permission to post. She said, “plz!” Then I posted, hoping you’d all enjoy the joke as much as we did.
My apologies to anyone who thought it was for real. Honestly we did not intend to trick anyone. Was solely for the giggles.
Oh noes! Another lying Maureen Johnson cover! She must be stopped!
And in late breaking news I have found the perfect way to stop her. Maureen Johnson has just publicly declared that if her next book: the paperback edition of Suite Scarlett (which comes out in cheap cheap paperback on 1 May 2009) hits the bestseller list she will GO TO TRAPEZE SCHOOL.
I encourage every single one of my readers to buy Suite Scarlett on 1 May. Even if you were thinking of buying one of my books. Don’t! Buy hers instead. I want her to suffer. I need her to suffer.
I wasn’t going to mention Maureen Johnson’s Blog Every Day Month (BEDA) thingie because I already blog every day and think those who don’t already are losers lucky not to be addicted to blogging the way I am. Seriously I shake if I don’t blog once a day. The only days I miss are when Scott drags me away to some benighted place without intramanet access. He claims these are “holidays” and I should be having “fun” on them. Where is the fun without my blog?
*Heh hem* I digress.
The point of this post is to publicly admit that what Maureen is doing this month is pretty amazing. See, Maureen doesn’t blog the way I do. Her shortest posts clock in at around one thousand words. I have posts that are in Twitter range. So my once-a-day blogging is not the same as her once-a-day epic essay + photos of Cary Grant.
What she’s doing is more akin to what I did in January when I answered all your writing questions and you tricked me by asking really hard ones that required acres of wordage to respond to. I got very little of my own writing done that month and by the end of it I was knackered. Don’t get me wrong I had fun but it was not as relaxing as my usual blogging. Youse lot made me THINK! Which is why it will be a very long time before I dedicate a month to answering publishing questions.1 Perhaps next time it’ll just be a week and I’ll stipulate that you can only ask yes/no questions.
So, I’m sorry for being mean, Maureen! Blog like the wind!2
Last week writers were invited to vent about agents at the Bookends literary agency blog. I assumed it would be published writers ranting about their bad agent experiences. I have never experienced bad agentry, but I have heard some scarifying stories. However, it was mostly unpublished writers. Some of their complaints were totally legitimate and made a lot of sense. But many of them were, um, somewhat astonishing.
They mostly boiled down to aspiring writers not understanding what it is that agents do. They seem to think an agent’s job is giving them feedback on their work and teaching them the ways of publishing. That isn’t any part of an agent’s job. Agents who provide that kind of feedback are doing it out of the goodness of their heart.
Even more aspiring authors seemed to be convinced that the main part of an agent’s job is finding new clients.
No, the main job of any agent is to look after their existing clients.
Which involves negotiating deals in multiple territories, for audio, media, electronic rights etc etc. That’s a LOT of contracts. Then they’re dealing with problems that come up between publisher and author. Bad edits. Bad covers. Late payments. Late manuscripts. Inaccurate royalty statements. Client’s editor being laid off. Their imprint dissolved. Book remaindered within less than a year. No paperback edition of hardcover. Author going crazy and turning in a book written in crayon on vellum. Editor going crazy and demanding all characters be changed into echidnas. Etc etc and so on.
My agent, Jill Grinberg, starts work early in the morning and keeps going till late at night. I’ve sent her emails at 10pm her time and she’s gotten back to me instantly. She’s had phone calls with me at all sorts of ungodly hours because I am in Sydney and she in New York City. Remember, I am just one of her many clients and no where near her most successful.
Yes, agents want to find the next big thing. But their pre-existing clients come first and take up the majority of their time. Trust me, when you have an agent you will be glad that’s how it works.
I get how much rejection hurts. It took me twenty years to get published. There was a lot of rejection on the way. It frequently made me furious. I was enraged by form letters. (I am not just a number!) I was enraged by personalised rejections that detailed what was wrong with my work. (Why are they so stupid and blind?!) I was enraged when the rejections took ages to come or didn’t come at all. (Why are they torturing me?) I was enraged by quick rejections. (What? It takes seconds to decide my work sucks? They can’t have actually read it!)
But really I was angry about not getting published. I saw lots of crap on the shelves. My book’s better than that! Why wouldn’t they publish me?!
It’s great that I believed in my writing even in the face of all that rejection. I encourage you, too, to believe. But I also know that many of the people rejecting me were right. My writing wasn’t ready. One of the rejections that hurt me the most was by an agent who said they thought I had talent and originality but they just weren’t enthusiastic enough.
Reader, I cried.
I know now that that agent was right to pass. I have writer friends who were signed by agents who weren’t enthusiastic enough about their work. In each case—after much unpleasantness—they wound up with a different agent. Ever been out with someone who wasn’t really into you? Not fun was it? It’s even worse when you’re with an agent who’s not that into you. Because they’ve got your dreams and hopes in their hands and they don’t really care.
An agent who passes cause they’re not sufficiently in love with your writing is DOING YOU A FAVOUR.
I know that’s hard to believe. But a good agent is going to be with you for the long haul. You want them to believe in your writing as much as you do. That’s what I have with my agent. It is a wonderful thing. When you find an agent that’s what I want you to have too.
Recently I observed that back home in Australia, the vast majority of books are published in paperback. Hardcovers are exceedingly rare. But here in the US of A there’s a huge emphasis on hardcovers.
When I first asked about it I was told that paperback originals don’t get reviewed. Thus the hardcover is more prestigious because it generates more attention. Many good reviews can lead to awards, and best book of the year listings, and lots of sales. A paperback original goes into the world unheralded and unreviewed and thus disappears into oblivion.
I’m not convinced this is as true as it once was or that prestige is as important as people think it is. I believe that fewer and fewer buyers of books are paying attention to what old media reviewers say. Partly this is because the book review section has been disappearing from newspapers all over the USA, just as newspapers have been disappearing.1 And partly because there is such a long lag time for reviews of YA in old media. Whereas there are blogs, whose reviews I respect and trust, reviewing YA before the books are even out.
How To Ditch Your Fairy is my best selling book. It had very few reviews in old media venues. It’s won no awards, nor been shortlisted for any, and has made precious few best book of the year lists. Magic or Madness won awards, was shortlisted for others, had starred reviews, and was very widely reviewed in old media places and made lots of best book of the year lists. HTDYF has already outsold MorM in hardcover even though it’s been out for five months and MorM’s been out for four years.2 I suspect (hope!) that HTDYF will do better in paperback.3
What HTDYF has had more than any of my other books is a smart publicity and marketing campaign4 that has generated plenty of word of mouth. I’m convinced that the word of mouth has especially been pushed along by all the blog coverage5 While HTDYF didn’t get much old media coverage, it was extremely widely reviewed in new media places. There are so many online reviews I’ve lost track of them all.6
The majority of bloggers don’t care whether a book debuts in hardcover or paperback. They are not going to refuse to review a paperback original because it’s not prestigious enough. They don’t think they’ll be sullied by its mere presence. They just care whether they like it or not. I suspect this partly because that’s how I feel after—all I’m a blogger who sometimes reviews YA—but mostly because I’ve seen it in action.
Debuting in paperback can be an enormous start to a series or a career. Off the top of my head I can think of two series that got a massive kick in the pants because they were paperback debuts: Scott’s Uglies series and Naomi Novik’s Temeraire books.7 At US$10 or less the first books in these highly addictive series were cheap, attractively packaged, and there was a less-than-a-year wait for the next book in the series, which was also a cheap paperback. Readers got hooked—at which point the evil publisher switched to hardcover.
Which leads me to the second reason publishers like hardcovers: the profit margin is higher. In order for a paperback to be profitable it has to sell vastly more copies than a hardcover book. How much more? An average royalty for hardcover is 10%, and for paperback 6%. So pbs are a smaller percentage of a smaller amount of money, which means on average you have to sell three times as many to earn out. Let me show you the maths: Say you have a $10 pb, that’s 60c per copy. If the advance was $20,000 you’d have sell more than 33,333 copies to earn out. If your hc retails for $17, you’d only have to sell 11,764 hardcovers.
That’s a huge difference and a big incentive for both publisher and author to want hardcover. In fact, I think this is the only solid argument for going with a hardcover.
However, you’ll only earn out faster if the hardcover sells. When a hc costs close to twice what a pb costs people are less likely to buy them—especially in the middle of a recession.8Book sales are down across the board in the USA. I predict that if sales keep going the way they are9—hardcovers down; paperbacks down a bit, steady or, in some cases, climbing—we’re going to see a lot more paperback originals.
Overall, that’s probably a good thing, especially for debut authors. And also for series where the books are already written—that way the books can come up cheaply and in quick succession. This has long been a successful formula for romance and mysteries. I won’t be surprised if the USA winds up like Australia and the UK with very few hardcovers at all.10
Here’s one reason it can be a good thing: Guess what frequently happens to books that don’t sell in hardcover? They aren’t published in paperback. They don’t get their second shot. This has happened to many wonderful books, which despite awards and glowing reviews didn’t sell, and thus the publisher decides that a paperback version is not viable. Holly Black’s first book Tithe didn’t sell well in hardcover, but sold spectacularly in paperback. What if her publisher hadn’t taken the risk?
On the other hand, if a book is a paperback original that’s typically the only chance it gets. If it doesn’t do well then that’s it. At least with hardcover a book has a pretty good shot at a second life as a paperback. And often it will go from hc to trade pb to mass market pb. Three chances to go out there and sell.11
As you can see it’s a complicated set of decisions a publisher has to make when they’re figuring out whether to go hardcover or paperback. You have to sell way more copies for pbs to make a profit. But expensive hcs can kill a book. Keep in mind that the majority of books do not earn out.
I’d love to hear what youse lot think. I’m especially interested to hear from those making this decision and from those of you who’ve had different experiences in one format over the other.
And, no, I don’t think that’s a good thing.
Remember though surpassing Magic or Madness’s sales is a very low bar.
Especially with it’s fabulous new cover. Hint: look at the top of the left-hand side bar. Or go here for a bigger view.
Thank you, Bloomsbury!
Bloomsbury was excellent at spreading the ARCs of HTDYF far and wide.
Which, let me tell you, is a marvellous feeling.
Being a paperback series had a lot to do with the success of Gossip Girls, A List, etc.
Or depression or whatever you want to call what the world is experiencing right now.
I know this link leads to an article on sf book sales but all its links go to reports of sales across the board. It was the most recent round up I could find.
Judging from the foreign language editions of mine and Scott’s books I’d say most countries in the world are predominantly paperback.
Though usually the third life in mass market pb is because it sold well in trade.
0 Comments on Hardcover versus Paperback Redux as of 1/1/1900
A while back one of you wonderful commenters recommended the books of Thorne Smith as fun examples of 1930s NYC fiction. I have been reading much Thorne Smith of late and his books are strange and wonderful and full of much usefulness for my research. He wrote Topper which was turned into a marvellous movie of the same name with Cary Grant and Constance Bennett.
Another reader recommended Been Rich All My Life a documentary about the Apollo Theater dancers of the 1930s, which was truly wonderful and made me cry, and also gave me many leads. Because I am at the very beginning of my Harlem research I am embarrassed to confess that I had not heard of Small’s Paradise, a black-owned big nightclub in Harlem, which was also the only integrated nightclub and is now a school. I think Smalls will be making an appearance in the 1930s novel.
Now of course I can’t find either of the comments where those recommendations were made so I can’t find who to thank. All I can hope is that the two of you read this post and put up your hand. In the meantime: THANK YOU!
While I’m at it thanks to all the lovely folks who’ve been sending me links to 1930s sites and other tips and suggestions for the research for what is fast becoming the biggest book I have ever written. So much cool stuff to include! You’re all wonderful!
Please keep the suggestions coming. I’m especially interested in documentaries about the period. Liz Bray, one of the fabulous Alien Onions, told me about the 1930s in colour series that I managed to just miss in Australia and is no longer available on BBC’s iPlayer. But I will get my hands on it. I will!
Sometimes I have to pinch myself on account of the insane amount of fun I’m having with the research and writing this book. Tis almost too fabulous.
Thanks, all!
0 Comments on Thank you as of 1/1/1900
Justine said, on 3/28/2009 11:13:00 PM
Here’s a photo of the view from our new Sydney digs at night. Twas taken by Stephen Dunbar on the 6th of March:
And here’s the same view taken during Earth Hour by my dad:
I wish I’d been home to see it.
Justine said, on 3/31/2009 8:56:00 AM
Me and Scott are in Houston for TLA (Texas Library Association). Tis much warmer than NYC. W00t! Also we’ll get to hang out with many teen librarians.1 Always a good thing.
Another w00t worthy thing: I have just learned that the ARC (advances readers’ copies) of Liar have made it to TLA. Yee hah!2 I have not actually seen it myself. So I’m eager to get my hands on a copy. Well, not eager so much as afraid. I know I’ll just open it up and go, “Crap. Typo. Also that section really doesn’t belong there. I need to move it. Another typod. Also I’m not sure this minor character’s got the right name. Perhaps I should have called them Rexford? What was I thinking! Crap. Yet another typo. And another.” Etc.
But I’m excited that people who aren’t my agent, friends, or publishers will soon be having a squizz at it. Liar is unlike anything I’ve ever written before and especially not like How To Ditch Your Fairy. Thus I am dead curious to see how people respond. I hope no one throws things at me.
Admin note: Sorry for everyone whose comments were held up in moderation yesterday. Wifi access was sketchy. I believe I have set everyone’s comment free at this time. Let me know if you still can’t find yours.
To be clear, I mean librarians who specialise in books, manga, anime, etc for teenagers, rather than librarians who are teenagers.
I am in Texas, after all. Though maybe it’s not spelled “yee hah”. That looks wrong.
I hate to be the one to say it, but my dear friend, John Scalzi, is telling lies. He claims that authors aren’t machines.
So, not true. We’re all robots. Every single one of us.
Especially Maureen. She is one of the screaming author models.
Scalzi, himself, is one of the lazy author models. I know this because I am too. Once or twice we’ve gotten through cons by swapping out parts. (There’s not always time to get a tune up in the middle of a busy con.) It’s one of the bonuses of hanging out with same prototype robots.
I hope that’s cleared things up for everyone.
3 Comments on Authors are humans! Yeah, right. Tell us another one., last added: 3/2/2009
I shall be brief for the internets is expensive and wobbly.
Organisation: superlative. The PWF crew know that authors are a hapless lot and they have kept us on course and on time. Why, I have not gotten lost or been late for a single event. Bless them all!
I have met too many wonderful writers to name them all but I particularly enjoyed meeting Barry Jonsberg and his wife Nita who love the cricket as much as I do. There was much discussion of the South Africa v Australia and West Indies v England tests that are currently unfolding.
For the first time in my career I wound up talking to under twelve year olds as opposed to over twelve year olds, which was dead interesting. I was asked many questions that I’ve never been asked before. Also my jokes that knock ‘em dead when they’re a bit older did not always fly with the younger set. Fortunately, they laughed at many jokes that hitherto only I have found funny. It made me really want to write a book that skews even younger than How To Ditch Your Fairy. It will involve quokka.
Thanks to everyone who came out to see me. Thanks for the great questions and comments and stories of your fairies and curses. I especially loved the girl who has a sunshine fairy.
And now (for me) it is over and I wend my way back home. Later!
Justine said, on 3/1/2009 8:23:00 PM
So, this is very weird but I’ve had three people write to ask if it’s true that I changed hotels in Perth in order to watch the South Africa v Australia test.
Yes, it’s true. The Duxton did not have Fox 3, the Hyatt did. What else could I have done?
Justine said, on 3/2/2009 7:27:00 AM
It’s pretty bad, isn’t it, that one of my favourite aspects of my 1930s NYC/USA research is the hilarious names I keep coming across.
Readers, I admit that I laughed for about half an hour. And then I made the mistake of telling Scott about Monsieur Tugwell. More laughter.
For the record, Mr Tugwell was a dead interesting bloke. A member of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Brain Trust and thus a key contributor to the New Deal.
Inspired by how much fun I’ve had with the month of writing requests I’ve decided to make a few changes around here. Basically I’m no longer blogging about stuff I think I should blog about. From now on I only talk about what I want to talk about.
I always figured that I had to let you know when my books get good reviews etc. even though I find writing those posts the most boring thing in the world. Not to mention embarrassing. I always feel like I’m saying, “Hey look at me! I’m fabulous!” My heart was never in it. Thus there will be no posting about reviews of any of my books unless the reviewers raises an interesting point I want to riff on. If you’re interested in that kind of thing you can find pullquotes for each of my books in their review section. I will continue to add them as they come in.
Note: My not blogging about reviews does not mean that I’m against other writers doing so. I’m not criticising any of you. I find some writers’ discussions of their reviews fascinating, some a train wreck1, and some unreadably dull. Just like blogging about any subject really. I would never blog about cakes and yet Cake Wrecks is one of my favourite blogs.
More and more readers of this blog are here, not because they like my books, but because they like this blog. So overall I will be blogging less about the publicity aspects of my career. Though I will continue to bitch and moan and be rapturous over my struggles and joys in writing those books.
I’ll also continue to let you know about upcoming events because otherwise how will I get to meet you? But you can always check here for details.
And nothing can stop me posting about other editions of my books. Because that’s my favourite thing about being a published writer: I has books in different languages and different covers! Bliss! Joy! Happiness! For example, my foreign rights agent, Whitney Lee, just sent me links with the Japanese covers of Magic or Madness and Magic Lessons and they’re fabulous!
I love that Reason is wearing the outfit I describe her wearing and that Tom is surrounded by fabric. It’s as if the cover designer had actually read the books! Made my day! Whatcha reckon about these covers? I still love the German ones best, but these are up there.
Speaking of great covers. Just wait till you see the cover for the paperback edition of How To Ditch Your Fairy. It’s the best cover I’ve ever had. Bless you, Bloomsbury!
Though that’s still fascinating.
1 Comments on Tiny change + Japanese covers, last added: 2/22/2009
W00t! Just back from chatting with Simmone Howell at the State Library of Victoria in front of a fabulous audience of students, teachers and librarians. It were good. I met two of my blog readers: Joey & Tez! Thank you for the note, Tez! Lovely to meet you both!
A whole bunch of genius writers also showed up to support us: Kate Constable, Karen Healy, Melina Marchetta, Penni Russon and Kirsty . Not to mention Lili Wilkinson who organised the event and introduced us most eloquently.
I think the event went well. It was a little bit tricky because I am a blabbermouth and the fabulous Simmone Howell is not. Thus I had to work very hard not to eat up all her talking time. But I think I managed. I hope I managed. Mental note: MUST LET OTHER PEOPLE SPEAK.
I especially enjoyed hearing Simmone talking about going to a private school after she was asked to leave her public school. I wish she’d talked a bit more about that. I find other people’s miserable school days fascinating especially if they have a secret bogan past.
The audience was attentive and laughed at all the right places as well asking most excellent questions. If this is what typical Aussies audiences are like I think I’m going to have a blast on this tour.
In other news there’s some very very good advice from Cory Doctorow about how to be productive writing despite the dread distractions of teh interwebs. Particulary this bit:
Realtime communications tools are deadly. The biggest impediment to concentration is your computer’s ecosystem of interruption technologies: IM, email alerts, RSS alerts, Skype rings, etc. Anything that requires you to wait for a response, even subconsciously, occupies your attention. Anything that leaps up on your screen to announce something new, occupies your attention. The more you can train your friends and family to use email, message boards, and similar technologies that allow you to save up your conversation for planned sessions instead of demanding your attention right now helps you carve out your 20 minutes. By all means, schedule a chat—voice, text, or video—when it’s needed, but leaving your IM running is like sitting down to work after hanging a giant “DISTRACT ME” sign over your desk, one that shines brightly enough to be seen by the entire world.
Must disable IM. Must do it immediately.
How about that? One blog post but two resolutions. Wish me luck!
“Write what you know” is one of the most frequent pieces of writing advice. Problem is, it’s rubbish. As Cat Sparks discusses at length in this excellent post:
We’ve all heard that old adage ‘write what you know’. Well, that’s a damn fine idea if you happen to be an articulate astronaut, outback adventurer, brain surgeon, fashionista, rock star, molecular biologist or trapeze artist. But if, like me, you’re just another white middle class wage slave, maybe you want to rethink that hoary old chestnut. Because maybe we just aren’t that interesting and maybe what we know about is duller than a public service tea break. I have developed a better idea. Find something you don’t know much about, learn it up and run with the baton from there.
Almost every book I’ve written has involved me doing research. Obviously, I did that for my two non-fic books. But also for my novels. The Magic or madness trilogy has a protag, Reason Cansino, who’s a mathematical genius. I am not. I can barely add up. I had to learn about Fibonaccis, prime numbers, and many other mathematical concepts that I barely grasped and have now completely forgotten, but hopefully make sense and worked in those three books. I’ve had some maths fiends write and tell me how much they appreciated Reason’s mathsiness. Those are the compliments that mean the most to me because that was by far the hardest part of writing the trilogy. I was writing stuff I didn’t understand. Or only barely. And only for long enough to write those bits of the book.
None of my novels are about people who are like me. Charlie in How To Ditch Your Fairy is a jock. I love sport, but I’ve never played that much and have never excelled. I would never have made it into a sports high school, even if I’d had the talent, cause I don’t have the discipline, and I really hate being told what to do. Charlie loves it. Rules make her happy, being at the strictest, most irrational high school in the world makes her happy. It would have driven me nuts. I would have been expelled within a week. Sometimes I think Charlie is the character I’ve written who is least like me. She has little intellectual curiosity, she’s happy with how things are, she loves rules, and she’s very very disciplined. Writing her was a revelation—I wound up liking and even understanding her. Whereas if we’d been at school together, I doubt we’d have had anything to talk about. Charlie doesn’t read or watch tellie and she doesn’t have much of an imagination.
If I’d've stuck to writing what I know, I wouldn’t have written any of those novels.
That’s not to say that I use nothing I know. Sometimes I give characters aspects of myself. Reason has spent time on indigenous settlements, so did I. Tom (also from the trilogy) has a father who’s a sociologist, so are both my parents. Tom in the trilogy loves fashion; so do I. But we’re still different. I’m challenged to get a button onto a shirt; Tom can make any item of clothing from scratch. So it required research to make his fashion prowess believable.
For me, one of the great pleasures of writing novels is exploring worlds I don’t know. I didn’t know anything about New Avalon when I began HTDYF. It’s an amalgam of places I’ve been, but it became its own city. Not like anywhere else. I didn’t know it until I wrote it. But I especially love learning about the characters I populate my books with. None of them have ever turned out the way I thought they would. They’ve all forced me to stretch as a writer, to learn things I didn’t know—about mathematics, about being an athelete, about being someone other than myself. It’s a gift to get to live in someone else’s head for awhile. It’s why I kept writing for twenty years without being published. It’s why I will keep writing long after my career has dried up. And it’s why I’m so bewildered by those writers who keep writing the same book over and over again. Maybe I should write a novel about that kind of a writer so I can figure it out?
Forget about “write what you know”. Or, rather, don’t be limited by that injunction. One of the scariest things I encountered on my tour was when I was being shown around a lovely school and I was introduced to all the different grades, even kindergarten, and in one class, second grade, I think, the teacher told her students that I was a writer:
“She writes stories for a living!”
The kids looked a bit bemused by this information but smiled and waved at me. I smiled and waved back.
“When you were their age,” the teacher asked me, “you wrote about your own experiences, didn’t you?”
“Oh, no,” I said immediately, “I wrote about dinosaurs and wizards and witches and monsters and—”
The teacher cut me off even as many of the kids were giggling. “Yes, but don’t you agree that it’s much better to learn to write from your own experiences?”
I don’t think that at all. I was horrified. So horrified that I just stared at her, not able to articulate my response. I don’t think anyone noticed because someone realised we were running late and I was led away. But later that day I made it a point to talk about how important and fun it is to write about stuff you don’t know, and that the way to do that is to make it into something you do know.
For example, maybe you have an excellent idea for a story about a kid whose mum is an elephant trainer? But you don’t know anything about elephants or what goes into training them. Start reading up on it and once you have go to the zoo nearest you. See if you can interview the zoo keeper about how they keep their elephants. Ask yourself lots of questions: How happy are elephants to be trained? How much longer do they live in the wild than in captivity? Would your character have an ambivalent attitude to their mum’s job?
That’s a lot to learn. Maybe you can ground your story by setting it somewhere you’re familiar with, or giving your protag some aspect of yourself. I doubt anyone writes a story that’s entirely made up of stuff they don’t know. In fact, really once you’ve researched it, you do know it.
Hmmm, I think I’ve come full circle: write what you know.
But remember that what you know includes everything you’ve learned, all your research, everything you’ve read, or heard or seen. So the more you read, and hear and see, the more you have to write about.
0 Comments on Write what you know, NOT! as of 12/29/2008 1:45:00 AM
I always figured that I had to let you know when my books get good reviews etc. even though I find writing those posts the most boring thing in the world. Not to mention embarrassing. I always feel like I’m saying, “Hey look at me! I’m fabulous!” My heart was never in it. Thus there will be no posting about reviews of any of my books unless the reviewers raises an interesting point I want to riff on. If you’re interested in that kind of thing you can find 
More and more readers of this blog are here, not because they like my books, but because they like this blog. So overall I will be blogging less about the publicity aspects of my career. Though I will continue to bitch and moan and be rapturous over my struggles and joys in writing those books.
Yesterday I discovered that my husband is evil.
Remember way back when people said they’d donate money to New York Public Library if I learned to lindy hop? I said that I would have my dancing verified by three YA authors approved by John Green who was the first person to offer money to charity if I learned to dance. Well, that’s not necessary any more.
Because Scott secretly shot video of some of our lessons. Utter, utter, utter bastard! He was going to make a video and put it up on youtube! Behind my back!
Fortunately, I caught him looking at some of the footage. But since he was nice enough to not shoot our faces, and we’re running out of time to gather up YA witnesses, I decided that we would make the vid together.
But just so you know, Scott, YOU ARE EVIL. ALL TRUST IS GONE.
Some disclaimers for people who know from lindy hop. We’re knows we has a long way to go. We’re working on bending knees, sticking out arses, holding frame, chasseing, pulsing and etc. The most recent footage included is from three weeks ago. We’re already way better than the vid demonstrates. Honest.
Many many people have been asking how I like learning lindy hop given how much I really really really really didn’t want to do it.
I love lindy hop.
[A minutes pause while you all tell me you told me so.]
It’s the most fun I’ve had in ages. I’m loving learning something that requires my full attention. When I’m dancing I’m not thinking about my novel or bills that have to be paid or anything except where my feet and bum and arms should be. While I’m learning to dance I’m not even slightly stressed. Scott feels the same way. We will be continuing our lessons. We both want to get good at it.
One of my objections did turn out to be true: I have to ice my left foot after every lesson. Lindy hopping is not kind to plantar fasciitis.
We got around my other fear—of making a fool of myself in front of total strangers—by taking private lessons. I honestly don’t think I would have made it otherwise. Also private lessons means learning faster and having all your mistakes picked up and corrected quicker. We have had two awesome teachers: Jessi and Stephanie. Thank you!
We have even gone out and danced in public. (Once.) Last Sunday under the stars on Pier 54. It was magical. Yes, we are addicted.
Here’s proof that I’ve been learning to lindy hop:
If you pledged money now’s the time to pay. You can donate to the NYPL here. Even if you didn’t make a pledge you can still donate to the NYPL or your local library wherever you may be. Libraries all over the world need our help.