Those of you who know me may or may not know that I've been writing for 12 years.
I started in 2004 when my daughter was born and I had 5 months of paid maternity leave. I was immediately hooked and haven't looked back since.
I've had a tough road in publishing. I've written about 9 books over 12 years rejected by agents and editors. I had an amazing agent and then mutually parted ways.
I ended up indie pubbing my Nature of Grace series (before it was cool) and worked hard to sell over 100,000 copies. I also worked hard to rise above the stigma of self-pubbing and turn off all the naysayers and criticism I received from many. TO be honest, I worked through many tears to get where I am. I stopped writing for 6 months and almost gave up at times, but I found my way back to loving writing again.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE indie pubbing and still do. It was the best decision I ever made (besides my husband :) But I always wanted a traditional deal. Whether I felt I needed to be legitimized or that I needed to prove it to myself or whether it was because I wanted to be a hybrid author and do both indie and traditional, I don't know.
But one day I got super lucky and found a new agent (my agent soulmate) and we have worked hard together to make that dream a reality.
So today, after 9 books, 2 agents, 12 years of writing, and months of holding in a secret and avoiding talking to anyone because I can't keep secrets very well...I can finally announce my first traditional deal. :) And I get to see my name in Publisher's Weekly - a dream come true.
And what's even better, it's with my best friend,
Kimberly Derting (author of the Body Finder series).
=========
Virginia Duncan at Greenwillow Books preempted world rights, in a two-book deal, to a picture book series called Luna and the Scientific Method! by Kimberly Derting and Shelli Johannes-Wells. The first book is set for fall 2017. Laura Rennert at Andrea Brown Literary represented Derting, and Lara Perkins, also at Andrea Brown, represented Johannes-Wells. Rennert said the series is about a “science-loving, question-asking girl” who discovers that “scientific inquiry... can lead to a lot of fun and adventure.” Derting (the Body Finder series) and Johannes-Wells (who uses the pseudonym S.R. Johannes and is the author of the Nature of Grace series) will be writing the series together; an illustrator for the books has yet to be chosen.
==========
We have no idea who will be illustrating our picture book babies, but what I can say is that Kim and I are crazy-excited to be working with Virginia Duncan, the publisher at Greenwillow, and her amazing team to bring our feisty, science-loving girl, LUNA, and her love science to girls around the world.
To me, this book is more than a traditional deal. More than a book. LUNA is a chance for us to make a difference in the lives of many future scientists to be. :)
Special shout out to our partner's in crime - Laura Rennert, Lara Perkins, and Virgina Duncan/Greenwillow for believing in me and Kim... and LUNA.
Because...
Science + Girls = AWESOME-SAUCE
YAY!!!!
Don't give up on your dreams - ever - they can happen.
It just might take some time. :)
Yay!!!
Sailor Moon will always hold a special place in my animation loving heart.
Background was referenced from: http://yuninaoki.deviantart.com/
Two books I read recently in my ongoing LGBT reading challenge — Nancy Garden’s ANNIE ON MY MIND and Julie Anne Peters’s LUNA — employ the same interesting technique: the narrator-protagonist is really telling you the story, as evidenced by their struggling to remember particular details.
It’s more pronounced in ANNIE ON MY MIND, where the narration repeatedly includes passages like,
I remember we were both watching the sun slowly go down over one end of the beach, making the sky to the west pink and yellow. I remember the water lapping gently against the pilings and the shore, and a candy wrapper — Three Musketeers, I think — blowing along the beach. Annie shivered.
Sometimes — I can’t find a good example — Garden has the narrator Liza trying, and failing, to remember details that are important to her (who put their hand on the other’s arm first), even while she remembers other things that don’t matter. You get a strong sense that the story is her actively constructing her memories for you.
And you get a sense that she’s really explaining things to herself, as much as to you, when she adds narrative commentary like, “But maybe — and I think this is true — maybe we also just needed more time.”
When Garden isn’t highlighting the imperfections of Liza’s memory, or her struggle to make sense of it, she’s sometimes drawing attention to the fact that she does remember, as in this passage:
I nodded, trying to smile at her as if everything was all right — there’s no reason, I remember thinking, why it shouldn’t be — and I sat down on the edge of Annie’s bed and opened the letter.
Which, for me, pulls up that recognizable feeling of knowing something is wrong but pretending to yourself that it isn’t, far more than if Garden had simply told us that that’s how Liza felt. For some reason, the fact that she remembers feeling that way matters.
It actually reminded me of nothing so much as a moment toward the very end of the pilot episode of MY SO-CALLED LIFE. Angela and her mother reconcile after their fight over her hair (which she has dyed “crimson glow,” and which her mother says looks like it “had died — of natural causes”). The scene ends with Angela’s voiceover narration, “I fell asleep right there — I must have been really tired.”
MSCL does not, in general, have WONDER YEARS-style narration, where older Kevin Arnold is looking back; most of the narration is real-time. And partly, this was the pilot and they were probably still figuring out the limits of their template, but it always stands out to me as, I think, the only example of Older Angela thinking back. And it’s funny because it’s such an utterly banal thing to remember!
I think that’s what I liked about the technique in both of these books… it’s a convention of fiction that the narrator has this obscenely good memory, and you accept it for the sake of getting the story. Garden, and to a lesser extent Peters, break that convention and make their narrators into …people narrating, instead.
Posted in Annie On My Mind, Garden, Nancy, LGBT reads, Luna, On Genre, Peters, Julie Anne, Shades of My So-Called Life
Just finished Julie Ann Peters’s LUNA — which I liked, and about which I will have more to say this week — and was struck by two crutch words she uses, as physical descriptions, over and over: someone’s eyes widening — generally to express sarcastic intent or signal someone to stop something — and someone’s “spine fusing.”
The second stood out to me because the first time, it struck me as a nice description of someone stiffening; by the third or fourth time, though, I was over it. And the first was noticeable because I have different associations with eyes widening, so all the many usages of this felt odd.
Do you notice crutch words when you read? There was one that drove me mad in TWILIGHT (especially, as I recall, in NEW MOON), but now I’m blanking on what it was. Googling turned up a different one of Meyer’s crutches I can attest to — Bella “glaring” at Edward.
And writing this post, I can see what one of my own crutch phrases is — something “striking me.” (I edited a few out.)
Posted in Luna, Meyer, Stephenie, Peters, Julie Ann, Twilight series
I lost my Luna, the Moon, this morning
Luna color chocolate con cara de caramelo
I lost her this morning
Luna my dog
I lost her among the ancient trees and the newborn moss.
I lost her on the mountains
where the deer runs and
the cougar hides
I lost her because she was afraid
Afraid she was of two wooly dogs
like lions
who chased her away
I didn’t even have time
to tell her
that I would never let
anybody hurt her
Instead she was gone
running towards the
forbidden forest
where the magic creatures inhabit
Did any of them see my Luna?
I called my Luna many times.
I called her like Coyote calls at night
crying for his moon
I called my Luna
But she didn’t come back
and inside the forest
no creature could tell me
which way she had gone
Luna
Luna?
Is that you?!
Back in the streets she was found
looking for her way home!
I licked her face and chewed on her ears
And then asked her to tell me
Please tell, Luna, tell me—about the magical things she saw
and the animals she talked to
But so far
Luna just licks my hands
and reminds silent
like the moon hiding above us
It’s been a while since we read any fairy tales but our local library has recently added a goodly number of fairy tale books to its collection so we thought we’d delve in. We came home with an armful… some of them are traditional, others are modern (re)tellings or parodies.
I knew that Jon Scieszka’s The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales and The Frog Prince Continued would both go down well – they are funny and wittily illustrated (by Lane Smith and Steve Johnson respectively); and both depend on the kind of superior knowledge that children delight in - all the stories would be somewhat lost in the telling if you didn’t already know the originals.
The Lost Happy Endings by Carol Anne Duffy and illustrated by Jane Ray was visually irresistible. Duffy’s rich eloquence also lives up to all expectations: but a word of caution. Although this is a new story, she takes the fairy tale genre back to its grass-roots level. No wishy-washiness here. The retribution meted out to the thieving witch is absolute. It is more suitable for slightly older children: and should be cherished for that, for it sometimes seems that the older children get, the harder it is to find beautifully illustrated picture books for them. Certainly both my children relished both the pictures and the wonderful, descriptive language and each bore the book off to read independently after I’d read it to them.
There were several anthologies of traditional fairy tales to choose from and I have to admit I was slightly dubious as to how my boys would take to several nights in a row of traditional “happy-ever-after” tales: they assure me every time romance is mentioned that all that stuff is yeuch… But of course, I had fallen into the trap of equating fairy-tale with romantic and there is so much more to the traditional stories than that. Anthea Bell’s name is a talisman for me so her translation of Henriette Sauvant’s selection of Rapunzel and other Magic Fairy Tales was the obvious choice (helped by the surreal cover illustration)– and has been bourne out. We have so far enjoyed stories we know well, as well as come across some new to us all.
For twenty years, Jane Ray has been dazzling the children’s book world with rich and exotic illustrations for stories that include fairy tales, cultural and biblical stories, Shakespeare and more. She’s become involved in promoting awareness of green issues and the inclusion of children with disabilities in books as part of the In The Picture project. In March of this year, Ms. Ray will publish The Apple Pip Princess, her second book as both an author and illustrator.
On this edition of Just One More Book, Mark speaks with Jane Ray about museums for inspiration, exploring the darker aspects of stories and what we can expect in The Apple Pip Princess.
Books mentioned:
Related resources:
Jane Ray books reviewed on Just One More Book:
Tags:
childrens books,
interview,
Jane Raychildrens books,
interview,
Jane Ray
Author: Jeanette Winterson (on JOMB)
Illustrator: Jane Ray (on JOMB)
Published: 2004 Bloomsbury Publishing (on JOMB)
ISBN: 0747563470 Chapters.ca Amazon.com
Crammed* with curiosities and humourous details, this gorgeously illustrated and leisurely told fairy tale reminds us of the perils of reckless consumption and the priceless pleasures of good company.
Other books mentioned:
Tags:
childrens book,
Jane Ray,
Jeanette Winter,
Naples,
Podcast,
review,
The King of Caprichildrens book,
Jane Ray,
Jeanette Winter,
Naples,
Podcast,
review,
The King of Capri
Following on from Charlotte’s post the other day, I thought I would put together a list of a few of the books my family loves, which focus on that special bond between grandchildren and their grandparents.
I have already talked about the Katie Morag books, in which both her grandmothers are central. I wish we’d known about Nigel Gray’s A Balloon for Grandad when we lived abroad; as it is, we discovered it recently in our local library. Illustrated by one of my favorite illustrators, Jane Ray, it deals in such an uplifting way with the separation which is sometimes inevitable when generations live a long way from each other. Then there are Ana Baca and Anthony Accardo’s Benito books – look out for a review of their latest bilingual title Benito’s Sopaipillas/ Las Sopaipillas de Benito in next week’s update of PaperTigers (I’ll add the link to this post when it’s available).
We also love Raymond Briggs’ typically quirky story The Puddleman. You have to be an indulgent grandfather to allow your grandson to lead you around by a dog-lead attached to your wrist and call you “Collar” - but the hint at the end, where Briggs thanks “Miles” for “the naming of puddles, Collar” etc. would suggest that he had real-life, grandson inspiration for the story! It’s a loving, imaginative tale that also provides a particularly special read-aloud experience. Since it is a cartoon strip, you can’t just read it as a narrative; you have to share the interpretation of the pictures alongside the reading of the dialogue and build it up together.
Sometimes we need books to help us talk about the illness or death of a beloved grandparent. (more…)
Told By: Kathy Henderson
Illustrator: Jane Ray
Published: 2006 Candlewick Press (on JOMB)
ISBN: 0763627828 Chapters.ca Amazon.com
This warmly worded and intricately illustrated epic enchants our daughters with its exotic beauty and its underlying themes of kindness and generosity, in spite of its war and gore and shark-toothed, eagle-taloned Anzu birds.
You can find more information about cuneiform writing here.
Tags:
childrens book,
cuneiform,
fran hazelton,
Jane Ray,
Kathy Henderson,
Lugalbanda,
Podcast,
review,
Sumerian,
Urekchildrens book,
cuneiform,
fran hazelton,
Jane Ray,
Kathy Henderson,
Lugalbanda,
Podcast,
review,
Sumerian,
Urek
.jpeg?picon=2058)
.jpg?picon=380)
Crutch words suck to read, but they’re so hard to catch in your own stuff! I think there are programs out there to help you catch phrases/words that are overused, but I can’t remember what they’re called.