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Today, I want to acknowledge that sometimes a novel is not like a city at all.
I think most regular readers of this blog know that my debut novel, Ivory and Bone, releases tomorrow, June 7. These last few months leading up to the on-sale date have been a very exciting, sometimes terrifying, often exhausting time. Over the past few days—and especially today, on the eve of the launch—I’ve been forced to admit that there is another apt metaphor for a novel. In many ways—at least from my personal perspective—I’d have to admit that a novel is a lot like a child you’re sending out into the world.
We’ve all heard novels referred to as “book babies.” Here are three reasons I have to agree that writers’ books are like their children.
First, like a child, a novel has a mind of its own. If it doesn’t want to conform to your expectations of it, it simply won’t. You may want it to grow up to be a fast-paced thriller, when it might instead become a quiet psychological drama. Some things are within the author’s control, of course, (you can simply start over if things aren’t going well,) but just like with children, you may find that letting them choose their own path can lead to amazing results. It can be maddening when things don’t go the way we intended them to with a manuscript, but just like kids, books tend to find the path they were meant to be on all along. (The author—like a parent—just needs to keep up!)
Second, when your book baby meets with rejection, it feels a little like someone has insulted your child. Every author receives a certain amount of rejection, but knowing that rejection is unavoidable and generally not personal doesn’t make it any easier to process. It hurts, even when you know it’s a part of publishing. When the book I wrote right before Ivory and Bone failed to find a publisher, I took it very hard. The characters in that book were incredibly real to me after I’d worked on the book for so long, and I felt like I’d let them down. Of course, the opposite holds true, too. Now that Ivory and Bone is almost here, I feel so happy and proud for my characters.
Third, when your book receives praise, it feels (at least to me,) like the praise is for this separate entity, rather than for you yourself. This is another way that a book is like a child. As a mother, I’m always proud and flattered when someone praises my child, and I feel like I can accept the praise graciously because it’s not really directed at me. In the same way, even though a good review of your book feels personal, it still feels separate and distinct from a direct compliment. You may have brought your book baby into the world, but it’s got a life of its own.
I’m extremely excited to be posting this on the eve of my book baby’s birth! Though I’ve said it here before, I can’t say it enough—thank you all so much for your support on my path to publication. I joined PubCrawl in early 2010, when it was still Let the Words Flow. This has been a long pregnancy—book babies take a long time to gestate—but it’s been amazing. Thank you all so much, and please check the acknowledgements at the back of Ivory and Bone for a special shout-out to all the readers of this blog!
What do you think? Are your books and manuscripts like your babies? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
Welcome back to Upcoming Titles, our monthly feature where we highlight books releasing this month. As always, this is by no means a comprehensive list of forthcoming releases, just a compilation of titles we think our readers (and our contributors!) would enjoy.
Summer is in full swing and two of our PubCrawl contributors have books coming out this month, including our very own Jodi Meadows and Julie Eshbaugh! Julie’s debut will be coming out this month and we are so, so, so excited for her book to finally be out in the world!
Hi All! Today I want to talk about the next building blocks of a novel—scenes! (This is part four of a series built around a metaphor comparing a novel to a city. So far, we’ve imagined words as bricks, sentences as walls, and paragraphs as buildings.)
In a world class city, the streets will get us from point A to point B, but they will also give us a taste of the city’s culture, connect neighborhoods, and create a natural flow. In our novels, we want scenes to get us where we’re going, but we also want them to leave us with new information, new questions, or greater understanding of our setting and characters. In other words, like a great city boulevard, we want a great scene to keep things moving in the most thrilling and memorable way.
Here are some tips that will help you to create strong scenes:
In every scene, the MC should be acting, reacting, or both—all with a purpose.
Every scene must move the main character (or the POV character if the book contains multiple POVs,) toward his or her objective. The reader should know what the character is working toward, and how the actions they take are intended to bring about those goals. You may want to create a scene that reveals the terrain of your story’s world or that lets the reader know the truth about the MC’s father. Definitely do that, but make sure the scene contributes to the MC’s objective.
As an example, consider the scene early in The Hunger Games where Katniss goes hunting before the reaping. As readers, we see the woods around the Seam, we meet Gale, and we learn a lot of backstory. But at the heart of the scene is Katniss’s action in support of her objective of providing for her family and keeping them safe.
Every scene should contain obstacles to the MC’s objective.
A scene that has no obstacles will have no conflict and won’t keep the story moving and the reader engaged. Even if the scene contributes to the MC’s objective, it won’t be engaging if it doesn’t contain a challenge. It doesn’t have to be obvious or overtly connected, but it needs to have some impact on whether or not the MC will achieve his or her goal.
Take another look at the example of the hunting scene from the opening of The Hunger Games. In that scene there is conflict between Gale and Katniss over the idea of whether they should try to run away. They don’t have a huge argument, but Katniss gets irritated and snaps at Gale. She remarks that “the conversation feels all wrong.” Not a huge conflict, but one that connects to the central objective of keeping her family safe. If Gale encourages her to leave with him, he’s putting that objective in jeopardy. The scene reveals this larger conflict on a smaller scale.
Every scene should matter.
Every scene needs to have something valuable at stake. It could be huge, like the welfare of your MC’s family, or smaller, like her mood on the day of the reaping. But every scene needs to have something connected to the MC’s goal at risk.
The size of the stakes will depend on how strongly they impact the character’s objective. A scene with lots of conflict and high stakes—a head-on car crash that leaves a boy pinned inside a burning car, for instance—only delivers if it connects to your MC’s goal. If your MC is struggling to cope with PTSD, and she saves that boy from the burning car, her stakes are impacted along with his. The stakes might be life and death for him, but this isn’t his story, so those stakes won’t resonate as strongly. But saving him required our MC to face her condition, so she had stakes in the scene, too. It’s the stakes that connect to your character’s goals that matter the most in your scene.
Every scene must move the plot forward, but great scenes will contribute other elements to the story, as well.
A truly great scene contributes more than just goal and conflict. If you can weave in setting, character growth, backstory, etc. you will have created a truly great scene. Think of the trash compactor scene in the first Star Wars movie. There’s conflict that impacts the characters’ goals of rescuing the Princess and thwarting the Empire, but there’s also great use of setting, character development, and dialogue. All these things support the main action of the scene—escaping the trash compactor before they are all crushed to death.
Just like a great city has all sorts of streets keeping things moving and connected, your novel will have many kinds of scenes driving the story forward and keeping the reader turning pages. Next month I’ll post about chapters, the neighborhoods of your novel.
How do you feel about scenes? Did I miss anything important? Do you have any additional tips? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
Hi All! Today I want to talk about the next building block of a novel—paragraphs! (This is part three of a series. Part one was on word choice and part two was on sentences.)
If we continue with the metaphor comparing a novel to a city, we can imagine words as bricks, sentences as walls, and paragraphs as… buildings!
Think of the buildings on a city street. They may be linked together, but each has its own door, its own foundation, its own roof.
Now imagine you’re tasked with planning a walking tour of that street. Your goal is to design a tour that leads from one building into the next. You would want each building to be enjoyed for its own strengths and beauty, but it would be equally important that the tour keep moving! Each building would need to naturally flow into the next and keep the tourists wanting to discover more.
That’s how great paragraphs work. They have their individual strength to stand on their own, but they keep the reader moving forward. No matter how beautiful or strong or resonant a paragraph may be, it fails if it slows the reader’s progress forward. Likewise, a paragraph that’s weighed down by excess might encourage skimming, which has an equally negative effect on the reader’s experience.
You may not even think about paragraphs as you write. (I know I rarely consider them until I’m revising.) Often we group our sentences together instinctively, creating that new indent when focus shifts. This casual approach to paragraphs will often produce very adequate prose. But by giving more care to our paragraphs, we can create a stronger story that won’t let a reader’s attention wander.
Here are three tips for maximizing the strength of your paragraphs:
Make each paragraph contribute more than one aspect of the story. A paragraph of description follows a paragraph of dialogue. A paragraph of action comes next, which is followed by a paragraph of internal monologue. Writing like this will get the story onto the page, but it’s unlikely to make it leap to life. The reader will begin to be lulled by the monotony. Paragraphs that combine story elements will convey the same information, but in a more engaging way.
As an example, here’s a passage of three paragraphs from Vengeance Road by Erin Bowman.
By the time I’s raced back to Silver and grabbed my rifle, Lil’s already disappeared among the dense vegetation. “Thanks for waiting,” I mutter to myself, and take to tracking her between shrubs and cactuses. When I finally catch up, she’s crouched behind a boulder, some sort of net clenched in her grasp.
She puts a finger to her lips and nudges her head toward the other side of the boulder. It’s then I see the quail—maybe a dozen of ‘em, pecking at the dry earth for what I reckon must be insects. I creep forward, but gravelly earth crunches beneath my heel. There’s a flutter of feathers and a chorus of squawks, and the birds go scampering deeper into the thicket of shrubs.
Lil glares. “You walk like your feet are made of stone.”
Those three paragraphs could have been written as a paragraph of description, followed by a paragraph of action, followed by a few paragraphs of dialogue. The same information would have been provided. But by combining these elements within these paragraphs, we experience the characters, the setting, and the action all at once, and the prose comes to life on the page.
Vary the length of your paragraphs. Long paragraphs might be used to reveal something important that needs careful attention. Short paragraphs might be used to keep the story moving quickly through action. Mixing short and long can keep the reader moving while signally where it may be important to linger.
Here’s an example from the opening of Queen and Shadows by Sarah J. Maas:
There was a thing waiting in the darkness.
It was ancient, and cruel, and paced in the shadows leashing his mind. It was not of his world, and had been brought here to fill him with its primordial cold. Some invisible barrier still separated them, but the wall crumbled a little more every time the thing stalked along its length, testing its strength.
He could not remember his name.
In this example, the short first paragraph grabs the reader’s attention, and the longer second paragraph draws the reader in deeper as it gives clarity to the questions raised in the first paragraph. The short third paragraph shifts the focus again.
Consider carefully where you end and begin new paragraphs. This goes hand-in-hand with the tip about paragraph length. In nonfiction, paragraphs are generally organized to support a topic sentence. The organization of paragraphs in fiction can be much looser, however, and paragraph breaks can be more creatively applied. Ending a paragraph immediately after a certain sentence will create a different emphasis than if that sentence occupies the middle of the paragraph or starts the next paragraph. Looking again at the above example from Queen of Shadows, how would the emphasis change if we changed the paragraph breaks? How would the focus change if we did this:
There was a thing waiting in the darkness. It was ancient, and cruel, and paced in the shadows leashing his mind.
It was not of his world, and had been brought here to fill him with its primordial cold.
Some invisible barrier still separated them, but the wall crumbled a little more every time the thing stalked along its length, testing its strength. He could not remember his name.
Changing the paragraph breaks changes the emphasis. As readers, we tend to pay special attention to the content of paragraphs made up of a single sentence. In the actual example from the book, the emphasis is on the effect “the thing in the dark” has on the character. In the revised example, the attention shifts away from the effect to the fact that it was brought here to menace him. We focus on different things depending on the breaks.
How do you feel about paragraphs? Are they a tool you enjoy using? Do you have any additional tips? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
Although the central analogy of this series compares writing a novel to constructing a city, forgive me for switching to a different metaphor for a moment. If we think of a novel as a living body, sentences create the heartbeat. Choices a writer makes about sentences can alter that heartbeat—make it speed up, slow down, pound harder, or even skip out of rhythm.
Returning to the city analogy, if words are the bricks, then sentences are the walls. They provide support and structure, but they also control how a building is experienced. High ceilings, narrow passageways, walls of glass and steel–change these things and the whole building changes. In the same way, each sentence makes a difference, and each must be deliberately crafted.
Here are some tips for creating great sentences:
Use sentence length deliberately. Long sentences can force the reader to linger, allowing an image to appear in the reader’s mind. Here’s an example from Truthwitch by Susan Dennard:
“As Iseult det Midenzi wriggled free from her sea-soaked tunic, boots, pants, and finally underclothes, everything hurt. Every peeled-off layer revealed ten new slices from the limestone and barnacles, and each burst of spindrift made her aware of ten more.
This ancient crumbling, lighthouse was effective for hiding, but it was inescapable until the tide went out. For now, the water outside was well above Iseult’s chest, and hopefully that depth—as well as the crashing waves between here and the marshy shoreline—would deter the Bloodwitch from following.”
Long sentences can also carry the narrative along, picking up speed as they go. Here’s an example from The Love That Split the World by Emily Henry:
“The walls and floor are aging now, the light still juddering through its phases like a movie from a projector, until the drywall starts crumbling, spiderwebbed with vines and weeds. From those vines, flowers blossom and wither and grow back and die again. Seasons stretch into years stretch into decades stretch into centuries, all in moments, while I can hear Beau’s breath, make out his edges through the millisecond of dark before another morning comes.”
By contrast, short sentences cut out all the window dressing. They ensure pauses. Short sentences change a rolling pace to a staccato rhythm. This can be effective for focusing attention on the plain meaning of the words. Here’s an example from The Martian by Andy Weir:
“I ache all over. And the shovels I have are made for taking samples, not heavy digging. My back is killing me. I foraged in the medical supplies and found some Vicodin. I took it about ten minutes ago. Should be kicking in soon.”
One thing I love about the above example is how a sentence starts with “And…” rather than continuing from the previous sentence. If those two sentences were joined into one, the resulting long sentence would ruin the effect that the shorter sentences create: a man in pain giving a spare description of his circumstances.
Vary the structure. This is important advice if you have a favorite sentence structure, because you may not realize how frequently you repeat it. Your reader will notice, though, and those wonderful sentences will lose their power. I personally love parenthetical phrases—especially when set off by dashes—but if I use too many on a page the sentences become muddled. Changing up the structure keeps the reader engaged. It combats boredom. Here’s an example of varied sentence structure, from Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard:
“He stares at me, scrutinizing everything from my face to my worn boots. It makes me squirm. After a long moment, he heaves a breath and lets me go. Stunned, I can only stare at him. When a silver coin spins through the air, I barely have the wits to catch it. A tetrarch. A silver tetrarch worth one whole crown. Far more than any of the stolen pennies in my pockets.”
One of the things I like best about the above example is the fact that the last three sentences are fragments. Sometimes it’s hard to ignore that red underline in Word that tells you the sentence isn’t grammatically correct. Here, it’s clear that those sentences are thoughts in the narrator’s head, and we rarely think in complete sentences.
Check for clarity. Sometimes we try so hard to create prose that stands out that we let communication suffer in the name of style. You can create lovely, lyrical, complex sentences, but your writing will suffer if clarity is sacrificed. Parallel structure, consistent tense, and clear pronouns are all the more important when sentences become more intricate. Here’s a made-up example of what I mean:
“The trail was blanketed in snow and shadows, creating a patchwork design that climbed into the mountains. The hikers paused. Their feet ache in their damp boots, memories of so many miles imprinted on their soles. It’s terrifying, Megan thought. Terrifying, yet beautiful. Her freezing toes wiggle inside her boots as they press forward, leaning into the wind.”
This example is loaded with clarity issues. The first line seems to say that the trail was creating a patchwork design, when it’s actually the snow and shadows. There are multiple tense changes, and it’s unclear what Megan finds terrifying yet beautiful. The view, or her aching feet? The last line seems to say that her toes are pressing forward, leaning into the wind.
How’s this instead?
“Snow and shadows blanketed the trail, creating a patchwork design that climbed into the mountains. The hikers paused. Their feet ached in their damp boots, memories of so many miles imprinted on their soles. It’s terrifying, Megan thought, her gaze taking in the view. Terrifying, yet beautiful. Her freezing toes wiggled inside her boots as she and the others pressed forward, leaning into the wind.”
Still not great prose, but the sentences are clearer! They make more sense and better support the story.
What are your thoughts on sentences? Do you have any advice to add? Please share your ideas in the comments!
Recently I found myself looking out a hotel room window at a cityscape. The view made me think of the components of a city—streets made up of buildings, buildings made up of walls, walls made up of bricks.
I found myself thinking of all the unnoticed bricks that were holding up the city below my window.
This observation got me thinking about novels. I started considering all the components of a novel—chapters made up of scenes, scenes made up of paragraphs, paragraphs made up of sentences, sentences made up of words.
This whole metaphor gave me the idea for a series on the building blocks of a novel. This post will be on words—the most basic building block. The next will be about sentences, then paragraphs, then scenes, then chapters. Of course, most things as intricate as a novel are greater than the sum of their parts, so maybe the final post in the series will be about how a novel transcends (or hopes to transcend) all these things that go into it.
Starting with words.
Word choice is one of the most fundamental aspects of writing, so much so that we don’t talk about it much. But the wrong word can leave writing flat or confusing, and more importantly, the right word can make writing come alive on the page.
There are so many ways in which word choice impacts a piece of writing! Since we’re talking about novels, I want to focus on clarity, voice, and sound.
Clarity
One of the most powerful things about word choice is the subtle change in meaning that can happen when a writer changes just one word. Consider the differences between the following:
“She dropped the package to the ground.”
“She chucked the package to the ground.”
“She hurled the package to the ground.”
Swap package with bundle and ground with pavement and the meaning changes even more. Consider the difference between “She dropped the package to the ground,” and “She hurled the bundle to the pavement.”
This is a painfully simple example, and the lesson here is so basic and elementary, it’s easy to assume this is something we all know how to do and dive into what we perceive as more “advanced” methods of improving our writing. But all the symbolism and metaphors and motifs in the world won’t rescue a sentence from the wrong words. Without clarity, our meaning is lost. We can all think of at least one book we’ve read that felt muddled and murky. Just as you wouldn’t want to watch a movie that was shot through a blurry lens, you wouldn’t want to read an out-of-focus story. Word choice instills meaning and tone, and without intentional language those things suffer.
Voice
Word choice has a huge impact on that elusive aspect of writing we call voice. There are many ways to define voice, but for this post, I’ll turn to something Kat Zhang wrote in a fabulous post on the subject for this blog:
“Voice is, I think, the way a story is told. Just as how the same piece of music sounds quite different if played on a violin versus a flute (or sung by a choir or a rapper), a story that involves that same plot, characters, world, etc, can still change a lot depending on the voice used to tell it.”
By carefully selecting the right words, a writer can alter the voice of a story from tense to sarcastic to poetic. I often turn to TheCatcher in the Rye when I need an example of a story told with a distinct and unmistakable voice. Imagine how word choice would affect the voice of just the first line:
“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”
~ JD Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye.
If Salinger had changed just a few words—substituting painful for lousy and stuff for crap, for instance, the voice would have been significantly altered.
This example also demonstrates how strongly word choice impacts characterization, especially in a first person narrative. But even in third person, word choice will help or hinder characterization. If I write, “The family always dined at six,” your idea of the characters will be different than if I write, “The family always ate at six,” or “The family always broke bread at six.”
Rhythm and Sound
I’ve written about adding sound to your prose on the blog before, but I want to mention it here because sound ties in to any discussion of word choice. Comedy illustrates this beautifully. Think of Bill Murray’s line in the movie Stripes: “That’s the fact Jack!” So much of that comedic moment relies on the sound and rhythm of the words. Comedian Brian Regan has a whole bit about forgetting to do a project for science when he was in the sixth grade and handing in a “cup o’ dirt.” The entire joke depends on the staccato sound of the words. If Regan had said he handed in a “container of soil,” the joke would lose all of its impact. Of course, the importance of choosing words for their sound and rhythm applies to all writing, not just comedy. If you can think of a book that received praise for its lyrical prose or its taut tension, you can be sure it contains excellent examples of words carefully chosen for their sound.
Returning to our metaphor of a city, the words you choose for your novel really are comparable to the bricks used by the builder. When bricks are well chosen and do their job, they go unnoticed. They hold everything in place and create beauty and function. The words you choose will do the same. The right words will hold up the structure of your novel and give it style without calling attention to themselves.
What are your thoughts on word choice? Do you have any advice to add? Please share your ideas in the comments!
Happy New Year! Can you believe PubCrawl is four years old this year? How time does fly! This little blog will be toddling off to grade school before we know it, sniff.
Anyway, to start off another awesome year with us, we thought we’d let y’all know what we PubCrawlers (current and alumni) are publishing this year!
E.C. Myers
Against All Silence
Available May 23, 2016!
After being a key figure in the exposing of government corruption, Max Stein has spent a quiet semester abroad in Paris, studying, staying off the Internet, and looking for his long-lost mother. But just as he is about to fly back to the United States for the holidays, trouble manages to find him once again.
Max receives a call from Penny, his on-again-off-again girlfriend who is part of the expert hacking duo DoubleThink. She wants him to meet with Ada Kiesler, a high-profile whistleblower hiding out at a foreign embassy in Berlin. Max has no interest in getting drawn into another corporate conspiracy. But when airport security suddenly detains him on suspicion of cyber-terrorism, he has little choice but to get involved. Soon Max and Penny are tangling with a new group of shadowy figures who are determined to control how the world shares its information. And some figures from Max s past resurface, including his own mother, whose life has mirrored his own in more ways than he d realized.
In this action-packed follow up to The Silence of Six, Max and his hacker friends must fight to expose a corrupt corporation that has been systematically taking control of the Internet.
E.C. MYERS was assembled in the U.S. from Korean and German parts and raised by a single mother and the public library in Yonkers, New York. He is the author of the Andre Norton Award–winning young adult novel Fair Coin and Quantum Coin, as well as numerous short stories. His latest novel, The Silence of Six, is a thriller about teenage hackers and government conspiracies. You can find traces of him all over the internet, but especially at ecmyers.net and on Twitter @ecmyers.
Stacey Lee
Outrun the Moon
Available May 24, 2016!
From the author of the critically acclaimed Under a Painted Sky, an unforgettable story of determination set against a backdrop of devastating tragedy. Perfect for fans of Code Name Verity.
San Francisco, 1906: Fifteen-year-old Mercy Wong is determined to break from the poverty in Chinatown, and an education at St. Clare’s School for Girls is her best hope. Although St. Clare’s is off-limits to all but the wealthiest white girls, Mercy gains admittance through a mix of cunning and a little bribery, only to discover that getting in was the easiest part. Not to be undone by a bunch of spoiled heiresses, Mercy stands strong—until disaster strikes.
On April 18, an historic earthquake rocks San Francisco, destroying Mercy’s home and school. With martial law in effect, she is forced to wait with her classmates for their families in a temporary park encampment. Mercy can’t sit by while they wait for the Army to bring help. Fires might rage, and the city may be in shambles, yet Mercy still has the ‘bossy’ cheeks that mark her as someone who gets things done. But what can one teenaged girl do to heal so many suffering in her broken city?
Breakout author Stacey Lee masterfully crafts another remarkable novel set against a unique historical backdrop. Strong-willed Mercy Wong leads a cast of diverse characters in this extraordinary tale of survival.
Stacey has two books coming out in 2016!
Catch a Falling Heart
Pub date not yet available
A 16-year-old aromateur with an extraordinary nose, the last in a long line of love witches, scrambles to reverse the effects of a love elixir after giving it to the wrong target—all while trying not to fall for the woman’s attractive son. Publication is set for fall 2016.
STACEY LEE is a fourth generation Chinese-American whose people came to California during the heydays of the cowboys. She believes she still has a bit of cowboy dust in her soul. A native of southern California, she graduated from UCLA then got her law degree at UC Davis King Hall. After practicing law in the Silicon Valley for several years, she finally took up the pen because she wanted the perks of being able to nap during the day, and it was easier than moving to Spain. She plays classical piano, wrangles children, and writes YA fiction.
Jodi Meadows
The Mirror King
Available April 5, 2016!
Wilhelmina has a hundred enemies.
HER FRIENDS HAVE TURNED. After her identity is revealed during the Inundation, Princess Wilhelmina is kept prisoner by the Indigo Kingdom, with the Ospreys lost somewhere in the devastated city. When the Ospreys’ leader emerges at the worst possible moment, leaving Wil’s biggest ally on his deathbed, she must become Black Knife to set things right.
HER MAGIC IS UNCONTROLLABLE. Wil’s power is to animate, not to give true life, but in the wraithland she commanded a cloud of wraith mist to save herself, and later ordered it solid. Now there is a living boy made of wraith—destructive and deadly, and willing to do anything for her.
HER HEART IS TORN. Though she’s ready for her crown, declaring herself queen means war. Caught between what she wants and what is right, Wilhelmina realizes the throne might not even matter. Everyone thought the wraith was years off, but already it’s destroying Indigo Kingdom villages. If she can’t protect both kingdoms, soon there won’t be a land to rule.
In this stunning conclusion to THE ORPHAN QUEEN, Jodi Meadows follows Wilhelmina’s breathtaking and brave journey from orphaned criminal on the streets to magic-wielding queen.
Jodi also has two books coming out in 2016, plus an e-novella!
My Lady Jane
Available June 7, 2016!
For fans of The Princess Bride comes the comical, fantastical, romantical, (not) entirely true story of Lady Jane Grey.
Lady Jane Grey, sixteen, is about to be married to a total stranger—and caught up in an insidious plot to rob her cousin, King Edward, of his throne. But that’s the least of Jane’s problems. She’s about to become Queen of England. Like that could go wrong.
JODI MEADOWS lives and writes in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, with her husband, a Kippy*, and an alarming number of ferrets. She is a confessed book addict, and has wanted to be a writer ever since she decided against becoming an astronaut. She is the author of the Incarnate Trilogy and The Orphan Queen Duology (HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen).
*A Kippy is a cat.
Julie Eshbaugh
Ivory and Bone
Available June 14, 2016!
The only life seventeen-year-old Kol knows is hunting at the foot of the Great Ice with his brothers. But food is becoming scarce, and without another clan to align with, Kol, his family, and their entire group are facing an uncertain future.
Traveling from the south, Mya and her family arrive at Kol’s camp with a trail of hurt and loss behind them, and hope for a new beginning. When Kol meets Mya, her strength, independence, and beauty instantly captivate him, igniting a desire for much more than survival.
Then on a hunt, Kol makes a grave mistake that jeopardizes the relationship that he and Mya have only just started to build. Mya was guarded to begin with—and for good reason—but no apology or gesture is enough for her to forgive him. Soon after, another clan arrives on their shores. And when Mya spots Lo, a daughter of this new clan, her anger intensifies, adding to the already simmering tension between families. After befriending Lo, Kol learns of a dark history between Lo and Mya that is rooted in the tangle of their pasts.
When violence erupts, Kol is forced to choose between fighting alongside Mya or trusting Lo’s claims. And when things quickly turn deadly, it becomes clear that this was a war that one of them had been planning all along.
JULIE ESHBAUGH writes young adult fiction. She is the author of the upcoming Ivory and Bone (HarperCollins, 2016.) You can visit Julie’s website, add her on Goodreads and follow her on Pinterest and Twitter @JulieEshbaugh.
S. Jae-Jones
Wintersong
Available September 13, 2016!
Beware the goblin men and the wares they sell.
All her life, nineteen-year-old Liesl has heard tales of the beautiful, mysterious Goblin King. He is the Lord of Mischief, the Ruler Underground, and the muse around which her music is composed. Yet, as Liesl helps shoulder the burden of running her family’s inn, her dreams of composition and childish fancies about the Goblin King must be set aside in favor of more practical concerns.
But when her sister Käthe is taken by the goblins, Liesl journeys to their realm to rescue her sister and return her to the world above. The Goblin King agrees to let Käthe go—for a price. The life of a maiden must be given to the land, in accordance with the old laws. A life for a life, he says. Without sacrifice, nothing good can grow. Without death, there can be no rebirth. In exchange for her sister’s freedom, Liesl offers her hand in marriage to the Goblin King. He accepts.
Down in the Underground, Liesl discovers that the Goblin King still inspires her—musically, physically, emotionally. Yet even as her talent blossoms, Liesl’s life is slowly fading away, the price she paid for becoming the Goblin King’s bride. As the two of them grow closer, they must learn just what it is they are each willing to sacrifice: her life, her music, or the end of the world.
S. JAE-JONES (called JJ) is an artist, an adrenaline junkie, and the author of Wintersong (Thomas Dunne, 2016). Before moving to grits country, she was a YA fiction editor in New York City. A southern California native, she now lives in North Carolina, and many other places on the internet, including Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and her blog.
Stephanie Garber
Caraval
Available September 20, 2016!
An original world. A legendary competition. A mesmerizing romance. An unbreakable bond between two sisters.
Welcome to Caraval—the spell-casting first book in a fantasy series that’s perfect for fans of Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles series and The Night Circus.
Before you enter the world of Caraval, you must remember that it’s all a game . . .
Scarlett has never left the tiny island where she and her beloved sister, Tella, live with their ruthless father. Now Scarlett’s father has arranged a marriage for her, and Scarlett thinks her dreams of seeing Caraval, the legendary, once-a-year performance where the audience participates in the show, are over.
Then, Scarlett’s long-dreamt of invitation to Caraval finally arrives. So, Tella enlists a mysterious sailor’s help to whisk Scarlett away to this year’s show. But as soon as the trio arrives, Tella is kidnapped by Caraval’s mastermind organizer, Legend.
Scarlett has been told that everything that happens during Caraval is only an elaborate performance. But she nonetheless soon becomes enmeshed in a game of love, heartbreak, and magic with her sister, with Legend, and with the other players in the game. And whether Caraval is real or not, she must find Tella before the five nights of the game are over, a dangerous domino effect of consequences is set off, and her sister disappears forever.
STEPHANIE GARBER loves Disneyland because it’s the one place on earth where she feels as if the fantastical stories she loves to write about could actually come to life. When she’s not writing young adult fantasy, she teaches creative writing a private college in northern California. Her debut novel, Caraval, will be published by Flatiron Books/Macmillan (US) and Hodder & Stoughton (UK) in fall 2016.
And of course we couldn’t let the publication of our dear PubCrawl alumni pass without a mention! Here are some forthcoming books from PubCrawl members past!
Alexandra Bracken
Available now!
Susan Dennard
Available now!
Sarah J. Maas
Available May 3, 2016!
Sarah J. Maas
Throne of Glass #5 (no pub date available)
Marie Lu
The Young Elites #3 (no pub date available)
Amie Kaufman
Gemina (Illuminae #2) (no pub date available)
(with Jay Kristoff)
Leigh Bardugo
Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows #2) (September 27, 2016)
Erin Bowman wrote a great post about the steps in the editing process here, but I wanted to dedicate an entire post to pass pages.
Full confession—despite the fact that I’ve been around writers for years and heard a lot about “pass pages,” I didn’t fully understand what they were until I was about to receive my own! So chances are, if you’re reading this post and you’re not already a traditionally published author, you probably aren’t one hundred percent sure what they are either. No worries! Today I’m going to talk about what pass pages are and the purpose they serve in the process. I’m also going to share my personal experience with them, because I didn’t know what a big impact they were going to have on me until that big envelope came in the mail!
The basics of pass pages…
Pass pages are the actual pages of your book, laid out as they will appear when the book is bound. They are created from the text after copyedits are done. As the author, you’ll receive these pages for your review, which means this is one more time you will be expected to read your own book (after having read it and re-read it for several rounds of revisions, line edits, and copyedits,) but it’s also one final chance to catch mistakes and make any (small) last minute changes.
I first learned about this stage of the process when I confessed to my editor that I was terrified about the prospect of finalizing the text and knowing the book could no longer be “fixed.” (I’m that person who dreads finishing something, because as long as it isn’t finished, it can always get better.) My editor assured me that even after line edits—even after copyedits—I could still make small changes. Because the final opportunity to make those changes didn’t come until I got my pass pages.
When you receive your pass pages, you will be able to review the book as it will appear in the bound copies. It gives you a chance to not only review one last time for typos or errors, but it also gives you the chance to see if the layout caused any unforeseen issues, like a word left alone by itself at the top of a page. You’ll read the text, but a copyeditor will also read it. You write your changes or notes directly on the page (in a color other than black so it stands out!) and send it back by your deadline. While you read through it, a proofreader reads though it as well, so after you return your pages, you may still receive questions from the proofreader, if there are any issues they spotted that may have been missed before.
Also, it’s interesting to note that the changes made at this stage will be incorporated into the final book, but not into the ARCs, since your ARCs will be at the printer by the time you are reviewing your pass pages. (This is why ARCs have that note on the front that says “Uncorrected Proof.”) Also, if you have an issue with the appearance of the text on the page, this is the time to say something, since changes can still be made. One author I know didn’t like the font that was used on sections of her book that were meant to look like handwriting. Pass pages gives an author the chance to discover these issues and have them addressed.
So that’s the mechanics of pass pages. But there’s more to it than that.
The emotional side of pass pages…
For me, seeing these pages for the first time was the most emotional experience of the publishing process so far. When I pulled the stack of pages from the envelope and saw my words laid out like a real book… I cried.
The first page I saw was the title page. I’m not sure why holding the title page felt more real to me than seeing the cover—after all, it’s the same information on both!—but I think it was the tactile experience of holding it in my hands. It’s on paper, just like a real book! Also, I saw for the first time the details created by Erin Fitzsimmons, the wonderfully talented designer who not only designed my cover (which will be revealed on Thursday!) but also the interior of the book. The title page, chapter headings, and page number details were all perfectly suited to the world of the story, and I knew they would support the reader’s experience. This all felt so right, and pretty overwhelming.
The pictures I’ve included here were among many I snapped as soon as I opened the envelope, so I could share the look of the book with my family. I needed to share this “real book” moment! That’s the emotional side of pass pages—the part no one really warns you about.
So that’s it! What do you think? Have you gone through this process yourself? What was your experience like? If you haven’t gone through the pass pages process, do you think you would enjoy it, or do you dread the thought of reading your own book one… more… time… ? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
I’m currently in drafting mode, working on the sequel to my debut, IVORY AND BONE. I’m definitely a planner (as opposed to a pantser,) and I’m working from an *extensive* outline. But even the most thoroughly planned novel doesn’t always flow onto the page without a hitch. (Okay, let’s be realistic. No novel flows onto the page without a hitch!) Often, when I’m struggling to translate a scene I’ve held in my mind into prose on the page, and it’s just… lying there, devoid of life… I’ll discover that the problem is a lack of stakes. Either nothing’s at risk, or there’s a lot at risk, but no one really cares. I have found that if I fix the stakes, I can often fix the scene.
You’ve probably heard that, to keep your reader’s attention, you need to keep raising the stakes. This is sound advice, but it’s also pretty vague. What does it mean to keep raising the stakes? Should you start with dismally low stakes so you have somewhere to go? If you start with life-and-death stakes, do you have to end with save-the-world stakes?
Both of these assumptions seem reasonable if you only look at the superficial meaning of the adage to “keep raising the stakes.” Higher mountains! Bigger guns! I wish it were that simple, but I’ve learned by trial and error that there’s a lot more to it than that. Here are a few things I’ve learned:
There is always something important at stake, even at the opening of the story.
One of my favorite stories to use as an example is the original Star Wars, both because IT’S SO GOOD and because most people are familiar with it (because IT’S SO GOOD!) In that story, Luke learns about some high stakes that are at play when he sees the holographic message from the princess. “Help me Obi Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope,” implies some very high stakes, especially when the call for help has been hidden on a droid by a desperate prisoner of a ruthless empire. And yet, in response to that original plea, Luke Skywalker says No. The stakes are high, but not to him. Instead, the stakes that matter to Luke—the higher stakes in his world—are the needs of his family on the farm. But as soon as that family is taken from him by that same empire, he is ready to fight.
So the stakes for Luke at the opening of the story may seem small in the grand scheme of things—“help the family,” does not have the same magnitude as “rescue the princess.” Except it does to Luke, because it’s his own family at stake.
So don’t start with dismally low stakes, because no one wants to read about things that don’t matter. But you can start with stakes that matter intensely and fiercely, but on a smaller scale.
Here’s another example. At the opening of The Wizard of Oz, the stakes for Dorothy are that she must protect Toto. The life of a dog may seem like smaller stakes compared to some of the challenges Dorothy will face later in the story, but not to Dorothy at that moment. When Dorothy runs away from home to protect Toto, the stakes are very high for her. They will get higher—and in a lot of ways, they will get wider and broader—but she will never get away from her need to protect her dog.
Which leads me to…
No matter how big the stakes become—even when they grow to save-the-world level in size—the stakes need to stay focused on something “small” for the reader to care.
Let’s look at Star Wars again. When we meet Han Solo, his motives are all self-serving. He needs to save his own skin. Granted, these are life-and-death stakes—they are significant—but he’s not striving to save the galaxy from the evil empire. But later, after he’s achieved his goal and gotten his reward, he comes back into battle and helps to—quite literally—save the world (err… galaxy.) But he doesn’t do this because the stakes have escalated and he’s been sucked in by the bigger, world-saving stakes. He does it because of the smaller stakes—the need to save his friends. Specifically, when he returns he acts to save one life—Luke’s. The stakes have both grown and shrunk, but it’s the smaller stakes that make Han act.
Han even jokes at the end that he couldn’t leave and let the others get all the credit and all the reward! This joke works because those things really were at stake in the scene—someone will get the credit for destroying the Death Star—but we know these stakes didn’t play a part in what happened. Credit and reward once motivated Han, but they no longer do.
Which leads me to my final lesson learned about stakes…
Stakes are always going to depend on what matters most to your character.
Luke’s family, Dorothy’s dog, Han Solo’s friends. You can tell the most fascinating story with life-and-death, save-the-world stakes, but if the reader doesn’t feel that something matters to your character, she won’t care about your story.
I’ve learned this in a very hands-on way, by re-writing a scene over and over, frustrated by a lack of energy or excitement on the page. I’ve added more danger—higher heights to fall from, sharper blades to dodge. I’ve learned that a fight, no matter how fierce, is dull and boring if we don’t feel the weight of the thing the character is fighting for.
So yes—the adage to raise the stakes is a good one. This is what a writer should do. But it only works when the reader understands what matters. Then raise the stakes by putting that thing that matters at greater and greater risk.
The Wizard of Oz starts out with Dorothy trying to save her dog. Then the story raises the stakes. We are introduced to more characters and situations that matter to Dorothy, and those things—along with her dog—are put at greater and greater risk. In the end, she’s still trying to save Toto—plus a whole lot more—from a much more dangerous situation. And we care, because it all matters to Dorothy.
How do you feel about stakes? Do you find them to be a tricky part of writing? Do you have any methods or techniques to share? Please join the discussion in the comments!
I’m in the process of outlining the sequel to my debut YA novel, Ivory and Bone, so I’ve been thinking a lot about conflict and the purpose it fills in a story.
“Joe went to the store and bought a dozen eggs,” is not much of a story, mainly because it doesn’t contain any conflict.
Joe went to the store and picked up a carton of eggs. On the way to the register, a cart came out of nowhere and smashed into him, breaking the eggs. He picked up a second carton, but slipped in a puddle of melting ice cream, and all the eggs broke. He picked up a third carton of eggs, but realized they were past their sell-by date. Just then, Joe noticed the doughnut case. Five minutes later, Joe was on his way home with a dozen doughnuts.
That second example is a story (albeit a boring story,) because it has conflict. But it is boooooring. And at least part of the reason this story is boring is because the conflict doesn’t have any meaning. It doesn’t tell us anything about Joe, his character, or the choices he makes. It doesn’t make us care. It doesn’t resonate.
I’ve been thinking about these concepts as I consider the conflicts my own characters encounter. There are so many ways to put an obstacle in your character’s path, but they won’t all serve the story equally well.
Let’s go back to Joe. All of the obstacles he encountered to buying the eggs were impersonal and did little to develop or reveal Joe as a character or make us care about him (except, maybe, for his final decision to buy doughnuts instead of eggs!) They also held no hint of something interesting about Joe and his quest for eggs that was yet to be discovered.
But what if we revisit those obstacles and tweak them just a bit?
Joe went to the store and picked up a carton of eggs. On the way to the register, a cart came out of nowhere and smashed into him, breaking the eggs. Looking up, Joe spotted a man running away down the frozen foods aisle. The man gave one quick glance over his shoulder, and Joe thought he looked like his grandfather, but that was impossible. His grandfather had died just last month of coronary heart disease complicated by uncontrolled high cholesterol, and Joe did not believe in ghosts.
Joe picked up a second carton, but he slipped in a puddle of melting ice cream, and all the eggs broke. As he lay sprawled on the floor, Joe noticed that a sign emblazoned “Caution-Wet Floor” had been folded and set to the side, where it wouldn’t be noticed. Had someone intentionally sabotaged the dairy aisle?
Joe picked up a third carton of eggs, but realized they were past their sell-by date. A strange chill ran over Joe’s skin, as he wondered if someone—or something—was determined to thwart his quest for eggs.
Just then, Joe noticed the doughnut case. Five minutes later, he was on his way home with a dozen doughnuts, hoping he had put the trauma of the dairy aisle behind him.
Joe’s story is finally becoming a bit more interesting, because the conflict is beginning to take on some meaning. We know that Joe recently lost his grandfather. We know that eating eggs may have contributed to the cause of his grandfather’s death. We know that Joe’s obstacles may have been more than coincidences, since there are signs that the cart and the ice cream puddle may have been deliberately intended to thwart his progress.
To us as readers, Joe’s struggles become more interesting when we see the personal meaning behind them. The conflict now reveals a bit about his character. It raises questions in our minds about the source of the conflict and what may come next. We care more about Joe—we may even relate to him and root for him.
Consider the first book of Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy. The inciting incident occurs when the main character, Katniss Everdeen, is sent to the Games. It would have been enough if Katniss’s name had been pulled from the bowl at the reaping, triggering the main conflict of the story. But instead, the name of Katniss’s little sister, Prim, is pulled from the bowl, and Katniss volunteers to go to the Games in her place.
This is a fantastic example of conflict that resonates. If Katniss’s own name had been called, the story would have gone in the same direction. But because she volunteers, the conflict now tells us about her character, it makes the struggle she faces more personal, and gives us cause to relate to her and root for her. It’s a small choice that makes a huge difference.
What are your thoughts on conflict that resonates? Can you think of other examples from books or movies? Do you strive for meaningful conflict in your own writing? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
Hey guys, it’s Kat! In case you missed it, Julie and I already talked a little about productivity and self-motivation tips on Wednesday. Today, we’re going to go more in depth about ways to use a community to help keep you on track.
Julie and I actually got the idea to write this post because we’ve been sharing a “Progress Report” spreadsheet between us for about 7 months now. It’s set up in a Google Spreadsheet, with a new sheet for each month, and every day, we update each other on what we have (and haven’t!) achieved writing-wise. It seems like a little thing, but knowing that you’re going to check in with someone at the end of each day is pretty motivating. I guess it’s similar to those tips about finding an exercise buddy, to keep you accountable.
Julie: The Progress Report has helped me a lot! I recognize that I’m the kind of person who produces better work when I know there’s a measure of accountability involved. (For instance, I was always good with handing in papers when I was in school.) Not to say that our shared Progress Report is like being in school, (I don’t feel like Kat is going to give me an F if I don’t get my work done!) but it does help keep me focused. By sharing my progress at the end of each day, I’m able to catch myself if I see a few days where I’m not getting anywhere. Sometimes I know I’ve just been “taking it easy,” or overwhelmed by other things, but other times I don’t realize that my productivity has declined until I’m typing the third, “didn’t get much done today,” in a row. When I see things moving in the wrong direction, I can step back and figure out what might be wrong, and correct it.
Kat: I give Julie As every day
Julie: Haha, thank you Kat! Actually, there is a bit of a grading component to the Progress Report, but we don’t grade each other. On the days we feel particularly good about our accomplishments, we give ourselves a check mark.
Kat: Which is really motivating, too. Positive reinforcement, and all I know I’m not the only one who can actually be too hard on myself. After two or three unproductive days, it’s all too easy for me to slip into “Oh, god, I’ve done NOTHING this whole week!” mode…which, of course, only kills my productivity even more. When I have a record of my progress, it’s easier for me to tell myself, “Ok, so you had a bad day or two or three, but hey, before that you were doing great! Let’s get back to that.” Plus, when Julie also sees my progress, she can be that reasonable voice that tells me, “You’re doing fine.”
Julie: And she’s doing fine all the time. But that’s a great point. By sharing our updates every day, we’re able to add in notes of encouragement to each other. It feels a lot less like I’m working all alone!
Kat: This spreadsheet method has worked really well for me, but there are other ways of using a community to keep you accountable. For example, in the past I’ve sometimes had critique partners send me chapters as they revise them. I think there’s something satisfying and “done!” feeling about doing something concrete to mark the completion of each chapter. At the end of the day, it’s the same idea of keeping yourself on track because someone is going to be watching over your progress.
Julie: Kat, I love that idea! I’ve never had that type of relationship with a critique partner, but I have turned over my chapters to a non-writer friend as I worked. It gave me the same sense of completion you were talking about, (even though I wasn’t expecting feedback on the writing.) Most writers probably have a few people in their lives who would be more than happy to assume this role–if not another writer who is already a critique partner, then a family member or close friend. I know a few members of the Sweet 16s debut group have mentioned that they belong to writers’ groups, which meet regularly to read each other’s work and lend support.
Kat: Again, we’d love to hear from you guys. Does this sound like something you could see yourself doing with a critique partner/friend? Or are you already using some other method that works well for you? Let us know!
Julie here! Today, Kat Zhang and I are co-posting on the topic of productivity. We both know (from personal experience!) that sometimes the hardest part of writing is staying consistent and getting the work done. After all, writing is usually a solo activity, with no one checking in on you to make sure you reached your word count goal or revised that chapter. So we decided we would team up to share tips for staying on track.
This is a two part post, so on Friday, we’re going to go more in depth about ways a community can help keep you on schedule. But today, here are some tricks you can use on your own!
Kat: One of my biggest hurdles while drafting is my perfectionism. I want my first draft to be as perfect as a final draft–which is, of course, impossible. I’m a very exploratory writer, and sometimes I just need to write 10,000 words for every 5,000 that end up in the final draft. However, sometimes when I’m sludging through that first draft, I get so bogged down by the “Oh my god, this is the worst scene I’ve ever written” feeling of drafting that I either end up in an endless cycle of editing and re-writing, or worse, I get so frustrated that the writing isn’t fun at all.
Both those things can be killer to any attempt at staying on schedule. So while I’m drafting, I hold myself to exactly zero “How good is this writing?” standards. Okay, that’s a lie. I keep certain standards in the back of my mind, but my number one goal for each drafting day is: Just Hit the Word Count.
Now, there are some things I wouldn’t do to Just Hit the Word Count–I do outline before writing, so I don’t throw random tangents in my story for the sake of words. (No “And then a man with a gun and a flamingo showed up!” just for the sake of something happening). No adding adverbs or writing in weird ways just to up word count. Personally, those things would really just be wasted words, for me–but maybe they wouldn’t be for you.
Making my main goal a word count lets me let go of my inner editor a little, while keeping my eyes on the finish line.
Julie: This is great advice, Kat! I also try to resist the urge to self-edit while I draft, but find it difficult to avoid the trap of judging every word before moving on. I could easily rewrite the same thousand words five times, when I really need to get five thousand words down on the page!
Like you, I make word count my main goal when drafting. To stay on track, I create a spreadsheet so I can watch my progress. I’m a fanatical list-maker! It’s helpful for me to be able to see myself moving toward a goal in some concrete way. So I choose a day to target for the completed draft, and then I work backwards. I set manageable goals for each week and each day, and I definitely build in some wiggle room. If I fall off the pace, I’m willing to cut myself a break, and will even re-calibrate the goals if my original pace turns out to be unrealistic.
This spreadsheet helps so much, because it allows me to see just how much I’m getting done on the days when it feels like the draft is a disaster. It also calms my fears that I’m not going to make my deadline, because as long as I’m making the small goals, I know I’ll get there. That validation helps a lot when the goal of a complete draft feels overwhelming.
Julie: I’ve never seen Victoria’s method before, but I definitely believe a calendar system can be an effective tool. I used to use a modified version of a technique popularized by Jerry Seinfeld. It’s so simple! All you need is a wall calendar and a red pen. (It also requires that you have a goal of writing every day. Not every writer wants to do that.)
In Seinfeld’s system, for every day that you write, you put a large red X on the calendar. The Xs should be from corner to corner, so that they begin to form a chain of Xs. Over time, you have a long chain, and you don’t want to let it break! This method helped me stay motivated, and it also helped me see myself as a writer. All those Xs on the calendar proved to me that I wasn’t just someone who wanted to write; I was someone who was really doing it! (It’s also a visual reminder to everyone else with access to the calendar–your family, your roommates–that you are a writer and you need to stay on track.)
Kat: Hopefully, one or more of these ideas will kickstart your own method for staying on track, and keeping yourself productive! Everyone is different, so what works for us might not work for you.
Julie: We’d love to hear from you! What do you think of these ideas? Do any of these seem like they would work for you? Do you use a productivity system of your own that you would like to share? Please join the discussion in the comments!
Recently, my editor and I went through the line editing process with IVORY AND BONE. If you’re unfamiliar with the steps a book goes through once it’s acquired, here’s an at-a-glance overview:
Structural/Developmental Edits: This is the part of the process often referred to broadly as Revision. Your editor sends you a letter outlining her ideas for the “big picture” changes that will make the manuscript stronger. (There are usually several rounds of this stage.)
Line Edits: In this stage, your editor goes through the manuscript line-by-line. The notes you receive look at the “small picture”—word choice, sentence structure, etc.
Copyedits: I haven’t gotten to this stage yet—expect a dedicated post when I do—but copyedits are concerned with correcting grammar, punctuation, style, and usage. For example, if you misuse dashes—I’m sure I never do—you will find out at the Copyedits stage.
After going through structural edits, I made a crazy assumption that line edits would be… easy. Well, maybe not easy, but easier. This assumption was incorrect.
I learned A LOT from the line editing process! Here are five things I learned, that apply to writing and life in general:
Some things that you expect to be easy are actually quite hard.
Many (maybe even most) of the comments in my line edit involved rewording and rephrasing. At first glance, I thought tackling these requests would be so easy. How hard could it be to find a fresh word or to change up sentence structure? It’s probably different for everyone, but I learned that rewording the simplest sentences could be quite difficult for me.
I found myself bogging down on four-word sentences. I have to admit that I felt stupid. How could this be hard? But getting the wording right can be equally challenging when the sentence has four words or fourteen. I learned to come back to things after letting my mind clear, and to be patient and forgiving with myself when things didn’t come easily.
Another person’s input can help immensely.
I’ll be honest—I’m not good at asking for help. I like to solve things on my own. But line editing taught me that some problems become much more manageable if you accept help.
Sometimes that help came from the thesaurus (which, for lots of reasons, I usually try to avoid.) Sometimes it came from my (immensely patient) husband. Sometimes it came in the form of a suggestion from my editor, tucked into a comment.
“Playing favorites” can hurt you.
I never knew I had “pet words” until I went through this line edit. If I told you how many times I used the word “stunned,” you’d be… surprised. I was quite stunned to see how frequently my characters were stunned. Or shocked. It was… startling (another one of my pet words!)
An echo isn’t as lovely on the page as it is on a hillside.
“Echoes” are words or phrases that repeat multiple times on a page, or even in a paragraph. (My editor often would simply highlight the word in both places, so it would jump off the page at me.) My theory on how this happens is that, when drafting, I use a word or phrase that feels so right, I subconsciously use it again, the sooner the better! It doesn’t matter how it happens, though. It still makes for flat, uninteresting writing. (Fixing these was slightly easier for me than some of the other line edits.)
A question mark can make a huge difference. (So can the word “please.”)
It never feels good to have your mistakes pointed out, no matter how small or common they may be. Knowing that all writers repeat words doesn’t make it easier to address the hundredth comment about a repeated word in your own manuscript. What does make that hundredth comment easier to accept is a simple question mark. “This repeats. Rephrase?” is very similar to “This repeats. Rephrase.” Yet that question mark makes such a huge difference! (As does, “This repeats. Please rephrase.”)
How about you? Do you enjoy working on the small details of your manuscript? Do you catch yourself using pet words or echoes? Does rewording come easily for you? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
Hello from Julie! I’m so excited, because today I get to reveal the cover for a fellow 2016 debut author, Emily Martin, whose YA novel THE YEAR WE FELL APART (Simon & Schuster/Simon Pulse Spring 2016,) is at the top of my CAN’T WAIT list! I feel so privileged to be able to introduce you to this book. Along with her beautiful cover, we have a few words from Emily herself, as well as from the designer! If that weren’t enough, we also have a giveaway for an ARC! So, without further ado…
Few things come as naturally to Harper as epic mistakes. In the past year, she was kicked off the swim team, earned a reputation as Carson High’s easiest hookup, and officially became the black sheep of her family. But the worst mistake was her first one: destroying her relationship with her best friend, Declan.
Now, after two semesters of silence between Harper and Declan, Declan is home from boarding school for summer break. Everything about him is different—he’s taller, stronger . . . handsomer. But Harper has changed too, especially in the wake of her mom’s cancer diagnosis.
While Declan wants nothing to do with Harper, he’s still Declan, her Declan, the only person she wants to talk to about what’s really going on with her. But after she betrayed his trust, he’s also the one person she’s lost all right to seek comfort from.
As shared friends and shared histories draw them together, Harper and Declan must decide which parts of their past are still possible to fix and which parts they’ll have to live with forever.
I could go on and on about this book, but I know you’re dying to see the cover, so here it is!
Isn’t it GORGEOUS? We are so lucky to have Karina Granda, Designer at Simon & Schuster, here to discuss the process that went into the design.
Where do you start when it’s time to design a cover? Do you get a chance to read the book? Do you consult with the editor? How do you pull together those first ideas?
Every book is its own world and has its own process, which keeps my job varied and fun! Sometimes we just have an outline, author or editor’s concepts, comp titles, icons, etc. to work with, but whenever possible, I do LOVE to start by reading the book! I was fortunate to be able to read THE YEAR WE FELL APART, and it really helped me to get a deep sense of the tone and to develop a package that feels as special as Harper and Declan’s story.
As I mentioned, our projects are hugely varied–sometimes I get to work with a really cool artist, other times I compose my own iconic or type-driven covers, occasionally I’m able to direct and style a shoot, and sometimes we just comes across an existing image that perfectly jives with the story—and there are many factors that go into deciding the final direction: what is the tone of the book; are there any compelling icons; is it important to show the characters; what other books do we want to be associated with; and of course, what is the budget?
The editor, Sara Sargent, and I both immediately knew that THE YEAR WE FELL APART needed an illustrated cover since it would give us huge range for creating a unique package that would capture many aspects of the story. Which brings us to that question: The editor is hugely involved through the whole process, and our editorial team does a tremendous job of providing ideas and feedback and ensuring that the images and tone are right for each individual project.
Tell us a little about the cover design for THE YEAR WE FELL APART. What choices did you make, and what did you want to convey?
In the case of THE YEAR WE FELL APART, we were able to work with the fabulous artist, Sarah Dennis, whom I’ve been wanting to work with for a long time! She not only illustrates, but she creates her illustrations through cut paper rather than drawing, which just brought that extra special touch that we wanted for this cover. We knew she could bring the right feel. As a team, thematically, we wanted to emphasize the course of the year and time and the seasons through the cover. So much of the book is about what can and cannot be changed over the course of time (and the emotions that come with that!), so we felt that depicting the course of the year with images that felt relevant to the story would make for a good cover.
Though all projects can (and do!) take many different directions and turns, ultimately the end products are always the result of a very collaborative team effort, and THE YEAR WE FELL APART was definitely no exception. The author pulled a bunch of images from the story that felt most relevant to her—the oak leaves were specific to the type of tree that was special to Harper and Declan, the friends spend a lot time in a quarry during the summers so it is a place of tension now that Declan and Harper are at odds, etc. Among many other ideas, the editor made the key suggestion that we should bring a hand-written feel to the type design. I found and art directed the illustrator, provided direction for the palette and composition, and created the hand-written elements on the jacket. Sarah Dennis brought her own ideas, compositions, wonderful details, and most importantly, her killer illustration skills!
How many concepts did you consider, and how many drafts did this one go through?
Honesty, I cannot even remember how many specific concepts we considered for this book! So often tons of ideas are tossed around in conversations with the editor or at team meetings—many get left right there, some make it into rough comps, and sometimes we are picking between options at very final stages. THE YEAR WE FELL APART has been through two “final” iterations—though in this case they came consecutively rather than simultaneously. We strongly pursued the idea of focusing on the tree or a tree stump, and though our art team tried several iterations of that concept that were beautiful, it was ultimately a bit too young and did not capture the depth and scope of the story. However, that process did lay the groundwork for developing the ideas that made it into our final cover. Even when concepts are rejected, they are always a crucial step in the process!
Thank you so much Karina!
Author Emily Martin is also here to answer a few questions!
Congrats on your beautiful cover! Karina mentioned that you had some input into the design, in that you offered some images from the story. How were you brought into the process? What was that like?
Thank you! My editor and the team at S&S were amazing about keeping me in the loop on the cover design. We discussed which places and moments in the book felt most important, and it became clear we all wanted a similar look for the cover. Being able to see the cover evolve from sketch to final product was an awesome experience.
The designer said that lots of ideas were considered, and that there were two “final” versions of the cover. Were you able to see different drafts? If so, how much did they vary?
I saw sketches of both covers that became contenders, and from sketch to final version, neither of them changed too drastically. However, the two concepts were very different from each other.
I really loved the first design, so it was painful to find out the team had decided to go in a different direction. But I was fortunate enough to be brought into the conversation again, and I was thrilled when we settled on Sarah Dennis as the illustrator. I wound up falling even harder for the second design!
Since you were somewhat involved in the process, did you develop an idea in your mind of what the cover would look like? Does the finished cover reflect your expectations, or did it surprise you? How did you feel when you saw the final version for the first time?
Despite knowing who the illustrator would be and having an idea of the concept, it was still really difficult to visualize the finished product. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the cover completely blew me away. It just felt so special to me, such a perfect representation of my characters and their story.
Has your love of this cover caused any interesting new behaviors? Do you carry a miniature version of it tucked in a locket, or sleep with it under your pillow? (You can tell the truth. We’re all friends here!)
Ha! I am fairly obsessed with it, and did immediately save it on my phone… but I only peek at it a dozen or so times a day! Pretty sure it’s only a matter of time before a framed copy finds its way onto my bedside table.
More about the author: Emily Martin lives and writes in the Greater Boston area, though she will always call Michigan home. When not writing books, you can find her hiking New England’s peaks, searching for the perfect cup of hot chocolate, or baking something pumpkin-flavored. She is a member of The Sweet Sixteens and the Class of 2k16. Visit Emily online at her website, and on Twitter @thatEmilyMartin.
Thanks to Karina Granda from Simon & Schuster for sharing her process with us, and to Emily Martin for not only letting us host her cover reveal, but also generously giving away an ARC of THE YEAR WE FELL APART! (Emily will happily send an ARC to the winner’s US or Canadian address, once they are printed later this summer.)
You can add TYWFA to your “To Read” shelf on Goodreads and pre-order it on Barnes & Noble and/or Amazon. Please join us in congratulating Emily in the comments below!
The email from my editor’s assistant popped into my inbox, the subject line glaring at me: Author Photo… (dun dun dun duuuuunnnn…)
If you’re like me, the thought of a professional author photo is both exciting and terrifying. I knew exactly what I wanted: a photo that would have almost magical qualities—a picture of me that would look good, and yet somehow also perfectly represent the real me to my readers.
I approached this task with dread. However, I am happy to say that, here on the other side of the process, I have pictures I LOVE.
Some of my positive experience is owed to planning; some of it is owed to luck. I did do some research. I looked at A LOT of author photos, and made decisions about preferences: color over of black and white, outside over inside, smiling over serious. So that much was planned. Luck entered in when it was time to find a photographer. Just before I started searching, my son and his girlfriend (who are both graduating from NYU’s New Studio on Broadway,) had actor headshots taken. My son raved about his experience with Amanda Pinto and Jake Nathanson of Sub/Urban Photography, told me about other authors they had photographed, and suggested I reach out to them. He also gave me the link to their website, (sub-urbanphotography.com,) which overflows with beautiful examples of their work. (Though I credit good luck with bringing me to Sub/Urban Photography, finding the right photographer does not require good luck–read on!)
When I emailed Amanda and Jake, I let them know what I was looking for, and they walked me through questions about clothing, locations, and whether I wanted to hire the freelance hair and make-up artist they work with. All these discussions were important, but after the choice of photographer, I would say the choice to hire a professional stylist had the greatest impact on my results. Alex Rivera, the freelance hair and make-up artist I worked with, not only listened to my thoughts about what I wanted, he had the training and experience to know how to achieve it. My son’s girlfriend, (who–like me–has long hair,) mentioned how great it was to know that there was someone standing by with a brush while she was being photographed outside in the wind. Sold.
In the end, this experience I’d been dreading turned out to be an incredibly pleasant and relaxing day. I rode the train to New York, met the team downtown, and after hair and make-up, we headed out to the streets of the East Village and Soho. (Yes, we shot outside on the street! Amanda and Jake knew where they could find lots of light and very little traffic.) Afterwards, I was sent a huge batch of proofs, out of which I chose three to be edited. (The results are attached at the bottom of this post.)
I was so happy with how everything turned out, I asked Amanda and Jake if they would contribute to this post. In response, they provided some excellent questions that authors should ask themselves, as a type of checklist before choosing a photographer. I’m thrilled to be able to share them with you:
First question to ask – Is this photographer a portrait photographer?
This seems like an obvious question, but it’s actually very important. Many photographers have different specialties, whether it’s event photography, weddings, live performance, art-specific work, etc. So for example, if you have a friend that takes photos and will take your author photo for cheap (or maybe even free), have you seen their portrait work and do they seem to have a knack for it? A portrait, especially one that goes on the back of a book, needs to reflect who you are as a writer. This doesn’t mean that if you wrote a serious book that you have to have a serious picture, but what about your personality plays a big part in your writing? Are you playful? Are you soulful? Are you witty? Photographers with portrait experience, especially with actor headshots, have to have that extra ability to make people comfortable enough to be themselves on camera. So if this photographer is a portrait photographer, you’ll be able to see that reflected in their work. Does it consist of beautifully composed pictures with people smiling awkwardly and stuck in tense poses? Or are you looking at an honest moment captured on camera?
Second question – Does the photographer typically work with non-actors?
Even though having headshot experience is almost crucial for taking an author photo, it’s just as important for the photographer to know how to work with people that aren’t used to being on camera. A great deal of photographers, especially those that work in major cities like NYC or LA, can be actor headshot centric. Look through the photographer’s work and see if they have anything like corporate portraits, family portraits, candids, etc., and see how they compare to the actor headshots. Do they seem just as natural as the headshots? If so, that shows you that they can use those interpersonal skills even on the otherwise camera shy. You know that they can help guide you through the shoot without expecting you to know exactly how to act or pose beforehand.
Third question to ask – Do you know anyone who has used the photographer?
So many of our new clients come to us through recommendations from prior clients. Honestly, these are the people you need to ask the most questions. They’ve been on your side of the shoot and were satisfied with how it all turned out, but why? Ask them what the shoot was like, how long it took, how much it cost, where did they take you (if it was an outdoor shoot,) etc. I would hesitate to use any photographer unless you know someone who has worked with them in the past and can answer your questions objectively. Just because they had a positive experience with them, or even a negative one, doesn’t mean you will have the same one. You may prefer someone that’s bubbly vs. neutral, fast vs. slow, and so on and so forth. The best possible situation, however, is you can get a consensus on this photographer from more than one person. If you know a handful of people who have used the photographer, each of them being from different professions and with different personalities, and they unanimously agree they had a positive experience, then chances are you’ve found the right person to work with.
Thank you so much, Sub/Urban Photography! I love my photos! (The one in the middle is the one I chose for the book jacket.)
What kind of experiences have you had with author photos? As a member of the The Sweet 16s, I know many authors who are in different stages of the process. Please share your thoughts in the comments!
Julie here! Today, Melody Simpson is stopping by to talk about YA Runs A 5K, which this year is supporting We Need Diverse Books. Read the post to learn how you can win books, critiques, and other great prizes while supporting an important cause!
Hi, everyone! I’m Melody Simpson, blogger at Hollywood the Write Way and co-creator of YA Runs A 5K which promotes diverse reading and healthy living. With the success of YA Runs A 5K last year, I have decided to host the event once more!
This year, YA Runs A 5K is raising money for We Need Diverse Books while also running/walking the super hero themed 5k, The Super Run in Philly.
There are writing critiques, (signed) books, and more up for grabs for anyone who donates $30 or more. I am so excited to have Publishing Crawl contributors participating again this year! You can win a writing critique from Julie Eshbaugh or a signed book from Adam Silvera! Thank you, Julie and Adam!
Also up for grabs, signed Suspicion Nation by Lisa Bloom, signed Relish by Daphne Oz (The Chew), signed books from TV writer and author Attica Locke (Fox’s Empire) as well as a writing critique from TV writer and author, Kira Snyder (The CW’s The 100) among others. Speaking of The 100, we’re giving away signed books from author, Kass Morgan!
Plus, I will be attending Book Expo America and I will be giving away the majority of the ARCs that I receive to those who donate as well. I will be sharing photos of the books on Twitter as I receive them during the expo, so feel free to follow.
See the entire list of books, critiques, etc… here. The physical items are U.S. only and the writing critiques are open to everyone. After donating, be sure to fill out this form to select the writing critique, book, or other item that you want!
Also, anyone who donates $1-$29 will be entered into the raffle where one person will receive a $100 Kindle gift card + an Epic Reads book bundle! After donating, be sure to fill out this form to enter the raffle!
To donate to We Need Diverse Books, visit the YA Runs A 5K GoFundMe page.
The Super Run 5k will take place in Philadelphia on 6/6/15. If you do run/walk with us in Philly and have YA books you’d like to donate to a local library, please bring your books to the run so that YA Runs A 5K can donate them after the run! Also, since the 5k is superhero themed, you are more than welcome to cosplay! The 5k is cosplay friendly and family friendly.
We’re also hosting a virtual 5K! Anyone who donates at least $15 and pledges to run/walk their own 5K will get YA Runs A 5K bookmarks! Let us know if you plan to join the Virtual YA Runs a 5K.
For more information, visit YA Runs A 5K and please help us spread the word using the #YARunsA5K hashtag!
Thank you to Publishing Crawl contributors, Susan Dennard and Kat Zhang for offering writing critiques (which have already been claimed!) and Erin Bowman for the logo.
Huge thank you to everyone donating critiques, books, and more as well as those who donate and run with us!
Melody Simpson was born and raised in New Jersey. She is a YA writer, literary intern, and blogger at Hollywood the Write Way where she blogs about TV, movies, music (mainly Broadway), and books. You can find her on Twitter and Goodreads.
Note from Julie: Today’s post is a compilation of advice on historical research from a few members of the Sweet Sixteens, a group of YA and MG authors who are debuting in 2016. You can learn more about the Sweet Sixteens and their upcoming books on their website. I’m very proud to be a part of this great group, and I’m excited to share some writing advice from my fellow debut authors!
The idea for this post came from a thread on the Sweet Sixteens’ discussion forum. Kali Wallace, who writes YA horror, posted a question for historical fiction writers. I thought it was great that a writer was reaching across genres to ask a question, and the replies were stellar! Thank you all for agreeing to let me share this great discussion with the readers of PubCrawl! (And stay tuned for more of Kali Wallace and YA horror in a future post!)
I have a question for writers of historical fiction:
How do you research for a historical novel? What sort of research do you do?
How do you balance getting the period details right with writing for a modern MG/YA audience?
~Kali Wallace, author of Shallow Graves, Katherine Tegen Books 2016. You can visit Kali’s website and follow her on twitter @kaliphyte.
Lois Sepahban: My stories always start with a character, and I think that even in a historical setting, the character’s experiences are what make his/her story accessible and interesting for modern readers. But getting the setting details right does require research. Over a period of several months, I devour everything I can find about the setting–books, newspaper articles, diaries, documentaries, and museums. During those months, the story starts to slowly come together in my mind. So as soon as I’m ready to start writing, then I’ve already done most of the research.
I use a notebook to keep track of what I learn, and I always need to go back and dig up new details while I’m drafting.
By immersing myself in the history and culture before I start writing, I have found that the details come naturally as I’m drafting.
(Lois Sepahban is the author of the upcoming MG Historical, Paper Wishes, coming from FSG/Margaret Ferguson Books in Winter 2016. Learn more about Lois on her website and say hello to her on twitter @LoisSepahban)
Janet B. Taylor: When I FIRST started writing for REALS, I’d planned to write adult historical fiction. I was working with a hisfic author as a “writing coach” who told me–in no uncertain terms–that though I was a good writer, with potential…blah blah…my “voice” was too modern and too “YA”.
Now, at the time, I didn’t really know what “YA” was. And I certainly didn’t know what voice meant in writing terms.
Soo…I cried. A lot. Then I got to thinking. Okay. Modern voice. YA. Loves historical…..TIME TRAVEL!
I’ve been fascinated by the medieval period for years, and had studied it for a long time. Particularly England and France, and even more specifically, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. (I’d LOVE to write about her one day. Her teenage years are absolutely astounding. However, there are a LOT of wonderful books already written about Eleanor. And I’m not sure I have the chops to go up against someone like Elizabeth Chadwick or Sharon Kay Penman, for instance.)
Anyhoo, with that background, I basically did what Lois said. Total immersion for months. Websites. Read a lot. Traveled to Europe a few times. Read a lot. Castles, museums. Oh, did I mention I spent WAY too much money on books so I could read a lot? I got everything about anything to do with time period. I even got to spend the night inside Fontevraud Abbey in France, where Eleanor spent her later years, and is buried. I got to be alone with her (and Henry II and Richard the Lionheart) at night, in the cathedral, all alone. It was magnificent!
Now the sequel to my current book will take place in NYC during “The Gilded Age” 1895. That is requiring a LOT of new, very detailed, very intense research, as I wasn’t really familiar with that era. But it’s such a cool time and I’m enjoying it very much!
(Janet B. Taylor’s debut YA Adventure/Time Travel, Into the Dim, will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in Spring 2016. Visit Janet on her website and follow her on twitter @Janet_B_Taylor)
Patrick Samphire: Almost everything I write is set in one historical period or another. I’ve written short stories in Ancient Greece and Ancient Egypt, as well as in the first world war and prehistoric Britain. My novel, SECRETS OF THE DRAGON TOMB, is set in 1816, and I’m also working on a novel set in the 1930s.
But the shameful truth is that I’m an absolutely terrible researcher. I hate doing it. I pick up some incredibly informative, vastly heavy reference book and I rarely get past the introduction before my brain melts into a puddle of supreme apathy. I just can’t bring myself to do it. Come on. I can’t be the only one, right?
So, I have developed a special method of Historical Research for the Historically Ignorant and Terminally Lazy:
1. Watch movies and read books set in the relevant period, to get a basic idea of what the period was like. You have to be careful that you’re not picking books and movies by people who are equally Historically Ignorant and Terminally Lazy. For my 1816 book, that meant reading Jane Austen, Bernard Cornwell and Georgette Heyer and watching lots of Jane Austen adaptations. Yeah, and some people claim this is work…
2. Write your book.
3. Figure out all the bits you should have researched and go and look them up. Wikipedia is, of course, not particularly accurate about many things, but admit it, we all use it… Alternatively, ask my wife (you’ll have to find someone else to ask; sorry). My wife loves doing historical research. She reads books like that for fun. She even has degrees in this kind of stuff.
4. Realise that what you have in the book can’t possibly have happened, because you didn’t bother to research it in advance.
5. Rewrite, making it less impossible.
6. Blame the wizards/fairies/aliens. My books tend to have pretty heavy fantasy or science fiction elements, so when I get something wrong, I just blame the influence of magic/technology for changes to real history.
7. Now no one will realize how little you actually know about your historical period. Unless you write a blog entry admitting it.
(Patrick Samphire is the author of the upcoming MG Adventure, Secrets of the Dragon Tomb, coming from Christy Ottaviano Books (Henry Holt / Macmillan) in January 2016. Learn more about Patrick on his website and say hello to him on twitter @patricksamphire)
Heidi Heilig: For starters, picking historical fantasy/time travel over straight up historical fiction made things easier when it came to research. In the world of the book, characters can travel to historical and mythological maps, so I am not tied strictly to widely-agreed-upon reality.
That said, accurate history can really make the fantasy aspect shine. When I did my research, reading was key for me, and I often went down the research rabbit hole for hours on something small that never made it into the final draft–or even the draft I was working on at the time. But that time wasn’t wasted–having all that information in a soup in my head made it easy to pick small things out and weave them into a detailed story.
Obviously, primary factual documents were very useful–boat time tables, newspaper articles–but I also found fiction of the time period very helpful for dialogue and speech cadence. Old pictures helped (the bulk of the story takes place in 1884 so there are some) and maps, of course, so I could see, for example, what areas of town smelled because they were near the tannery or how noisy things were due to proximity to the market. Paintings, art, or songs of the time helped me humanize the characters and understand what people filled their time with when they weren’t doing Important Book Things, because I have this tendency to see historical people as Very Serious.
In the future, I hope to be skilled enough to do straight up historical fiction. I love history. I think there are some issues that are universal. No matter when, teens are always growing up, or falling in love, or looking for their place in the world.
(Heidi Heilig’s debut YA Fantasy/Time Travel, The Girl from Everywhere, will be published by Greenwillow/HarperCollins in February, 2016. You can learn more about her on her website and follow her on Twitter @heidiheilig.)
What are your thoughts on historical fiction? Do you use any of these techniques when you research? Please share you thoughts in the comments!
As readers of this blog already know, PubCrawl is excited to help spread the word about Egmont USA’s spring 2015 list, a group which has banded together under the name Egmont’s Last List. It’s my pleasure to welcome Patrick Jennings as our guest here at PubCrawl today! (And we are giving away of one of Patrick’s books! More on that below…) I’m so thrilled to interview such a prolific writer of children’s books! Patrick’s website lists 25(!) titles. If you’d like to see all their beautiful covers, you can click here. Patrick’s latest is HISSY FITZ, which came out last month from Egmont. Here’s the synopsis from Goodreads:
Hissy Fitz lives with some two-legged creatures who are destined to serve him in every possible way and understand his every whim. Sadly, these creatures are sorely lacking in their skills. For one thing–they touch him when they want to touch him. Don’t they know that the two-legged are there for him to touch when he wants to–meaning when he wants food? Petting wakes him up! They speak to him–don’t they know the two-legged should be seen–so Hissy knows where to order food–and not heard?! It’s becoming intolerable. What is this irascible cat to do?
I understand that, although you generally write for middle graders, this book is for younger readers. What made you decide to move in that direction? My publisher wondered if I’d be interested in writing a chapter book. The book fairs and clubs had been asking for them. I told my editor about my insomniac cat idea and she liked it.
What changes in your writing process when you target a different age level? Do you write for a certain age, a reading level, or both?
I think the story dictates the reading level, the audience. When a story is right for a seven-year-old, the language often takes care of itself. In other words, if you want to engage with a kid, you should talk about something they care about, and in a voice and vocabulary that makes sense to them. That’s not talking down; that’s talking to.
Hissy Fitz is your first illustrated chapter book in in a long time (over ten years, correct?) How is an author matched to an illustrator? What is the process involved in creating an illustrated book? Other than providing the text, do you have any other input as to the illustrations?
When a book is submitted without illustrations, the art director looks for an artist. They have many illustrators’ portfolios on file. I work on the book with my editor while the artist is found. Usually the text is nearly finished before the illustrating begins. For Bat and Rat, a picture book, I ended up retooling my text, cutting out what was rendered visually by the amazing Matthew Cordell. I did a little tweaking for Hissy after Michael Allen Austin’s hilarious pictures came in. There were textless spreads in Bat and Rat, so, some notes were needed, but, in general, one tries to leave artistic decisions to artists.
I also understand that this is your first cat book! Yet you’ve had pet cats for 20 years? What took you so long to write a book about a cat?
I never had a story to tell. I’ve considered that this is due to cats not really doing much of anything. Mostly they just sit around the house. Dogs go out and play with their owners, protect their owners, rescue people, hang with their friends. Cats nap on average eighteen hours a day. It was when I struck upon the idea of an insomniac cat that I finally had a cat story.
Hissy Fitz is such a unique character – his voice really sucked me in. I know it’s difficult to pinpoint the origin of an idea, but can you say where the character of Hissy Fitz came from? What made you decide to tell this particular cat’s story? Those twenty years with cats were spent wondering what they thought about, especially what they thought of humans. In recent years, I’ve led a young writing group at my house, and have watched the writers interact with my cats. I tried sharing with the kids all I’d learned about how to approach a cat, touch a cat, and treat a cat, but it didn’t make much of an impression. I suppose their treatment of my cats shaped my idea of how Hissy would view kids, as well as other humans.
I know you do a lot of school and library visits with children. What’s your favorite thing about meeting young readers?
Their enthusiasm. They love to read, and they get very excited when they meet an author of a book they’ve read. They have tons of very good questions. They’re often also interested in writing stories. The whole day is filled with excitement. I’m thoroughly exhausted afterward. It’s the best.
Any last words of advice for aspiring writers, particularly those hoping to write for children?
Spend as much time as you can with kids. Volunteer to read at the library, or in classrooms. Read to nieces and nephews, grandchildren, whomever. Talk to kids about the books they love. Listen carefully. Feel their enthusiasm.
Thank you so much, Patrick! Also, I want to offer congratulations on the news that Lerner Publishinghas acquired all of Egmont USA’s frontlist and backlist titles. We look forward to reading many more of your stories!
To celebrate the publication of HISSY FITZ, we’re giving away a copy of this wonderful book! Leave a comment below and use the Rafflecopter form to enter!
About the author:
Patrick Jennings’s books for young readers have received honors from Publishers Weekly, The Horn Book, Smithsonian Magazine, the PEN Center USA, the Woman’s National Book Association, and the Chicago and New York Public Libraries. The Seattle Public Library awarded his book, Guinea Dog, the Washington State Book Award of 2011. His book, Faith and the Electric Dogs, is currently being adapted for the screen. His new book, Hissy Fitz, will be published in January 2015. He currently writes full time in his home in Port Townsend, Washington.
Today is an exciting day for me, because I have the great pleasure of introducing you to R.C. Lewis, the author of STITCHING SNOW and the upcoming SPINNING STARLIGHT!
I’m currently reading STITCHING SNOW, and I’m loving it! If you’re a fan of exciting sci-fi, filled with original characters and set in an amazing world, you need to check this out! Kirkus calls it a “clever, surprisingly gritty science-fiction version” of Snow White. (That grittiness is what I’m enjoying most about the book!) And now is the time to read STITCHING SNOW, so you’re ready to read its companion book, SPINNING STARLIGHT, when it’s released this fall.
Here’s a synopsis of STITCHING SNOW:
Princess Snow is missing.
Her home planet is filled with violence and corruption at the hands of King Matthias and his wife as they attempt to punish her captors. The king will stop at nothing to get his beloved daughter back—but that’s assuming she wants to return at all.
Essie has grown used to being cold. Temperatures on the planet Thanda are always sub-zero, and she fills her days with coding and repairs for the seven loyal drones that run the local mines.
When a mysterious young man named Dane crash-lands near her home, Essie agrees to help the pilot repair his ship. But soon she realizes that Dane’s arrival was far from accidental, and she’s pulled into the heart of a war she’s risked everything to avoid. With the galaxy’s future—and her own—in jeopardy, Essie must choose who to trust in a fiery fight for survival.
Fantastic, right?! And just to add to the excitement, here’s what you can look forward to in SPINNING STARLIGHT:
Sixteen-year-old heiress and paparazzi darling Liddi Jantzen hates the spotlight. But as the only daughter in the most powerful tech family in the galaxy, it’s hard to escape it. So when a group of men show up at her house uninvited, she assumes it’s just the usual media-grubs. That is, until shots are fired.
Liddi escapes, only to be pulled into an interplanetary conspiracy more complex than she ever could have imagined. Her older brothers have been caught as well, trapped in the conduits between the planets. And when their captor implants a device in Liddi’s vocal cords to monitor her speech, their lives are in her hands: One word and her brothers are dead.
Desperate to save her family from a desolate future, Liddi travels to another world, where she meets the one person who might have the skills to help her bring her eight brothers home-a handsome dignitary named Tiav. But without her voice, Liddi must use every bit of her strength and wit to convince Tiav that her mission is true. With the tenuous balance of the planets deeply intertwined with her brothers’ survival, just how much is Liddi willing to sacrifice to bring them back?
Haunting and mesmerizing, this retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Wild Swans strings the heart of the classic with a stunning, imaginative world as a star-crossed family fights for survival in this companion to Stitching Snow.
We’re so lucky to have R.C. Lewis here today to talk about fairytale retellings, the concept of a “companion book,” and so much more! (AND… there’s a giveaway! More on that at the end. :D)
Thank you for visiting us here at PubCrawl today! I’m excited to learn more about your books, since they interweave fairytale and science fiction so seamlessly. Have you always been drawn to fairytales?
Actually … no. It was kind of a twist of fate that Stitching Snow came out at all. There’s a line in the Florence + The Machine song “Blinding” about Snow White stitching up a circuit board. I heard that once, and an image popped into my head. Before that, it never occurred to me to try a fairytale retelling.
Spinning Starlight is being described as a “companion book” to Stitching Snow. Does that mean it’s not a sequel?
Not a sequel at all. In fact, not even in the same imagined universe. However, they go together well because it’s another sci-fi take on a fairytale—this time Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Wild Swans.”
How did you decide to write a re-telling of The Wild Swans? Until I learned of your book I was unfamiliar with the fairytale. Was it your intention to retell a story that wasn’t well known?
This is basically the opposite of how Stitching Snow came about. My editor and I decided to have another fairytale follow up Stitching Snow, so I had to go out and find one. We didn’t want something that’s been retold to death (which eliminates a LOT of the most recognizable tales), but also didn’t want something too obscure. I got some fairytale anthologies and started reading, making notes about how I might put a sci-fi twist on it (not always an easy task!), and picked the one that called to me the loudest.
I worried that The Wild Swans might fall into the too obscure camp, because I wasn’t terribly familiar with it before I began. But as soon as I mentioned it to several friends, they said, “I love that one—it’s my favorite! I’ve always wanted someone to do a retelling of it!” That was good enough for me.
Can you tell us a little bit about the original story? What drew you to it?
I mentioned a little of it above, but a big part of why I picked this one is the way it focuses on a family relationship. It’s about a girl trying to save her brothers, no dashing prince rushing in to save the day. In fact, in the original, a king rather randomly marries the protagonist while she carries on trying to help her brothers, which ends up getting her in trouble.
Not to say there isn’t some romance in my version…
Maybe I also welcomed a challenge, because I quickly decided one part of the original I wanted to keep (somehow) was the protagonist being unable to speak until her brothers are saved. Not easy!
It seems like the young adult book world has been dominated by series for a while now, but lately it feels like that trend is changing somewhat. Do you feel that the concept of a companion book is something your readers are excited about?
It seems like it from the responses I’ve been getting! A few readers of Stitching Snow were hoping for a sequel (which I never intended it to have), but seem willing to accept this as the next best thing. And a lot of people felt Stitching Snow being a standalone was a strong selling point, yet were eager for something in the same vein, so hopefully this will satisfy them, too.
What can fans of Stitching Snow look forward to most in Spinning Starlight?
Unfortunately, Dimwit does not make a return appearance. (Like I said, separate universe.) My main character Liddi is very different from Essie (the main character of Stitching Snow), but I hope readers will enjoy her journey as she goes from paparazzi-hounded misfit of a famous family to someone who must fend for herself and take risks to save her brothers when no one else can. She also makes some interesting friends along the way … some of them coming from VERY unexpected places.
SPINNING STARLIGHT sounds fantastic! I’m so excited for it, and I’m still reading STITCHING SNOW! Thank you SO MUCH for stopping by to talk to us about your writing process!
And now the giveaway! We are giving away an ARC of SPINNING STARLIGHT! Just fill out the Rafflecopter form below. R.C. will send the winner an ARC as soon as they are available!
About the author:
R.C. Lewis has taught math to teenagers for over ten years, including several where she found calculus is just as fun in American Sign Language. After a lifetime of thinking she didn’t have an ounce of creativity, she realized she just needed to switch to metric. When she escapes the classroom, she writes geek-infused YA like Stitching Snow (2014, Hyperion) and Spinning Starlight (2015, Hyperion). a Rafflecopter giveaway
The seed of this post began as a reflection on my own writing choices – the constant desire to create something new and original on the page, pitted against the awareness that any break with writing conventions and norms carries with it a certain level of risk. Will readers feel drawn in by this choice, or will they find it off-putting? Is this a bold break with tradition, or is it a gimmick? Risk can be terrifying, (especially for an unpublished writer,) but I’m a strong advocate for risk-taking, and the aim of this post is to help you discover the best risks for your story.
What do I mean by taking risks?
Risk is a broad term. Dictionary.com defines it as exposure to the chance of injury or loss; a hazard or dangerous chance. Reading that definition, it’s difficult for me to see how I’m going to make a convincing argument in favor of risk-taking! Even dictionary.com’s example of the word used in a phrase is negative – their example is: not worth the risk. Wow! So much risk aversion!!!
Even when narrowed down to the art of storytelling, the concept of risk is still quite broad and could represent a zillion different things. A writer weighs many choices as he or she forms a new story – the setting… the age, gender, race, etc., of the characters… the time period… the point of view… and on and on and on. Every choice could represent a type of risk to the story. For purposes of this post, however, I want to focus less on the story and more on the telling of the story. I want to talk about narrative choices – risks that a writer might take in deciding to employ a style or structure outside of the norms or expected conventions.
For clarity, let me share some examples of books and films that took narrative risks and succeeded.
(*Spoiler Alert* Most of the narrative “secrets” of these stories are well known, but I personally hate even the tiniest of spoilers. Most of these are harmless, but if you haven’t read Atonement or seen The Sixth Sense – and somehow haven’t been spoiled to their secrets – please skip my notes about them! I would hate to be the one who spoiled these for you!):
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak – A book narrated by Death himself.
Monster by Walter Dean Myers – The story of Steve Harmon, a teenage boy in juvenile detention and on trial, presented as a screenplay of Steve’s own imagination.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky – The story of a boy named Charlie, who describes the events of his freshman year of high school through letters to an anonymous stranger.
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov – A foreword, a 999-line poem by a fictional poet, and a commentary to the poem combine to form the story of the novel.
Atonement by Ian McEwan – A “story within a story,” but the reader is kept unaware of the nested story until well into the book.
The Sixth Sense (a film by M. Night Shyamalan) – The main character can only be seen by one other character, a narrative manipulation that is hidden from the viewer until late in the story.
Memento (a film by Christopher Nolan) – A story presented as two different sequences of scenes: a black-and-white series of scenes in chronological order, and a color series of scenes shown in reverse order. The two sequences converge at the end of the film, creating a unified story.
These are just a handful of examples, but I hope they convey the breadth of stories that can be successfully told outside of the standard conventions of form. I also hope they demonstrate the value of risk-taking. Looking back at these from the perspective of the present, knowing what we know, for instance, about the way readers have embraced The Book Thief, it may not seem like Markus Zusak took a risk by casting Death as the book’s narrator. But as he was writing, Zusak couldn’t have known how this break from narrative norms would be received. Fortunately for us as readers, he took a chance.
When a break from traditional structure succeeds, it’s often because the choice complements and magnifies the story and all of its elements – character, setting, theme, etc. When such a choice fails – when it calls attention to itself and distracts the reader – it’s often because it doesn’t add to the story, but instead stands out against it in a false and gimmicky way.
So how do you get it right? How do you ensure that your choice to abandon some narrative norm improves rather than detracts? I would suggest that you consider the following:
Your own personal judgment as a writer – How do you feel about this choice? If you’re passionate about a unique narrative structure for your story, you’re probably onto something. Trust your gut.
The advice of trusted readers and your agent – Your critique partners and beta readers may love your choice… they may hate it. They may fall somewhere in between. Weigh their input. Ask for the basis of any reservations they may have. Remember that critique partners and beta readers want your story to succeed. Of course, if you’re fortunate enough to be working with an agent, he or she will have an opinion, too.
Let the story itself be the ultimate judge – Ask questions like: Is this choice illuminating the story, or getting in its way? If I went with a more traditional form, would the story shine more brightly, or dim from a loss of energy? Why?
All this advice can be reduced to one essential truth: the ultimate goal of a writer is to tell the best story in the best way possible. Serve your story. Use conventions. Take risks. Tell the best story you can.
What are your own feelings about narrative structure? Are you a risk-taker, or do you prefer to follow traditional form? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
~~~
Julie Eshbaugh writes fiction for young adults. She is the author of the upcoming Ivory & Bone (HarperCollins, 2016) which (incidentally) has been described as having “a unique narrative structure.” You can add Julie on Goodreads and follow her on Twitter and Pinterest.
Where do your ideas come from? This can be a difficult question to answer, since usually, an idea seems to come out of nowhere. One day you’re driving in your car or washing dishes and an idea starts to glow in your mind like the sun coming up, or maybe it glares down on you all at once, as if dark clouds were suddenly blown away and there it is – hot and bright and obvious.
Since ideas seem to come unbidden, it might seem that we writers have no control over our ideas. They come on their own, after all, not when we call to them (no matter how nicely we call…) but when we least expect them. But I would argue that these seemingly random ideas are actually the product of a subconscious mind that has been “trained” to be searching for them at all times.
Maybe this sounds very mystical or pseudo-psychological (because, well, maybe it is…) but if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to share four suggestions to prime your mind to subconsciously formulate story ideas:
Always ask “what if?” You may have heard never to open a query letter with a hypothetical question, but that shouldn’t mean that hypotheticals are useless to writers. Most of us think this way already. If it rains for three days straight, we say, “Imagine if this were snow!” If it starts to storm, we say, “Imagine if you were catching a flight on a day like today!”
Since most of us already think this way, I’m simply suggesting you take your questions a bit further. You may ask yourself, “What if it never stopped raining ever again?” or “What if all this rain were acid and it destroyed everything it touched?” You may think of the flight taking off in a storm and ask, “What if two long separated lovers were seated next to each other in a jet taking off in dangerous weather?” or “What if lightning hit an engine just as a hijacker was storming the cockpit?” Just pushing your “what ifs” a bit further will jump start your imagination.
Never accept that there is only one solution to a problem. If you have to pick up Mary from cheerleading and Rebecca from field hockey, and they are ten minutes apart and you have only five minutes to make the trip, you can probably figure out at least one solution. Maybe Mary catches a ride with another family. There’s a solution, so the problem is solved. But as writers, shouldn’t we train ourselves to come up with a few extra solutions? Rebecca could walk to the local library and wait there. Mary could ride her bike to practice so that you only need to worry about Rebecca. Writing is all about obstacles and overcoming them, so train your mind to look for more solutions than you’ll ever need.
Ask questions like a child. I remember when my son was small he would ask questions all the time. “How does an antenna work?” “Why do fluorescent lights make my skin look blue?” “How does the TV find the right show when you change the channel?” I’m embarrassed to admit how many times I had to answer, “Go ask Dad.” Shouldn’t a grown woman know how an antenna works? And if she doesn’t, shouldn’t she be anxious to find out the answer? Unfortunately, as we get older, we let the day-to-day questions – “How am I ever going to pay the cell phone bill?” – crowd out the questions that lead to much more creative thinking.
Read widely. While it’s important to read in the genre you write, I personally believe writers should read all kinds of fiction, as well as magazine articles, current events, travel stories, and even science journals. A few years ago, when the Chilean miners were trapped, I developed a voracious interest in Chile, and tried to read as much as I could about a country I’d rarely thought about before. Not long after that, a photo on a magazine cover spawned a frenzy of research into Machu Picchu. To date, I’ve never used anything I learned about Chile or Machu Picchu in any of my fiction, but it has helped train my mind to imagine different environments, and the lives of the people who live there.
Do you have unique methods for generating ideas? Do you already practice any of these habits? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!
~~~
Julie Eshbaugh writes fiction for young adults. She is the author of the upcoming Ivory & Bone (HarperCollins, 2016.) You can add Julie on Goodreads and follow her on Twitter and Pinterest.
Is your National Novel Writing Month plot stuck? Maybe you need to add in a little irony.
The TED-Ed team partnered with educator Christopher Warner to create videos about both verbal irony and dramatic irony (embedded above). Below, we’ve rounded up three tips on how to incorporate dramatic irony into a story.
(This post originally appeared in a slightly different form on my personal blog in October, 2010. I revisited it recently and decided to share it here.)
Wouldn’t it be great if, when you went to your mailbox today, you found a letter inside from the main character of your work-in-progress, telling you just how she feels about the central conflict of your story? Or maybe she wrote a love letter to another one of your characters, and somehow it was misdirected to you? Imagine what a resource a letter like that would be…
When I do my outlining for a new WIP, I write up a lot of backstory. I also do character sketches, to help me form a clear idea of each of my characters – not just hair color, eye color, and favorite movie, but what they would do on a perfect spring day, where they would go on vacation if money were no object, even how they feel about money, in general. I try to think of the most revealing questions possible. These sketches help me with the essentials of my characters, but they only get me so far.
That’s why I’ve taken to writing first-person narratives – letters to me, if you will – in the voice of each character. These narratives generally address the main conflict faced by that character in the story, and how she or he feels about it. Does she believe that the problem is insurmountable? Does she still have hope? Who is she counting on most to help her? Who does she expect to cause her the most trouble?
I also write first-person narratives by all the individuals involved in romantic relationships in my story. For each one, I ask the character to tell me:
What do you love most about this other person?
What would you miss the most if he or she were taken away?
When did you first feel an attraction and what triggered it?
And, well, I’m sure you can come up with a lot more questions along this line.
These letters are great tools to return to while drafting. They help me to maintain consistency within a character, but they also helped me see that, despite consistency, all well-rounded characters have internal conflicts they are dealing with. People are filled with contradictions. Your characters need to be, too, if they’re going to leap off the page as real people with real complexity.
When you ask your character to tell you how he feels about the central conflict, chances are his answer will be complicated. It won’t just be as simple as, “I hate my father and wish he were dead,” because where’s the true conflict in that? Nothing is ever that straightforward. If it were, in chapter one your character could pull out a shotgun and shoot his father and the story would be done. Instead, your character’s answer to how he feels about the central conflict will be layered, complex, and in some ways, contradictory.
For you, as the writer, the secret to your character’s arc lies hidden in these contradictions. Early in the story your character may respond most to the tug of one attitude toward the central conflict. But as the story moves along, he may feel the influence of another attitude toward that conflict, and he will begin to change. By the time he’s completed his character arc, he may find himself in a place of compromise between these two contradictory attitudes.
Do you think this method might work for you? Do you have any of your own unique methods of learning about your characters? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
~~~
Julie Eshbaugh writes fiction for young adults. She is the author of the upcoming Ivory & Bone (HarperCollins, 2016.) You can add Julie on Goodreads and follow her on Twitter and Pinterest.
This is my first post for PubCrawl since my big news came out. For those of you who have not yet heard, I am thrilled to announce that my debut novel, IVORY AND BONE, has sold to HarperCollins in a three book deal. Yay! Here’s the summary from Goodreads.com:
Pitched as a YA Clan of the Cave Bear, this fantastical debut with a unique narrative structure tells the story of two star-crossed teens whose competing clans share a dark history, and who must choose between trusting—or fighting—each other.
Sharing this news with the readers of this blog is nothing less than a dream come true. If you’ve been following PubCrawl for long (and maybe even its predecessor, Let The Words Flow,) you know that this didn’t happen for me overnight. I joined Let The Words Flow in 2010. I’m not sure exactly when I first set the goal of becoming a published novelist, (I feel like it crept up on me slowly, developing over time,) but I think it would be safe to say the goal was fully formed somewhere between the summer and fall of 2008, six years ago.
Six years… Six years of writing almost every day. Six years of setting word count goals, of giving up evenings out and favorite TV shows. Six years of getting up early and going to bed late so I could get the writing done.
None of that makes me unique or special – I know I’m far from alone in this. Over these six years, many of you have been pursuing your writing dreams right alongside me. But since IVORY AND BONE was officially announced, I’ve been congratulated on my tenacity. A few people have said they were impressed that I never gave up.
The truth is, I almost never considered giving up. I rarely thought I was wasting my time. Thoughts of quitting only darkened my mind on the very worst of days, which, thankfully, were few.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, trying to figure out what exactly kept those thoughts at bay. I’ve come to realize that, while some of it can be credited to a naturally persistent (some might say stubborn,) disposition, much of my ability to persevere is owed to my fantastic support system. In hopes that this might help readers of this blog that may be dealing with the temptation to quit, here are my thoughts on the aspects of my life that have kept me going:
The people closest to me understand the creative process. This has probably been the biggest boost to my perseverance. Both my husband and son have their own creative pursuits. My son studies acting and filmmaking. My husband is a singer-songwriter. Since the day I met my husband, writing songs has been a part of his daily life. He has been a fantastic example for me of a person who relentlessly pursues his art. Not for glory or money or external validation, but for the art itself. Because he didn’t choose music; music chose him. His example has helped me to live as if writing chose me.
I have writer friends and critique partners who tirelessly cheer for me. Writing is lonely. By its nature, it’s solitary and isolating. That’s why I can’t overstate the impact my writing friends have had on me. To say they encouraged me would be a horrific understatement. When it felt like the whole world was telling me “no,” they screamed “YES!” Yes, you can do it. Yes, you’re good enough. Yes, you will get there. I cannot thank them enough. If you do not have friends like this around you, find them. Join a writing group. Engage with the online writing community. (The #amwriting hashtag on Twitter will lead you to lots of likeminded people.) Find people who understand what you’re trying to do. Find people who will cheer for you (and cheer for them, too!)
I blog about writing. Blogging may seem like just one more obligation, something that takes up more time and might make it even harder to keep pursuing your writing. And for some people, blogging does get in the way. But for me, blogging has been a godsend. It’s connected me with all of you who read this blog – writers and readers willing to exchange ideas with me. That process has helped me to form my identity as a writer. When you have a day job that takes up forty (plus) hours of your week, it’s easy to forget that you are a writer first. But this community keeps me focused, so thank you, thank you, THANK YOU. Thank you for supporting my posts, because every time I post I have the audacity to call myself a writer. It’s right there in my bio. Julie Eshbaugh writes fiction for young adults.
Of course, that statement in my bio is true, simply because I choose to make it true. I do write fiction for young adults. Nothing about that part of my life is going to change. Except now, I’ll have the guidance of an experienced editor. I’ll have the support of an established publisher. And sometime in 2016, some of the fiction I write for young adults will go out into the world as a book.
How about you? What keeps you writing? What’s pulled you through when you’ve been tempted to quit? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
~~~
Julie Eshbaugh writes fiction for young adults. She is the author of the upcoming Ivory & Bone (HarperCollins, 2016.) You can add Julie on Goodreads and follow her on Twitter and Pinterest.
Here at PubCrawl, we’ve occasionally done posts about “What we’re reading now.” Recently, I found myself feeling the need to do one again, prompted by this story I saw in Publisher’s Lunch, the daily newsletter of Publisher’s Marketplace:
Booker Prize winner for THE LUMINARIES Eleanor Catton said in accepting a recent prize from the New Zealand Post that she intends to establish a grant that will award writers $3,000 to provide “time to read.” Catton told the Guardian: “My idea is that if a writer is awarded a grant, they will be given the money with no strings attached except that after three months they will be expected to write a short piece of non-fiction about their reading (what was interesting to them, what they learned) that will be posted online so that others can benefit from their reading too.
This story started me thinking about the importance of reading for writers, and the value of sharing our thoughts on books with each other. So, with all this in mind, here are the books some of us are reading now.
Erin Bowman:
I just finished Jodi Lynn Anderson’s THE VANISHING SEASON. I picked it up on a whim because I absolutely adored her previous novel, TIGER LILY. She’s now 2/2 in making me cry. The books are very different but both touch on first loves, and have lyrical prose, vivid locations, and heart-wrenching endings. Tragic but beautiful tales. Highly recommend!
Adam Silvera:
I just started CHARM & STRANGE by Stephanie Kuehn, which recently won the William C. Morris award for best young adult debut novel. The jacket copy was pretty vague, but it’s definitely done the book a great service because I’m insanely compelled by it and have zero clue what’s about to go down. If the book slays me the way I think it might, not reading summaries beforehand may be the new way I approach reading.
Rachel Seigel:
Right now I’m in the middle of David Baldacci’s new Dystopian Fantasy THE FINISHER which is great for that 11-14 age range. I’ve just finished OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE by Neil Gaiman. Fabulous, quick fantasy that will appeal to teens and adults alike.
Jodi Meadows:
I’m right in the middle of RED QUEEN by Victoria Aveyard (Feb 2015) and it’s really interesting to see how her film background influenced her novel writing. Plus I’m enjoying the story a lot.
Sarah Jae-Jones (JJ):
I am currently reading what I call 12-year-old JJ Crack, or books set in England…with magic (you know, in the vein of Harry Potter). It’s partially for research, and partially because it’s 12-year-old JJ crack. So right now I am currently (re)reading: The Burning Sky by Sherry Thomas, The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud, the Chrestomanci books by Diana Wynne Jones (YES, ALL OF THEM), The Peculiar by Stefan Bachmann, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, and Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal. (I have read several of these before, which is why I am reading so many books at the same time.)
Susan Dennard:
I’m reading THE HOUSE OF THE FOUR WINDS by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory. I’m enjoying it, but I find it interesting because so far it feels incredibly YA (in a good, fun way!) though the book is marketed as adult fantasy. It leaves me wondering why–from a publishing/bookseller standpoint–a book gets placed on the YA or adult shelves.
EC Meyers:
I just finished THE MAGICIAN’S LAND by Lev Grossman, the wonderful conclusion to his Magicians trilogy, which now stands as one of my favorite book series. I’ve just started something completely different: GREAT by Sara Benincasa, which is described as a contemporary retelling of THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I recently watched the film Gatsby, so the source material is fresh in my mind, but I keep forgetting about that because GREAT is so funny and interesting and pretty much works on its own.
Julie Eshbaugh: I’m about 80% through LIE DOWN IN DARKNESS by William Styron, which is easily one of the most depressing books I’ve ever read, but the setting and characters are so well rendered, I can’t break away from this vivid portrait of a dysfunctional family. I’m also reading Maggie Stiefvater’s THE RAVEN BOYS, which I’m just getting into and loving.
What are YOU reading now? Do you have any books you can recommend to us? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
~~~
Julie Eshbaugh writes fiction for young adults. She is represented by Adams Literary. You can add Julie on Goodreads and follow her on Twitter and Pinterest.
tomorrow, June 7. These last few months leading up to the on-sale date have been a very exciting, sometimes terrifying, often exhausting time. Over the past few days—and especially today, on the eve of the launch—I’ve been forced to admit that there is another apt metaphor for a novel. In many ways—at least from my personal perspective—I’d have to admit that a novel is a lot like a child you’re sending out into the world.
E.C. MYERS was assembled in the U.S. from Korean and German parts and raised by a single mother and the public library in Yonkers, New York. He is the author of the Andre Norton Award–winning young adult novel Fair Coin and Quantum Coin, as well as numerous short stories. His latest novel, The Silence of Six, is a thriller about teenage hackers and government conspiracies. You can find traces of him all over the internet, but especially at 
STACEY LEE is a fourth generation Chinese-American whose people came to California during the heydays of the cowboys. She believes she still has a bit of cowboy dust in her soul. A native of southern California, she graduated from UCLA then got her law degree at UC Davis King Hall. After practicing law in the Silicon Valley for several years, she finally took up the pen because she wanted the perks of being able to nap during the day, and it was easier than moving to Spain. She plays classical piano, wrangles children, and writes YA fiction.
JODI MEADOWS lives and writes in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, with her husband, a Kippy*, and an alarming number of ferrets. She is a confessed book addict, and has wanted to be a writer ever since she decided against becoming an astronaut. She is the author of the Incarnate Trilogy and The Orphan Queen Duology (HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen).
JULIE ESHBAUGH writes young adult fiction. She is the author of the upcoming Ivory and Bone (HarperCollins, 2016.) You can visit Julie’s 
S. JAE-JONES (called JJ) is an artist, an adrenaline junkie, and the author of 
STEPHANIE GARBER loves Disneyland because it’s the one place on earth where she feels as if the fantastical stories she loves to write about could actually come to life. When she’s not writing young adult fantasy, she teaches creative writing a private college in northern California. Her debut novel, Caraval, will be published by Flatiron Books/Macmillan (US) and Hodder & Stoughton (UK) in fall 2016.
I know I’m not the only one who can actually be too hard on myself. After two or three unproductive days, it’s all too easy for me to slip into “Oh, god, I’ve done NOTHING this whole week!” mode…which, of course, only kills my productivity even more. When I have a record of my progress, it’s easier for me to tell myself, “Ok, so you had a bad day or two or three, but hey, before that you were doing great! Let’s get back to that.” Plus, when Julie also sees my progress, she can be that reasonable voice that tells me, “You’re doing fine.”
