Close Encounters of the Human Kind

I like it when the little kids toddle in, their snowy boots, their hats slipping over their eyes as they peel off their mittens.

I remember those snowy days with my own kids, how hard it was to get them coated up and out the door and car-seated into the minivan. All the stuff you had to carry. Diaper bags and wipe-ys and tissues for runny noses. The dolly toy my daughter sucked on so fiercely she lost her face. The dolly. Not my daughter.

The kids kneel down in front of the mice holes first and I kneel with them because I like to point out the teeny blue paint brush the mouse is holding and the paintings he's been working on and the mess he's made, but that's okay. He's an artist. Sometimes the mouse is a she. 

Is she real, they ask me. 

And when I tell them, yes, they believe me. 

Outside the bookstore the world is awful and growing awful-er or maybe it's always been like this and I only know it more now because the news scrolls out of my phone endlessly. 

Did you know a man hated his ex-wife so much he killed their two children when he was on the phone with her? They executed that man last week and his wife watched him die and I wish I didn't know this and I am sorry I shared it with you. 

My favorite book in the bookstore this week is a book called Ball. It's the story of the most darling adorable dog and how he keeps trying to get someone to throw him his ball. This favorite book is tied with the books How to Put Your Parents to Bed (hilarious) and After the Fall (the story of what happens after Humpty Dumpty fell and how he conquered his fear of heights. It's an inspirational tearjerker. I'm not lying) 

(And don't miss the sequel: Treat)

The other day two pre-schoolers gathered up every stuffed animal on the book shelves and lined them up on the couch and read books to them while their harried, apologetic mother nursed a baby sibling. 

Eh, whatever, I told her. Don't worry. I've been there. 

All those days nursing my daughter, her three year old brother dropping books on her head or legoes or matchbox cars. He wasn't used to sharing me with someone else and my heart broke for him at the same time I was saying, Just a minute. Give me a minute. The TV was on and the news broke in: 

A shooting at a school. 

I watched a stream of teenagers fleeing a school called Columbine with their hands up and I turned off the TV fast and burped my baby and played legoes with my three year old, freaked out, thinking about my own teaching days (only a few months before quitting to stay home with my new baby) and never ever ever did I worry about a student shooting up the school.

Did you know that there were "11 school shootings in the last 23 days, which is more than anywhere else in the world, even Afghanistan or Iraq"?  

I don't want to know this and I am sorry I told you. 

A boy reads a book curled up on the couch. A father teaches his daughter how to play chess. A grandmother comes into the store with her grandchild and I show her the book How to Babysit Your Grandma and she reads it with her grandchild on her lap. A mom comes in with her son and I point out the book Dragons Love Tacos. Later I hear the little boy giggling as she reads it to him. 

Last week a father in Kansas, a professor, a respected man in the community for over 30 years was picked up by ICE as he was taking his young child to school. He's going to be deported back to Bangladesh as an example to other immigrants. (If the first thing that crosses your mind when I tell you this story is that the man should've taken care of his paperwork, please don't tell me. I don't want to know this cold-hearted thing about you.) 

Last week we hosted a bookclub at the bookstore and a dozen kids read from A Wrinkle in Time. It was my favorite book as a kid and I still remember the story. How it was a dark and stormy night and Meg's father had been taken away and she flew off to rescue him with her younger brother Charles Wallace. 

It was really bad where their father was being held. A dark place where evil had taken over and even good people had been sucked into it, and to make matters worse, It took Charles Wallace. In the showdown the once darling brilliant beautiful boy tells Meg he hates her, and she is horrified and enraged, thinking

there is nothing you can do to fight hate like that.

Oh my God so many girls took the stand last week and told the world how their gymnastics doctor hurt them, one girl after another, telling her story, shaking and crying, and even now there are men and women closing their eyes to it and saying it didn't happen or it wasn't that bad or why did they wait so long to tell or maybe they are lying and 

I could hate these people. 

Did I tell you about the teeny mouse painting a picture in the bookstore where I work? Did I tell you that the artist who created it is named Sharon Dorsey? She works at a place called Open Door Studio where she helps artists with disabilities create and sell their art. 

Did I tell you that the first time I read A Wrinkle in Time I cried? Not in sadness, but from relief and joy. 

It turns out there is a way to triumph over darkness:

Love

and I am happy to share it with you.

The last time I worked at a bookstore

I shelved the books in the Romance section, which was the easiest section to maintain because there was only one way to organize those books-- alphabetically by author -- and I was a part-time bookstore worker. They were never going to give me one of the big, complex, multiply-segmented sections like History or Religion

or even Poetry, even though I was working on my MFA in poetry at the time. Everyone at that bookstore was an expert in something, and people all over the city would call our Information Desk line to ask questions about Whatever. What movie won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1936 or How many years did the Mexican American War last, and one of us would know the answer or we'd know where to find it.

We were basically the Siri of the early 1990's, when there was no such thing as the internet or Google and cellphones were as big as your forearm and only really wealthy and/or obnoxious people carried them around.

I wasn't always the best bookstore worker. I snootily looked down on the Romance novels I shelved and I secretly rolled my eyes at the people who came in looking for a book but couldn't remember the title or the author or really anything about it, except that it had a white and black cover.

(for the record, they wanted Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein)

Something people are often surprised to learn about bookstore clerks is that we were not allowed to read the books-- at least while we were on the clock.

I wanted to read everything.

But once I got over that rule, I loved working at the bookstore. I loved unpacking the new arrivals. I loved the smell of the storeroom, the wooden shelves, the rows and rows of backstock. I loved reorganizing books in the bookcases. I loved talking to people about books and asking them what they were reading and learning what was new in the book world and getting to meet authors at book-signings and fulfilling my mission

which was always to put a book into the customer's hands.

Turns out that nearly thirty years later I still love doing all of these things. The bookstore where I have been working for the past few weeks is called Cover to Cover.  It's the reconfiguration of the original Cover to Cover (my favorite bookstore of all time, which closed a few months ago when the darling owner Sally Oddi retired), now reopened in a new space by the lovely Melia Wolf, a former art teacher, which is very apparent the moment you walk through the door. 

(LOOK!! a teeny mouse nook under the counter, designed by
artist Sharon Dorsey of Open Door Studio)

(The original Cover to Cover had a wall of visiting author
and illustrator signatures. The wall went with Sally but Melia
took photos and recreated it as tissue paper!)

I am having a blast unpacking boxes and moving the books around on the shelves. Struggling, a little, to learn the ordering and computer cash register system (yes, THIS has changed mightily over the last thirty years), but the smell of the books is the same, and I will never tire of talking about books with people.

(One of my first customers, Sally! at the grand opening.)

And my new favorite thing?

Kneeling down to put a book into a child's hands.

Love Letter to a (departing) Bookstore

Dear Cover to Cover Bookstore,

The first time I stepped through your doors, I was in love.

Well, it's always that way with me and places that house books. Libraries. Bookstores. The spines lined up on the shelves, the scent of the paper, the people who tend to congregate in these spaces. Voracious readers. Aspiring writers. A kid here and there, cross-legged on the floor, lost in a story.

But you were different. You were special.

A store dedicated to children's books. An owner who reads everything, who loves and honors children's literature. I browsed for a year before I talked to her beyond the typical clerk-to-customer conversation. Can you recommend--? If my child loves that, will she like this--?

A year or two more before I told her I reviewed books on my blog. Her eyes lit up and she waved me into a back room. I nearly keeled over from book overload shock. Stack after teetering stack, books scraping the ceiling in high rise towers, books piled up on the floor and spilling out of boxes.

Advanced copies of forthcoming books, she said. She and her assistant couldn't read them all. They needed people to review them. Would I mind doing that for her?

Uh, no. I wouldn't mind!!! I walked out that first time with an armload, feeling like I'd won the lottery.

Somewhere along the way I told her I dreamed of being a published writer. From then on, she always asked how my writing was coming along. When I attended book talks and signings, she introduced me to the authors. When I had a manuscript on submission, she offered to take a look. She liked it, she said. And when the book was released, she threw me a spectacular launch party.

There's a wall in this lovely bookstore, several walls actually, of author and illustrator signatures. All of the people who visited the store in the thirty-five years of its existence. In my pre-pubbed days I used to read the signatures. Jacqueline Woodson. Virginia Hamilton. Kwame Alexander. John Green. Imagine my name up there.

I know, I know, this magical space couldn't go on indefinitely.

This week the owner is retiring. Someone's bought the place--the Cover to Cover name, I should say--because the building itself is closing and reopening somewhere else. The expansive inventory of children's books is being sold. The wall of signatures will be taken down.

Yesterday I browsed the shelves for the last time. I touched the book spines, sat cross-legged on the floor. Lost myself for a few moments in a story. Searched the wall of signatures for familiar names.

Smiled when I found my own.

I realize as I write this letter that it isn't to the bookstore. It's to the owner, Sally Oddi, book lover and children's literature champion, supporter of writers and illustrators, teachers and librarians, and loyal, supportive friend to me and to so many.

Thank you, dear Sally, for creating Cover to Cover.

May this wonderful place live on without you, and may you enjoy your retirement, surrounded by good friends and good books.

On Finishing a Draft (Again)

The other day I finished working on a draft of a novel that I have been revising (on and off) for five years. This was version number 4.

There will be a draft 5.

Writing this draft almost killed me (in order to meet a totally self-imposed deadline, I worked 6 to 10 hours a day for 46 days in a row)

--but it also taught me the greatest truth I know about writing (again).

Trust the process.

Say it with me, people:

TRUST

THE

PROCESS.

I understand this mantra now at the very core of my being. I say it at the beginning of every new project. I say it somewhere in the middle. And I say it at the end. Most of the time I don't even believe it.

And then I do.

Trusting the process means:

• pushing forward, writing every day whether or not you want to/feel like it/care/have fantasies about flinging your laptop through a plate glass window
• focusing on the day's goal--whatever it happens to be--a passage, a scene, a chapter, a word count, a character arc, a plot line, etc.--and not worrying about what you will have to work on the next day (or God forbid, next week) 
• pushing out of your mind if this story is any good, if it will ever sell, what your agent or editor will think, and/or what the bloggers on Goodreads will say. I heard once that every writer has an ideal reader in mind while writing--this is the person you imagine reading and responding and it is the person you most hope to please. My ideal readers are my husband--who is extremely critical, and yet, I admit, nearly always right, and my writing critique partner Donna, who knows exactly what to say and how to say it and who has kept me from jumping off a ledge too many times to discuss here. I need both of them in my writing life. I also need to push them out of my mind during writing sessions.
• celebrating small successes and going easy on yourself when you feel like you've failed. 
• reminding yourself and then believing it--that this is only a draft and you will finish it, and if you have to, (likely) you can pick it up again and go back in, knowing that each time you really are getting closer and closer to that nebulously termed "right" feeling of completeness.

A few months ago I was chatting with one of my favorite writers Rae Carson. We had volunteered for Small Business Saturday to work at our local children's bookstore Cover to Cover. Small Business Saturday, unfortunately, turned out to have been poorly scheduled in our town of Columbus Ohio--it coincided with a college home football game and not just any college. The store is about 10 minutes away from where the Ohio State Buckeyes play.

Rae and I spent quite a bit of the quiet day in the bookstore chatting--about our favorite books and about the writing life (she is a New York Times best selling author, so let's just say that her writing life is a tad different from mine). But at the same time, there are similarities--ie: figuring out how to balance writing with promoting and with actual living of life with kids and bills and grocery shopping.

At one point the conversation turned to what our latest project is. Rae has a three-book trilogy out, the glorious Girl of Fire and Thorns, and now she is working on writing her next three-book series, something she's already sold on synopsis. When she told me this, my mouth dropped open. I can't even imagine writing under that kind of pressure--selling a book before you've written it... Yikes.

I told her that I was working on a rewrite of a rewrite of a rewrite, and we lamented about how to fit in writing around travelling (I laugh as I write this because Rae's travel schedule dwarfs mine--I think she said she hasn't been home for more than a month at a time in several years). She asked if I had sold the book yet and I said no, and she had a funny expression on her face.

She said something like, Wow, I can't even imagine that kind of pressure.

My mouth dropped open again. What do you mean? I asked.

She said, you're writing something without knowing if it's ever going to go anywhere?

After a pause, I laughed, because this is how I've written every book I've ever written. I've never had a guarantee that anything was going to sell.

We parted that day, probably both feeling sorry for the other person. Okay, that's stupid. I do not feel sorry for Rae Carson. She probably does not feel sorry for me either. So, forget I said that.

My point is, (I think this is my point), that writing is hard for every writer, no matter where you are in the process or in your career.

I know that my friends and family look at my crazy, totally self-imposed work schedule and shake their heads in amazement and confusion. Why not take a day off? Why work so hard for something that you could easily put off for another day? Why work into the night in order to get just one more sentence?

The answer: I don't know.

The answer: it seems to be my process.

And, I trust it.


PS: For the record, I am taking a two-week break from writing. I am traveling soon to the area where I grew up. I will be visiting libraries and schools and reconnecting with old friends and relatives. Stay tuned for all the fun (and pressures of a different kind)...

In Which I Return (briefly) to My Dream Job

When I was fifteen, my dream job was to work at a department store and sell perfume. I have no idea what that was about. I don't even like perfume. Maybe I thought it sounded like easy work--lounging behind a glass counter, arranging bottles, spritzing people...

The jobs I ended up with were so far away from that perfumy vision, it's laughable. I chopped whole chickens in half at York Steakhouse. I scrubbed pizza pans at Papa Gino's Pizzeria. I flipped steaks at Ponderosa. I busted my butt waiting tables at TGI Fridays and Perkins (jobs I still have nightmares about). At the end of my shifts, let's just say, I did not smell like perfume.

When I was in grad school, a friend of mine suggested I apply for a job where he worked, a bookstore. This sounded like a cool gig. I knew how to work a cash register. I wouldn't have to wear a grease-spattered polyester uniform. I had what I thought was an extensive knowledge of books.

What I didn't have was much experience with bookstores, unless you count bopping into one of those Walden Books places at the mall every Christmas to pick out a yearly calendar. Up to that point, I was a total library fan girl.

But man oh man, the first time I stepped foot into the Davis Kidd Booksellers store in Memphis, I swooned. 100,000 + books. Bookcases upon bookcases. Tables piled high with stacks. And more books lining the walls. Comfy chairs. Cozy nooks. Pillows.

Oh! a book-loving, nerdy, poet-writing grad student could get lost for days in a place like that. I loved everything about working at Davis Kidd except for one rule: we were not allowed to read on the job. I confess that I did. Unpacking boxes of fresh new books and arranging them on the shelves, geez, how could you not stop to read the blurbs on the backs?  Or thumb through the pages. Or, um, read a couple of chapters?

My co-workers were the coolest people, fellow book lovers, many with advanced degrees or students like me (like I?) See, if I were still working there, I could ask any grammar question, and someone would know the answer. This was before the internet, before you could ask your phone any question in the world and get an almost instantaneous answer. No, children, before the internet, before smart phones, you had to just sit around and wonder what the answer was.

Or, you could call Davis Kidd Booksellers and a clerk would tell you.

I'm not lying. We got calls like that all the time.

We also hosted story times and author signings. We chatted with customers about the latest bestsellers, classics, and forgotten gems. People browsed around, listening to music and sipping coffee.

Bookstores, sadly, tragically, are struggling, and many are going out of business. It's hard to compete with the low prices and convenience of Amazon. And more and more people are downloading books on e-readers. I'm not knocking this practice. But I do so hope that we'll still have places for book-loving people to gather and browse.

This Saturday, Nov. 30, is Small Business Saturday. Author Sherman Alexie put out a call to fellow writers to support their local independent bookstores. Shop. Volunteer to work. Hand sell books. So, that is what I am going to do.

You can find me at my favorite bookstore in Columbus--Cover to Cover Bookstore.

Please come out and say hello. I promise I will not be reading on the job.

Story of a Book Launch (featuring fun party pics)

The party sorta ended up spinning out of my control.

This has happened to me in the past when it comes to party-planning. I start with something smallish:

Hey! Let's have a book signing for my debut novel Thin Space at my favorite local bookstore and I'll invite my family and friends to celebrate and we'll have punch and cookies, and maybe the cookies will be shaped like bare feet.

But somehow it grew bigger:

Of course I wanted to invite my Bunco group because those ladies are so much fun, and all of my daughter's friends--my key demographic readers--and my Mom, (because she is my MOM!), and my in-laws must come because they are awesomely supportive and somehow giddier than I am about this whole publishing a book thing, and then, there are the teachers and librarians who've read the book and have been thrusting it into their students' hands and now I don't even think of them as teachers and librarians anymore, but good friends who go out for margaritas and chips and guacamole with me.

Also, my book club. And my neighbors. And my husband's coworkers. And my hair stylist.

Somewhere along the way the amazing next door neighbors, who throw THE most lavish parties on the block, took over. (She's a former caterer and gourmet cook. He's a former bartender. Enough said.) She planned a menu. He stocked a full bar.

My friend from college drove 12 hours from Minnesota. My long time friend and her daughter drove 12 hours from North Carolina. She'd made these gorgeous necklaces:

(Here's my Mom, modeling one)

And brought a stamp shaped like feet and proceeded to stamp the heck out of a bunch of stuff with it.

(A napkin)

I guess I should mention here that the main character in the book walks around barefoot. Also, the thin space, supposedly, is a misty and cold place. Which inspired my in-laws to buy blocks of dry ice and set them misting around the back porch:

We drove over to the bookstore and I was getting more and more nervous... especially when I walked in the door and this greeted me:

And I got even more nervous when I saw the crowd--a panorama of This Is Your Life Meets my Bunco Group and My Mother and including some people I did NOT know!!:

 
I took a deep breath and had a profound moment of gratitude and love for all the readers in the world and for bookstores and for dear friends and for my father-in-law clapping and wearing his book cover necklace with pride.

I talked for a bit about something--who knows what. I signed books and smelled the stunning flower arrangement that my best writing friend Donna sent.

I tried not to spell anyone's name wrong and somehow ended up spelling my OWN name wrong a few times. (It's the two l's and the e that trip me up. I just keep looping letters without paying attention.) After the signing, the bookstore owner invited me to sign the Wall of Authors and my daughter noticed that there was tiny space under John Green's signature so I squeezed my name in there, making sure I spelled it correctly.

The party went on late into the night. We stuffed ourselves on gourmet food and my bartender neighbor ran around filling drinks and popping champagne and making multiple toasts to perseverance and following dreams and Harry Potter-like success.

And then we all kicked off our shoes and enjoyed each other's company and the remainder of the lovely warm summer night.

Random Thoughts on Book Signings (with Fun Vintage Pics)

So, I am in the process of setting up three book signings and therefore thinking a lot about book signings.

One thing I've noticed is that book signings these days tend to have titles. Recently, I've attended a Fierce Reads Tour and a Dark Days Tour. Also, a Good Girls/Bad Boys in YA Fiction Tour.

For my "tour" I am toying around with this title: "Places Where Jody Lives or Once Lived and Knows Some People Who Live in Those Places and Therefore Might Show Up" Tour. Whatdaya think?

(For the record my tentative schedule for the "PWJLOOLAKSPWLITPATMSU" Tour is as follows:

Columbus, Ohio: Saturday, Sept. 7 from 2:00-4:00 at Cover to Cover Bookstore

Lexington, KY: Saturday, Sept. 21 from 2:00-3:30 at Morris Book Shop

Memphis, TN: Saturday, Oct. 26 at 2:00 at The Booksellers at Laurelwood

Make a note family and friends! Also, peeps in CT, don't worry, you are on my radar next...)

I like going to author book signings and as someone who used to work at a bookstore, I have attended many. My favorite, back in those days, were cookbook authors. Those signings usually included food, and if we bookstore clerks waited patiently, sometimes we got to have a taste of sample recipes.

I've been to book signings (Louis Sachar, Sue Grafton, Jane Fonda, Madeleine L'Engle, Veronica Roth) where the line snaked out the door. Also, I've witnessed a few book signings as a bookstore clerk where no one showed up except the bookstore clerks. I will kindly not mention who the authors were for those...

The most crowded book signing I've ever attended was a children's author, Mary Pope Osborne of Magic Tree House series fame. My daughter, at age seven, was a HUGE fan, and I promised her we'd buy Osborne's latest book and get it signed. But, I almost reneged on this promise when we pulled up to the overflowing bookstore parking lot (and this is the huge bookstore Joseph Beth in Lexington that has two stories and space for like, 100,000+ books). We waited in line for two hours to reach Mary Pope Osborne, and I must say she was very sweet, taking a minute to smile and chat with my daughter before continuing on with the 100 people behind us.

There is something VERY cool about meeting and chatting with the author of your favorite book. I burst into tears when I had the chance to meet one of my favorite childhood authors Madeleine L'Engle. And I was similarly tongue-tied when I meet Barbara Kingsolver and Meg Rosoff. 

The idea that people might wait in a line to get my book signed kinda freaks me out if I think about it too much.

But then it hit me. I've had some practice signing books before...

Twenty three years ago, when I worked at Davis Kidd Bookstore (now Booksellers at Laurelwood) in Memphis, I got roped into doing a signing. Every Saturday there was a children's story time at the bookstore and for some reason, this one particular Saturday, they decided to add a book signing by a costumed character into the mix.

I played the costumed character Madeline. I remember waiting in the back room as a clerk read the story. You may remember that the book begins like this: "In an old house in Paris, that was covered with vines, lived twelve little girls in two straight lines... the smallest one was Madeline."

After she finished reading, the clerk said something like "And now we have a special guest with us..." That was my cue to walk out.

I was wearing a ginormous head mask, which turns out is frightening to young children. Also, it was false advertising because I was not "the smallest one" those kids had been picturing. A few of the children burst into tears--the terrified kind, not the joyful kind.

Some grabbed my legs and almost tripped me. (Fun fact: those ginormous head masks allow no peripheral vision. You can only see out from a 5 inch square directly in front of you. Luckily, the bookstore clerk figured this out quickly and wrapped an arm around me and led me forward before I could trample anyone.)

The signing went fairly well after the crying subsided.

I sat at a table, face hidden and sweating inside my ginormous head mask, and the kids lined up and thrust their books in front of my eye holes.

I nodded and chatted with them and signed

Love, Madeline.

In the storage room before putting on the ginormous mask

and surrounded by (possibly terrified) fans

Twenty three years later I will sign my actual name. Also, I will try not to trip over anyone.

"Reviews Are Not for Authors" and Other Bits of Wisdom from the Cool Chicks on the Dark DaysTour

It hit me when I had to park three blocks away from the bookstore that this was no ordinary writer book signing. The place, the awesome independent children's bookstore Cover to Cover, probably doesn't have more than fifteen parking spaces and every darn one of them was taken when I pulled up (naively) ten minutes early. I'm not good at counting people in crowds, but I'd have to guess that at least a hundred people were there--ranging from middle schoolers and moms to older teens and college types. The big draw, I realized at once, was Veronica Roth, author of the Divergent series. (I must confess here that I have not read the books yet, but I promise they’re on my short list.) The buzz is that this dystopian series will satisfy readers of the Hunger Games. Other fun trivia, the second book Insurgent is out, and Roth is working on the third, which she's jokingly calling Detergent. Her fans love this and LOVE her. The kids around me gushed about Roth like she was a rock star, and when she emerged from the back room, they cheered and giggled and swooned.

I had to sit on the floor behind a pole so I didn't actually get to see her at first (or the other authors along for the ride) but their voices all sounded cool. Sally Oddi, the owner of Cover to Cover, introduced the group--Roth, Bethany Griffin (Masque of the Red Death), Elizabeth Norris (Unraveling) and Aprilynne Pike (Destined--the fourth book in the Wings series)--then set the ground rules: twenty minutes of questions before we’d form orderly lines to get our books signed. The first questions were mostly for Roth--"Veronica! What's your biggest fear?" But then things settled down and we got into some interesting stuff:

Someone from the audience brought up a controversy on Goodreads. Apparently some writers are responding to negative reviews on that site. I wish I could've seen from behind the pole because I have no idea which author said what. I think it was Aprilynne Pike, though, who pointed out that book reviews really aren’t meant for authors. By the time a book’s out; it’s out, and there isn’t anything a writer can do to change it. Reviews, she said, are for readers. The others agreed, saying they tried to avoid reading reviews but couldn’t always help it, especially these days with social media. One of them laughed and said that there are readers online who tweet bad reviews directly to her. Maybe they don’t realize that she’s an actual person sitting at home in her pajamas reading this thing. But they all agreed that it was not cool to attack a reviewer and sometimes there was stuff they could learn from a negative review, that could at least help them with the next book they’re working on.

Then there was the mention of the controversial article in the New York Times recently that disparaged adults who read children’s fiction. I hate to even bring this up. One, because it ticks me the hell off when people attack an entire genre of literature—particularly one that I love so much—and two, because I think it just gives attention to a troll. Last year it was the article in the WSJ that painted all YA fiction as deliberately lurid. The ladies on the Dark Days tour waded in after the audience had finally quieted down (Yes, these rabid YA fans were ticked off too, offended that some blowhard would dare knock the books they love.) YA literature is popular right now, was one of the author’s responses. (again, could not see WHO since I was stuck behind a pole!) which makes it a fun target. But why not be happy people are reading more? Why attack books you haven’t read? Here here! (I get the feeling that certain critics are deliberately being provocative, trying to hit a nerve to throw a spotlight on themselves, and if we all ignore them, maybe they’ll go away.)

There were questions about the writing process. Two of the writers, Elizabeth Norris? and Bethany Griffin? (pole in the way!) have day jobs and fit writing time in at night. Veronica writes in spurts, working long days for weeks at a time, then taking as many weeks off after. Aprilynne has four kids and writes when they’re at school. She got a laugh when she mentioned that her only two goals every day were to write a certain number of pages and to run five miles. Cleaning and other stuff, including taking a shower, might not ever happen.

What do they do to combat writers’ block? One turns away from the blaring blank computer screen and writes by hand. Another (Veronica?) tries to figure out what’s really at the core of it—too much pressure, fear of failure—and address that first. And another said she doesn’t believe in writer’s block and because of that it can’t hurt her. Which prompted one of them to quip, “I want to live in your world.”

When the lines formed for the signings, I finally crawled out from behind my pole and managed to see these ladies. Oh, they were all very cool and hip and young-looking! Most of the audience squeezed into Veronica’s line. We sweated it out in a store not really built for over a hundred people, but everyone was polite and patient, and I was happy to see that most of those fans had bought at least one book by the other authors. Those writers were gracious and a little bowled over, I think, by the reception.

"What do you think of this?" Sally Oddi said to me at one point, clearly gratified herself by the mob of YA book lovers crammed into her store.

“It’s awesome,” I told her. “And it’s nice to see your place can handle a large crowd.” I nudged her then and we both laughed. We’ve been chatting for a couple years about my struggles getting published and now about my book sale, and Sally (because she's amazing and sweet and kind) offered to host my book launch party (Sept, 2013, mark your calendar). Can’t imagine I’ll have anything like the crowd for the Dark Days Tour. But hey. I’ll boost Sally’s sales with invites to all my family and friends. And now that I know Cover to Cover’s got the capacity (and plenty of parking on nearby streets) I’ll beg my bunco group to come too.

Why I Won't Write a Bad Review

Someone asked me the other day if I LOVE every book I read. They noticed that all of the book reviews I do are so gushingly positive. Yes, that’s true. But what I haven’t been mentioning is that for every book I blog about, there are a good four or five others that I don’t review. I read a lot of books. And sadly, most of what I read isn’t that great. These unreviewed books seem to fall into two categories, each kind of depressing to me as an aspiring writer.

1. Simply bad. These are the ones that I question how in the world they ever got published. They’re over-written and/or poorly written. The characters are stereotypical, cardboard cutouts. The plots are plots I’ve seen before. Predictable. Boring. The English major in me has an extremely hard time closing a book without finishing it. But this year I have done that several times, ignoring the accompanying twinges of guilt.

2. Decent but “meh.” Somehow these books depress me even more than the badly written ones. There’s nothing wrong with them. They just lack something. Heart, maybe. I heard an editor talk about this once at a conference. She said she could work with an author who had issues with plot or characterization or even grammatical problems. But if the “heart” wasn’t in the book, there was nothing she could do to save it. Heart is one of those elements that’s hard to explain, but you know it when you feel it. A character’s voice that immediately resonates with you. Maybe the story meanders or nothing much happens but somehow you want to keep reading anyway. Finish a book like that and it’s still tugging at you. Meh books disappear the second you put them down. I feel sad about those books. Somebody worked on them. Somebody loved them. And yet my only reaction in the end is: Yeah. Whatever.

I used to review books for a regional magazine. The editor made it clear that my job was to promote authors from that region. This meant no bad reviews. If I truly didn’t like the book, he said, I could simply write up a summary of it. That was fine with me. Until I came to a book that was so terrible I could barely plow through it. I don’t want to get into a big discussion here about self-published books, but this one took the stereotypical self-published prize. I read the whole damn thing out of some sense of obligation. (The magazine didn’t pay me for writing reviews. The payment was a copy of the book.) I tried to write up a summary. I really did. But every sentence veered into snarky territory and then I started worrying about my name being on top of that review. What if someone bought the book because of me? I just couldn’t go through with it.

When the owner of the children’s bookstore Cover to Cover asked me to review advanced copies of young adult books for her, remembering that previous experience, I made the deal that I would send her a short review of every book she gave me but only blog about the ones I really liked. I have nothing against literary critics. I appreciate their analyses of books—both the positive and negative. You’re not going to get better if you don’t have someone pointing out areas of weakness or plot holes or whatever. But being a writer, I understand what goes into creating a book, and I’m not going to spend my time or energy crafting a negative response to someone’s precious manuscript, no matter how crappy I think it is.

So for whatever it’s worth, if I review a book on this site, you can rest assured that it’s pretty darned good. (just my opinion, of course) I’m not getting paid. I don’t know any of the writers. And I have no reason to plug them. Except that something about the book stood out to me and I hope it might appeal to you as well.

Musings on Carnivorous Horses

I am not a horse person. I know many people are. There’s a whole genre of horse-related books that I’ve never read. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Black Beauty. I didn’t read that one either.

So I really had no desire to read the book The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater. Something about the cover. I hate to say I judge a book by one, but it’s true. The picture on the front didn’t grab me. It’s a girl riding on a horse, in kind of a cartoon-like style. In addition to not being a horse person, I’m not an artistic person. I don’t pretend to know what goes into the design of a book cover. I just know what appeals to me and what doesn’t. This one fell into the second category. I was sitting at one of my favorite places in the world, Cover to Cover, a children’s bookstore in Columbus, and I had an array of new books to choose from, advanced review copies piled in front of me. I kept passing by the horse one, picking it up and putting it back down. In the end the only thing that made me hold onto it was the author’s name. Stiefvater wrote the novel Shiver about a girl who loves a wolf (really a beautiful boy named Sam) that lives in the woods behind her house. That was a good book so finally I took this new one. And, out of some sense of obligation to read it before it comes out officially on October 18, I opened it.

To say that I loved this book is a gross understatement. I spent an afternoon reading it when I should’ve been working on a revision. I am knee deep in major revision of a novel, a novel that for the first time in my life I think might possibly, dare I say it?—be published. (Maybe I shouldn’t have said this. "Scratch that," as Willy Wonka would say. "Reverse it.") Anyway, the last thing I needed to be doing today was curling up with a book.

But I am so glad I did. It reminded what I love about reading and books and children’s books andreading children’s books, and all of that draws me back to my own childhood when one of the only things that kept me going sometimes was the ability to escape into the world of a book.

The Scorpio Races is exactly the type of story I would’ve loved to fall into as a child. Even though, as I said, it’s filled with horses. These aren’t ordinary horses, though. Did I mention that? They’re killer ones based on an ancient myth of horse monsters that swim in the sea and rise up out of the waves to gallop on the shore. And occasionally eat people. The island where they roam builds an entire culture around these horses--catching them, riding them, racing them. The two main characters, a boy named Sean and a girl named Puck, have their own complicated relationship with the horses and eventually with each other. Sean is something of a horse whisperer. He’s a trainer and four time-race winner but he dreams of getting out from under the thumb of the owner, tired of propping up the owner’s worthless son. If Sean wins the next Scorpio race (which involves riding a horse on the beach between the cliffs and the sea while praying that you don’t get eaten or dragged into the water) maybe he can buy his beloved horse and gain his freedom. Puck’s got more serious problems. Her parents are dead (courtesy of, you guessed it, a horse), her older brother’s about to abandon her and her younger brother, and their cottage is about to be repossessed by Sean’s boss. If she rides in the big race (something a girl has never done before) she might win enough money to save her family from ruin.

I am not doing this book justice. The gorgeous language. The description of the sea and the beach and the strange people that inhabit the island. I don’t know where the novel takes place, or when. It doesn’t matter. It’s another world, a place you wish you could drop into and stay.

I don’t think there will be a sequel, something that surprises me (because sequels are so obligatory lately) and it makes me sad. I reached the last page and I wanted the story to keep going. Which reminds me of another favorite pastime I had as a child—rereading my favorite books so I could escape into them again.

It’s something I will certainly do with this one.

Book Review: Forgotten by Cat Patrick

Before I continue with my three part facing failure series, I must post a review of a book I read this morning while it’s still fresh in my mind. But first, I have to let you in on an awesome deal I’ve sort of stumbled into. The people at Cover to Cover, my favorite independent local kids bookstore, offered me several ARCs to review. (ARC is short for Advanced Reading Copy. Publishers send them out to bookstores and the media and now more and more lately to bloggers to review and hopefully create buzz before the books are officially released.) I jumped at this opportunity. Actually I felt like a kid in a candy store, salivating over the boxes of ARCs hidden away in the back room and wondering how many I could realistically carry out of there without looking too greedy. I took seven and told them I would only blog about the books I really liked. I don’t know how other bloggers feel about this, but I don’t see the point in spending time writing something negative. I know what goes into making a book. I’m not going to add to another writer’s pain by creating whatever the opposite of buzz is.

So that said, here is my first review of an ARC, and what I hope is my little piece of its ensuing buzz:

The book is Forgotten by Cat Patrick, edited by Nancy Conescu and Elizabeth Bewley at Little, Brown.

The premise immediately grabbed me. The main character, London Lane, wakes up every morning forgetting everything that happened to her the day before. (Sort of like the movie Memento, but this girl remembers the events of a particular day until her brain resets itself at 4:33 a.m.) There’s also an added twist in that she can see the future. The irony is that she can remember things until they actually happen and then she forgets them. So she takes a lot of notes, reminding herself what she wore and what assignments she needs for school and any other important details that will help her make it through the day without looking like a total flake.

Teen girls will love this book because there’s a cute boy,(whom our memory-challenged main character swoons over as she meets him every day for the first time), and there’s a mystery involving a future, creepy vision. Plus, there’s the added tension that builds as the girl (and the reader) try to figure out what messed up her memory in the first place and if it will ever be possible for her to change the future.

Couldn’t put it down and highly recommend. Look for it mid June!