Children's Author Blog Hop: In Which I Reveal What I Am Working on Now (Sorta)

This week I am participating in the Children’s Author Blog Hop. My friend Holly Schindler, the extremely awesome administrator for our group blog, YA Outside the Lines, invited me to be part of this interview hop in which each author answers four questions and then invites three other children’s authors to participate.

Sad truth: I'm not having very much luck with my invitations. YA Writer Colleen Clayton, author of the brilliant and heartbreaking debut novel What Happens Next and Tracy Barrett, much-acclaimed historical fiction writer, are my only takers at the moment. So I am going to promote the heck out of them TIMES 3 (see below) and leave it at that--

because I do love these interview questions.

My book Thin Space is days away from being released but my head's been in another story entirely, and all of the questions relate to that. So, without further ado:

1. What are you working on right now?

A rewrite of a rewrite of a rewrite--is the short answer.

The longer answer is that back in 2009, when I was first submitting Thin Space and trying not to get sucked under the waves of despair that accompany the querying process for me, I signed up for NaNoWriMo (short for National Novel Writing Month--where writers pledge to write a novel during the month of November). NaNo is how I'd written the first draft of Thin Space the year before and that had worked out for me, so...

Flash forward to Dec. 1, 2009, and I had another finished 50,000 word manuscript. I use the word "finished" in the very loosest definition of the word.

When you write a book in the floundery, digressing, jumping around, trying-to-figure-out-the-story kind of a way that I write, the real work comes later.

a few versions of this mess (and note the grocery receipts. I am BIG on scribbling stuff down on grocery receipts.)

Not to get into too many boring details, but the revision I'm fiddling with now is at least version number four. I wrote three other novels in between and did heavy revisions on Thin Space during this time too. AM I THE ONLY WRITER WHO WORKS THIS WAY?

2. How does it differ from other works in the genre? 

Good question. This book, which I'll call "YA Fantasy," is the most complicated thing I've ever tried to write. It's got multiple points of view. It has two major plot lines and extensive back stories that had to be hammered out. There's some stuff from Greek mythology sprinkled around in it. Also, gritty and horrifying environmental disaster elements.

I don't think it's like any book out right now. (This is how weird it is, and this is the thought that sometimes wakes me up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night.) Something I read recently and loved--and I don't in any way assume that my book is even in the same LEAGUE as this--is the brilliant Maggie Steifvater's The Raven Boys. That's also got multiple povs and strands of magical realism and mythology...

3. Why do you write what you do?

Jeez. Who knows.

4. What is the hardest part about writing?

Here's a fun quote: "I hate writing; I love having written."

Not sure who said it, but it is so damn true some days. Most days. WRITING IS HARD. I don't know why. I mean, you're just sitting there. You're tapping on the keyboard. You're making stuff up. What's hard about that?

And yet every damn day, I have to psych myself up to sit down and open up my file and start tapping. Within minutes I fall into a spell and disappear. This is the magic part of writing that is so difficult to explain. It feels strange and good but also it saps your energy, and when you climb out blearily at the end of the day, you feel like you've run a mental marathon.

Maybe this is what is hard about writing--the intense focus and concentration required, never mind the emotional wringer that often accompanies that bizarre spell-like realm.

I have no idea why I do it. As difficult as it is for me every damn day, I have learned over the years that the days I don't write are much harder than the days I do.

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And now here are my shout outs to my writer friends:

Colleen Clayton--
I read Colleen's novel What Happens Next before it came out and had no idea what I was picking up. I immediately loved it. On the surface this is a problem novel--a girl is drugged and date raped--but the book is about so much more than that.

This is every girl's story to come to grips with a tragedy, to make sense of the unthinkable, to emerge on the other side okay. The book's theme is dark but there's humor too and painfully real interactions between friends, between a mother and a daughter, and an unfolding romance between two damaged people who deserve to have love in their lives.

Since I reviewed What Happens Next, Colleen and I struck up a correspondence. She was kind enough to read my book Thin Space and her blurb figures prominently on the first page. We've met since that time--we're both Ohio authors--and she's become a mentor and a friend.

She told me recently that her second novel is finished and I am so looking forward to reading it.

And

Tracy Barrett
First, I must tell you that Tracy has been pretty much a mentor to me since I met her years ago at a regional SCBWI conference. We struck up a conversation and I invited her to visit the school where I was teaching. My book club students had read her novel Cold in Summer and were thrilled to meet Tracy and ask her questions about the writing and publishing process.

This was actually MY first encounter with a visiting author too, and Tracy's presentation that day and her insightful responses to the kids got me seriously thinking that being a working writer might not be such an impossible/pie in the sky/day dreamy life after all.

Tracy's written 19 (probably more!) books for middle grade and YA readers. Most of these are historical fiction, but some are twists on classic myths. My favorite of these is Dark of the Moon about Theseus and the Minotaur.

And now Tracy's got several projects in the works that are sure to be awesome: The Icarus Complex, which uses the Icarus myth as a basis for a contemporary story set at a skydiving center, The Stepsister's Tale, a retelling of Cinderella, and Mirror, a twist on Snow White. I am so looking forward to getting my hands on these!

Talking Good Girls and Bad Boys in YA Fiction

The first Spring-y-like day in Columbus, Ohio, and instead of basking in the much longed for sun, shameless author groupie that I am, I headed over to one of my favorite places in the world, the children's bookstore Cover to Cover to meet a group of YA authors: Colleen Clayton, Kristina McBride, Tiffany Schmidt, and Katie McGarry. I wasn't the only fan there, but in case you missed it, here's a rundown of the fascinating, funny, and sometimes sorta heartbreaking discussion on books and boys and pretty much everything else in contemporary realistic YA fiction.

The big question was why these writers wrote about "bad" boys in their books. Katie McGarry weighed in first to talk about how she'd grown up around guys that some people viewed as being from the wrong side of the tracks. These boys were her friends, and it bugged her that they were judged unfairly. Her novel Pushing the Limits portrays a boy in foster care and his relationship with a "good" girl who's struggling with her own issues. There's a negative perception people sometimes have of poor kids, McGarry said, and she hopes her readers will see beyond the stereotype.

Colleen Clayton, author of What Happens Next, agreed. It's her sense that working class kids aren't represented in YA lit or else are treated one-dimensionally. "Why don't we see more of these boys who aren't college bound?" she asked. "We need to dig deeper, perceive the real person at the core."

The authors didn't want to give too much away about their books--whether the bad boy at the center of the plot was truly a bad boy or not, but Tiffany Schmidt and Kristina McBride wondered why girls are drawn to the stereotypical bad boy in the first place.

Tiffany said it may come down to the belief that only you can see the good guy underneath, the guy that no one else can see, and that's a heady feeling for a teen girl.

Kristina added, "Let's face it. Sometimes girls think they can fix a bad boy." She mentioned that as a teen this was the case for her. Her novel One Moment is the story of a girl's growing realization that her dead boyfriend might not have been the person she thought he was. The book is edgy, she explained, but she believes that it's a good thing for girl readers to live vicariously through characters, to see the bad choices made (and the consequences) and possibly make different decisions in their own lives.

The writers were asked what inspired them, which led to another interesting discussion. Katie McGarry told a story about going back to visit her old high school and wanting to give the kids there hope. "Kids need hope," she said, "that they can make it past today. Not that things will be perfect, but that they can survive their circumstances."

Colleen Clayton talked about having negative experiences in school and reliving that anxiety when her own kids started school. Writing about those experiences freed her and helped her find her writing voice.

Tiffany Schmidt's novel Send Me a Sign is about a smart, hardworking girl starting her senior year. She's looking forward to what she assumes will be a bright future, but then she finds out she has cancer. Tiffany, a former sixth grade teacher, had a student in her class that faced this situation. The student didn't want to be labeled the girl with cancer. She was so much more than her illness, Tiffany said. A big issue for teens is struggling with identity. "Who are we really?" she asked. Which turned the discussion back to the need to transcend stereotypes and labels.

And this turned into a conversation about transcending genres in YA literature. Readers of YA know what's trendy--what's out (sparkly vampires) and what's probably on its way out (the end of the world). But where does contemporary realistic fiction fit into the market?

The panel felt that the demand for this genre is growing. Each of the writers is having success with their novels and they don't feel pressure to write other kinds of books. They agreed that it's pointless to write what you think is trendy anyway, given the lengthy submitting and publishing process. Better to write what feels right for you and hope the market catches up. Sometimes this has been frustrating.

Colleen's novel What Happens Next begins with a girl being raped, but the story cannot be distilled down to a "rape book." The main character is wise-cracking and funny. She's coping with the aftereffects of the trauma but she's also dealing with typical high school friendship dramas and family conflicts and a romance. Colleen has had some people question the need for another novel on the subject of rape. They point to the classic Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson as being the definitive book and imply that this might be enough.

Tiffany Schmidt echoed the frustration that this kind of question only seems to come up when discussing contemporary fiction. "Why is it okay to have multiple books on vampires or werewolves or zombies?" This was asked with a sigh and the acknowledgment that her novel was released the same year as John Green's The Fault in our Stars. "Shouldn't there always be room for another good book, regardless of the subject?" she asked. In other words, is John Green the only author who can write about teens with cancer?

The group also talked shop, specifically, how to get published (the consensus being that you will have to write and revise and research the business. Also, prepare for the inevitable rejections), and gushed about how much they loved to read, and shared some funny stories about how they're treated by family members and close friends now that they are published authors.

"When are you going to write a real book?" someone once asked Katie McGarry, and she responded, "Aren't teens real people?"

Nice comeback, Kristina McBride said. And then it was time for picture taking and book signings and a raffling off of several cool, soon-to-be-published books. Should I mention here that one of these was mine? Um. Nah. I'll leave that for another day...

Want to find out more about these authors and their books? Check out the links below:
Colleen Clayton
Kristina McBride
Tiffany Schmidt
Katie McGarry

From left to right: Kristina McBride, Colleen Clayton, Katie McGarry, and Tiffany Schmidt. And there's Sally Oddi, owner of Cover to Cover in the background.

The 2nd Annual Jody-intz Awards

Back by popular demand! Okay, not really, but I need a blog topic, and since this is the day that the ALA announces the Printz Award for the best young adult book of the year, I realized it was time to release my own list of besties.

And now without further ado, the Jody-intz-es: 

1. Book That Made Me Laugh Out Loud (and also fight off tears). Daniel Handler's Why We Broke Up. Handler's the author of the Series of Unfortunate Events, so he's an expert in quirky humor, but this turn at YA proves that he's got heart too. This brilliant novel is one long kiss off letter--main character Min's rant against big time %&$* jerk Ed. Oh, I soooo wish a book like this existed when I was a teen.

2. Best Love Story. A 3-way tie between The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith (because I LOVE Oliver and LOVE the serendipitous moments that continually pull him into Hadley's life over a 24-hour period); Just One Day by Gayle Forman (even though the romance takes a back seat to the main character's journey of self-discovery); and John Green's The Fault in Our Stars (yeah, this book does not need anymore accolades--it's placed firmly in bestseller land as shown by its appearance on shelves at Walmart and Kroger--but I will praise it anyway: Great book on multiple levels by an awesome writer I bow down to.

3. Coolest Hook. Every Day by David Levithan. I could've stuck this one in the best love story category too. Thought-provoking and heartbreaking and probably contains the most noble sacrifice in the history of love stories as main character "A" fights to woo Rhiannon despite his curse of never remaining in one body for more than one day. Bonus points for being a fave of both of my kids, a rare feat for a picky teen girl and her hardly-ever-reads-fiction older brother.

4.  Book That Had Me Hearing Slasher Music in My Head Whilst Reading. Shift by Em Bailey. Riveting psychological horror/thriller about Olive, who may or may not be crazy, who's enemies with Miranda, who may or may not be evil, who may or may not be sucking the life out of Kate. Cue the freaky music...

4. Series I Wanted to Keep Reading (and Did). I read a lot of books and too many are first books in a series. Unless I am totally hooked, I rarely follow up on the sequel (there are so many other books to try....) but I did with Rae Carson's Girl of Fire and Thorns and the sequel (just finished this one a week ago) The Crown of Embers. I'm not typically a fantasy fan, but Carson's reluctant and very human princess Elisa is worth following through multiple novels. Major bonus points for unpredictable and complex plot. Eagerly awaiting book three!

5. Book that Transcends a Difficult Topic. Colleen Clayton's debut What Happens Next. The topic is date rape, which might turn some readers off, but Clayton never over-dramatizes or crosses the line into lurid. Her main character Sid's journey is heartbreaking and beautiful and somehow funny and romantic too. My only beef with the book is the kinda "meh" title. Something else might've worked better to capture the essence of this novel. Or maybe not. The whole time I was reading I had no idea what was going to happen next.

6. Books That Stuck with Me and Make Me Proud to Call Myself a Young Adult Writer. In addition to the ones listed above, a shout out to Adele Griffin for the horrifying and twisty/turny drama All You Never Wanted; E.M. Kokie's brilliant debut Personal Effects about a boy's search to understand his revered older brother's death (and life); Michelle Cooper's Brief History of Montmary because I rarely like historical fiction but totally fell into her quirky pre-WWII world; and last but not least, Meg Rosoff's There is No Dog, which made me laugh and think and question my belief in God.


UPDATE:  The official Printz Award was just announced: In Darkness by Nick Lake, a book I sadly have not read but will add to my TBR list asap!

And just for the heck of it, here's the entire list of books I read this year, in case anyone's wondering: (Reviews highlighted)

1. What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty, adult fiction
2. I Don't Know How She Does It by Allison Pearson, adult fiction
3. The Future of Us by Carolyn Mackler and Jay Asher, YA fiction
4. A Brief History of Montmaray by Michelle Cooper, YA historical fiction
5. The Fitzosbornes in Exile (sequel) by Michelle Cooper
6. The Vanishing Game by Katie Kae Myers, YA fiction
7. Ripper by Stefan Petrucha, YA historical/Steampunk
8. The Girls of No Return by Erin Saldin, YA fiction
9. The Fault in our Stars by John Green, YA fiction
10. Dead to You by Lisa McMann, YA fiction
11. Catch and Release by Blythe Woolston, YA fiction
12. Maze Runner by James Dashner, YA science fiction
13. Unraveling by Elizabeth Norris, YA science fiction
14. Bewitching by Alex Flinn, YA paranormal
15. Partials by Dan Wells, YA science fiction
16. Take a Bow by Elizabeth Eulberg, YA fiction
17. Slide by Jill Hathaway, YA paranormal
18. Glimmer by Phoebe Kitanidis, YA paranormal
19. There is No Dog by Meg Rosoff, YA fiction
20. Croak by Gina DaMico, YA paranormal
21. Where Men Find Glory by Jon Krakauer, adult non-fiction
22. The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith, YA fiction
23. The Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford, adult fiction
24. Shift by Em Bailey, YA paranormal
25. In the Woods by Tana French, adult mystery
26. The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, adult "non" fiction/inspirational
27. Shipbreaker by Paolo Bacigalupi, YA dystopian
28. V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton, adult fiction
29. The Selection by Kiera Cass, YA romance/dystopian
30. A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, adult nonfiction/inspirational
31. Crazy by Amy Read, YA fiction
32. Grim by Anna Waggener, YA paranormal
33. Cat Girl's Day Off by Kimberly Pauley, YA fiction/fantasy
34. State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, adult fiction
35. So Close to You by Rachel Carter, YA paranormal
36. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, adult fiction/dystopian
37. Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin, YA dystopian
38. Guitar Notes by Mary Amato, YA fiction
39. Look Again by Lisa Scottoline, adult mystery
40. Chime by Franny Billingsley, YA historical/paranormal
41. Sailing to Freedom by Martha Bennett Stiles, middle grade historical
42. Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein, YA historical
43. Ashen Winter by Mike Mullin, YA dystopian
44. Some Assembly Required by Anne Lamott, adult non-fiction
45. The Beginner's Goodbye by Anne Tyler, adult fiction
46. Breaking Night by Liz Murray, adult memoir
47. Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson, YA fantasy
48. Keep Holding On by Susane Colasanti, YA fiction
49. Thrill in the 'Ville by Patsi Trollinger, middle grade fiction
50. Safekeeping by Karen Hesse, YA dystopian
51. Every Day by David Levithan, YA fiction
52. Graceling by Kristin Cashore, YA fantasy (second time reading this and loved it all over again)
53. Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore, YA fantasy
54. Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler, YA fiction
55. Personal Effects by E.M. Kokie, YA fiction
56. Buried by Robin MacCready, YA fiction
57. What Happens Next by Colleen Clayton, YA fiction
58. Broken Harbor by Tana French, adult mystery
59. WIP by a friend, YA contemporary
60. Because it is my Blood by Gabrielle Zevin, YA fiction
61. Sacred by Elana K. Arnold, YA paranormal
62. A Blue So Dark by Holly Schindler, YA fiction
63. Leaving Fishers by Margaret Peterson Haddix, YA fiction
64. All You Never Wanted by Adele Griffin, YA fiction
65. Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald, adult historical fiction
66. Shadows by Ilsa Bick, YA dystopian
67. Wild by Cheryl Strayed, adult memoir
68. Tighter by Adele Griffin, YA fiction
69. Touching the Surface by Kimberly Sabatini, YA parnormal
70. The Invisible Thread by Laura Schroff, adult memoir
71. A Woman Called by Sara Gaston Barton, adult non-fiction
72. Just One Day by Gayle Forman, YA fiction

Keeping the REAL in Realistic Contemporary YA Fiction

Some people lament about what they call "dark" topics in young adult fiction. They're squeamish about the idea of their kids reading (knowing) about drug use or homosexuality or rape or suicide. "Why can't there be more books about plucky girl sleuths and sunnybrook farms?" is what they're thinking. Yeah, I get it. I'm a parent too, and it's tempting to want to protect our kids, keep them innocent and safely bubbled up beneath our helicopter-y arms. But, uh, good luck with that. Even the plucky sleuths of yore had to fight evil--in the shape of smarmy villains. And wasn't the sunnybrook farm chick an orphan?

I've shared my stance on this before, so I won't rehash, but it's something that's been bugging me--not the fact that YA writers write about this "dark" stuff but how they treat the material.

I don't want to go off on another bad books tangent (also went there before) and I know it's a subjective thing--what works and what doesn't/what's a page turner/what has heart, etc., but I've read a few books lately that I'd hate for my fifteen year old daughter to read. Soap-opera-y junk that highlights a sensational topic the way trashy magazines do, basically just a YA version of peer pressure--portraying drug use or sexting or mean-girl bullying as whatever because everyone is doing it anyway.

Then I had the great good luck to read three books in a row that deal with difficult subjects while never crossing over the line into lurid. The keys to getting this right, I think, have to do with character (as in never putting plot before one) and complexity (sorry, this isn't a black and white world) and heart (when the characters are so real you care about what happens to them).

A few weeks ago I read Personal Effects by E.M. Kokie (a debut novel from Candlewick due out in September) and still can't get the voice of the main character, Matt Foster, out of my mind. The first time we meet him he's one minute away from beating the crap out of a classmate. Not the type of action that typically makes a reader sympathetic. But we soon learn that Matt's buckling under the weight of anger and grief--at the death of his idealized older brother in the Iraq War and at his authoritarian, abusive father. Nevermind his other "smaller" conflicts: dismal grades and a crush on a girl who will likely never see him as more than a friend. When Matt has a chance to see his brother's personal effects, he defies his father and sets out on a quest to figure out who his brother really was.

This book could so easily have veered into stereotype (I don't want to give away the brother's secret) but it never did. Also it's a rare YA novel that deals with war or the armed services. Mark this one as Coming of Age with an unexpected, complex twist.

Buried by Robin MacCready came out in 2006 and for some reason never crossed my path. It only did now because I'm on my own personal quest to read every YA novel edited by the brilliant Julie Strauss Gabel (Why? Because she's my dream editor. Why? Because she edits John Green and Nova Ren Suma and Stephanie Perkins and Ally Condie, just to name a few.)  Anyway, the main character in Buried, Claudine, has got big problems too. Her mother's an alcoholic who's just gone on a binge and taken off and now Claudine's stuck cleaning up the literal and figurative mess.

(Brief digression about parents in YA books. Let's just say that many parents in YA books would not win a Parent of the Year Award. Maybe this is unfair. But the truth is ALL teenagers are struggling one way or another to grow up--to assert themselves--to figure out who they are, apart from their parents. Sometimes this is easy. (Okay. Really. Is this ever easy?) Sometimes it is hard. Sometimes kids are making this human journey toward adulthood under the tutelage of neglectful or abusive or just plain a-hole-ish people. Enter YA literature to present the variety of ways that parents can blow it and that kids can escape and thrive.)

But back to Claudine. She's a model kid, considering her pathetic mom. Gets straight A's. Keeps the trailer clean. Takes care of herself and others. Dutifully attends an Alateen-like group meeting. With messed-up Mom gone, it's even easier to be responsible. Claudine's got a great system for organizing her many tasks, and so what if she bends the truth about her mother's latest disappearance, telling the kids at the meeting that her mom's in rehab? Oh, this book may make you a nervous wreck. Because you'll quickly care about Claudine and her increasingly over the top enabling ways. There's a twist at the end of this one too--that's pretty horrifying but thankfully on the realistic side of the line.

Last but in no way least is Colleen Clayton's soon-to-be-released novel What Happens Next. (I keep hearing at conferences editors saying they're looking for the next Sarah Dessen. Sarah Dessen, if you don't know, is the queen of realistic/contemporary/stand-alone YA fiction.) Okay, editors. So stop looking, because I'm presenting to you: Colleen Clayton.

The topic of this novel is such a potential mine field: date rape. Most writers would slip over the lurid line in a second. But Clayton deftly avoids that. Example one: the voice of sixteen year old Cassidy (Sid) Murphy is honest and wise-cracking and self deprecating. Ordinary world for Sid is joking around with friends and being irritated about her appearance--red hair, big boobs. Example two: the incident itself is handled carefully and the after-effects are realistically complex. Case in point--Sid struggles to tell her mom what happened (and here is a mom who is not awful, by the way) deciding that she can deal with her mom's anger but not her mom's horror and grief. I could not put this book down, marveling the whole time I was reading it that I had no idea what was going to happen.

This is what real is, I suppose. To be thrown into a horrible situation or be faced with a complex problem and NOT know what to do. To have to muddle through and figure things out as you go, probably messing up along the way, maybe even making stuff worse for a while, before you emerge (safe! better? grown up?) on the other side.

Thank goodness our teens have got a few good books to read along the way.