#FridayReads with Wendy McClure

It’s #FridayReads with Albert Whitman Staffers!  Today Senior Editor Wendy McClure talks about her current reads:

Remember back in October when I told you I wasn’t sure I was going to hit my Goodreads Challenge Goal for 2014?  It turns out—whew!—I did. Those lazy days around Christmas and New Years really helped, and so did audiobooks. I’m pretty new to the audiobook thing. I’d never listened to them on a regular basis before this past fall. In fact, I resisted them: my editor brain is so used to thinking in terms of print that I thought that was the only way I could truly experience a book. But when I was facing a long solo car trip in November I decided to listen to Amy Poehler’s audio book; after that experience, I figured out how to download audiobooks from the public library onto my phone so I could listen to them while driving home from work. (Or folding laundry, or working in the kitchen, or working out at the gym.) I hit my reading goal, and I discovered that audiobooks are good for my editor brain as well: I find I pick up things about story pacing, shifts in tone, and narrative and character voice.

So audiobooks are now A Thing with me, and my favorite audio genre right now is middle-grade fiction. At the moment I’m halfway through The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex. I’ve wanted to read this book ever since I read a New York Times review a few years back, and then it won the 2011 Odyssey Award, which is the ALA award for kids’ audiobooks. So I had a feeling it would be good.

You guys. It is hilarious. Part of it is the writing and the premise, which is: aliens attack and take over Earth; the protagonist, a girl named Gratuity Tucci (her nickname is TIP) and her cat, Pig, embark on a road trip to Florida (she can drive; she has cans nailed to her church shoes so she can reach the pedals) where all the humans have been relocated. Along the way she encounters an outcast alien whose Earth name is “J.Lo,” and they become unlikely friends. And he takes apart her car and combines it with a slushie machine to make a hovercraft. Add to that a deeply funny performance from the reader, Bahni Turpin, and the result is an incredibly entertaining audio experience that I highly recommend.

I had no idea when I first got the audiobook, but apparently The True Meaning of Smekday has been adapted by Dreamworks as an animated feature and is coming out under the title Home in March!  Looks fun, except the alien is no longer named J. Lo. Okay, so the movie features J. Lo as one of the voiceover actors, so I suppose a compromise had to be made. But for me, Alien J. Lo has become the true J.Lo. You’ll have to check out The True Meaning of Smekday to understand.

#FridayReads with Albert Whitman Staff …Plus StarWarsReadsDay!

It’s #FridayReads with Albert Whitman Staffers!  Today Senior Editor Wendy McClure talks about her current reads:

So I’m one of those nerds who does the reading challenge on Goodreads, where you set a reading goal for the year and log all your books. In the past years my goal has been around thirty books—not that many compared to some folks, but then I read a lot of manuscripts for my job, so if you count unpublished works or books in production, my stats are a lot higher. So high, in fact, that I decided I was totally WINNING at reading and decided to set my Goodreads goal for FORTY books this year. So here’s where I’m at now:

You guys, I don’t know if I’m going to make it to my goal.

Part of what got me behind is The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell, the most recent book I finished, because it’s 600 pages. But it’s one of the better 600-page books I’ve read. Then again, I don’t take on a book this long unless I’ve heard it’s good. And as it happened, my husband read it, and he made me read it too, partly because he wanted to talk to someone about it.

This is only the second David Mitchell novel that I’ve read—last year I read Black Swan Green, and I’ve been trying to gather the will to read Cloud Atlas (which is supposed to be a challenging read). How do I even begin to describe The Bone Clocks? Um, well, it begins in 1984 and ends in 2044. And it’s divided up into six sections. And there are immortal characters fighting a psychic war that has lasted for centuries. And since it’s 600 pages, you really do feel like you’ve been fighting a psychic war for centuries. IN A GOOD WAY, I mean. I really enjoyed it. It just came out, so you’re probably reading all about it right now anyway. (And hey! Here’s an excerpt.) I won’t give anything away except to say that I really hope the real 2044 is better than the one in the book (spoiler alert: it’ll make you want to hoard batteries).

Another fun thing about The Bone Clocks: my husband won the advanced reader copy in a bookstore raffle, so we both got to feel like the cool kids on the block for getting to read it early. And this is one of the first times I’ve read an ARC and found out that there are some significant differences in the final version: apparently David Mitchell loves to put characters from his previous books in cameo roles in other books. Several of them made an appearance in The Bone Clocks, but Mitchell changed his mind at the last minute and took out a few of them in the final version.  As an editor, I know of course that this can happen, but it was fascinating to find out about it from a reader’s standpoint.

So, what do you read next after reading a 600-page book about the future?

Book 3 in a totally addictive YA trilogy!  Ashes to Ashes by Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian is now on deck. This is the follow-up to the novels Burn for Burn and Fire with Fire (which of course I’ve read), about three girls who find they’ve been wronged by the same people and enter into a revenge pact to bring them down. PSYCHIC WAR, INDEED. I can’t wait.

———

And here’s a little bonus link in honor of #StarWarsReadsDay tomorrow—my favorite story ever about books and Star Wars: Darth Vader Made Me Cry, about a book signing with the Imperial Dark Lord. Seriously, read it.

Rolling with the changes

Things never stay the same at publishing houses. Offices move, editors come and go, and submissions guidelines change all the time. Within the past five years here at AWCo we’ve relocated, seen two retirements in Editorial, experienced new leadership, and have changed our submissions response policy. For a small house like us with a long history, it feels like a lot of change, but it’s often par for the course at bigger houses.

What’s the best way for writers to respond to all these changes? Don’t panic. I say this because, well, people panic sometimes. I’ve gotten the phone calls. “I submitted my manuscript to Editor X,” the caller will tell me. “But I heard she’s gone! What does that MEAN? What do I do NEXT?”

I can’t speak for other publishers, particularly the bigger houses. But a writer sending us unagented work does nothave to worry that we’ll make a big bonfire of unread submissions addressed to Editor X. Here at AWCo, submissions still come addressed to Editor X sometimes, or for Editor Y, who retired two years ago, or even Editor Q, who left sometime in the 90s. They still get read.

Having an editor’s name is helpful in that it helps your submission get to the right place in a publisher’s office. In the case of our office, an envelope with an editor’s name on it will bypass the big pile of envelopes in the editorial mail bin and go straight to . . . the big pile of envelopes in an editor’s cubicle. One pile gets read a little faster, but both still get read.

How-to-get-published guides will tell you that a cover letter sent to a real name is preferable to “Dear Sir or Madam,” and that’s still true. But an editor’s name is not a Wonka Factory Golden Ticket to the inner circle of a publishing house. To an editor, a personally addressed cover letter lets her know simply that the writer has taken time to research the company and find out her name, or else came across her name in a publication or at a conference, or found her business card on the sidewalk. None of that, of course, is nearly as important as the manuscript enclosed.

Here are some additional tips for when you learn your Editor X has retired or left the company:

• Just call. And be calm! Just state that you would like the name of another editor to submit work to now that Editor X is no longer there. (This works better than asking for the name of “Editor X’s replacement,” because sometimes the size and structure of a department changes as staff members come and go.)
• When in doubt, just resubmit.If you had an unsolicited manuscript on submission to a recently departed editor, you may not know for sure whether it was read. Rather than trying to get other staff members to solve the mystery, just send your story again.
• Don’t make assumptions.One of our other editors was very surprised to get a cover letter saying, “congratulations on your promotion, now that Editor X has retired!” (Luckily she thought it was hilarious.)
• Write the best stories you can and put your energy into understanding the market. We tend to forgive the finer points of etiquette when a story is good enough.

Good luck with your submissions!

What’s in a Title?: The Editorial Perspective!

(From betterbooktitles.com)

Yesterday Michelle spoke about choosing a book title from the marketing department’s perspective, and about the “running argument” she has with us folks in Editorial.

Hmm, is it really an argument? Well, I will admit to thinking that if Marketing truly had their way, the title for every book would be an artless string of words broadcasting its selling appeal. The Hunger Games would be called ACTION PACKED DYSTOPIAN LOVE TRIANGLE and When You Reach Me would be FRIENDS ARE IMPORTANT, PLUS TIME TRAVEL.  It would be like that Better Book Titles site, except worse, because it would be for real! And mostly not funny!

But I also get why it’s often necessary for book titles to be unsubtle. Since Whitman specializes in “issues books” I understand that a well-chosen title can broadcast its usefulness to those in need. If a child is diagnosed with asthma, chances are her mom would rather not scan endless titles looking for artful metaphors for “hard to breathe.”

If anything, I think my place in the running argument titles is somewhere in between Marketing and the author. In fact, I’m often the actual go-between: sometimes I’ll have to explain to Marketing that the author-illustrator I’m working with would rather not have “A Story About the Importance of Oral Hygiene” as a subtitle for her picture book about a wacky tooth fairy; other times I might have to persuade a writer to let us come up with something better than “Tommy the Turtle” or “Reflections.”

(Note: these are all hypothetical examples.)

And I’ve been there right in the middle myself. A few years back I wrote a picture book about a girl with a peanut allergy. I called it “The Princess and the Peanut,” which I thought was totally the cleverest title in the world for a book about peanut allergy. Except that it didn’t have the word “allergy” in it. Somehow it sounded a lot less witty with that “A” word.  But Marketing began to insist, and while it took a while, I finally realized that while “The Princess and the Peanut” was a clever title, The Princess and the Peanut Allergy was a SMART one.

And then we all lived happily ever after, and with continued royalties, too! THE END.

I met Mouse!!!!

I work with most of our authors and illustrators long distance, and don’t usually get to meet them in person, but on the rare occasion that I do, it’s great. But it’s even more awesome when I get to meet a CHARACTER from a book I’ve worked on.

And this fall, on a weekend trip to Iowa, I got to meet Mouse from The Buddy Files! (Also known as “Dori Butler’s dog.”)

The thing about Mouse is that he really does look like a dog who speaks all in caps. He’s HUGE.

Here Mouse is telling my husband, “HELLO. YOU SMELL LIKE PEANUT BUTTER AND SOAP.”

Not only is Mouse a character in The Buddy Files books, he’s also, as a part Golden Retriever and as a therapy dog, the inspiration for Buddy himself. And he loves to play in the yard with Dori and her family.

LOOK AT THAT FACE.

Notes From a NaNoWriMo Convert

I’m not a convert to National Novel Writing Month in the way you might think. I’ve never completed a manuscript during NaNoWriMo (and in fact have only attempted it once). My conversion has to do with the fact that I used to really sort of hate NaNoWriMo. As a writer, I felt it reduced the book-writing process to a hacky speed-typing game, and as an editor I’d shudder at the thought of thousands of novella-length rough drafts heading straight to my inbox in December. NaNoWriMo was for dilettantes, I thought.

But in time I changed my mind. Something about that surge of collective writing energy rearing up every November as the weather grew colder was—I had to admit—extremely appealing. And if any underdeveloped NaNoWriMo novel manuscripts wound up in the slush pile, I couldn’t tell them apart from the many underdeveloped novel manuscripts that were already there.

Eventually I began to just appreciate NaNo for the unique creative opportunity that it is. Because if there’s one pet peeve I’ve developed from working in this business, it’s talking to people (acquaintances, strangers on airplanes, fellow cocktail party attendees) who find out what I do and tell me they have an idea for a book, a book that they will write someday. The peevish part is that because of my vocation, these folks often expect me to help them by giving them a complete explanation of the publishing process, or my agent’s email address, or even a book deal. But honestly, when someone has just an idea for book, the only way I can help is to say, “Well, then you should write the book.”

So I’m grateful now that every November, pretty much the entire internet comes out to rally behind those words: YOU SHOULD WRITE THE BOOK. Stop talking about “someday.” WRITE THE BOOK. Look, here’s a whole month where you can WRITE THE BOOK!

I believe NaNoWriMo can be serve you beset when you approach it not as gimmicky experiment, but as a starting point. Personally I don’t think NaNo’s official word count requirement and the “don’t delete anything, ever” rule is necessarily useful for everyone—for me, for example, taking the extra step to shape a sentence from time to time helps me think. And reading about this guy’s non-NaNoWriMo experience of writing a book in two months gives me pause when he says that he “barely left the apartment” while writing 1500 words a day, making me wonder how people who work day jobs manage to produce the 1667 words/day that NaNo requires. But as Justine Larbalestier points out, taking the time to write and think and learn about what kind of a writer you are is more important than the word count.

For that matter, there’s nothing saying you can’t start NaNoWriMo now, ten days into November, if hearing about thousands of people deciding to WRITE THE BOOK inspires you to WRITE THE BOOK. Why wait until next November?

From the Archives: The Scariest Children’s Book We’ve Ever Published

Oh, we’ve done plenty of Halloween books over the years, and we have a fine selection of them out this season and on our backlist. But the creepiest and most terrifying book our company has ever published isn’t a Halloween book at all.

It’s this book:

Published in 1945 with an exclusively black-and-white palette, Time to Eat presents “correct ideas on a proper, balanced diet for children,” according to the flap copy. Clearly, though, the book does far more than kill all the fun of mealtimes, and must have been used as an instrument of terror.

Scroll down, and brace yourself. What follows are some of the most haunting images ever produced for children.

Yes, just “stew.”

I think the use of shadow in this one is especially effective.

Oh, no.

And now, the worst one of all:

THE HORROR.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Guest Blog from Dori Butler: Meet Mouse!

Last week, we happnened to be visiting Iowa, where Dori Butler, author of The Buddy Files, lives. We knew Dori had a big black dog named Mouse, just like Buddy’s friend in the books, and we wanted to meet him! Then Dori mentioned that Mouse was a shelter dog. Since October is Adopt-a-Shelter-Dog Month, it seemed like a good time for Dori to write about how Mouse came to her house…

Meet Mouse! by Dori Butler

Three years ago, unbeknownst to my husband, I started reading online profiles of all the dogs that were in animal shelters within a 120-mile radius of our house. I sensed that Molly, our 14-year-old cocker spaniel wasn’t going to be around much longer. I also decided I wanted to get involved in a pet partner (i.e. therapy dog) program, so I was also searching for a dog that would have the right temperament to be a therapy dog. I figured I’d find the dog first, then worry about bringing my husband on board.

I came across a profile that read: Mowgli never met a human or animal he didn’t like. He was a golden retriever mix, 9 months old, and housebroken. That all sounded promising. I talked to the shelter people on the phone (they were 30 miles away) and then they made an appointment to bring Mowgli to our home. They wanted to meet everyone in our home, both two-footed and four-footed, before we filled out any paperwork to see how everyone got along.

When Mowgli walked into our house for the first time I thought, “Oh, boy. He’s BIG. Really big.” Then he walked over to our kitchen table and rested his chin on it…which, if you’re a BIG dog, is not the way to make a positive first impression.

But there was something about those warm, brown eyes. And he definitely had all the qualities you look for in a therapy dog. He was friendly, confident, smart, and eager to please. My kids took to him right away, especially when he caught a treat in his mouth. He got along well with Molly and our cat (well, he liked the cat; the cat wasn’t so sure about him). And despite the fact my husband wasn’t convinced we absolutely needed a second dog at this point, I could tell he really liked this dog. He liked him more than I expected him to.

We decided to go ahead and adopt him!

Let me introduce you to my dog, Mouse.

Yes, Mouse. “Mowgli” and “Molly” sounded too similar, so we changed Mowgli’s name. To Mouse. My kids liked the irony of a big dog named Mouse. But the idea wasn’t originally theirs. They stole the idea from science fiction author, Jim Butcher, whose hero Harry Dresden has a big, gray dog named Mouse.

Just the facts:

Breed: 50% Golden Retriever, 25% English Setter, 8% Parson Russell Terrier, with a little Akita, Border Terrier, Yorkshire Terrier and Poodle thrown in

Date of birth: February 29, 2008

Date of Adoption: November 26, 2008

Weight: 100 pounds

Favorite Food: BUTTER! cheese, apples, hot dogs, liver treats

Favorite Activity: greeting children at the bus stop on our morning walk, visiting people, being read to at the library, playing hide and seek

Favorite Toy: Kong wubba…and any plush, squeaky toy

Favorite Tricks: bringing in the newspaper, turning the light on or off on command, retrieving any of his toys by name, retrieving leash, putting toys away (okay, that’s Dori’s favorite trick, not Mouse’s)

Favorite Way to Get in Trouble: digging in the yard

Claim to Fame: the inspiration behind the Buddy Files

While there is a big, black dog named Mouse in the Buddy Files books, my Mouse is more like Buddy than he is like Buddy’s best friend. In fact, I would go so far as to say my Mouse IS Buddy. Mouse lies at my feet every day when I write. Whenever I’m unsure what Buddy would say or do next, all I have to do is look into Mouse’s eyes. The answer is always there.

October is Adopt-a-Shelter-Dog Month. Please consider contacting your local animal shelter or rescue group this month and find out how you can donate supplies, money, or time. If you have room in your home and your heart, consider adopting a shelter dog this month. Shelter pets really do make the best pets!

A quick (and inevitably incomplete) guide to the YA Twitterverse

Are you a newcomer to Twitter?  Or else the realm of young adult publishing? Or both? Don’t be intimidated—you can learn a lot about the YA book world AND the way it uses Twitter by following a number of great people and conversations.

In my experience, Twitter provides a great happy medium between the kind of industry news stories you get from Publishers Weekly  and the here’s-a-video-of-my-cat minutiae of Facebook—often focusing more on real discussions, opinions, and networking. I remember hearing someone say once that the difference between Facebook and Twitter is that Facebook is where you follow people you already know, and Twitter is where you follow people you want to know more about. While some of the folks linked below will already be familiar to you, following them can be a good starting point—from there, check out the profiles of the people they reply to, and check out the links they post. The rest, of course, are definitely worth knowing more about.

Authors: In addition to favorites like Maureen Johnson, Libba Bray, and John Green, you’ll find authors who often work a particular angle on Twitter: Cheryl Rainfield often talks about bullying, Ellen Hopkins and Laurie Halse Anderson address censorship, and Cynthia Leitich Smith offers great writing and reading resource links.  Want to follow current and forthcoming Whitman Teen authors? Deborah Blumenthal, Anna Perera, Irfan Master, and Jon Blake are on Twitter now.

Editors and Agents:  While publishing company Twitter accounts usually consist of announcements and promotional tweets, YA editors like Stacy Whitman, Molly O’Neill, and Andrew Karre offer more personal insights and represent a range of perspectives from both big and smaller houses. (As for the Whitman editors, I’m on Twitter, too, and so is Kristin!) And there are plenty of agents, including Sara Crowe, Laura Bradford, Jill Corcoran, and  Nathan Bransford (who is no longer an agent, but still an inspirational guy to follow if you’re an aspiring writer), who talk about craft as well as industry trends.

Reviewers and Booksellers: For straight-up book talk and a great look at new and upcoming titles, check out 4EverYA, YABookShelf, Chasing Ray (aka Colleen Mondor, Bookslut columnist and soon-t0-be author, and does she ever sleep?), and Mitali Perkins (also an author, and a force for good in the book world). And some of our favorite booksellers on Twitter include Melissa from Pudd’nhead Books and Stephanie from Word Brooklyn.

Hashtags: You can also search hashtags (to find more about how they work, here’s a guide), for YA-related posts and links. There’s #YALitChat, which is an ongoing weekly Twitter chat organized by Georgia MacBride, and #YASaves, which has its origins in an online protest against objections to “dark” content.

Finally, here’s our own Twitter List of more than 50 folks (and organizations) who are dedicated to YA.  It’ll never be a complete list, of course, but we’ll keep adding to it over time.

Happy reading (and tweeting)!

Guest Post: Inside The Zombie Project!

by Anastasia Suen

Whenever I visit schools the children always ask, “Where do you get your ideas?” It’s one of my most frequently asked questions. They always seem surprised when I say that ideas are everywhere. I find ideas at home, in school, and in books, magazines, and newspapers. I also find them on the television and the internet. There is always something interesting that can be used in a story. So what did I use in this story? The clues are on the cover….

I love how the cover of my first Boxcar Children Mystery tells the story at a glance. You see the four Aldens working together. It’s a classic Boxcar Children moment! That’s why I loved these books as a child. The Aldens don’t sit around worrying – they make things happen! What are they up to this time? The title is our first clue…this book is called The Zombie Project.

Zombies?

Why did I choose a zombie for this book? Zombies are scary, but not too scary. After all they walk slowly, so you can get away…usually! It’s the chance that you might not escape that makes it interesting. Furthermore, zombies are dead, but they’re not. They’re “undead.” Zombies used to be people like us, but now they’re trapped between life and death because of voodoo or some sort of nasty virus. So they look like us, but not quite. Instead, they’re all gory and disgusting, making them the perfect bad guy for a mystery. If you look closely at the cover, you can see the zombie walking past the river.

Things that go bump in the night

You can see a cabin in the woods on the book cover, too. It’s right behind the zombie. I’ve never seen a zombie up close, thank goodness, but I do know about camping and staying in cabins in the woods. It’s so nice to get away from the lights of the city and see all the stars at night. Oh, but those noises…those strange noises in the woods…they can keep you awake at night. Who is really out there?

Our family has had some interesting experiences camping in the woods. One night in the middle of a thunderstorm, we heard a loud cracking sound. It was a massive lightning strike, one that shut off the cabin’s power for hours. As Snoopy would say, “It was a dark and stormy night.”

Another night we heard a noise outside the cabin and when we looked out the window, it was a bear! A young bear was wandering around knocking over trash cans looking for something to eat. There was nothing to eat in our trash can, so it moved on.

Fishing

On the book cover you can also see Henry holding a fishing pole and a bucket. The Aldens aren’t just fishing for clues; they’re fishing in the water. This is something that our family always does whenever we go camping in the woods. Fishing is a must.

My father taught me to fish when I was Benny’s age. I learned how to fish in the river, just like the Alden children do in this book. When my children were young, we taught them how to fish, too. It can be hard to sit there quietly and wait, but when you feel that tug on your pole, ah, sweet reward.

A campfire

There’s nothing like eating a freshly caught fish cooked over a campfire. Yum! Cooking over an open flame makes the food so tasty. Later, as the fire dwindles down, it’s time for campfire stories. The sun has set, so the woods all around you are dark…and then someone tells a scary story. It’s a campfire tradition.

It is by the campfire that Henry, Jessie, Violet and Benny find out more about the Legend of the Winding River Zombie. They know the story isn’t true, it can’t be. Everyone knows that zombies aren’t real. But who is out in the woods at night? Who was the lurching figure Benny saw in the woods? Could the legend be true after all?

Your turn

As you can see, The Zombie Project story came from ideas I had and from my own personal experiences. Now it’s your turn. Write your own zombie story this October. I’ve created a Silly Zombie Story Writing Workshop for you to use. This 4 page writing workshop kit has an instruction page, two planning pages (one was completed by Frank E. Stein, so you can see what kind of story he was planning) and a blank author/illustrator page for you to use.

A story really starts when something changes, so here is your writing prompt: When I saw the zombie on Halloween…

Happy writing!