It’s time to announce the rest of the winners for the Summer 2012 YA Debut Interview series! Maybe it’s YOU…
Did you win a Summer 2012 debut?
The TWO WINNERS of *signed and personalized* hardcovers of False Memory by debut author Dan Krokos, to be mailed when finished copies are available in August are… Christine (A Reader of Fictions)andAshley Orellana!
The winner of a *signed and personalized* ARC of Grim by Anna Waggener is… Tandra S.!
The winner of a *signed and personalized* hardcover of Hemlock by Kathleen Peacock is… Doodle!
The winner of a pre-order of Something Like Normal by Trish Doller is… Maggie at Young Adult Anonymous!
The winner of a *signed and personalized* hardcover of Counting Backwards by Laura Lascarso, to be mailed when finished copies are available in August is… Alicia!
The winner of a *signed and personalized* hardcover of Fingerprints of You by Kristen-Paige Madonia, as well as a temporary tattoo!, to be mailed when finished copies are available in July is… Ames!
And… there’s one last winner to announce…
The winner of the finale INTERNATIONAL GIVEAWAY is Becky! And the book Becky chose out of all the debuts is… The Little Woods by McCormick Templeman! Yay, hope you love it!
Congratulations to all the winners! I will email everyone shortly for mailing addresses.
(All winners were chosen thanks to the random magic found at Random.org, with extra entries factored in. Thank you to everyone who entered!)
Why, hello there. Today I have the last Summer 2012 YA Debut Interview in the series! Yes, the very last interview of these summer debut YA authors who’ve written books I am absolutely dying to read!
The final Summer 2012 YA Debut is Fingerprints of You by Kristen-Paige Madonia. Read on to see how this author answered the Q&A… And be sure to enter to win a temporary tattoo and a signed and personalized finished copy of Fingerprints of You!
Kristen-Paige Madonia: Fingerprints of You is about that strange but brilliant time in life when you realize the world is much larger than you thought, and that you have the ability to decide what kind of person you want to become. It’s about a pregnant teenager and the cross-country road trip she takes in search of her father, a man she’s never met. It’s set on the road and amidst the inspiring music and art scene in San Francisco, and the book explores the challenges of growing up in a single-parent home and the various ways we can confront our pasts, our skeletons in the closet. But at the heart of it, Fingerprints of You is about hope. About the comfort we find in one another and the security of family; not blood-born family necessarily, but the families we create for ourselves from the people we love and the people that love us back. The book is about a seventeen-year-old named Lemon Williams and her discovery of hope and strength as she stands on the brink of adulthood.
In my experience, every book wants to be written differently—and each one behaves differently from the one before it. Some novels like it out of order, and some rigidly insist on being written from start to finish. Some novels come out fast; others are excruciatingly slow. Some novels torment you, and some sing you to sleep. What did your novel want? How did you appease it? Did it ever misbehave?
In general, the book came fairly fast, and the characters arrived in my imagination with great stubbornness and spirit. I was actually writing a different book when I first created the central characters in Fingerprints of You, but once they existed, I just couldn’t leave them alone. I began the book as a short story but quickly realized it was much larger than that, so I wrote a second story, and a third. Once I accepted that I was working on a new novel, the manuscript came quickly. I wrote the bulk of the first draft chronologically during a one-month writing residency in Key West in 2008, and then, as I always do, I took some time away from it to let it breathe. I rewrote the book during another 4-week residency in New York and felt fairly confident I had told the story I was supposed to tell. Of course there was a lot of revision and editing that followed, but the process was rather straightforward. And the book belonged to Lemon from the first day I started it—it was always driven by her voice, her restlessness, and her journey into adulthood as she tried to determine the kind of person she would become.
Tell us about the place—as in the physical location: a messy office, a comfy couch, a certain corner table at the café—where you spent most of your time writing this book. Now imagine the writing spot of your fantasies where you wish you’d been able to write this book… tell us all about it.
It began in the coffee shops of San Francisco where I was living at the time, but I wrote the majority of the first draft in a wonderful studio in Key West with a Mango tree climbing through my deck and a sculpture garden in the back yard. The second draft was written in a large writers’ studio in a converted barn in upstate New York at the Millay Colony. I lived in Charlottesville by then, so I reworked the novel and edited it in various rooms of a small house my husband and I were renting at the time. And somewhere in between, we spent about three months living out of our car during a road trip we took to Alaska, so, like Lemon, I moved around a lot during the writing of this novel. There was no one place, per say, but a number of places that were as different in size as style, but they each contributed to the making of the book in some way. I feel fortunate because I was living in transit when I wrote the novel, just like Lemon was, and I think it worked well to help me understand her wanderlust and, at the same time, her craving for stability. In that way, we’re very much alike… And in hindsight, that was the ideal way to write this particular book.
Life on the road in Alaska during the writing of FINGERPRINTS OF YOULife on the road in Alaska during the writing of FINGERPRINTS OF YOU
Imagine you’re on the subway, or the bus, or sitting in a park somewhere minding your own business… and you look up and see the most perfect person you could picture devouring your book. This is your ideal reader. Set the scene and describe him or her (or them?) for us.
That’s an easy one: The ideal reader would be a person so absorbed in the book, so involved and engaged that they forget to get off the bus, they don’t notice their subway stop was an hour earlier, they don’t realize the park is now dark and the day has slipped away from them. Other than that, there is no perfect reader; I hope the book appeals to a broad range of people—men and women, teens and adults, people living in big cities and small towns alike.
Publishing a novel is full of high points, low points, absolutely surreal points, and shocking points you never thought you’d see in your lifetime. Tell us a high point, a low point, a surreal point, and something shocking or at least somewhat surprising about your experience so far.
I’m writing this about five months before the release date, so I still have a ways to go, but needless to say, getting the offer from Simon & Schuster was THE absolute high point because it marked the beginning of a long and wonderful path to the publication of my first novel. My agent phoned with the news, and it was nice because I was alone when I got the call. I had some time to myself before the champagne and celebrations and the calls to family and friends; the news was just mine, it was private, and that was really lovely. You work so hard for so long, and most of that work you’re alone, so it seemed fitting to be alone when I found out we’d sold the book. It was perfect, really, to have an hour or so when that news, that thing that I had been fighting for, for so long, was all mine.
And I guess, in contrast, as with anything, the process inevitably involves disappointing moments as well. For me, the one disappointment that has come with the novel is the realization that, in some venues, there is still a slight stigma attached to the YA label. For example, I have a friend, a highly educated published author in fact, whom I saw recently, and when the conversation turned to the release date of my novel, she made the comment, as she always does, that she couldn’t wait for her daughter to read the book. There’s certainly nothing wrong with her excitement at giving the novel to her sixteen-year-old, but to me her comment implies she doesn’t plan to read the novel herself. Of course I realize it’s a personal sensitivity for me as I continue to adjust to being labeled a YA writer, a sensitivity I hope I’ll shed as more time passes. Margo Rabb published a wonderful article in The New York Times a few years ago entitled, “I’m YA, and I’m O.K.”, which I recommend to anyone writing fiction that straddles the line between YA and adult; like myself, she wrote a book she imagined being labeled as adult literary fiction but was sold to a YA division. There are inevitably challenges that come with that process, and many adults still don’t realize the high caliber literature that can now be found on the YA shelves. It’s such a funny thing—these labels based on audience—and I find it fascinating that literature is the only art form that’s adopted the YA category; we don’t classify visual art, paintings or sculptures, for teens versus adults just as we don’t claim music to be one or the other. But it is what it is, and at the end of the day I couldn’t be happier with the home that Fingerprints of You found at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.
In terms of surprising moments, I’d have to say my first visit to NYC to meet my editor was pretty astonishing. I was incredibly nervous and intimidated, but when I arrived everyone was unbelievably normal. Everyone was kind and gracious and welcoming, and as odd as it sounds, I was surprised by that. Publishers are in the business because they love books, and it’s easy to forget that sometimes when you’re collecting rejection letters and reading the heartbreaking stories about authors who get orphaned or novels that get lost in big houses. But the staff at S&S is one hundred percent amazing, and they work incredibly hard because they care about stories; that’s the bottom line, and writers need to remember that. S&S has done everything possible to make me feel like I’m part of the team, and when I realized that was going to be how our relationship worked, I was surprised, and so very thankful.
And as for surreal, it was the same day, during my first visit to S&S. My editor spent the morning showing me around and introducing me to people in the office, and when we met someone from the art department in the hallway, and he introduced us, she told me she was in the middle of reading Fingerprints of You. I remember thinking, “Really? Why? I don’t even know you!” Besides my agent and my editor, my family were the only people that had read the book, and it was the strangest thing to listen to her talk about the different sections she liked and the characters she connected with. It’s obvious, of course, but it was surreal, and I think that was the moment, that girl in that hallway, that was when I realized it was actually happening. Other people were going to read the book, and as wonderful as that is, it also means that, in a way, the book isn’t really mine anymore. That’s what I love most about writing, one of the fundamental reasons I do it, but it’s also what I struggle with: it’s yours for so long, and then, it just isn’t. Once it’s out there, it becomes the readers’, and they’ll bring their own experiences and emotions and viewpoints into the novel. It’s really not mine at all anymore.
Dream question: If you could go on book tour anywhere in the world, with any two authors (living or dead), and serve any item of food at your book signing… where would you go, who with, and what delicious treat would you serve your fans?
I would love to go on book tour in Europe, to take the train for weeks at a time and immerse myself in unfamiliar cultures. I’d give intimate readings on houseboats in Amsterdam, drink thick dark beer with book clubs at pubs in Ireland, and lead literary discussions in Paris while sipping small cups of espresso at sidewalk cafes. And I’d bring Flannery O’Connor to keep things honest and Hunter S. Thompson to keep things a little bit Rock and Roll. For food I’d serve red wine, dark chocolate, and extravagant cheeses and baguettes.
If you had to pick one sentence, and one sentence only, to entice someone to read your book, what would it be? (I almost hate myself for asking you this question and making you choose! Almost.)
For me the first sentence is still the sentence that tells you exactly what the book is about: a mother and daughter relationship on the brink of that moment when the child becomes an adult…
My mother got her third tattoo on my seventeenth birthday, a small navy hummingbird she had inked above her left shoulder blade, and though she said she picked it to mark my flight from childhood, it mostly had to do with her wanting to sleep with Johnny Drinko, the tattoo artist who worked in the shop outside town.
Fingerprints of You will be published by Simon & Schuster on August 7, 2012. Read on for a chance to win a signed and personalized finished copy of the hardcover—as well as a temporary tattoo!
Photo by Christopher Gordon
Kristen-Paige Madonia is the author of Fingerprints of You, a young adult literary novel, and recent stories can be found in the New Orleans Review, upstreet, and American Fiction: Best Unpublished Stories by Emerging Writers. She has received scholarships or residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Juniper Summer Writing Institute, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival, Hedgebrook, the Millay Colony, the Studios of Key West, and the Key West Literary Seminar. She holds an MFA from CSU, Long Beach and teaches fiction in Charlottesville, VA.
Time for more in the Summer 2012 YA Debut Interview Series, featuring debut YA authors who’ve written books I am absolutely dying to read! I’ve chosen eleven (yes, 11 this time!) debuts to feature, and I hope by the end of this series you’ll be as excited about these books as I am.
Today’s Summer 2012 YA Debut is Counting Backwards by Laura Lascarso. Read on to see how this author answered the Q&A… And be sure to enter to win a signed and personalized finished copy of Counting Backwards!
Nova Ren Suma: I’ll start with the dreaded question you may be hearing already from strangers on elevators, long-lost family members, and your doctor while you’re sitting on the examination table in the paper gown during your next checkup: “So what’s your book about?” (Feel free to use the jacket copy, or describe in your own words. Up to you.)
Laura Lascarso: Counting Backwards is about a girl who wants to escape—her home, her family, and even at times, herself.
In my experience, every book wants to be written differently—and each one behaves differently from the one before it. Some novels like it out of order, and some rigidly insist on being written from start to finish. Some novels come out fast; others are excruciatingly slow. Some novels torment you, and some sing you to sleep. What did your novel want? How did you appease it? Did it ever misbehave?
This novel wanted to be written again and again. The first draft of CB I wrote in 2007, which I submitted to agents, then rewrote it with the advice of one of those agents who ultimately passed. I then submitted that revised manuscript (CB 2.0) to Caryn Wiseman at Andrea Brown Literary. She took me on (squee!) and we then went to work on it again. We took CB 3.0 to editors in 2009, and it was picked up by Namrata Tripathi at S&S. Two years and three rewrites later, we have CB 6.0, which is by leaps and bounds better than my original story. My one word for new writers out there: Perseverance.
Then I took a nap.
Tell us about the place—as in the physical location: a messy office, a comfy couch, a certain corner table at the café—where you spent most of your time writing this book. Now imagine the writing spot of your fantasies where you wish you’d been able to write this book… tell us all about it.
I have three writing locales. One is my desk at home. I will not lie, I decluttered my desk before taking this photo to bring you the shining vision of order you see here.
My second spot is my critique partner’s house which is blessedly quiet with a full fridge and small library of fabulous YA and middle grade books.
The third is a coffee shop where they make the best café con leches around. Coffee + sugar = word magic.
My fantasy writing locale is this beach in Florida, though I won’t say which because I don’t want to play favorites.
Imagine you’re on the subway, or the bus, or sitting in a park somewhere minding your own business… and you look up and see the most perfect person you could picture devouring your book. This is your ideal reader. Set the scene and describe him or her (or them?) for us.
My ideal reader would be found in a high school gymnasium. There is a pep rally going on and everyone is screaming and chanting, but then, somewhere in the stands is that one teenager who is so engrossed in my book, that they’ve totally tuned out everything around them. They’re so into it, in fact, that they’re gnawing on their cuticles or chewing their hair in concentration. That’s my ideal reader.
Publishing a novel is full of high points, low points, absolutely surreal points, and shocking points you never thought you’d see in your lifetime. Tell us a high point, a low point, a surreal point, and something shocking or at least somewhat surprising about your experience so far.
I think the most surreal/amazing moment was when I got my first look at the cover proofs. The Atheneum team was very gracious in letting me give my input as to how I envisioned the cover. They even let me choose the cover model, which was kind of incredible in itself—that they would set up a photo shoot with an actual model. The cover was important to me because I wanted it to represent the book well, and also because I’m a very visual person. The double image on this cover is both intriguing and revealing of Taylor’s character where denial is a big theme. The lighting also has an institutional feel, which is both subtle and relevant. With this cover I feel they carefully considered my input, and their delivery far exceeded my expectations.
Dream question: If you could go on book tour anywhere in the world, with any two authors (living or dead), and serve any item of food at your book signing… where would you go, who with, and what delicious treat would you serve your fans?
I’d take Kurt Vonnegut and Dr. Seuss on a road trip from Miami, Florida to Seattle, Washington. We’d decorate our tour van to represent their life’s work. One side would be a mural with the Lorax, Sneetches, Thing One and Thing Two… The other side would be aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. I’d record their discourse and post it on my blog so that the whole world could glean from it their brilliance. For sustenance, we’d eat peanut butter and Nutella sandwiches. And we’d sign some books too.
If you had to pick one sentence, and one sentence only, to entice someone to read your book, what would it be? (I almost hate myself for asking you this question and making you choose! Almost.)
It’s a beautiful day for escaping.
Counting Backwards will be published by Atheneum / Simon & Schuster on August 14, 2012. Read on for a chance to win a signed and personalized finished copy of the hardcover!
Laura Lascarso is a writer of young adult fiction and companion to Lucy, a dog who not only gives great cuddles, but also knows the difference between how to lie and how to lay.
Time for more in the Summer 2012 YA Debut Interview Series, featuring debut YA authors who’ve written books I am absolutely dying to read! I’ve chosen eleven (yes, 11 this time!) debuts to feature, and I hope by the end of this series you’ll be as excited about these books as I am.
Today’s Summer 2012 YA Debut is Something Like Normal by Trish Doller. Read on to see how this author answered the Q&A… And be sure to enter to win a pre-order of Something Like Normal (giveaway open internationally)!
Nova Ren Suma: I’ll start with the dreaded question you may be hearing already from strangers on elevators, long-lost family members, and your doctor while you’re sitting on the examination table in the paper gown during your next checkup: “So what’s your book about?” (Feel free to use the jacket copy, or describe in your own words. Up to you.)
Trish Doller: From the flap copy:
I just came home from Afghanistan.
My parents are splitting up.
My brother has stolen my girlfriend.
(He also stole my car.)
And I’m haunted by the ghost of my best friend.
Then I run into Harper.
(Technically, her fist runs into my face.)
She’s beautiful, smart, funny…
…and she wants nothing to do with
the messed-up Marine who ruined her life.
Sometimes the best you can hope for is something like normal.
Sometimes what you get might be even better.
In my experience, every book wants to be written differently—and each one behaves differently from the one before it. Some novels like it out of order, and some rigidly insist on being written from start to finish. Some novels come out fast; others are excruciatingly slow. Some novels torment you, and some sing you to sleep. What did your novel want? How did you appease it? Did it ever misbehave?
When I first started writing this book, I thought it belonged to a girl whose reputation had never recovered from being labeled a “slut” in middle school. Travis was meant to be the golden boy who trashed her reputation, now home from Afghanistan, broken both in body and spirit. Except when I tuned into what he had to say about his character, I discovered that his voice was loud and clear and demanding to be heard. When I made him the main character, he took up residence in my head and guided me to a very different story. While I’ve never been a fast writer, the story came out much quicker than I expected.
Tell us about the place—as in the physical location: a messy office, a comfy couch, a certain corner table at the café—where you spent most of your time writing this book. Now imagine the writing spot of your fantasies where you wish you’d been able to write this book… tell us all about it.
I wrote Something Like Normal on my living room couch. Not a very romantic or writerly location, but I do have a very comfortable couch and I find that public places are much too distracting for me.
The writing studio of my dreams—and one I’m really hoping to make a reality one day—is a VW Westie/Vanagon that I can drive wherever the mood strikes, yet still maintain some semblance of privacy. And with a built-in fridge, I can bring my own snacks.
Imagine you’re on the subway, or the bus, or sitting in a park somewhere minding your own business… and you look up and see the most perfect person you could picture devouring your book. This is your ideal reader. Set the scene and describe him or her (or them?) for us.
Actually, I kind of imagine a guy dressed in camouflage, maybe sitting on the ground, back propped against the wall. Maybe he’s deployed to somewhere hot and dusty. Maybe not. Either way, he’s reading, with an occasional smile, or laugh, or nod of the head when he gets to something he’s done, or said, or felt. That’s not to say I don’t want girls to read the book. I definitely, totally, and absolutely do. In fact, I want them to fall wildly in love with Travis. But for a guy in the military to love the book, too? That would be the best compliment.
Publishing a novel is full of high points, low points, absolutely surreal points, and shocking points you never thought you’d see in your lifetime. Tell us a high point, a low point, a surreal point, and something shocking or at least somewhat surprising about your experience so far.
The low point for me actually came before Something Like Normal was conceived—when the first book I sold was canceled by my publisher and failed to sell on our second attempt at getting it published. While we were still out on submission with that first book, I started working on Travis’s story, which actually leads to the high point. My first book was inspired by another writer’s style and I secretly hoped that perhaps I’d become the next her. But with Something Like Normal, I discovered my authentic voice, my own style. And I realized that instead of wanting to be the next her, I’d much rather be the first me. The high and the low combined gave me what I think is a much stronger debut in Something Like Normal—and takes most of the sting out of that first deal gone bad.
There have been a lot of surreal moments—like opening the box of ARCs or seeing readers tweet that they can’t wait to read my book—but the most surreal was when I entered the ISBN in the computer at work (my day job is at B&N) and Something Like Normal was there.
Dream question: If you could go on book tour anywhere in the world, with any two authors (living or dead), and serve any item of food at your book signing… where would you go, who with, and what delicious treat would you serve your fans?
Jack Kerouac, John Steinbeck, and I would pile into Steinbeck’s Rocinante and hit the U.S. highways, especially the small, old ones like Route 20 and Route 66. We’d stop at greasy spoons. We’d drink a lot. Kerouac would say stuff I wouldn’t always understand, but I’d laugh anyway. And when we signed, we’d serve pie—pumpkin, pecan, apple, banana cream, and lemon merengue.
If you had to pick one sentence, and one sentence only, to entice someone to read your book, what would it be? (I almost hate myself for asking you this question and making you choose! Almost.)
I’m not sure how enticing it is, but this line is my favorite (and never fails to make me laugh):
My mom—the only parent on the planet to try and talk her kid into doing drugs to keep him out of the Marines.
Something Like Normal will be published by Bloomsbury on June 19, 2012. Read on for a chance to win a pre-order!
Trish Doller: I’ve been a writer as long as I’ve been able to write, but I didn’t make a conscious decision to “be” a writer until fairly recently. For that you should probably be thankful.
I was born in Germany, grew up in Ohio, went to college at Ohio State University, got married to someone really great, bounced from Maine to Michigan and back to Ohio for a while. Now I live in Florida with my two mostly grown kids, two dogs, and a pirate. For real.
I’ve worked as a morning radio personality, a newspaper reporter, and spent all my summers in college working at an amusement park. There I gained valuable life skills, including counting money really fast, directing traffic, jumping off a moving train, and making cheese-on-a-stick. Also, I can still welcome you to Frontier Town. Ask me sometime.
These days I work as a bookseller at a Very Big Bookstore. And I write.
Time for more in the Summer 2012 YA Debut Interview Series, featuring debut YA authors who’ve written books I am absolutely dying to read! I’ve chosen eleven (yes, 11 this time!) debuts to feature, and I hope by the end of this series you’ll be as excited about these books as I am.
Today’s Summer 2012 YA Debut is Hemlock by Kathleen Peacock. Read on to see how this author answered the Q&A… And be sure to enter to win a signed and personalized finished copy of Hemlock!
Nova Ren Suma: I’ll start with the dreaded question you may be hearing already from strangers on elevators, long-lost family members, and your doctor while you’re sitting on the examination table in the paper gown during your next checkup: “So what’s your book about?” (Feel free to use the jacket copy, or describe in your own words. Up to you.)
Kathleen Peacock: Hemlock is about friendship and secrets and what happens when the people you love turn out to be so much less—or more—than you need them to be. It also happens to be about werewolves.
And (since I always turn into a tongue-tied fool at this particular question) here’s the jacket copy:
Mackenzie and Amy were best friends. Until Amy was brutally murdered.
Since then, Mac’s life has been turned upside down. She is being haunted by Amy in her dreams, and an extremist group called the Trackers has come to Mac’s hometown of Hemlock to hunt down Amy’s killer: A white werewolf.
Lupine syndrome—also known as the werewolf virus—is on the rise across the country. Many of the infected try to hide their symptoms, but bloodlust is not easy to control.
Wanting desperately to put an end to her nightmares, Mac decides to investigate Amy’s murder herself. She discovers secrets lurking in the shadows of Hemlock, secrets about Amy’s boyfriend, Jason, her good pal Kyle, and especially her late best friend. Mac is thrown into a maelstrom of violence and betrayal that puts her life at risk.
In my experience, every book wants to be written differently—and each one behaves differently from the one before it. Some novels like it out of order, and some rigidly insist on being written from start to finish. Some novels come out fast; others are excruciatingly slow. Some novels torment you, and some sing you to sleep. What did your novel want? How did you appease it? Did it ever misbehave?
I’d like to say Hemlock misbehaved, but I think it would be more accurate to say that I would occasionally wander away from what was important and the manuscript would (justifiably) throttle me until I was dazed and senseless.
Ideas for projects often come to me in flashes of scenes. With Hemlock, I got a flash of three friends in a hospital room with secrets stretching between them until something snapped. The important thing was always the friendship and the way their feelings—and their secrets—pulled them apart and bound them together. Sometimes I’d lose sight of that when writing. When I did, the results were always scenes that didn’t work and which needed to be rewritten.
Tell us about the place—as in the physical location: a messy office, a comfy couch, a certain corner table at the café—where you spent most of your time writing this book. Now imagine the writing spot of your fantasies where you wish you’d been able to write this book… tell us all about it.
Most of Hemlock was written in my messy home office on a computer that does not have internet access.
My fantasy writing spot would probably be a small room overlooking the ocean (or at least a bay that leads to the ocean). Large bodies of water always seem so infinite; they make me feel endless.
Imagine you’re on the subway, or the bus, or sitting in a park somewhere minding your own business… and you look up and see the most perfect person you could picture devouring your book. This is your ideal reader. Set the scene and describe him or her (or them?) for us.
They’re sitting on the subway, hips and knees just brushing. She’s reading Hemlock and he’s listening to music. They’re opposites. He looks a little scruffy and his hair sticks up at crazy angles. She looks neat and tidy—although her jacket is a little threadbare and the glasses she’s wearing were in style a year or two ago.
Her mouth quirks up in a shadow grin and she tugs on his sleeve. He fumbles with his iPod as she shows him a page and points to a paragraph. He sees the name of an artist or band he likes and smiles.
Publishing a novel is full of high points, low points, absolutely surreal points, and shocking points you never thought you’d see in your lifetime. Tell us a high point, a low point, a surreal point, and something shocking or at least somewhat surprising about your experience so far.
High: Telling my family and friends about the book deal.
Low: Crying at my desk because I was stressed about book one. Not my desk at home. My very visible day job desk.
Surreal: Writing a blurb request to an author I’ve had a crush on since I was twenty-one.
Surprising: How very “It’s a Small World After All” publishing is. One of my best friends (who has a completely different agent) ended up with the same editor at the same imprint.
Dream question: If you could go on book tour anywhere in the world, with any two authors (living or dead), and serve any item of food at your book signing… where would you go, who with, and what delicious treat would you serve your fans?
DOUGLAS ADAMS! NEIL GAIMAN! CUPCAKES!
If you had to pick one sentence, and one sentence only, to entice someone to read your book, what would it be? (I almost hate myself for asking you this question and making you choose! Almost.)
Oh, you are evil. No wonder Ruby came out of your brain…
Hmmmm…
Death had made her a bad liar.
Short and sweet and Amy-centric.
Hemlock will be published by Katherine Tegen Books / HarperCollins on May 8, 2012. Read on for a chance to win a signed and personalized finished copy of the hardcover!
Kathleen Peacock spent most of her teen years writing short stories. She put her writing dreams on hold while attending college but rediscovered them when office life started leaving her with an allergy to cubicles.
Time for more in the Summer 2012 YA Debut Interview Series, featuring debut YA authors who’ve written books I am absolutely dying to read! I’ve chosen eleven (yes, 11 this time!) debuts to feature, and I hope by the end of this series you’ll be as excited about these books as I am.
Today’s Summer 2012 YA Debut is Grim by Anna Waggener. Read on to see how this author answered the Q&A… And be sure to enter to win a signed ARC of Grim!
Nova Ren Suma: I’ll start with the dreaded question you may be hearing already from strangers on elevators, long-lost family members, and your doctor while you’re sitting on the examination table in the paper gown during your next checkup: “So what’s your book about?” (Feel free to use the jacket copy, or describe in your own words. Up to you.)
Anna Waggener: My go-to description: “A single mom gets in a car accident and wakes up in Limbo. All she wants is to return to her children, and all they want is to move on after her supposed death. It’s a book about love. Family love, selfish love, and all the gray areas in between.”
Scholastic’s jacket copy (they’re better at this than I am):
“When Erika wakes up after a horrific car crash, she finds herself somewhere between earth and heaven, between life and death. She doesn’t want to accept help from Jeremiah, who she’s not sure she can trust, even as she finds herself drawn to him, following him into a grim city of souls. She’s not sure who wants to help her and who wants to hurt her. And she’s desperate to get back to her children.
Shawn’s never thought about having to shoulder the responsibility of caring for his young sister Megan and his reckless older sister. And he never imagined that the three of them would find themselves in a haunted wood, sometimes chased, sometimes assisted, never sure where they’re headed.
With Grim, the terrifically talented Anna Waggener delves into the place where myth becomes reality, where family can distort you as easily as it cares for you, where death and eternity meet.”
My friends consistently tease me for the “terrifically talented” bit 😉
In my experience, every book wants to be written differently—and each one behaves differently from the one before it. Some novels like it out of order, and some rigidly insist on being written from start to finish. Some novels come out fast; others are excruciatingly slow. Some novels torment you, and some sing you to sleep. What did your novel want? How did you appease it? Did it ever misbehave?
This was the last novel for NaNoWriMo that I ever penned—not because I didn’t enjoy the process, but because I got swallowed up by big-people life (i.e., college). I went into NaNo with a rough sketch of what Grim would become and it spilled out. So. Fast. I’m sure that time away has made it seem like a more painless process then it actually was, but I do remember staying up late at night and thinking about the book throughout my day; I loved these characters and it was a pleasure to be with them.
The editing process, on the other hand, was a grueling one. I performed an edit before submitting to Scholastic, and three more in a two-year span while they held onto the manuscript. By the time I received an offer from them in November 2010, I had spent a lot of time away from Grim, and had moved onto other projects.
But I was ecstatic that November! Being published was something I’d always dreamed about—something that I’d studied and researched and desperately wanted.
In the middle of my euphoria, I dusted off the manuscript that had changed my life. And I hated it.
I obsessed over it for months, reading and rereading the prose that I thought was too stilted, the characters whose motivations had seemed so clear but no longer were. I doubted myself and I doubted Scholastic for believing in me. I didn’t want to talk to people about this self-doubt for fear, ironically, of looking full of myself. I had a book offer from a huge publishing house! Why couldn’t I be happy for myself?
I went through a multi-month period when I would reread sections of Grim and feel sick to my stomach. I tried to edit and had a lot of trouble. At one point, I finally went to one of my creative writing professors and told him that I didn’t know what to do. He told me to start over.
From my conversation with that professor, I felt a lot better about being able to go back in and rip Grim apart if that’s what it took to make me happy with my own work. I calmed myself and reread the manuscript without letting myself dwell on how frightened I was, or on other people’s expectations. I scribbled on the pages. I also received a more intensive editorial letter from my editor, and realized how brilliant she was—and how she’d seen things in my work that I had forgotten about and overlooked during my period of Grim-bashing.
In the end, I didn’t start from scratch, but I gave myself permission to—and that was one of the best decisions I ever made. I wrestled with the text and with my own intensions and I fell in love with Grim again. In a different and more complicated way than I did when I first wrote it, but probably in a healthier way too.
Tell us about the place—as in the physical location: a messy office, a comfy couch, a certain corner table at the café—where you spent most of your time writing this book. Now imagine the writing spot of your fantasies where you wish you’d been able to write this book… tell us all about it.
I wrote Grim primarily in my bedroom in the house I grew up in, by a window that overlooked our backyard. I no longer live there and the house is currently being rented, so I can’t provide a photo—but this where I write now:
It’s the couch in my apartment living room, and it’s usually a lot messier than this. I’ve also been writing on the floor a lot, which my boyfriend critiques as bad for my back. But I go where the muse goes!
My fantasy spot is an office in the upper floor of an older house, whose walls have been converted into bookshelves. I’m a bit obsessed with bookshelves—they always make cameos in my novels.
Imagine you’re on the subway, or the bus, or sitting in a park somewhere minding your own business… and you look up and see the most perfect person you could picture devouring your book. This is your ideal reader. Set the scene and describe him or her (or them?) for us.
She’s in that flexible age between high school and college and she’s reading Grim in a coffee shop on a sunny weekend afternoon, before meeting friends. She’s clever and confident but also reflective, and she loves reading books, from the classics to contemporary YA. Maybe this is reflected in the stack of books she has sitting on the table beside her cup of tea, or maybe you can’t tell. Reading is a part of who she is, not just what she does, and I’d be thrilled to find that Grim isn’t merely a guilty pleasure for her—it’s a book that she’s happy to read with the dust jacket on, in public.
Publishing a novel is full of high points, low points, absolutely surreal points, and shocking points you never thought you’d see in your lifetime. Tell us a high point, a low point, a surreal point, and something shocking or at least somewhat surprising about your experience so far.
High point: Receiving my first in-depth editorial letter and mark-up from my editors. They were both so supportive, but also had some great constructive criticism, and I felt respected and valued in an incredible way.
Low point: I went into this in question two, so I won’t rehash except to say that self-doubt is an evil, debilitating creature.
Surreal point: Talking to Rosemary Stimola on the phone, after she’d read a draft of Grim. I tried to sound coherent even though my mind kept telling me that, in that moment, I was one degree of separation from Suzanne Collins.
Surprise!: Receiving my cover! I’d talked to my editor the week before and had been told that it would be blue and silver—only to receive an orange .jpg! It turns out she’d meant to say not blue and silver, but I’d caught her pre-caffeine.
Dream question: If you could go on book tour anywhere in the world, with any two authors (living or dead), and serve any item of food at your book signing… where would you go, who with, and what delicious treat would you serve your fans?
I’d tour with Sarah Rees Brennan (who seems like a lovely, hilarious person) and Terry Pratchett (because I think he might be a god). We’d tour by train through Spain, France, and Germany, and hand out black tea and croissants with my mom’s homemade apricot jam.
If you had to pick one sentence, and one sentence only, to entice someone to read your book, what would it be? (I almost hate myself for asking you this question and making you choose! Almost.)
Nooooo!
Okay, fine.
I love my youngest child more than the other two, and God bless them but they all know it.
Grim will be published by Scholastic on June 1, 2012. Read on for a chance to win a signed ARC!
Anna Waggener was born in Thailand and has spent many summers eating ripe-to-bursting mangoes. At college in Minnesota she spends her winters buried under the snow, studying English and human rights, and happily writing YA fantasy. She was the 2008 winner of the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards novel writing category, and Grim is her first novel.
A new week, and more in the Summer 2012 YA Debut Interview Series, featuring debut YA authors who’ve written books I am absolutely dying to read! I’ve chosen eleven (yes, 11 this time!) debuts to feature, and I hope by the end of this series you’ll be as excited about these books as I am.
Today’s Summer 2012 YA Debut is False Memory by Dan Krokos. Read on to see how this author answered the Q&A… And be sure to enter to win a signed and personalized finished copy of False Memory! UPDATE: Dan is giving away his book to TWO lucky winners!
Nova Ren Suma: I’ll start with the dreaded question you may be hearing already from strangers on elevators, long-lost family members, and your doctor while you’re sitting on the examination table in the paper gown during your next checkup: “So what’s your book about?” (Feel free to use the jacket copy, or describe in your own words. Up to you.)
Dan Krokos: I’m going to take the easy way out and post the jacket copy:
Miranda wakes up alone on a park bench with no memory. In her panic, she releases a mysterious energy that incites pure terror in everyone around her. Except Peter, a boy who isn’t at all surprised by Miranda’s shocking ability.
Left with no choice but to trust this stranger, Miranda discovers she was trained to be a weapon and is part of an elite force of genetically-altered teens who possess flawless combat skills and powers strong enough to destroy a city. But adjusting to her old life isn’t easy–especially with Noah, the boyfriend she can’t remember loving. Then Miranda uncovers a dark truth that sets her team on the run. Suddenly her past doesn’t seem to matter…when there may not be a future.
In my experience, every book wants to be written differently—and each one behaves differently from the one before it. Some novels like it out of order, and some rigidly insist on being written from start to finish. Some novels come out fast; others are excruciatingly slow. Some novels torment you, and some sing you to sleep. What did your novel want? How did you appease it? Did it ever misbehave?
This novel was an adventure from the beginning, because I’d never written anything like it before. It started as an experiment. I wrote a lot of masculine adult fiction for a long time, and stacked up quite a few rejections saying exactly that—too masculine. I was worried I was turning into those authors that could only write one thing.
At this point I’d been really getting into YA because of The Hunger Games, and, yes, even Twilight. So I decided to mess around with a character that kept popping up: a girl named Miranda North, who didn’t know who she was.
It was hard. But I wanted to grow, so I didn’t give up. There were times during the editing process (before submission to publishers) that I would lie down on the floor and think maybe I should just take more classes and try to get a real job before pursuing a writing career. I’m glad I didn’t take the responsible road, because the experiment turned out great—I grew as a writer, which was the ultimate goal. I know now that I can do more than one thing.
Tell us about the place—as in the physical location: a messy office, a comfy couch, a certain corner table at the café—where you spent most of your time writing this book. Now imagine the writing spot of your fantasies where you wish you’d been able to write this book… tell us all about it.
I wrote False Memory in my condo in Cleveland, on the top floor, during a hot summer with no air conditioning. During the day the temperature would hover between 88–90. I wrote the book without wearing a lot of clothes.
Imagine you’re on the subway, or the bus, or sitting in a park somewhere minding your own business… and you look up and see the most perfect person you could picture devouring your book. This is your ideal reader. Set the scene and describe him or her (or them?) for us.
My ideal reader is anyone who picks up my book and takes the time to open it. If a leopard was sitting on the subway bench with False Memory in its jaws and was really just puncturing the pages with its teeth, I’d still thank it for at least carrying the thing around.
Publishing a novel is full of high points, low points, absolutely surreal points, and shocking points you never thought you’d see in your lifetime. Tell us a high point, a low point, a surreal point, and something shocking or at least somewhat surprising about your experience so far.
High: The editing process. More than one person at Disney has made me look like I know what I’m doing, which I’m so grateful for.
Low: There have been a couple low moments. All of them were my fault. But I’ve learned from them—perhaps even become a better person because of them—and that’s called turning a frown upside down.
Surreal: Seeing my cover. That might sound like a canned answer, but it was the first proof I had that there were people I didn’t personally know working on my book. A team of people worked on it. I’ve met some of them. There’s a guy I haven’t met who designed some parts. I wonder who he is. It’s crazy that his job for however long was to work on my cover. It was a moment of validation, that I’m not just some guy with coffee and a keyboard.
Shocking: Seeing the amount YA writers talk about other YA writers. I think the community could benefit from everyone taking a week off and remembering why we’re all here.
Dream question: If you could go on book tour anywhere in the world, with any two authors (living or dead), and serve any item of food at your book signing… where would you go, who with, and what delicious treat would you serve your fans?
This is easy. I would go with Josh Bazell and Chad Kultgen. I would serve beef wellington (I had it at a wedding once and it blew my mind out of my face). And while Josh and Chad don’t write YA, a tour would be a great way to force them to hang out with me.
If you had to pick one sentence, and one sentence only, to entice someone to read your book, what would it be? (I almost hate myself for asking you this question and making you choose! Almost.)
I stand on the edge, hands on my hips, heaving, a little shocked I’ve thrown two people off roofs in the last ten minutes.
False Memory will be published by Disney*Hyperion on August 14, 2012. Read on for a chance to win a signed and personalized finished copy!
After pumping gas for nine years to put himself through college, Dan Krokos, now twenty-six, dropped out to write full-time. He enjoys watching TV, playing MMORPGs, and drinking coffee. Currently, he’s hard at work on the next book in Miranda’s journey.
Time for more in the Summer 2012 YA Debut Interview Series, featuring debut YA authors who’ve written books I am absolutely dying to read! I’ve chosen eleven (yes, 11 this time!) debuts to feature, and I hope by the end of this series you’ll be as excited about these books as I am.
A new week, and more in the Summer 2012 YA Debut Interview Series, featuring debut YA authors who’ve written books I am absolutely dying to read! I’ve chosen eleven (yes, 11 this time!) debuts to feature, and I hope by the end of this series you’ll be as excited about these books as I am.
distraction no.99 