Bloggy bits: July 2008 Archives

One of the blogs I read regularly is Blue Rose Girls, an interesting collective of children's book professionals including writers, artists, a former librarian, and an editor. The post yesterday said, in part:

Some of you may have seen a video on the blog today. There one minute, gone the next. It was a stop animation of two upholstered chairs doing "the nasty" on a rooftop.[...] I should explain that I put it up because it's a very cool and artistic video. Artistic creative things get my artistic creative juices flowing. I make books by being inspired. Enough said.

But someone complained that it wasn't appropriate for a children's book blog, and so it came down.

Unfortunately, that kind of thing happens all the time, where we self-censor in order not to be thought of by some other, unknown group as something deviant, or wrong, or overly emotional, etc. Lots of words that could otherwise just mean creative or opinionated.

But moving on. What I wanted to talk about was a further discussion in the same place about how sex and nudity is treated in children's books. You can say that a video of people having sex is inappropriate on a blog for kids, which of course it would be, but when it's chairs? On a blog for adults that's ABOUT children's books? And what about when characters have sex in books? When is it right or appropriate? Is it all about the context? What about naked images in picture books? I can recall a brouhaha when a picture book featured a naked female form and was called to be censored -- never mind that it was about a kid in a museum and the naked form was a piece of classic art.

it reminds me of when some people though John Green's Looking for Alaska was inappropriate because of a sex scene, never mind the Printz Award. The scene was the opposite of sexy, but was very very real for the characters.

I don't know, maybe this is too deep a subject for a hot Tuesday morning. But I don't like the idea of something like this getting shoved under a rug. What do you think? To narrow it down to just one question, what kind of sex is appropriate in teen fiction, or on a blog about teen fiction?

Back at official kt literary headquarters, following up on all my NYC meetings and responding to those authors who've sent me partials in recent history. If you send me a partial and haven't received a response yet, there's a good chance I never got your email. Please go ahead and resend it to me. I still have a number of fulls to get through, which I'm tackling this week, and my pile of queries is hovering around 125, so that needs to be sorted out soon, too.

But there's other, more exciting news out there. Alyson Noel's Fly Me To The Moon is coming out in a Spanish language edition, and the cover is above. She's heading up to San Francisco for the RWA national convention shortly, so head over to her blog and wish her luck!

Later this week, we have more Ask Daphne questions coming, as well as the answers to your Ask An Editor questions. Stay tuned!

Another day in the New York office, but I will be very glad to get home tonight. So I'm up early, getting ready for my meetings, checking my blogs, and I see a post from my author Lili Wilkinson that touches on yet another hot-button issue of the day, product placement in books. And I do a little googling, and I find a few other links on the subject. I also find the original New York Times article (yes, again) that set it off. But here's what I found most amusing: the top story that comes up if you search for the words "product placement" and "new york times" and "young adult books"? Not the most recent article, but one that touches on the exact same themes and was published TWO YEARS AGO.

Now, take of that what you will -- a validation of the thesis that product placement in YA books is becoming too widespread, or the recognition, as Lili mentions, that a book that fakes its brand names may not hit the same chord with its teen readership than one that is more authentic to their experience. Now, conversely, an authentic book today may be more dated in a few years, but let's throw the question open to the floor: how do you feel about using brand names in your books? Do you? If not, how do you get around it?

Spent another day running around the city to meetings with editors, authors, and scouts, and while I had to replace the battery on my phone/mobile email device, my Kindle is standing up like a champ! I am the new champ of subway reading! Granted, I got a head start on my flight into town, but I am tearing through my submissions pile and have found at least four manuscripts out of the 40 or so partials I requested where I'd like to see the full novel. And they're not all what I might expect.

Which leads me to carefully issue the following statement: sometimes, what I want to represent is not what I say I'm looking for, or what even I might expect. Now, please don't take this to mean you should suddenly flood my inbox with queries far beyond my stated interests, or completely disregard my stated dislikes. I'm merely saying, for instance, if I'm open to a YA or middle grade novel with sci-fi elements, I might consider an adult novel with similar elements.

Not always. But maybe. Sometimes.

*ducks for cover under a sudden flurry of new queries*

There's another brohaha brewing on the interwebs about Margo Rabb's essay in The New York Times about her book being labeled as YA, and the assumed stigma that comes along with it, quoting a number of writers of both adult and children's books. Justine Larbalestier wrote about the "stigma", disagreeing with many of the points Rabb raised. I think it's telling that Rabb picked authors like James Patterson to quote, which seems an easy agreement to her point, especially since the Times has written before about Patterson's horror at the sales of his books when they were shelved only in the teen section.

There's also A.M. Holmes, who Rabb quotes as saying "Young people will find an adult book, but it doesn't work the other way." And excuse me for saying so, but doesn't that tell you something amazing about teens? They will go seek out the best books they can find, no matter where they're shelved, while adults apparently need seeing eye dogs like The New York Times to find their way to good books to read. Good on teens, I say!

The more telling interview, I think, is with Sherman Alexie, and while I know I've heard his words before, having been fortunate enough to hear him speak at BEA, they're words well worth repeating:

A lot of people have no idea that right now Y.A. is the Garden of Eden of literature.

YA writers, do feel free to go forth and multiply!

I find myself once more in the New York office, with a strangely adorable cat named Mr. Pongo peering at my fingers as I type. This is the consequence of a stopover at famous author MJ's swank pied-a-terre. The famous MJ, I might add, who recently so perfectly captured our series of conversations about her deadlines on her blog. Read it yourself.

As for me, I'm off to my first meeting for the day, and a search for a New York bagel. Oh bagels, how I've missed you.

I feel like I'm over-blogging today, perhaps to make up for Friday, but there's so much exciting stuff on the intrawebs! Like this brilliant list I agree with 99.99%, from J.A. Konrath. Yes, it's personal, and your results may vary, but it's a fantastic place NOT to start your story/novel.

Maureen Johnson blogged earlier this week about muses, and how, despite classical literary evidence to the contrary, they're not so helpful when you're on deadline. Justine Larbalestier picked up the baton and added some thoughts of her own on the subject.

So what about you? Where do you stand in the debate?

While I do believe some ideas can come to a writer in a muse-like flash of inspiration, that's the easy part. Writing them down, perfecting the words, polishing the story -- that's the tough work, and our flighty little Greek goddesses usually aren't around for that.

No funny pictures, just a fascinating article in The New York Times on child brides in Yemen asking for and getting divorces.

One morning last month, Arwa Abdu Muhammad Ali walked out of her husband's house here and ran to a local hospital, where she complained that he had been beating and sexually abusing her for eight months.
That alone would be surprising in Yemen, a deeply conservative Arab society where family disputes tend to be solved privately. What made it even more unusual was that Arwa was 9 years old.

I first came across this when a friend linked to a website talking about the article, which has some very interesting discussion going in the comments. For my part, while the custom is barbaric, I can't help but read this and beam with delight. If young girls can do this, what can't they do?

Something to remember when you're writing books for them.

Over on her blog, Josie Bloss shares her top secret pub day plans for Band Geek Love: a tattoo!

I love this idea, and have seen it before on authors. What a fantastic way to celebrate the culmination of years of work! I even know another one of my authors has made a similar promise to herself.

So here's my question for you before the long holiday weekend: if your WIP or totally imaginary book's publication day was tomorrow, what would you do to celebrate?

I've thought in the past about a tattoo to celebrate a life's milestone, but I think I'm too indecisive when it comes to my personal appearance. I mean, I change my hair color with the seasons, and I have long hair precisely so I can wear it lots of different ways. And my clothes run the gamut from preppy to classic to trendy to stay-at-home (step)mom. I did have one idea for an image that has several meanings to me, but where would I put it?

No, too many decisions to live with for the rest of my life.

So I think I would go shopping. I like the idea of a small piece of jewelry that I could wear to remind myself of my accomplishment, that I could change if I wanted to wear something else. Something like a small diamond earring.

What about you?

In other news, I'm going to do my best to get through all my queries before the long holiday weekend, in case you're waiting on a response from me. I'm hoping to read partials over the weekend, so will have responses on those for some people next week.

Have a great Fourth of July!

We're all about themes this week at kt literary, and since the Shelf Elf has posted a great review of Suite Scarlett by Maureen Johnson, and mentioned fondly The Hopewell Hotel which plays such a big part in the story, I couldn't help but wonder...

What are some of the most memorable hotels you've stayed in?

For me, there was this hostel in the Garden District of New Orleans my junior year of college. Five friends and I drove down from Delaware for our spring break, and stayed on the second floor at the front of a converted mansion. A small bathroom linked our two bedrooms, each of which had floor-to-ceiling windows wider than an arm's reach that opened out onto a balcony. At the time we were staying there, the hostel was also hosting an international smorgasbord of other young travelers, and we spent many nights that week all out on our balcony, talking to each other, learning about everyone's travels (and drinking). I'm not sure I'd want to go back now, being in a completely different time of my life, but it was a perfect hotel for a college-age kt.

Your turn!

It is the official pub date for Josie Bloss's debut novel BAND GEEK LOVE, and in celebration, I'm sharing tales of my high school geekiness. Oh yes.

Unlike the classic high schools you read about in teen fiction (or, if you were a child of the 80s, saw in a plethora of John Hughes films), my high school wasn't huge. Didn't have hundreds of people. Didn't even have boys, actually -- we were an all girls Catholic school in the New York suburbs, just down the road from a giant high school in a gorgeous gothic styled building that was all those things I saw on the movie screen. And for about half a semester my senior year, myself and four of my best friends walked the two and a half blocks to that giant high school every day to take Calculus.

Our school was closing, you see. The writing was on the walls. No freshmen had enrolled, all the girls who would be juniors left to get in two full years somewhere else, and most of the sophomore class had also bailed, leaving just 41 seniors in an echoing building. So no, the administration wasn't about to bring in a specialized teacher for those of us who had advanced beyond their teaching capabilities. Thus -- the walk down the road to the public high school.

Now, every public high school has its geeks -- band geeks, drama geeks, science nerds, etc. But this is nothing -- nothing, I tell you -- to five plaid-skirted girls coming to your high school just to take Calculus.

I could tell you I was also a cheerleader, helped organize a fashion show, drove a red convertible on ring day and gave speeches on class day, but this does nothing to balance out my Calculus-taking geekiness.

Eventually, someone caved to pressure and they brought us back within the confines of our school's walls and found us a teacher. And after passing that class (thanks to a sister who retaught me every principle of Calculus at home each night while I struggled over my homework), I never had to take another math class again.

That's me. How were YOU a geek in high school?