Blessed

With the recent snow days, I had grand plans of getting lots of things accomplished: writing, cleaning house, organizing files. But I made one critical mistake -

I picked up Cynthia Leitich Smith's new release, Blessed.

Pretty much everything else had to wait until I'd finished reading the whole thing.

The book is the third set in an alternative universe that includes vampires, angels, werewolves and other shape shifters - including werearmadillos and wereoppossums. The first, Tantalize, focused on Quincie, a teen coping with running an Austin restaurant while being wooed by a charismatic vampire. But what she really wants is to find romance with longtime friend (and half werewolf) Kieren.

In the second installment, Eternal, Guardian Angel Zachary tries to save the lovely Miranda from losing her soul to the Vampire King - in Chicago. In Blessed, the casts of the two books are united against an even greater evil.

At this point, you are probably thinking, "just what we need, another teen vampire novel." But these books are about a lot more than just fangs and fondling.

Smith doesn't pull any punches in tackling gender power issues, religion and the idea of differences uniting or dividing us. She also openly acknowledges Bram Stoker, the original creator of vampires, as well as literary and pop culture references appealing to a diverse group of readers.

At its core, Blessed is the story of second chances and going on when all seems lost. I found the story inspiring and I bet you will too.

Here is the trailer for Blessed.

Blessed was published by Candlewick.

Edited by Deborah Wayshak.

Cynthia Leitich Smith is represented by Ginger Knowlton of Curtis Brown.

More Editor Information

Only a couple days left before the SCBWI OK Spring Conference.

In anticipation, I've continued my research on the editors who will be in attendance.

Let's start with Kate Fletcher from Candlewick. Now, Candlewick publishes everything from board books to young adult, but from what I found, it looks like Ms. Fletcher handles mostly picture books. Here is an interview with her from Tina Nichols Coury's blog. She is also editing a bilingual picture book  from Meg Medina called TIA ISA WANTS A CAR, in which the narrator helps her aunt buy a car -- a perfect, shiny-green, used car with a bad radio and no air conditioning, but it will get them to the beach just fine.

A recent release from Candlewick that looks interesting is Wiggens Learns His Manners by author/illustrator Leslie McGuirk.

It looks like a really fun book and it has a devoted website complete with book trailers and lots of other fun things. 

Amy Lennex from Sleeping Bear Press will also be speaking at the conference. One of her recent projects was S is for Story written by Esther Hershenhorn.  This is a delightful story and a must-read for all writers (it is a "writer's alphabet" after all.)
Zachary Pullen is the illustrator and he talks about his experience working with Amy and the rest of the Sleeping Bear team here. It sounds like an ideal artistic situation.

Kerry Martin is the senior designer at Clarion, which is now an imprint of Houghton Mifflin. Now, I have to admit, being a writer, I wasn't completely sure exactly what an art director does. But I certainly did understand illustrator Jerry Bennett's excitement about getting to meet with Kerry at the conference.

I assumed (incorrectly) that a designer would be involved only with picture books. And while it is true that I found a lot of those on Kerry's website, I also found several middle grade and young adult books.

I particularly liked this cover.

I mean, who could resist that face? Certainly makes me want to buy the book. And I guess that explains an art director's primary job.  I'm eager to learn if I'm right about this on Saturday.

So, that's it - three editors, one agent and an art director.
I submitted the opening pages of my manuscript for a critique, but I don't know whether it ended up with the agent or one of the editors. I will be very excited to see what comments they have about it and maybe I'll even be lucky enough to win one of the coveted face-to-face time slots.
We shall see.
In the meantime, I'll be gearing up to reconnect with old friends and make new ones. Hope to see you there.