Writing News

I've been itching to share this news for quite a while, but I was specifically asked not to blog, tweet or facebook about it until today.

The opening chapter of my middle grade mystery BETRAYED won the middle grade/young adult category in the Hook 'em contest at the Dallas/Ft. Worth Writers Conference. My prize - a ten-minute pitch session with agent/contest judge Laurie McLean from the Larsen-Pomada Literary Agency. I was pretty excited about this because unlike most pitch sessions where the agent has no idea whether you can write, Ms. McLean had already seen my writing and liked it. She also already knew what the story is about.
This took a lot of pressure off, since I didn't have to give a perfect pitch. It also allowed me to use my ten minutes to find out more about Ms. McLean - that she is an editorial agent who likes to represent clients for their whole career. She asked to see more of my manuscript and said we were "beginning a dialogue."

My meeting with her was first thing this morning - and an excellent way to celebrate my birthday.

I also picked up this very cool T-shirt at the conference from Angela Whitehead. Her company is Youniquely Yours.

Just for clarification, it says "Writer's Block: When your imaginary friends won't talk to you." Pretty cool, huh?

Heart of a Shepherd by Rosanne Parry

Here are my thoughts about this compelling middle grade novel.

The roundup on Heart of a Shepherd.
Learn more about Rosanne Parry at her website
She is represented by Stephen Fraser at Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency.
Jim Thomas at Random House edited the book.

I emailed Rosanne Parry and asked if she had any advice she could share with aspiring writers. Here's her reply:
This is not so much advice as an observation. HEART OF A SHEPHERD is

the book it is, in part, because I thought I'd never sell it. Brother
is such a quirky character and Malhuer County is so far out of the
mainstream, I just assumed no one would want it. As a consequence I
focused on learning as much as I could about how to structure a book
that takes place over a whole year and how to handle a large family
while keeping to focus tightly on just one character. I ended up with
a story unlike anything I'd read recently and not a good match for any
editor or agent's list of "what they are looking for". Which, as it
turned out, was exactly what my editor and agent liked about it.

Olive's Ocean by Kevin Henkes

Another installment of Book Talk!

More information about Olive's Ocean, a Newbery Honor winner:
Author Kevin Henkes is equally famous for his picture books (and is also an illustrator)
He was lucky enough to work with the same editor, Susan Hirschman, for many years and she wrote a wonderful article about him in the Horn Book.
On the author's website, you can read a four-chapter excerpt
The folks at Greenwillow included pictures of work on his new book on their blog.

Book Talk - Each Little Bird That Sings by Deborah Wiles

Inspired by a number of people, I'm trying something a little different. To add a little more excitement to my blog, I'm testing out short video book recommendations. I plan to post several of these and get some feedback before deciding if it will be permanent feature.



In gathering the information on the editors and agents for the SCBWI conference, I ran into some difficulty in finding which books they had edited. Though it is becoming more and more common for authors to mention editors and agents on the acknowledgments page, that information is still sometimes scarce on the web. To help alleviate that, I plan to list all relevant information I can about each book along with its recommendation.

Here's the scoop on Each Little Bird That Sings.
Deborah Wiles has a website and a blog with a great recent entry on her writing process.
Her agent is Steven Malk at Writer's House
Liz Van Doren edited the book.
And last, but certainly not least, Deborah Wiles is an alum of the Writing for Children and Young Adults program at Vermont College.

Library Love Support

One of my fellow Vermont College students, Mikki Knudsen, is supporting libraries through a blog challenge - she'll donate $1 for every comment on her her blog. So stop by and speak up if you love libraries.
Mikki's middle grade novel, The Dragon of Trelian, is published by Candlewick Press.

I had a great time at the OKC SCBWI conference and I will post more about that soon.

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.

Conference Countdown Continues

Greg Ferguson from Egmont will be one of the featured speakers at the SCBWI Oklahoma Conference on March 27 in Oklahoma City.

This is very exciting because when other traditional publishers are downsizing and laying people off, Egmont is expanding their business. Egmont is a long-established European publisher that give a portion of their profits to children's charities. Here's an interview with Egmont publisher Elizabeth Law from the fabulous Cynthia Leitich Smith at Cynsations.

Here is a blog post from Kathleen Temean from the NJ chapter of SCBWI about Egmont and Greg Ferguson.

A recent book he edited at Egmont is The Dark Divine by Bree Despain.  I haven't read this yet. I am on the waiting list to get it from the library, but there are seven other patrons ahead of me. So, I'm probably not going to get it before the conference. :(


And here is the most exciting bit of news I could find. A couple weeks ago, he acquired a YA dystopian thriller trilogy in a six-figure deal. The author, Ilsa J. Bick, talks about it on her blog, Paperback Writer. So, yes, publishers are still buying books and making advances and that is encouraging given all the negative things we hear so often.