{fiction, instead of lies}

I’m going on a little vacation at the end of the month, and I’m not taking my computer. I’m going to try and write some snatches of atmosphere — descriptions of countryside, cityscapes, and more. I’m going to try some old-school writing techniques and take lots of notes to hopefully find some great scenes to stick in books someday.

I feel like I’m going back to grad school and sitting down in coffee shops, writing down conversations I overhear…

REMINDER: The Kimberly Colen Memorial Grant, established by SCBWI and the family of Kimberly Colen, honors the memory of this children’s writer by helping authors and illustrators publish their first book. Two grants will be awarded in 2005, each for $2500, along with transportation, lodging and tuition to the SCBWI Winter Conference in New York. One grant will be for a picture book and/or an early reader book, but the other will be for a chapter book for middle grade, and or a YA book. Applicants must write a 1-page letter (250 words maximum) about the book they propose to write, and include their an excerpt from the book, and their contact information. The letters must be put in a #10, business-sized envelope, postmarked no earlier than October 1, and no later than November 15 mailed to:

SCBWI Kimberly Colen Grant Letter
Box 20322 Park West Finance Station
New York, NY, 10025-1512

The 24th Annual Delacorte Press Contest is open again for submissions October 1 through December 31! First time writers may submit book entries between 100 to 224 pages in length, suitable for readers aged 12-18, and Delacorte is specifically asking for stories with contemporary settings.

Writers, start your engines!

I’m going on a little vacation at the end of the month, and I’m not taking my computer. I’m going to try and write some snatches of atmosphere — descriptions of countryside, cityscapes, and more. I’m going to try some old-school writing techniques and take lots of notes to hopefully find some great scenes to stick in books someday.

I feel like I’m going back to grad school and sitting down in coffee shops, writing down conversations I overhear…

REMINDER: The Kimberly Colen Memorial Grant, established by SCBWI and the family of Kimberly Colen, honors the memory of this children’s writer by helping authors and illustrators publish their first book. Two grants will be awarded in 2005, each for $2500, along with transportation, lodging and tuition to the SCBWI Winter Conference in New York. One grant will be for a picture book and/or an early reader book, but the other will be for a chapter book for middle grade, and or a YA book. Applicants must write a 1-page letter (250 words maximum) about the book they propose to write, and include their an excerpt from the book, and their contact information. The letters must be put in a #10, business-sized envelope, postmarked no earlier than October 1, and no later than November 15 mailed to:

SCBWI Kimberly Colen Grant Letter
Box 20322 Park West Finance Station
New York, NY, 10025-1512

The 24th Annual Delacorte Press Contest is open again for submissions October 1 through December 31! First time writers may submit book entries between 100 to 224 pages in length, suitable for readers aged 12-18, and Delacorte is specifically asking for stories with contemporary settings.

Writers, start your engines!

I’m not one of those people who likes, say, jokes… I’d rather just smirk sardonically at life than go to a comedy club. Surprisingly, I do like funny books, if they’re just funny incidentally, and I do like weird British humor. I find writer Terry Pratchett one of the better writers of surrealist comedy of any kind, and he writes… well… It’s kind of fantasy…only in the sense that the world is actually a disc set on the back of four massive elephants… who are, in turn, are riding atop a giant turtle. (Kind of like ours, right?) The disc is a board game for the various panoply of gods who bet on the stakes of hapless wizards and random citizens.

As for the worlds in that universe, well, they’ve got vampires and trolls. Death makes occasional appearances… with his granddaughter. And his horse. And his lovely black and white house and garden. And his four buddies, apocalyptic horsemen, who’ve stayed in touch all these years. There are kingdoms, and witches, and the odd Handsome Prince with his beloved werewolf girlfriend. There’s an interspecies police force that employs a golem. And dwarves. Mostly, Pratchett’s Discworld books are like a fairy tale gone quite thoroughly mad. And I await each new one with glee.’

They’re impossibly relevant to present day, this-world politics and history. They’re satire. They’re just darned funny. Check them out!

I’m off to get Pratchett’s newest book! He’ll be in the Bay Area soon.

Wednesday, September 21, 2005 7:30 PM
CODY’S BOOKS
Speaking/Signing autographs
2454 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94704

Thursday, September 22, 2005 7:00 PM
THE BOOKSMITH
Speaking/Signing autographs
1644 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA 94117

Enjoy!

More hurricane stuff:

There’s not much space to avoid reality when it keeps leaking into my brain via all kinds of media outlets. I’m doing my best to single-handedly support the Red Cross ($10,124,762.25 raised as of today and counting!) by shopping where there are donations made tips and change, and sending the cash I can afford to hopefully buy underwear and clean water for those in need. Today I found out where to send packages of necessities to various locations in the Gulf States (and I can give you the 411 if you really want to know), and I’m having fun collecting basic needful things – and stickers! I mean, isn’t this a bad enough disaster without glittery underpants and stickers! — for kids. No books yet, since displaced people have to schlepp their stuff… and they have enough to shoulder at present.

So much political debate is going on — are they ‘refugees?’ or are they survivors? I vote for ‘survivors.’ People in the Gulf states, where they are annually wind-battered, flooded and flattened, have got to be some of the toughest people around. May their spirits be as resilient… I hope that people like Mills alum and former classmate Mahmud Rahman and the Neo-Griot New Orleans Project who will be going around in New Orleans, collecting stories not only of the disaster, but of the lives of the survivors, remembers to record the stories of the children… The stories that kids can tell should be told. Every other kid in America needs to hear what it was like living in New Orleans before this last month. Every child needs to think about how they will act and feel and be during a disaster. The best children’s and YA books give kids a chance to fill another kid’s shoes, if just for awhile.

New Orleans resident and Project leader, Kalama ya Salaam adds,
“Too often when major historic events take place, those who are live at the margins of the mainstream are ignored. We know what the presidents and generals did, we know what the business leaders and major cultural figures thought, but do we know anything about the poor, the disenfranchised, the people of the Dome, the overpass, as well as those who left the city on Sunday and as of Tuesday night had no city to return to?

During the Great Depression the WPA collected the stories of people who had experienced slavery. Today we will collect the stories of people who survived a defining moment in American and World History.”

The project objective is:

1. to put the words and images of the people on the internet via a New Orleans
Project website.

2. to teach the respondents how to access the internet, so that they can
continue sharing their views after the neo-griots leave.

3. to archive the resulting information so that it can be researched and
accessed worldwide.

There are stories yet to be heard, and yet to be written. Like a campfire shining clear in a dark and unfamiliar wood, I hope the smaller stories will shine out and be seen…as hope, as memory, and as the means to rebuild a world.

Okay, people are needing shelter. I know that.
People are needing basic necessities like food and untainted water and medical care and protection from gun-toting thugs and gun-toting vigilantes.

I wish I could rock the South to sleep and tell them this hurricane/levee breakage/rising water/flooded homes/floating corpses/lost loved ones thing is a bad, bad, dream that will dissipate with the mists of morning.

Wishful thinking aside, I am trying to find something to do here, since I can’t go and rescue my relatives (blessedly missed by most of the rising water, as they don’t live IN New Orleans; the flood waters didn’t rise quite as high in the parishes further away. They’re just low on food, have no power and limited phones, and are low on pharmacologicals, but are alive… Thank God, Shiva, Buddha, or whomever – insert your Deity here.) and weeping every time I watch the news is somewhat, um, counter productive…

MoveOn.org, being the remarkably righteous people they are, have come up with a civic arm that ignores such absurdities as blue/red state, and have come down to the real issues, like housing — which is a wonderful thing for the people who live within 100 miles of the worst of the grief. I can’t help out with that, but here’s my best thought so far: I realize the schools and the libraries are going to be rotted stinking pulps of paper waste, in an already low literacy area (Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana – AND all three have rural poverty rates that are amazingly high, no coincidence)… Maybe we can do something like what Pamela Ribbon did for the Oakland School Library system, and come up with some kind of groundswell thing to collect books to support the libraries and schools, in a positive “you’re going to reopen someday” kind of mindset. Maybe the LitCrawl thing (which may have our name on it?) can somehow be involved in raising funds or collecting books…? Trying to think… but there’s still a lot of static.

We were planning to go to New Orleans for Thanksgiving. Still trying to recalibrate the brain.

Other thoughts, anyone?

As well as being astringent pundits of popular culture, my girlz at Mean & Catty are also on the look-out for the odd fifteen seconds of fame in the YA business… – and yes, Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak as immortalized on the Estrogen Channel, aka Lifetime is a definitely an odd sort of fame. If Anderson is lucky, it’ll be painless enough that the endless reruns won’t leave her suicidal… If she’s very lucky indeed, it’ll be a really wonderful portrayal of her work. Of course, for those of us still reeling from the Rings movies (or am I the only nerd still bemoaning plot additions and distortions?) maybe not so hopeful, eh?

Today’s been a busy day at the post office… A. Fortis has inspired, so I have launched forth book proposals and an entire manuscript to some lucky people to peruse. 51 Days and A La Carte are winging their way toward Mei Mei’s state. Crossed fingers that all editors are in a receptive mood during the fall reading period!!

Meanwhile, D’s lay-off took effect today, so for awhile I’m going to have lots of company around the office. Does that mean more writing gets done, or less? Does anyone else share work space? How do you do it?

If we save all of our pennies now, can we go here in February?

sigh

Back to work. For some reason, my failure with Glimmer Train prods me to try my luck with short stories…Again.

Optimism!

As well as being astringent pundits of popular culture, my girlz at Mean & Catty are also on the look-out for the odd fifteen seconds of fame in the YA business… – and yes, Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak as immortalized on the Estrogen Channel, aka Lifetime is a definitely an odd sort of fame. If Anderson is lucky, it’ll be painless enough that the endless reruns won’t leave her suicidal… If she’s very lucky indeed, it’ll be a really wonderful portrayal of her work. Of course, for those of us still reeling from the Rings movies (or am I the only nerd still bemoaning plot additions and distortions?) maybe not so hopeful, eh?

Today’s been a busy day at the post office… A. Fortis has inspired, so I have launched forth book proposals and an entire manuscript to some lucky people to peruse. 51 Days and A La Carte are winging their way toward Mei Mei’s state. Crossed fingers that all editors are in a receptive mood during the fall reading period!!

Meanwhile, D’s lay-off took effect today, so for awhile I’m going to have lots of company around the office. Does that mean more writing gets done, or less? Does anyone else share work space? How do you do it?

If we save all of our pennies now, can we go here in February?

sigh

Back to work. For some reason, my failure with Glimmer Train prods me to try my luck with short stories…Again.

Optimism!

Some thought-provoking stuff shared by a.fortis with our writing circle:

The NEW YORK TIMES today [July 1] has a story about Paul Ruditis’s RAINBOW PARTY, a new YA novel from the Simon Pulse imprint that revolves around the idea of an oral sex party:

Reporter Tamar Lewin starts with parents, as well as “bloggers and conservative columnists,” being shocked by this book. Which is, of course, part of its appeal. The article then goes on to reveal:

a) No oral sex party ever actually takes place in the novel, despite many pages of talk about it. That may be one of its realistic aspects because…

b) None of the sex-ed and adolescent-psych experts interviewed for the article said they know teens who have actually participated in oral sex parties as described in the book. For example, Dr. Deborah Tolman, director of the Center for Research on Gender and Sexuality at San Francisco State, says, “girls, particularly early adolescents, are still getting labeled as sluts and suffering painful consequences. The double standard is remarkably intact. So what could be girls’ motivations for participating in such parties? And I can’t quite imagine, even for a moment, teenage boys comparing their lipstick rings.” There’s a lot of talk, but the rumors of “rainbow parties” seem to be distorting what most adolescents’ true sexual activity.

c) This book was actually commissioned by Simon Pulse Editorial Director Bethany Buck after hearing the phrase “rainbow party” on an OPRAH episode. She took the idea to Ruditis, author of other YA novels and such pop fare as THE BRADY BUNCH GUIDE TO LIFE. Together they developed a spectrum of characters to cover a range of situations, attitudes, and/or recognizable types. So we’re not talking about a book arising from an author’s personal or parental experience, but one step in a spiral of media attention: OPRAH begets RAINBOW PARTY, which begets newspaper columns, which begets this message…

(Thanks to John Bell, RA Central New England, MA. Email: CentralNERA@nescbwi.org)

I was…confused by this. Okay, no, not all YA fiction is going to come from an entirely personal place — it’s not called ‘fiction’ for nothing. But this seemed a very wag-the-dog type of marketing ploy, and dishonest manipulation. This piece prompted a mini-rant from fellow-writer Jennifer S:

Oh Oprah, how will you next enlighten us with the dastardly ways of the world according to the latest suburban myth?

Okay, okay, I’ll crawl back down from my podium and read the book before I say more.

Has anyone else read it yet?

I haven’t– and whomever gets to it first, please review on our sister site! Meanwhile, I’m not sure the blame rests solely with Oprah for the furor over a *perceived trend in teen sexuality. First and foremost, she’s a talk show hostess, not a psychologist, not a teacher, not anyone who gets anywhere near children unless it’s for a photo op. How is she really going to know anything? A talk show hostess’ main job is to… talk. And give others something to talk about. Does being a multi-millionaire automatically beget talking about things that make sense? Obviously no. To me this is another example of the public’s gullibility, and of an omnipresent media ever ready to swoop in and manipulate and capitalize on people’s ever multiplying fears. Need we be surprised that this time the media outlet is the book publishing industry?

Until people insist on thinking for themselves, especially in the formation of issues close to their hearts (and if they’re parents, that means their kids), this is what we end up with — hysteria over imaginary sexual trends in order to manufacture A Solemn Warning about sex – for no real reason at all.

I have to admit that I’m disappointed that it’s an STD Story – I read Melvin Burgess’ Doing It and saw how a frank discussion of sexuality could happen without all the panic. However, as this book was debuted in the U.S., I’m not sure (until I read it) if it could have been broached any other way and gotten published. Are people more conservative in truth in this country than they like to say? I’d certainly like to revisit this once I read the book…

*And you notice no one ever names the ‘guests’ on the Oprah show who came up with this? Ostensibly the show’s Michelle Burford found her “facts” from interviewing parents and their teens. Which parents? Which teens? I think THAT bears more research.

Some thought-provoking stuff shared by a.fortis with our writing circle:

The NEW YORK TIMES today [July 1] has a story about Paul Ruditis’s RAINBOW PARTY, a new YA novel from the Simon Pulse imprint that revolves around the idea of an oral sex party:

Reporter Tamar Lewin starts with parents, as well as “bloggers and conservative columnists,” being shocked by this book. Which is, of course, part of its appeal. The article then goes on to reveal:

a) No oral sex party ever actually takes place in the novel, despite many pages of talk about it. That may be one of its realistic aspects because…

b) None of the sex-ed and adolescent-psych experts interviewed for the article said they know teens who have actually participated in oral sex parties as described in the book. For example, Dr. Deborah Tolman, director of the Center for Research on Gender and Sexuality at San Francisco State, says, “girls, particularly early adolescents, are still getting labeled as sluts and suffering painful consequences. The double standard is remarkably intact. So what could be girls’ motivations for participating in such parties? And I can’t quite imagine, even for a moment, teenage boys comparing their lipstick rings.” There’s a lot of talk, but the rumors of “rainbow parties” seem to be distorting what most adolescents’ true sexual activity.

c) This book was actually commissioned by Simon Pulse Editorial Director Bethany Buck after hearing the phrase “rainbow party” on an OPRAH episode. She took the idea to Ruditis, author of other YA novels and such pop fare as THE BRADY BUNCH GUIDE TO LIFE. Together they developed a spectrum of characters to cover a range of situations, attitudes, and/or recognizable types. So we’re not talking about a book arising from an author’s personal or parental experience, but one step in a spiral of media attention: OPRAH begets RAINBOW PARTY, which begets newspaper columns, which begets this message…

(Thanks to John Bell, RA Central New England, MA. Email: CentralNERA@nescbwi.org)

I was…confused by this. Okay, no, not all YA fiction is going to come from an entirely personal place — it’s not called ‘fiction’ for nothing. But this seemed a very wag-the-dog type of marketing ploy, and dishonest manipulation. This piece prompted a mini-rant from fellow-writer Jennifer S:

Oh Oprah, how will you next enlighten us with the dastardly ways of the world according to the latest suburban myth?

Okay, okay, I’ll crawl back down from my podium and read the book before I say more.

Has anyone else read it yet?

I haven’t– and whomever gets to it first, please review on our sister site! Meanwhile, I’m not sure the blame rests solely with Oprah for the furor over a *perceived trend in teen sexuality. First and foremost, she’s a talk show hostess, not a psychologist, not a teacher, not anyone who gets anywhere near children unless it’s for a photo op. How is she really going to know anything? A talk show hostess’ main job is to… talk. And give others something to talk about. Does being a multi-millionaire automatically beget talking about things that make sense? Obviously no. To me this is another example of the public’s gullibility, and of an omnipresent media ever ready to swoop in and manipulate and capitalize on people’s ever multiplying fears. Need we be surprised that this time the media outlet is the book publishing industry?

Until people insist on thinking for themselves, especially in the formation of issues close to their hearts (and if they’re parents, that means their kids), this is what we end up with — hysteria over imaginary sexual trends in order to manufacture A Solemn Warning about sex – for no real reason at all.

I have to admit that I’m disappointed that it’s an STD Story – I read Melvin Burgess’ Doing It and saw how a frank discussion of sexuality could happen without all the panic. However, as this book was debuted in the U.S., I’m not sure (until I read it) if it could have been broached any other way and gotten published. Are people more conservative in truth in this country than they like to say? I’d certainly like to revisit this once I read the book…

*And you notice no one ever names the ‘guests’ on the Oprah show who came up with this? Ostensibly the show’s Michelle Burford found her “facts” from interviewing parents and their teens. Which parents? Which teens? I think THAT bears more research.

The great folks at SmartWriter.com have come up with a YA shorts contest that will maybe help get some of the cobwebs out of your brain. Stuck on your current character’s current dilemma? How about backing up to another point in their lives and writing out a scene? The ensuing short story will be much richer because you have the background of really knowing the character, and can fill in enough detail to flesh out even the shortest piece.

Getting short stories for kids and young adults can be really difficult, especially if you’re not lucky enough to get into a literary-type magazine, or an anthology. This contest is a great chance to get some exposure — as well as cash prizes, the writers who place first in this contest in all three categories will be included in an anthology! Check out the Write It Now: Shorts page at SmartWriters. And get busy already! You’ve only got ’til Halloween!