July 2007 – Page 3 – Tanita S. Davis

Tellin’ Tall Tales

July 20, 2007

6:05 am

This is a rare opportunity for those of you who are natural born storytellers. Tall Tales Audio Books is looking for …storytellers. The real, old-fashoined, spinnin’ a yarn kind of storytellers. You’ll know what I mean if you go to the website and take a listen to a story.

This is what those seeking storytellers have to say: TallTales Audio publishes original told stories for children ages five and up. Our emphasis is on exciting, kid-centered tales of almost all genres—ones that will hold a whole family’s attention during a long car trip. …mysteries, old west adventures, and stories about not-too-scary ghosts, talking animals, princesses, kids with super powers, and more.

The format is CD-ROM (no print version), with each one-hour CD containing a series of three, approximately 20-minute long stories. This comes out to roughly 2,500-3,000 words per story. All three stories meant for a single CD involve the same characters.

The ideal TallTales stories have the following elements:
* strong characters that kids will relate to, with the action centered around children or animals
* a story line, setting, or relationship that kids can identify with and care about
* in addition to story narrative, at least several characters who have distinctive voices (this is audio, after all), and
* drama, humor, adventure, or suspense that truly holds the listener’s attention.
TallTales does not publish folk tales and traditional stories from cultures around the world. As much as we admire folk tales, this is not our publishing focus. In addition, TallTales does not publish stories with these elements:
* Death and misery. Although characters may have to overcome adversity such as a death or an illness in the family, we prefer to keep these themes in the background of upbeat adventures that entertain and build self esteem.
* Religion. There are plenty of religious publishers, but we are not one of them.
* Preachy tone. We are interested in wholesome characters and themes, but not stories whose primary goal is to attempt to instill “proper values” or “good behavior.”
* Violence. Our stories keep violence to a minimum and absolutely avoid torture or killing.
* Foul language. No. There are lots of other ways to express strong emotions.

If you wish to create a children’s audiobook for TallTales, please send us the following:
• brief (less than a page) description of three proposed (related) stories
• overview of the market (including age) you envision and why you believe kids will love your stories, and
• summary of your background and experience telling or writing stories for children.
Email this material to info_at_talltalesaudio_dot_com, noting in the subject line “TallTales Submission.”

We will review your proposal and get back to you within approximately 30 days. If we’re interested, we will ask for additional material, such as writing samples. We may also ask for a brief audio sample of your proposed stories. We sometimes prefer to line up actors to voice our stories–but this is always a second choice to working with storytellers who have the skill to do it themselves. If we sign a contract for your stories, we will pay you an advance plus royalties depending on sales.

The website is bright and happy looking, and it’s local to the Bay Area, so you know it’s good people. So, storytellers (and Alkelda, we’re looking at you), start your engines!

4 More Reasons Why… Jay Asher is very cool

by Tanita S. Davis

July 20, 2007

2:31 am

2 Comments on 4 More Reasons Why… Jay Asher is very cool

On Writing, World o' Blogs

I don’t have know him well enough to list all thirteen ways in which YA author Jay Asher of the threesome blogging team of DiscoMermaids fame is cool, but YA lit aficionado Natalie on the
Children’s Writers & Illustrator’s Chat board does — so check out her 13 reasons (and do a little dance that the October release date is COMING! Soon!), and listen to this:

There are four very excellent reasons the Mermaids as a team are rising stars in the YA lit blogosphere. They have done a very fine thing: they have interviewed… fifteen year olds. Four of them. To talk about who they are and what they are and what it is that they want to know and see in young adult literature.

Talking to the people for whom we write is sometimes really funny, really cool, really bewildering and always an experience. More writers for young adults need to find a way into the culture of the classroom, the library and into the world of young adults to keep in touch with why they are writing and the very real people and situations with whom they want to connect. I think this is SO COOL on myriad levels, Jay, and thanks for the heads up on this.

So: LOOK. LISTEN. LEARN.

Tomorrow, the first of what is intended to be a continuing series ‘airs’ on the DiscoMermaids site, truck on over and check it out!

(Psst! If you look over here, you can also find someone Else – a few someone elseS – doing Very Cool Things. To save the world. And stuff. Check ’em out.)

the 51st (dream) state

by Tanita S. Davis

July 19, 2007

5:04 pm

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Part and Poetry

excerpt from the 51st (dream) state by Sekou Sundiata:

What if we were Life

Or Liberty

Or the Pursuit of something new?

Between the rocks below

and the stars above

What if we were composed by Love?

And what if we could show

that what we dream

is deeper than what we know?

Suppose if something does not live

in the world

that we long to see

then we make it ourselves

as we want it to be

What if we are Life

Or Liberty

and the Pursuit of something new?

And suppose the beautiful answer

asks the more beautiful question,

Why don’t we get our hopes up too high?

What don’t we get our hopes up to high?

High!

Sekou Sundiata, the eloquent and much loved poet, performer, artist activist and educator, passed away this morning July 18, 2007 at 5:47am at the age of 58 due to heart failure. So much of what we find, we discover when it is fading.

Here’s to hopes set high.

Viva las Divas!

by Tanita S. Davis

July 19, 2007

3:44 pm

2 Comments on Viva las Divas!

On Writing, Web Wanderings

Book Divas, the Sinuate Media owned marketing website is announcing their upcoming author visits. Hobson Brown, Taylor Materne and Caroline Says, authors of the YA novel The Upper Class will be on hand for a week long blog tour and people will be able to discuss and anticipate their novel, which is being released the first of September of this year. Current guest author is the great E.Lockhart, on hand until July 23rd. Other guest authors have included Cecil Castelucci, David Levithan, and John Green.

While you might mistake this as just another publishing-linked marketing blog full of hot-author-of-the-bestseller-list interviews and such, I was pleased to see that Book Divas is a bit more. Sure, HarperCollins has signed on for three additional Author Visits for 2007, and they pay, of course, but ten percent of the proceeds from all author visits go towards Book Divas’ ‘Writing Star’ scholarship fund! The scholarship fund will assist in sending one high school senior with the intent in majoring in Writing or English to college in the fall of 2008. Which is why the site also has great links to things like grammar help, book discussions, reviews and writing tips. Future English Major Divas, unite!

Ooh, had you heard about David Lassman, the director of the Jane Austen Festival in Bath, who, as an experiment, took a mishmash of Austen chapters and passed them off as a book of his own work? He was shocked to find that most of the publishers to whom he sent the work didn’t recognize Austen’s voice – or some almost word-for-word theft of the first lines from Pride & Prejudice. (Oh, NEVER has such a case been made for people to read the book. Ignore Colin Firth. He’s not the best bit.) “It’s interesting that there are these filters that stop work getting through,” said another British Austen specialist. “Clearly clerks and office staff are rejecting these manuscripts offhand.”

I’m guessing that the expectation is that people are going to read this and blush with shame — and I would agree — for the Pride & Prejudice lines, at least, editors employed in a publishing office should feel at least a moment’s chagrin. But 19th century literature as a whole has a distinctive voice and feel of… dense antiquity. I’m sure many people sat and tried to dash through those first few paragraphs and said, “Wait. I’m not hooked by the first three pages. What is this tripe?” The rules have simply changed – whether for better or for worse is another question, and unless all publishing company mail room personnel and editorial assistants are now required to be English majors with a specialization in 19th c. lit, and/or British & American Literature as I was, and not, maybe, people just in need of work, or even marketing majors (which seems to largely be the trend), the shame-on-you finger-shaking here seems a bit… off. Thoughts?

Oh, hm. Apparently the New York Times has erred in treating the Deathly Hallows as just another book and have reviewed it before its release. Note: the SECOND link which includes the word ‘reviewed’ goes to that, if you don’t want to read about the book until you read the book: Don’t. Click. It. Though JK Rowling is apparently stormily displeased, most people can make the decision: to read or not to read. And look! The sky is still blue. (!)

As readers kick around the idea of what to do after the PotterPallooza, NPR has come up with a few suggestions. I’m sure there are others — I have heard tantalizing things about The Spellbook of Listen Taylor and quite a few new things to which I am looking forward. What’s on your ‘Gotta have it’ TBR stack?

CONTEST****CONTEST****CONTEST****ALERT!
When MotherReader does something, she does it WHOLEheartedly. We had a ‘Tell an Author/Illustrator You Care’ DAY, and she’s managed to bring the love for a full week. That’s totally one of my fave things about her. (She calls it an obsessive personality thing — I say, “Nah!”) Over at the site, she’s had a lot of love over the past few days, and has ended with an author interview with Caroline Hickey, and a contest to get a copy of the fabulous sounding book, Cassie Was Here. Go on over and find out how to get in the running!

And now, back to work: two more chapters of the expansion/revision and then… weeks of packing. Incidentally, if any of you know what to do on a six hour layover in Chicago at Union Station between four and ten p.m., let me know some ideas!)

Young, Red-Haired, and Anne-ish: You Oughta Be in Pictures

by Tanita S. Davis

July 17, 2007

6:38 am

1 Comment on Young, Red-Haired, and Anne-ish: You Oughta Be in Pictures

Contest Alert, On Writing

Now, you know how I love my Anne.
You might even know that Anne of Green Gables was the first fictional book I read that wasn’t a Peanuts comic when I was seven. You might know that I wrote at least six different endings to the book and didn’t know until years later that it had… sequels of its own.
If you peruse this blog periodically, you know I generally HATE, LOATHE AND DETEST books made into movies.
All this is fact.

However.

I have been told by reliable readers and film watchers that the last Anne of Green Gables movie put on by this movie company was actually pretty cool. It was faithful to the book. The actress was cute, but not too pretty, a bit eccentric. And dare we say… plucky. It was, all in all, pretty close to perfect.

In view of this, I am passing along something from the people at Sullivan Entertainment, who are making a new movie version of Anne’s books. They’re hunting for an Anne. For a prequel.
I don’t generally approve of prequels of anything. (Did I need to know from Anakin Skywalker? Did I really?) I am not advocating this at all. But if you know someone cute and ten or twelve -well then, I’ve done my bit for their college money.

That is all.

Two Last Thoughts (From my last two brain cells)

by Tanita S. Davis

July 17, 2007

6:05 am

1 Comment on Two Last Thoughts (From my last two brain cells)

On Writing, Web Wanderings

Well, the good news is that I’ve only got two more chapters left in the Almighty Brain Consuming Expansion & Revision job. YAAAY! The bad news is that I have two brain cells left rubbing together. However, rubbing together, my brain cells have managed to produce a spark, so I shall point you to these bloggerly goodnesses with its feeble flickering flame:

Journalist Anastasia Goodstein, usually found on Ypulse, guest wrote a piece for The Huffington Post on young adults and their lack of news savvy. She cites Al Gore’s CurrentTV as a potential means to reaching this hard-to-reach demographic, and joins Harvard’s JKF School of Government in bemoaning the fact that fewer of the 13-20 demographic read the paper and are only interested in “soft news” like celebrity deaths and the imprisonment of certain famous-for-being-famous anorexics who shall not be named. I am always interested in the idea that young adults know less than ever before, when they have more access to information of all kinds — if they want it. They… don’t. At least not in the way it is aimed at them, flung at their heads, peppered at their ears, and heavily sugared up, dumbed down, and laced with entertainment and flashing lights (aka breathless, CNN moment-by-moment celebrity news: “She’s got her hairdresser with her… yes, that’s her stylist… and she’s… walking through the front gates of the minimum security facility where she has languished this last week… yes, she’s walking… and she’s out! Skinny Blonde Hotel Heiress Type is free!”) If young adults don’t watch the news it’s because the REAL entertainment stuff — stuff actually intended to be entertainment — is a lot more …um, entertaining.

I dunno — I read the comics for most of my life and drew cartoon bubbles on the Sears models in their bras until I was WELL into high school and should have been busily reading the Wall Street Journal, apparently. So, if a lot of young people don’t read the paper seriously … should the adults who do read the newspaper seriously worry? What about you and the newspaper? At what age do you figure people they supposed to start? It seems like this endless hand-wringing is another excuse for someone to start marketing yet another product/service/program to young adults… because, cynic that I am, I have a hard time with the idea that all of these people are worrying that young adults aren’t getting enough information to make “informed life choices.” I’m not sure I buy that at all.

Septimus Heap the book series will soon be — Septimus Heap, the Warner Brothers film. Well, for all of you fans of the series, begin crossing your fingers now. With the debacle that the movie formerly known as The Dark Is Rising, but which I will now call The Stench Is Rising has become, actual fans — that is, people who have read the books? Will need all the universe’s assistance they can get to have a movie in anywise remotely resembling the book that they loved and read. WHY. CAN’T. MOVIE. DIRECTORS. COMPREHEND. BOOKS?!

All right, I can tell the lights from ye olde brain cells are starting to spit sparks and die out. I’m sure I’ll have more cynical observations tomorrow. Until then…

Tell An Author You Care Day! – Monday!

by Tanita S. Davis

July 16, 2007

3:59 am

2 Comments on Tell An Author You Care Day! – Monday!

On Writing

Imagine meeting an author, and telling them how much you loved their book. They’re surprised. You think they’re just being gracious, but nope — they haven’t heard.

Much of the work people do anywhere doesn’t get gold stars and smiley stickers. And writers — well, we get impertinent questions from our reading group, and pithy notes from our agents. We get the Writer-Hating Bus, we get told by our parents about their friends children who just had their first child or are researching diseases at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta or just married a physicist who works at the Livermore labs, and we wonder if we’d really be better off just cleaning the house and getting A Real Job. While writing is awesome, it is also sometimes a tiring, solitary and bizarre profession in which you spend more time talking to imaginary friends than not. When we were in school we were always encouraged to write letters to authors — so why not now, as (alleged) adults? July 16th is Tell An Author You Care Day, as awesomely instituted by Emily Beeson @ Whimsy Blog. It’s a day of paying forward the pleasure someone’s work has given you. It ‘s a day of small effort with the potential to make a major difference.

All that’s required is to:

1. Write a letter or email to a favorite author. I think JK Rowling and Stephenie Meyer recieve plenty of fan letters. Think of an author you love who may need a little boost.

2. Write a positive review on Amazon and, if you want to, link to it in your blog.

3. Buy a book by a favorite author and give it to someone who will enjoy it.

4. Profile an author in your blog. I’m not talking just another review. Tell us a little about the author and mention at least one of his/her books that you love.

Scotland is five hours ahead of us… maybe I’ll drop Our Jane a note before I go to bed.

Oh, Because I’m Loving This Harry Potter Shtick

by Tanita S. Davis

July 15, 2007

3:48 pm

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Uncategorized

Potterphiliacs worth their …erm, salt know that there was, in 2002, a law suit and this whole flap that the Great JKR stole the Potter idea entirely — the word Muggles and all — from any number of talented (yet less famous at the time)sources. And, if you think about it, it’s true – but most writing is theft … it just doesn’t tend to get as specific as the name ‘Larry Potter’ and the word ‘Muggles’ in the title of someone else’s book. I still can’t believe that they said there was no copyright infringement on that one!

But I digress — this is the most horribly true and funny theft I’ve read yet… and proves once again that NOTHING is new under the sun. I’d always heard that the Star Wars plot — and Narnia, and the Tolkien Rings — were easily paralleled in theology, which I know is factual for Tolkien and our dearest Clive, but this — this takes the cake.

Enjoy, enjoy, Happy Sunday.

Mac’s Harry Potter Personality… Seriously.

by Tanita S. Davis

July 15, 2007

3:10 am

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Find out your Harry Potter personality at LiquidGeneration!

I hooked up with Lord Voldemort.

I’m just sayin’.

Because I Have SO Much Time To Waste

by Tanita S. Davis

July 15, 2007

2:56 am

2 Comments on Because I Have *SO* Much Time To Waste

On Writing, Web Wanderings

Find out your Harry Potter personality at LiquidGeneration!

AHHH! I’m a teacher. A TEACHER!!!

Actually, this is the teacher from the Potter movies whom I love the best; I adore her as a frosty, snippish character – with a warm heart but a penchant for detail. And, I’ve been called the b-word as well as frosty and snippish before. I recall one of my students telling me once that “All you have to do is look at me, and I feel stupid!”

!!!

Thanks to ol’ Gilderoy Weasley over at A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy for the fun.