Month: February 2011

From a note from my S.A.M. ~

“I really, really loved your new novel!! Wow, what a different sort of novel for you. I gobbled it right up. I’d be most happy to send this to [Editor E] in due time. I think your description and comparison to those novels [The Exiles by Hilary McKay, The Penderwicks, by Jeanne Birdsall, and a few Beverly Cleary books] is apt to a certain extent…”

Well, it’s not yet sold, but my agent does not tend to be an over-emotive, over-reacting kind of guy, so if Mikey likes it… well, I feel REALLY, really good about that.

I’ve feared in the past being limited to one kind of writing — I’ve been afraid that my editorial house only wanted one kind of book from me, people only wanted to SEE one sort of thing of mine, but I tell you — reading about new projects from authors in general and this month’s highlighted authors of color recently has really inspired me.

I’m just so excited at the moment. ::happy dance!::

Okay. Better go call the man, he’s waiting…!

I was pleased and grateful to see A LA CARTE get such kind words from guest blogger Doret Canton at Diversity in YA Fiction. Being mentioned alongside of such great authors as Angela Johnson, Jacquline Woodson and Christopher Paul Curtis is indeed an honor, thank-you!

Speaking of ALC, last August, fantabulous Knopf book designer Kate Gartner started working with the new cover for my first YA novel, and while the new MARE’S WAR cover has debuted first, today you get a sneak peek of what else Kate’s been up to on our behalf.

BEHOLD!

Not entirely sure when this paperback version of ALC will hit the bookstores, but look for it around next autumn!

Lots more love to go around today. Don’t forget to check out the CYBILS AWARD website to see the names of the 2011 winners! I am PULLING for Rot & Ruin to win from the long list of fantasy and science fiction nominees. (There are tons of other great books, but that one is stupendous.) For whom are you especially cheering? Do tell!

“You never would have guessed what I had been through; where I had been. I didn’t look “crazy”-I never had. I looked like any other teenage girl. I went to classes with everyone else. I talked to other kids. I attended school events. I would have the [sic] seen your dance team, had I gone to Waunakee High School. And you would never have known. In fact, the next time you perform, I want you to look at the kids in the audience. About 1 in 10 children under the age of eighteen have a mental illness; 1 in 5 have a serious mental illness (SMI) like the ones you mock. ONE IN FIVE.

How many kids are watching you perform? How many are in your school? How about in your district? Your town?” ~ Erika, age 14

I remember reading It’s Kind of a Funny Story, by Ned Vizzini, the YA novel which has recently gone on to movie fame. I was at first uncomfortable with how funny I found it — because Mental Illness Is Not Funny… but I reread it, and found myself relieved. It is real. It has poignancy and bright/dark moments which are so very normal to how life goes, to the way I feel. It’s Kind of a Funny Story is most important to me because it highlights the decision to live, and get help when faced with what a friend and I call Those Intrusive Thoughts that make hanging one’s toes off the edge of the Brooklyn Bridge at 3 a.m. seem like a really good idea.

Most of us have personal experience with those Intrusive Thoughts. Most of us have the dear friend/family/personal connection with mental illness. I know I do.

Mental health issues are the biggest elephant in the room, EVER. They are hugely awkward in our society. When the “American dream” is to, by our own effort, rule our particular little worlds, a loss of control through mental challenges has a massive stigma to the American — heck, to the WORLD public. No one wants to be associated with the stereotypical “crazy person” who has to miss days of work and school, staying home and struggling. No one wants to be “that guy,” the one who has to take medication, who sometimes emotes too much – the girl who cries or laughs too easily, who has blackout panic attacks in a crowded hallway, or who falls apart at the drop of a grade.

It is something we all fear. Therefore, it’s really easy… to make fun of it.

Which is what happened, inadvertently, a few weeks ago at a Wisconsin high school. The pep rally routine featured cheerleaders with black makeup smeared on their faces, snarled hair, scary expressions, and the words “Psych Ward” on their straitjacket-looking uniforms as they danced through a “fun and catchy” song to get school spirit up and going. “We Get Crazy” is the title of their routine.

All right. The finger-pointing and shouty bits of the dialogue can go on without our input, can’t they? We can agree that the routine was insensitive and surreal without all of the screeching, and we can also probably agree that it was a misjudgment by the head coach, who isn’t an Evil Person and didn’t intend to humiliate or shame, just create a dance to a “catchy and amusing” hip-hop song.

Conversely, some of us might even agree with the NBC sportswriter who claimed that it’s a political thing and wrong to teach kids to back down under pressure, and that the cheerleaders should go on if they feel okay about things, and everyone is oversensitive and too PC these days, and should shut up. Yeah, someone can probably agree to parts of all of that.

I was able to pass the news story without public comment until I ran across a letter of response. Erika, guest blogs her story without adding a last name (for obvious reasons), writes with frustration and passion to the head coach of Waunakee Wisconsin High School. She tells a story that is familiar to far too many.

I blink when I think about the statistics that Erika quotes. One in ten young adults below eighteen have a mental illness, one in five have a serious one. One in five is a REALLY big number. Does YA fiction reflect this? Or is this invisible to YA authors, too?

Other than Ned Vizzini’s book, what was the last book I read wherein someone had a serious mental challenge? Okay, there are some classics: the Sonya Sones book, Stop Pretending; Patricia McCormick’s Cut. There was an old book I remember reading called Lisa, Bright & Dark about a girl with severe mood swings. Deb Caletti’s Wild Roses comes to mind, as does When She Was Good, by Norma Fox Mazer (boy, that’s an old one.) More recently, Dia Calhoun wrote The Phoenix Dance, a fantasy retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses — cleverly paralleling their dance mania with bipolar disorder. The intensely arresting Tallulah Falls by Christine Fletcher is about a drop-everything kind of friendship, and a very impulsive friend.

There are more novels, there must be — can you think of them? Have you read anything that struck you as extraordinary? I’m thinking of making a list to post — fiction which depicts people with wonky brain chemistry leading lives with meaning and humor and balance, in spite of school and work and life’s crap. Let me know if you find something which needs to be included.

My point, if I have one, is to let Erika know that I, as a writer, hear her, that this is bouncing around the echo chamber in my head, and that I’m still listening. And, that I know how easy it is to make fun of what we fear, but this isn’t funny, and smart people aren’t laughing.

That’s all.

(Mostly)cross-posted @ wonderland

BOOM. Controversy. Shrieking. Finger-pointing. Vitriolic ranting.

I see I can’t leave you people alone for even a minute.

I’m not in the habit of listing every award I’ve won on my blog, mainly because there just aren’t that many, and also because it gets to feeling weird and icky and self-serving, and I’m pretty sure that’s not why you’ve stopped by. So, last week when I was included on a new Best 100 Young Adult Books list, along with Harriet the Spy, and Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, I was pleasantly cheered, but not intending to write about it. I thought, “Huh! A magazine whose stated goal is ‘to point out the insidious, everyday sexism of popular culture, propose alternatives, and celebrate pro-woman, pro-feminism pop products,’ thinks Mare is cool and profeminist too! Excellent!”

Then, I pretty much went on with my life, which included, helping Tech Boy through some weird viral pneumonia and, wrestling yet again with the end of this @*%$!*& novel, (Which I’d really like to get into shape this week, please, God).

…meanwhile, back at the ranch, the list was surveyed by the internets. And lo, it was seen as Not Good. This morning I read through my usual blogs – Colleen Mondor, John Scalzi, Sarah Wendell – and discovered that sometimes being on Greenwich Mean Time means I am so behind the curve. Apparently as of yesterday, other fine publications once included on the list were yanked for various reasons. Margo Lanagan’s Tender Morsels, for one, which is odd, considering that it’s a Printz-winner and is beautifully written and intensely literary. It is a book that readers may not like, as Lanagan also writes things which are disturbing and intense, but she “tells the true” in a way which speaks movingly of real life, as seen through the fractured fairy tales she uses. (Think fairy tales minus Disney – the originals, as written, where people lied, bled and died – and you’ve got the gist.) Because Lanagan’s book was on the list, I thought it was there because the list-compilers had read and appreciated it, in spite of its dark and painful aspects.

Um… no. They hadn’t read it. They put it on a list because they’d researched it and it sounded good, and then, based on an excerpt which someone provided and a very virulent criticism which led to them finally reading it, they removed it. This was true of other books as well, some of which were removed – the common denominator of all books removed is that they dealt with rape… which apparently the people who screeched felt was too upsetting for feminist women to have to read about. (That’s simplifying a great deal, but it seemed to be the upshot of the issue, most things considered.)

Well, obviously, this is a Problem. Mainly because it’s a problem which seems to dog young adult authors. Do any adult mainstream novels have people trailing after the authors, pointing fingers and screeching about their content? Not so much. But somehow, YA has its self-elected Gatekeepers, and boy do they like to point fingers and screech and ban. This is not to say that the people who had issues with the Lanagan book and others may not have reasons, but I’m not sure that having a reason is an excuse to apply your reading preferences to the world at large… and to demand that books be removed from a list, or a library, or a classroom. Further, to my mind this list of books was included in an adult-marketed magazine, and if adult people had issues with the books on the list, they could, then, fail to finish reading them… but screeching and finger-pointing is apparently a right listed in the Constitution after that bit about “the pursuit of happiness.”

Anyway, now many authors whose books were listed are pretty darned ticked. And yesterday, many, many of them said, in mostly polite and intelligent tones, Dear List Makers, please remove me from your list, as I don’t support your book-bannin’ ways.

Well. I didn’t. Ask to be removed from the list, that is. Mainly because all of this drama happened while I was asleep in bed and I fear it would be a sort of also-ran/copycat move by now; more of a gesture than an act with any real meaning. The list is out, people are officially incensed, and that’s pretty much it. Also, I didn’t request they remove my book because I don’t care to engage with the over-the-top shrieking going on in the hundreds of comments on the site – you’ll note I didn’t even link to it (linking to it drives traffic to their site, which I do not choose to do). But mainly I didn’t do it, because I am sort of wondering what, if anything, it means to still be ON that list. And, I’m thinking that the list, with its cross-outs and arrows and shrieking commentary notes in the margins, now has no meaning whatsoever.

It’s kind of like the scratch paper at the end of study hall. It was useful to scribble on to figure things out. Now that you’ve learned, throw the wadded up list away, and move on to the next class. No doubt the world has something else to teach.