The Cardturner

I've had The Cardturner by Louis Sachar for about two months but only just read it because I didn't think a book that centered around bridge would hold my interest.  How wrong I was.  If you've looked at this book and thought the same thing, ignore your inner voice and read this book.

The book is about young Alton who helps his blind grand-uncle play bridge because Alton's parents are trying to suck up to the rich old guy before he dies.  The story is slow and quiet and brilliant.  Bridge takes up a huge chunk of the story, but Sachar wisely allows you to decide how much.  He uses an ingenious system to let you know when bridge talk might come up.  If you're interested, you can read it.  If not, you can skip it and won't miss anything.  I found myself skipping it at first but reading more of it as I went along.  There are also footnotes and diagrams to help you get a grip on what's going on.  And the nice thing is that Alton's confusion matched my own, so I learned as he learned.

More than bridge though, this is a story about young love and old love and what family really is.  The only thing I'd knock points off for is the characterization of Alton's parents.  They never moved beyond their greedy motives, into real people.  I realize some people are like that, but I would have liked to have seen some depth in them.  The young people in the book grow, the old people grow, but Alton's parents remain shallow throughout, which was a shame.  However, since they remained in the periphery for the entire book, it really isn't a big deal.

I haven't read Sachar's other book, HOLES, but now I'm going to.  And if you haven't read The Cardturner, you really should.  It's a rare YA book that hasn't got explosions or over-the-top drama or monsters.  It's got card games and beautiful characters and a lot of heart.

The Crisis With Boys Not Reading Has Nothing to do With Girls

We've talked about this before.  Boys aren't reading YA.  In some cases they're not reading at all.  Literacy amongst boys is down.  There aren't a lot of books in YA geared toward boys.  Maureen Johnson, who is a really awesome author by the way (I got Suite Scarlett on my Kindle as a free download and her writing hooked me), wrote a moving post about the issue.  It was countered by an equally awesome post by Guys Lit Wire.

I'm not as eloquent as either writer.  Go read those posts and then come back and read this.  Because I'm not going to add any arguments to theirs.  Both Colleen at Guys Lit Wire and Maureen, have put it out there better than I could.  All I'm going to do is tell you a story.  I'll be here waiting when you come back.

You're back!  Here's the story:  I remember the first time I became ashamed of reading.  I don't remember the exact moment I got hooked on reading.  I used to love staying home sick because I could gather a stack of book--Super Fudge and Ramona Quimby and The Great Brain and The Chronicles of Narnia and (my personal favorite) A Wrinkle in Time.  It just seemed to me that I was born with books in my hands and I was always proud of that.  My vocabulary level was far beyond my age group.  I was reading adult books in the 4th and 5th grades.  But it wasn't until 6th grade that I became ashamed of my love of reading.

I was sitting in class after PE.  I'd already changed and there were a few minutes left before the next period.  I loved those moments because I could sneak in a few pages without getting in trouble with my teacher.  I was reading Robert Jordan's THE WHEEL OF TIME.  Just about as perfect a fantasy novel as you're ever likely to find.  That's the cover off to the side.  His name was Matt Wheeler and I didn't hear him walk up.  He was bigger than me (almost everyone was back then) but he wasn't known for being a bully.  In fact, he was usually pretty decent.  Anyway, he stood there for a minute I guess.  I didn't pay any attention because, when I was reading, people usually didn't pay attention to me.

Then he slapped the book out of my hands so hard that the front cover ripped off.  I still have that book by the way, dog-eared and frayed and missing the cover).  He said, "What is that gay shit?" and kicked the book around.  I didn't see anything particularly wrong with the cover but I suppose the fancy lady riding the horse was a little odd.  I mean, no one was playing ball on the front.  Then everyone laughed.  The PE coach looked on but didn't do anything.  I fought back tears, grabbed my book, and shoved it in my bag.

From that moment on, I rarely read where anyone could see me.  I bought hardback books so I could remove the jackets and in some instances I tore the covers off to keep the boys from seeing what I was reading.  If I got to school early and was reading, the moment another boy came along, I put my book away and did nothing.  And I did my very best to choose books that didn't look like girl books.  I was ashamed to be seen reading.  Ashamed of being a reader at all.  I was already skinny and socially awkward and bad at sports.  I couldn't afford to do anything else to make it worse.  Reading made it worse.

Of course, I didn't give up reading; I was too in love with words to stay away.  But it became my secret habit.  At least for the rest of middle school.  In high school I gravitated toward other readers but I was still hyper-aware of what I was reading.  I was careful not to read anything that could get me ridiculed.  It's possible that if I hadn't already loved reading as much as I did, that I would have give it up completely.  I know guys who did.

So that's it.  That's my story.  Infer from it what you will.

I Need Cake

This week is eating me alive.  Sorry is posting becomes sporadic for the rest of the month.

So quickly:  Philip Pullman hates books written in present tense.    That's cool.  I hate narrow-minded people.  You know, though, Pullman makes some valid points.  But the deal is that present tense books have a place in the literary world.  Especially YA.  Pullman laments the lack of scope in present tense but that's the point and it's why it's so prevalent in YA.  That's because teens often don't give a damn about the scope of their actions.  They're tightly focused on their own lives.  I know I was.  I didn't think about my actions in a broader sense when I was that age.  Shit, I still often done.  But writing in that limited fashion helps teens connect to those particular stories.

I guess everyone's entitled to their opinions.  And who knows, maybe next year we'll all be saying, "Pullman was right!" but I think to essentially dismiss a book because of the tense it uses is a bit narrow minded.

There's also be a huge Twitter campaign with the #Speak hashtag because some total nutjob wanted to ban the book SPEAK and TWENTY BOY SUMMER, claiming that speak, a book about rape, is pornography.  Anyway, I've got a finger for Mr. Scroggins, the gentleman who posted the complaint, but I'd probably get in trouble for posting it. In the meantime, stand up for banned books.  No one should be allowed to ban books.  If you don't like them, don't read them.  If you don't think other people should read them, explain to them why and then step back and let them decide for themselves.  But never ever believe that you have the right to decide for someone else.  That's just ridiculous.

Um...yeah.  Not much else.  This rambling post was brought to you by coffee.  

Ollie's Favorite Commercial

If Ollie hadn't died, this would have been his favorite commercial.  Even so, I think he's up in fictional heaven looking down and laughing his ass off.

Books: Honesty

I'm going to tell you a secret.  One that's going to make my agent and editors cringe a little.  You ready?

I hated 13 Reasons Why.

Ouch, right?  But before the hate e-mail starts pouring in, let me explain something.  I also really loved 13 Reasons Why.  When I finished the book, I wanted to throw it against the wall.  Hard.  I didn't because the copy I had was borrowed (I own my own throwable copy now) but I wanted to.

It took me a long time to figure out what my issue was.  See, I loved the writing.  Jay Asher is a brilliant story-teller.  I was able to imagine every bit of that story.  As Clay walked from place to place listening to those tapes, my freaking heart broke.  And yet I hated the novel with a fiery passion usually reserved for America's Next Top Model.

The truth though, wasn't that I hated the book.  It was that I hated Hannah.  I hated how she manipulated the people around her.  How she didn't come right out to her teacher and beg him to stop her from killing herself.  How she made Clay go through the emotional torture of wondering what part he played in her suicide before letting him off the hook.  I felt it was unnecessarily cruel.  And I hated her for it.

I wanted Hannah to take some responsibility for her own actions.  To realize that she played a part in her own tragedy.  And that's where I got tripped up.  I confused what I wanted with what the story was offering.  The story hit home for me on a very personal level.  But Hannah was already dead.  She was never going to be able to understand just how cruel her tapes were.  Sure, people might learn some lessons, but I think she was still unjustifiably mean.  And that was the character.  People who attempt suicide often don't think about the consequences their actions will have on the people they leave behind. So what Hannah did was 100% in character.

When we read books, especially ones we don't like, we sometimes have to ask ourselves if the author achieved what they'd intended.  I often worried while writing Deathday, that people would find Ollie's frequent references to sex annoying.  And some have.  But I made a promise to myself to stay true to who he was.  My goal was to show the mind of a 15 y/o boy facing death in all his horny glory.  Whether I succeeded is up to you all, but there it is.  And when I sat down to read 13 Reasons Why for the second time, I was forced to ask myself, not whether I agreed with Hannah's actions, but if Jay Asher achieved out what he set out to accomplish.  The answer is definitely yes.

I still kind of hate it though.  But it's one of the best books I've ever hated.  Hands down.

Books of Wonder Event

Date:  October 10, 2010

Time:  High Noon.

Place:  Books of Wonder - New York, NY.

Come see ME and some other people (by other people I mean really cool authors...but if you want to make me feel good you'll pretend that you're only there to see me) at the NY Books of Wonder.  We'll be doing signings and short presentations and Q&A's.  It's going to be quite the event.

Check out this awesome list of authors.  I hope you'll be able to come.  Not you.  But definitely you.

Lines in the Sand

Sometimes I wonder where the line is that separates YA from the rest of the book world.  Is it YA simply because the main characters are teens?  Is it YA if it deals with teen issues?  How much violence is too much?  How much profanity is too much?  How much sex does it take to cross that line?

I hope you're not waiting for me to tell you, 'cause I sure as heck don't know.  I'm currently reading Battle Royale by Koushun Takami. It's got a similar set-up to The Hunger Games but is set in the contemporary world rather than a dystopian future.  In it, 42 15 year-olds are kidnapped, put on an island, and forced to kill each other.  It's called the Program.  In the first 3 chapters, there are 3 dead bodies.  Within the first hundred pages, the body count rises to near a dozen.  These are brutal, bloody deaths not for the squeamish.  Then again, most of the violence in The Hunger Games was exceedingly violent too.  But the difference is that HG is shelved in the YA section while Battle Royale is shelved in the adult.

Maybe there's a pivotal scene I've yet to read that will shed some light on it.  Until then, I'd love to hear where you all think the lines are.  How much violence is too much violence?  Are sex and profanity and violence and drug use only okay if they serve a point?  Isn't gratuitousness the birthright of youth?  Do we have a responsibility to write life as it is or as we think it should be?  Should I shut up and go back to writing about silly euphemisms?  

Word Choice Matters

When I was writing Deathday, I spent a lot of time coming up with colorful euphemisms for sex, genitalia, you name it.  It was a lot of fun coming up with different ways to refer to a guy's sunny side up.  Anything can be dirty if you present it in the right way.  I played it for laughs because the topic I was dealing with was heavy and I didn't want to write a depressing book about death.  I wanted to write a book about life.  Anyway, I used really specific words to get the laughs that I wanted.

But what about when you don't want the laughs?  I'm currently working on a book that's inspired by the hard boiled detective novels of Marlowe and Hammett.  Those detective novels have their own slang and I wanted to give my book that flavor.  But then I wrote the following snippet:

"She's guilty, Teddy.  Lucky fingered her.  Tess fingered her too, I was there.  By tomorrow, I'm betting half the school will have fingered her for this and there's nothing we can do."

The scene in which this unfortunate snippet resides is a really tense scene and I want readers to be on the edge wondering what's going to happen next.  But the word choice, finger, has another meaning, a sexual meaning.  Since I'm not playing this scene for laughs, any unintentional chuckles I get from this will ruin the mood and kill any tension I've created, and that's definitely not what I want.

So be careful when you're picking words, especially if you're using slang from another era.  Because if you finger someone who's got a lot of spunk, you may not like what happens.

Blog Chain - Genres

Hey!  Welcome back from the long weekend and welcome back to another installment of the blog chain :)  This rounds topic is courtesy of Margie, whose absolutely amazing book INCONVENIENT comes out in like 2 months!

So Margie wants to know:  How did you come to write your YA genre (e.g. contemp, fantasy, etc.)? AND (yep, it’s a 2 parter), if you weren’t writing that, what genre would you be interested in exploring?


I'll tell you what, I came to YA completely by accident.  Growing up, I read a ton of science fiction and fantasy.  I mean, I jumped right from stuff like The Chronicles of Narnia and the Dark is Rising sequence into books by Terry Brooks and Robert Jordan.  I was reading those around age ten and I kept up that trend until my early twenties.  It wasn't until I read Harry Potter that I realized how great YA had become.  


Because my influences were mostly sci-fi/fantasy, that's mostly what I wrote.  The thing is, I was really bad at them.  I did write some contemp realistic stories when I was in college, but when I dreamed of writing books, it was always some epic sword and sorcery fantasy.

A couple of years ago when I decided to try to take my writing seriously one last time before giving up the dream, I decided I wanted to write YA.  But even my first attempts at YA blended fantasy with realism.  Kids started out in the real world but ended up in a fantastical one.  When the idea for Deathday came to me, I didn't specifically think that I was going to be writing a contemporary realistic novel.  But it turned out that it was a genre that I was comfortable in and that I was pretty good at.

I'm actually exploring different genres all the time (much to my agent's chagrin :o) ) because I think YA allows for that kind of experimentation.  I think that so long as I hold onto the things that are uniquely me, that readers will give me some leeway.  But I'd still like to try epic fantasy.  I know that epic fantasy is on the decline, but I spent so much of my youth reading about it, that I feel I might have something to contribute.  It's the world building that gets me every time.  It's tough and I have so much admiration for people who can create worlds from scratch.  ONe of my favorites is the world of David Eddings.  He's pretty darn brilliant in my opinion.

I'd also like to write an adult book.  Not because I think there's anything wrong with writing YA...in fact I think that YA is the literary frontier right now.  But I'd like to bring some of that whimsical fun over to the adult side and see what I could do with it.

But even if I never write in any other genre, I'm still totally happy.

Man, I shouldn't blog before breakfast.  So, hey!  Go check out what genre the awesome Michelle loves and what she'd like to try, and then head over to Abby's blog tomorrow and see what genre she uses her amazing gift in.

Big in Germany

What do these two things have in common?  Germany loves 'em both!

I'm happy to announce that Arena Verlag will be publishing a German edition of THE DEATHDAY LETTER sometime in late 2011/early 2012.  Give it up for Ollie!  He's going global.

How to Survive

So Deathday has been out now for a couple of months.  Now when I tell people I'm a writer and they ask where they can get my book, I can tell them.  I've now been in the publishing business for almost two years.  And I've been thinking a lot about what I've learned.  So if you're an aspiring author or you've got a book coming out soon, maybe something here will be useful to you.

1.  Start a diet and exercise regimen now.  I'm just going to say it:  writing/editing/revising/stressing about Deathday made me a fat ass.  I put on fifty pounds after signing with my agent.  I got all caught up in the craziness of revisions and copy edits and I began stress eating in-between every call with my agent and/or editor.  I'm back down to 170lbs thank goodness but it's a daily struggle to keep it off.  The biggest impact was on my author photo.  Luckily it's not in my book, but it's on my publisher's website and I'm pretty embarrassed to see my fat face staring back at me.  Trust me when I say that your revisions/copy edits/next book will be waiting for you after you've gotten back from your run.  And trust me, the chocolate eclairs can't solve the issues with Chapter 7.

2.  Make yourself a budget...then stick to it.  There are going to be so many things that fly at you all the time.  Conferences, websites, bookmarks, marketing, that you need to decide where you're going to spend your money and how you're going to spend it.  My best marketing push was the free one.  Goodreads giveaways are free except for the cost of the book and postage, and they reach a lot of eyeballs.  Bookmarks are also great.  $90 in bookmarks is the best money I ever spent.

3.  If you're into social media, that's cool.  If not, don't do it.  I blog because I like it, not because I want to sell books.  I've been blogging since the early 2000's on various sites.  I started this one when I began to take writing seriously again.  Personally, I think I'm a sucky blogger.  I tend to ramble more than write.  But I still enjoy doing it, so I do.  Same with Twitter.  It's a fast, easy way for me to connect with people, and I like that.  But nothing drives me crazier than people whose sole purpose on blogger/twitter/facebook is to sell you stuff.

4.  Websites are easy to make, easier to screw up.  Listen, I'm not a fancy website designer, but I've been building websites long enough that I was able to design a nice, professional looking site that pimped my book for people who were interested.  So here's the rule:  you need to have a website, you don't need to spend a ton of dough, but it does need to look like your second-grade class didn't design it.

5.  Reviews:  don't read 'em.  Good, bad, in-between.  Just don't.  I mean, I know you're going to, but if I can save you the pain now, just don't.  Listen, the good ones are amazing but the bad ones will cut you to the bone.  And I believe it's a mathematical truth that the worse a review is, the longer it will haunt you.  But here's the thing:  they don't matter.  I recently got two reviews on Goodreads (see, even I can't follow this piece of advice).  One person absolutely LOVED Deathday.  The other absolutely DESPISED it.  Which one do you think I'm still thinking about?  But it goes to show you that two people can read the same book and have majorly different reactions to it.

6.  Prepare a one sentence breakdown of your book.  Then memorize it.  That way when everyone and your mother asks you, "So, what's your book about?" you'll be able to tell them without having to dig around in your pockets for a description.

7.  You haven't hit the big time.  Trust me on this.  Selling one book is great.  Selling multiple books is better.  But eventually, amidst all the hustle and bustle of revisions/copy edits/marketing you'll still have to put your butt in the chair and write more.

8.  Don't quit your day job.  I know that I've said this before and that I'm not the first person to say it, but having a day job has saved my sanity over the last two years.  Even though I hate working with computers, I work for nice people, at a nice company, and having one place I can go to and NOT think about writing is strangely cathartic.  Writing makes me appreciate my day job more and my day job makes me appreciate writing.  Plus, it pays the bills.

9.  Do one awesome thing with your advance.  Then save the rest.  The bigger the advance, the bigger the awesome thing.  See, I made the mistake of taking my advance and using it to pay living expenses.  And that was great.  But then this year came along and I didn't have that extra income.  So, while my cost of living is the same, my actual income is lower.  So this year has been something of a struggle for me as I juggle finances without that extra income.  Obviously, since I followed rule 8, I'm not in any kind of dire straights, but my discretionary income has been slashed, which means I spend a lot of nights in watching TV.

10.  You need at least TWO beta readers:  one to tell you you're awesome and one to tell you you suck sweaty balls.  Sure, it's great to have more but two should be the minimum, and at least one of those readers should be capable of being honest with you about the state of your book.  I always trust my best friend Rach to be honest with me.  She's the person who can say to me, "Whoa! That would never happen." Or tell me when I've taken a joke too far.  My agent and editors can do those things too, but Rach knows my mind and has saved me from myself more than once.

11.  Cheer on your fellow authors and then ignore everything else about their journey.  Here's the thing:  Whatever year you're published in, there are going to be a bunch of other debut authors doing the same things you are, not to mention the non-debut authors.  There are a million different ways you can compare yourself to them.  They got more press, they got a better cover, they got picked up by the major bookstores, they got nominated for awards, they have better Amazon rankings, they got more press, and on and on and on.  You'll go crazy if you compare yourself to them.  So here's what you need to remember:  They worked just as hard as you did.  They deserve everything they have coming to them.  Cheer for them, congratulate them, and then move along.  Because if you sit around wondering why they got something and you didn't, you'll ruin your own journey.  Readers are fickle.  Sometimes there's just no rhyme or reason why one book becomes successful and another doesn't.  You can't change it, so just go with it.

12.  It's out of your hands.  Seriously.  This is the biggest thing I've learned and how I've learned to survive.  Write the best damn book you can.  Pour your heart and soul into it.  Employ every single writerly trick you've ever learned into it.  Kill your darlings, slash and burn the adverbs, make your prose so tight that not a single word is wasted.  Then turn it in and let it go.  Your agent may love it, your editor may hate it, it might sell at auction or never find a home at all.  Readers could bash it, it might win a Printz.  Those things are simply beyond your control.  If you're going to survive, you have to accept that.

13.  Your agent's time is valuable.  Try not to waste it.  Get a firm grip on your expectations.  If you turn in a manuscript to your agent and he says he'll try to get to it in a couple of weeks, understand that he's probably as poor as you are and has a million things to do.  Don't start badgering him after a day or two.

14.  Your editor probably likes cupcakes.  Crumbs is a great bakery in NYC that delivers.

If I'm being honest, this writing thing is way different than I expected.  It's both easier and harder, more boring and more exciting.  It's not the path to riches, yet I feel richer than ever.  The people who say publishing is dead obviously haven't heard about a little book called MOCKINGJAY which sold 450k copies in its first week.  This is a great business to be in but it's tough and you have to be ready.  It's heartbreaking and awesome and sloooooooow.  But I wouldn't want to be doing anything else.