TEN YEARS.

Ten years—a decade!—ago today, I started my first full-time job in publishing.

Wow. 

A tremendous amount has changed since then, but the heart of this business endures steadily the same beneath it all, and for that I am truly grateful. I suspect that we all—editors, writers, illustrators, agents, marketers, publicists, educators, booksellers, librarians and so many others in this business—choose to do the work we do because we ourselves have lived lives shaped by stories. Because once upon a time, each one of us was a child mesmerized by picture books, or a kid magicked away on summer afternoons by wonder and possibility, or a teen who found solace or solidarity in fictional characters . . . so we know how much stories can and do and must continue to matter.

Some of the best friends and influences in my life have been books, or because of books. And for the past ten years, many of the most meaningful people in my daily world have been the people who make books. So thanks to all of you: you brilliant, insightful, dedicated, witty, wonderfully firey-minded people, for being an inspiration every single day.

Here's to many more decades of creating and sharing stories, friends.

Winter Comfort Reads

'Tis the season for cozy blankets, hot chocolate, and holiday comfort reads. Are there books that you re-read every year because it's part of your winter tradition? Fellow editor pal Martha and I talked about this a few years back , and she posted this and ever since then I've been accutely aware that there are certain books that just FEEL like Christmastime to me.

The Christmas Dolls. This one's top of my list, because despite the fact that I'm not nine years old any more, my inner reader often is. I'm not even sure when or where I acquired this book (which is long since out-of-print, though you can still find it on used book sites), but it's battered from years of re-reads. As it 1980s-tastic cover makes clear, this is a tale of orphans, snowstorms, dolls, & a very special Christmas Eve mission. It's also got a perfect--if utterly implausible--happy ending that arrives just in time, with a touch of Christmas magic. I can't really explain why out of all the books, THIS is the holiday story that imprinted on me as a lifelong favorite, but there you have it--it makes me suspend all disbelief & just believe in the goodness of people, & what more could you wish for in a holiday story, really?

(This is the copy I had as a kid.)




(This is the current cover. Much better!)

Angels &Other Strangers

This short story collection was on my family's bookshelves when I was a kid. Each time I re-read it, I'm reminded all over again of Katherine Paterson's incredible power as a storyteller &observer of the world: novel or short-story, she delivers honest, timeless truths about how important hope is, &how much, as people, we need each other.    

  

Little Women
The first line couldn't be more engaging, could it? "'Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents,' Jo grumbled, lying on the rug." It's Victorian-era Christmas warmth and miracles and hope and family love in all its glory!

(I do confess that some years I skip the re-read and go for one of the movie versions instead.)

 

And finally, one of my own! A Christmas Goodnight is a modern classic in my mind; the perfect hybrid between Goodnight Moon and the familiar Nativity story. My illustrator Sarah Jane Wright shows some of her wonderful interior artwork here (though her contest mentioned in that post is no longer live), and I talk about the process from the editorial side here. The thing I perhaps love most about this book is that ever since I first began working with this text over 5 years ago, it unconsciously runs through my mind over and over at Midnight Mass each year. I'm a biased editor and all, but if you're looking for a new Christmas picture book to add to your family's collection, it's pretty perfect for sharing, reading aloud, and for talking with kids about the connections between the long-ago Nativity story & their own lives.

What are YOUR holiday/winter comfort reasons? Share them in the comments!

You Tell Me: The Home Library Dilemma

At the SCBWI-Rocky Mountains Conference I spoke at a few weeks ago, organizer Todd Tuell posed a great dinnertime question that I've been chewing on ever since.

Imagine that your entire home library is destroyed (anguish! woe!) in a fire or flood or some such disaster. None of the books are recoverable. When it's time to start rebuilding your library: what are the very first two books (one picture book, one novel) that you'd want to put on your new shelves?

After much internal conflict and mental re-shelving, I think mine would be Blueberries for Sal and Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy. With a veryveryclose third being Charlotte's Web.

What about you?

Thought(s) for the day

I'm just back from two weekends of SCBWI Writers' Conferences (great to meet you, new friends in Colorado and the Carolinas). While creating my presentation for last weekend's conference, I found a couple of sharp, smart quotes from writerly "greats" that I love:

“Lots of interesting things happen to people, but they don’t all make good stories. It’s a writer’s job to know which is which.”—Joan Lowery Nixon, The Making of a Writer

“A book for young readers has to tell a story. This may seem self-evident, but the truth is some people ignore it because plotting is very hard work.”—Katherine Paterson, The Gates of Excellence

Do you have a favorite quote about writing? Leave it in the comments!

Craft exercises

Hello! If you're here for the first time via Write On Con, welcome! (And if you're a faithful reader, I like you a lot, too. Thanks for being here.)

Over at Write On Con HQ today, I waxed lengthy and opinionated about the importance of craft in a writer's life. (It read something along the lines of the below, but with more words, and a particular focus on craft).

You can read the whole post (and a lot of other great posts, too!) over there. But if you're here now, ready to turn abstract thoughts about craft into reality for your own writing, I thought a few practical craft-developing exercises might help. So, read on! Tweak, adapt, and adopt as you see fit for your own needs and own goals: And then write on!

1. Pick an ordinary object, or an ordinary view, or an everyday experience. Now describe it using five analogies or phrases that are entirely fresh, not clichés or familiar ideas. In other words, create an image that's entirely new, out of your words and perspective, and give it to one of your characters to speak.

2. Read a book that you admire aloud. Pay special attention to what’s NOT in the text as well as what is. Return to your own writing and see, as a result of your study, what you can remove and how the reader might actually benefit as a result—from a more compelling pace, from a more streamlined plot, from tighter writing, from more suspense.

3. Find a book that achieves some of the same things you’re trying to achieve in your own work. Take it apart. Dissect it. Turn it into a chapter-by-chapter outline, or even a scene-by-scene outline. Then study that outline to pieces, noting things like when subplots are introduced and woven in and resolved, and where the action rises and falls (and how often it does each), and the balance of dialogue and prose, and the sort of emotion each chapter opens and closes with, and where in the story's telling unexpected things happen and how that affects the overall pace, and the arc of each key character’s growth across the book.
     Don’t try to do all this in a day. Spend days on it, even weeks. Use it as a warm-up exercise before your day’s writing. Or stop writing for a little while, and devote yourself to this study intensely: whatever works for you. But eventually, go back to your own book, armed with new knowledge, with the ability to better master your own craft having studied another’s mastery.

4. Try writing from a different point of view than you’ve ever tried before; a different voice than ever before; a character who on the surface shares nothing in common with you. What might that previously untried-voice or perspective make fresh in your writing, set free in your writing? What will you learn from your foreign-seeming character, as a writer, and as a person?

5. Share what you know: leave some of your own favorite craft-developing practices in the comments below so that others can try them, too!

Hello, August

I've come to accept--and so rather hope you have, too--that in the summer this blog is mostly about being out frolicking and avoiding too many deep thoughts. (Shouldn't we all be doing that, in summer?) But I'm pausing the summer funtimes (and sweating!) to pass along a few links:

1. Soon-to-be-published author Claire LeGrand has a fun blog series up in which she asks fellow writers and publishing folk about one of their favorite books as a middle grade reader. You can read my entry over there now (AND enter to win a giveaway for an advance readers' copy of Kathryn Fitzmaurice's next novel, Destiny, Rewritten.)

2. Speaking of Destiny, Rewritten and the spectacular Kathryn Fitzmaurice, want a sneak peek at the cover of its cover? (It's out in March 2013!) She revealed it recently, over on her blog. Go take a peek; our designers have really outdone themselves!

3. I L-O-V-E-D listening to this recent edition of This American Life (the segment is called "South of Unicorns," and suspect many of the bookish among you (especially fantasy-lovers) will feel the same way.

4. SLOTH. OLYMPICS. The pictures will slay you with cuteness.

5. Write On Con, the 100% totally free, totally online, totally awesome 2-day conference for Children's & YA writers is fast approaching--it's August 14th & 15th. In its third year, this conference is designed especially for those who can't get away from home for an in-person conference, or who just need an inspiration boost. It makes use of lots of digital tools to present dynamic offerings from publishing peeps, literary agents, authors, illustrators, and more, and though some of the presentations and forum offerings are most valuable during the actual days of the con, if you can't make it then, lots of the content will be archived.
     As we've done for the past two years, editor friend Martha Mihalick and agent pal Holly Root and I will be doing a video, in which we answer YOUR questions. Which means we very much want to hear YOUR questions that you'd like answered about kidlit, publishing, YA, cute baby animals....etc! The best way to get your question to us is on Twitter, using the hashtag #askhmm, but if Twitter's not your thing, you can leave your question here in the comments section, too. Either way, we're only taking questions through THIS WEDNESDAY AT MIDNIGHT, so don't dally!

Back to frolicking!

INSIGNIA: An Editorial Love Story

(I don't blog a lot about my authors' books while they're in-progress toward publication. In part, this is out of respect for the writing/editing/revising/ publication process: a lot can change for a story as we work on it. It's also out of respect for readers--because I think it's mean to taunt you with tales of fantastic books you can't buy yet! Thus this series of publication-day "Editorial Love Story" posts was born: to celebrate the fact that, at long last, an author's book is out on shelves, and to share a bit of the "making-of" story of that book, too. Hope you'll enjoy and be inspired by this post, and that you'll soon have a chance to read this great book!)
 

More than anything, Tom Raines wants to be important, though his shadowy life is anything but that. For years, Tom’s drifted from casino to casino with his unlucky gambler of a dad, gaming for their survival. Keeping a roof over their heads depends on a careful combination of skill, luck, con artistry, and staying invisible. 
   Then one day, Tom stops being invisible. Someone’s been watching his virtual-reality prowess, and he’s offered the incredible—a place at the Pentagonal Spire, an elite military academy. There, Tom’s instincts for combat will be put to the test, and if he passes, he’ll become a member of the Intrasolar Forces, helping to lead his country to victory in World War Three. Finally, he’ll be someone important: a superhuman war machine with the tech skills that every virtual-reality warrior dreams of. Life at the Spire holds everything that Tom’s always wanted—friends, the possibility of a girlfriend, and a life where his every action matters—but what will it cost him? 
   Gripping and provocative, S. J. Kincaid’s futuristic thrill ride of a debut crackles with memorable characters, tremendous wit, and a vision of the future that asks startling, timely questions about the melding of humanity and technology.  

INSIGNIA by S. J. Kincaid hits shelves today, and it marks an awesome YA debut: as a bookseller who read an early draft of the manuscript said to me, "This author is the real deal!" and I couldn't agree more: it is a thrill to watch an author launch, knowing she is talented in endless ways!

   S. J. Kincaid is an incredibly skilled world-builder, one who uses science and history to ground a tale of the future, making for a brainy, smart, totally plausible story. The plots that she brings to life are genius: full of sneaky twists and turns and high-stakes moments that make your pulse pound all the more because you're aware as you read that every bit of her story feels uncomfortably possible. And her ability to create characters and genuine relationships between them is perhaps her greatest talent of all. I want to climb inside this book and be friends with these characters! Tom Raines and his friends are hilarious and fiercely loyal; they have an endless capacity for having fun, and they belong to each other in a way that makes a reader somehow feel that same warmth of belonging, too. That's a rare writerly talent, and a special one. Each time I read this manuscript anew, it felt like I'd skipped work for the day and was hanging out with friends, scheming pranks and enjoying inside jokes--and being that girl laughing too hard in public, whether on the subway or in a coffee shop, editing, because this story is high-stakes and thrilling, but it is also wickedly, wonderfully funny! We don't see enough humor in YA, I think, for what a key part of life it is for teens, but these characters are pitch-perfect in the way they never miss a moment for sly wit or full-on hilarity.

It's easy to assume that an author like this comes out of nowhere, but I think one of the things that awes me most about S. J. Kincaid is knowing just how hard she worked to become an author. INSIGNIA is her debut novel, but it's actually the seventh manuscript she wrote. Along the way, not only was she incredibly perseverant, but she let those six early manuscripts teach her a ton about writing, about storytelling, and about craft. As a result, she is one of the most confident writers I've ever met, and one who is willing to drastically tear apart and rebuild elements of her story if she can see that doing so might make it stronger. I am convinced that she has entire epic universes in her mind, and I am so pleased that she's willing to share some of them with us, as books.

S. J. Kincaid found her way onto my list in a distinctly modern way: she and her literary agent responded to an appeal I'd made on Twitter: that I was hungry for stories that asked interesting "what-if" questions. The first manuscript they sent me wasn't even INSIGNIA. But I am delighted that the next novel she wrote *was* INSIGNIA, and that I've had the privilege of working with her on the series, ever since I read INSIGNIA for the first time over Christmas, two years ago, at my parents' house, and ignored my entire family for the better part of two days as I did so. INSIGNIA creeps up on you as it steals its way into being one of the most engaging stories you've ever read. It's about a gamer kid, and I am decidedly not a gamer, but by three pages in, that no longer mattered because I was hooked, and totally on the side of intensely likable mischief-maker Tom Raines. I think Tom's character taps into something that exists in all of us: a universal desire to *matter*, and to make a difference in the world somehow, by using the talents we're proudest of in ourselves, which makes it a story that a fascinating variety of readers will enjoy.

Want to help S. J. Kincaid celebrate her INSIGNIA's debut? Check out the book trailer for INSIGNIA; buy a copy for yourself or a teenager or a gamer you know from your favorite bookseller or check it out at your library; "Like" Facebook.com/insigniaseries to follow news about the series; or if you're in Huntington Beach (July 10th, B&N Huntington Beach; Salt Lake City, UT (July 11th, The King's English Bookstore); Houston, TX (July 12th) Blue Willow Books) or attending San Diego Comic Con, you can meet the author while she's on tour this week.  Finally, you can follow the author on Twitter (@sjkincaidbooks) or read her blog.

Happy publication day, INSIGNIA and S. J. Kincaid! I'm so excited for readers to find and love this book!

P.S. I posted this from my phone while out of town, so forgive any weird typos or formatting issues, please!

The universe is big. And full of tiny fascinations.

Get your own profound realizations (and lessons in scale) here.

Thanks, Mr. Sendak

for all the books, but especially for Little Bear, whose stories and pictures I pored over and over and over, until I learned how to read.

INSURGENT: An Editorial Love Story



From this....
(that's about one-third of the rounds of editorial & production passes of INSURGENT, FYI.)


Sometimes, less is more. So this post will be short, but deeply-felt (yep, my faction would be Candor).

It is an incredible thing to watch a book take wings and find resonance with so many readers, as DIVERGENT has done.

It is an incredible thing to watch readers waiting with such enthusiasm for a book, and to know what awaits them (being an editor has its perks!), and to be so, so excited for the moment when readers and the story get to connect again.

And it is an incredible thing when an author outdoes herself and creates a sequel like INSURGENT, one that is even more compelling, even more powerfully written, than its predecessor.

Veronica Roth, you continue to amaze us all with this story. Thank you so much for creating it. Today (and every day), I am a lucky editor, and we are all lucky readers

...TO THIS!

Happy reading, friends!