A Quick FAQ About My New Job

I've gotten a lot of questions in the past few days, so am doing my best to briefly address them here. Obviously, it's been a time of busy transition and my priority has been helping to make the smoothest possible transition for my authors and their books, so if I was unable to respond personally to an email, tweet, post, or message, my apologies!

1. I know you're leaving HarperCollins, but where are you going again? To Storybird, a visual storytelling platform. There's more info about the change here, on the Storybird blog.

2. When is your last day? And when do you start at Storybird, and where will you be based? My last day is today (Friday, July 19th)! I start at Storybird in early August, and will be based in Brooklyn.

3. So if I send you an email today, will you still get it? Nope. My old HarperCollins email is shut down. (It's the end of an era!) If you're someone I accidentally omitted giving my new contact information to, my apologies! Please send me a private message via Facebook or Twitter, or leave a message in the comments here, and I'll follow up with you.

4. But wait! I sent my manuscript to you after an SCBWI Conference, and you haven't responded. What happens now? My excellent colleague, Editorial Assistant Alex Arnold, has generously agreed to read and respond to the conference submissions that I've left behind. It's going to take her awhile to catch up, though, so please extend your patience to her--as with any editor, submissions-reading is secondary to her daily responsibilities and the existing projects under her care. And, hey: similar hand-offs have been known to lead to very happy literary success before! Please also note that this is NOT an invitation to submit directly to Alex (like all editors at HarperCollins, she is closed to unsolicited submissions); she will only be reading and responding to the pile of submissions I handed over, not any future submissions. If you were meaning to submit but hadn't done so yet, I'm sorry--the offer has necessarily expired, now that I've left the company.

5. Speaking of SCBWI, will you still be at SCBWI-LA in August? Alas, no. I'll be starting my new job instead. But my super-fun and brilliant colleague, Executive Editor Claudia Gabel, will be stepping in for me, and she's already got a more exciting talk planned than I did, so you're in great hands!

6. I'm an agent who had a submission out with you--what now? I'm sorry if I didn't touch base with you before leaving. Any submissions that were with me can be resubmitted to a different HarperCollins editor, whomever you think might be the best fit. I did not hand-off any agented submissions to colleagues, as I presume that agents want to make their submissions decisions themselves.

7. Where are the submissions guidelines for Storybird? How can my agent and/or I send you a manuscript for consideration at your new job? Storybird works on an entirely different model than HarperCollins or any of the existing traditional publishing houses. I won't be acquiring projects in the way I've done previously, so there aren't submission guidelines to be had.

8. So, I've looked at the Storybird site and it's cool, but I don't really understand what you'll be doing there. That's probably because I'm not there yet, plus I'm the first person ever to hold this role at Storybird. As an editor of books, my job was to look at the existing story and see ways that it could be strengthened--but often even more important, was looking at the existing story to see what things weren't there yet, but maybe could or should be. That's part of why I'm going to Storybird--to help a really cool company continue to grow in all the ways it's already exciting, but also to help envision new developments and possibilities, and bring them into actuality. In other words, keep watching Storybird--there's much more to come!

9. Will you continue blogging? Well, some. As you have surely noticed, I'm not the type who blogs on a constant/regular schedule. But I imagine I'll keep it up in some form. And in the meanwhile, you can always find me on Twitter, where I'm much more present.

10. This is a big change. How are you feeling? Excessively grateful for the career I've had to-date, and the amazing relationships I have as a result. Understandably sad that I can't clone myself and continue working with my great colleagues and authors/illustrators at HarperCollins AND take this new opportunity. Intensely curious and excited to see what's ahead.

11. Storybird's all about art-inspired, visual storytelling, and this blog post's pretty bereft of images. You're right. Here you go. And here I go, too:

See you on the other side of this jump!