Get What You Give

There are some very interesting ongoing discussions by Authoress and Screaming Guppy about writing rule breakers. The points made by these two astute bloggers are informative and important, if unsettling.

And my naive little self can't help but be a bit shocked. Why are writers trying to skirt the protocol of querying/publishing?

I could understand if the "rules" asked you to hand over your first born a la Rumpelstiltskin, but Authoress gives aspiring authors wonderful venues to learn the craft AND the chance to show their stuff off to Secret Agents. She's doing the writing world a great service - so I had an eye-bulging episode when I heard she'd had entrants who cheated on the contest rules.

These sad, sobering tales of evil shortcuts is even more shocking to me because I've found the writing community to be such a cooperative and welcoming one. When I hear horror stories about authors forcing manuscripts on agents at conferences or submitting blanket queries addressed "Dear Agent" I wonder who these folks are. Certainly they aren't the wonderful writers I've met in the blogosphere and at conferences.

Real success in this endeavor isn't about cutting corners and getting ahead, it's how much we learn from each other and help our fellow writers traveling on the same road.

A few bad apples should not be allowed to taint our beautiful word orchard. At the end of the day writers, agents, publishers are all on the same team with the same goal.

Team: Book Love
Goal: Get more great books out into the world

Time for campfire songs! Or even better, Beaker doing torch.

SQUEEEEEEE!!!!!!

I'm floating, floating, floating to the moon!

My wonderful and fabulous agents, Richard Pine and Charlie Olsen of Inkwell, have landed me a two-book deal with Penguin.

Happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy!!!! And thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you to family, friends, and wonderful writer folk who helped me get here.

Keep dreaming big dreams!!

Sometimes You Can Have It All

As a general rule I keep a mental (and sometimes physical) barrier between my academic -

I, Professor:
- and fiction writing worlds.

I, Artist:
Though history itself always plays a part in the worlds and characters I build in my novels (because history inherently makes us and our societies what we are), the writing I do as a professor and that I do as a novelist run along parallel but non-intersecting roads.

Until now.
I'll have a chapter in the upcoming anthology History and Twilight (Blackwell, 2010).

One of my favorite parts of teaching history is examining the role of popular culture in the creation and reimagination of historical narratives. The Twilight series is full of such examples; through my reading of all four books I mulled over the ways history is constantly invoked in the lives of its central and supporting characters.

Soon I'll be sharing those ideas with all of you.

Serendipity is alive and well.

Into the Wild

It's official - my manuscript scampered off into the forest of editors TODAY in search of a happy, profitable home. (Commence nervous twitching now).

Charlie Olsen and Richard Pine of Inkwell are the agents who've put their stamp on the novel (thank you, thank you, thank you!); the agency has been amazing and I'm grateful for all the enthusiasm they have for my writing.

Wish me luck, folks, updates will appear on this blog. I'm not known for my patience, so waiting will be hard, but I do believe that dreams and wishes can come true. Waiting for the brightest of our hopes to take flight is well worth it.

Surrender, or What I'm Learning From Yoga

Happy First of June! The leaves shine like emerald mirrors and irises stretch feathered petals towards the sun. Ahhhhhh, summer has arrived.

I know I've posted a lot lately about my new Bikram Yoga practice, but I can't help it. Aware as I am that yoga is meant to maximize a mind/body connection, I'm still amazed at how much I take away from each class beyond a strenuous workout.

One of the yoga poses (asanas) is shavasana (corpse pose). The point of this pose is complete relaxation and meditation. It's normally what ends a yoga class.

When leading us through this final pose, my teacher said: "It took me a long time to get shavasana. It's about surrender, and I just didn't understand. Then I realized that trying to understand surrender was the problem. You just have to let go."

Writing requires near absolute surrender. So much of what happens in the craft lies beyond our control.

In a recent conversation with my agent, we discussed the fact that my book could very well be sold as adult or YA; thus, he's doing a big submission to both YA and adult editors.

In many ways this is great news. I do believe my book has broad appeal, it's what could be categorized as "crossover" and my beta readers, both teen and adult, all loved it.

In other ways this news makes me want to go into a fit of nail biting (as so much of this process does). The worry remains that my book could fall into the cracks between YA and adult genres and be dismissed by all editors as not clear enough for its intended audience.

So what's my recourse? Only surrender.



The book will find its way and its readers. All I can do is continue to write, and I remember how much I love the process of creating novels. The rest is out of my hands.

On another note, the New York Times totally stole my last blog post.

To Each Her/His Own?

I've been following BEA in cyberspace and stumbled across an amazing thread.

This discussion began after last year's BEA, but has taken on a life of its own. A year later there are still new comments being posted on the thread.

The topic: "The Book Loved by Everyone But You."

The number of comments intrigued me as I found both books that I adored (The God of Small Things, Cold Mountain, Love in the Time of Cholera, Harry Potter) on the list as well as those I similarly despised (The Giving Tree, The Great Gatsby, She's Come Undone). It's a fascinating conversation to follow and reveals both a problem and a need:

Problem - Reader guilt/secrecy; need - absolution.

Why do we feel shame when a book that's been lauded doesn't suit us? If variety is the spice of life, surely there remains room for a veritable seasoning pantry of literature to match diverse tastes.

Yet readers and writers seem loathe to admit when a "classic" or "critically acclaimed" text fails to set their hearts afire. Similarly we're encouraged to hide our love of "bestsellers" or "commercial" books. I can't tell you how much I struggled with the idea that I was making a horrible confession when I posted about my love of the romance genre.

This phenomena has become particularly apparent in the abundance of threads devoted to love and hate of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight.

Everyone and their mother has come out of the woodwork to heap praise or lob grenades at this series.

My own position on Twilight is mixed, so here's a summary.

Do I like this series? Yes. Correction, loved it. Stayed up several nights devouring all four books.

Do I think the writing is good? Not particularly. The story is good. The writing could be better, but I don't think that Meyer's writing is so horrible that she needs to be crucified for it. And I thought Stephen King's knock of her work was particularly petty and unnecessary. The writing community needs to get better at supporting authors rather than spending time tearing down success stories. Critiques of Meyer by other writers smack of sour grapes.

Do I think the gender politics of the book are okay? No, absolutely not. Some of my favorite critiques of this text are about the problematic nature of Bella and Edward's relationship and the whole issue of Bella's lack of self-esteem. However, I think anything that makes people excited about reading and gets us talking about gender and society is a very, very good thing. And it's still a damn good story.



The vitriol that accompanies criticisms of popular books juxtaposed by the secrecy with which readers surround their dislike of "literary" monuments makes me wonder why we're all so afraid to just live and let live. The one truth that rises to the surface in discussions about finding an agent and a publisher is that this industry is subjective. What works for one agent or house may not be the "right fit" for another. Nathan Bransford's "Agent for a Day" contest really drives this point home.

I believe I can love Stephenie Meyer, Kurt Vonnegut, J.K. Rowling, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez without the forces of the universe punishing me with sudden death by lightning strike.

Life is hard enough without petty squabbles about the books we're allowed to love and those we're encouraged to scoff at.

Reading is a gift all around. I think there is plenty of room for love, and I could just do without the hate.

*Comics courtesy of "Angry Little Girls," by Lela Lee. I love her work, but I do not endorse the ads attached to the comics, my apologies, they're just tied to the embedded text. Visit Lela's website: www.angrylittlegirls.com

Acronym Dreams

Those of you connected to the book/writing world are probably, like me, all too aware that the BEA takes place this week.

Those readers not connected to said professions just collectively went "Huh?"

BEA stands for Book Expo America. This mammoth love fest for writers, publishers, and agents takes place in New York City and features exhibitions of shiny new books, with shiny debut authors, and their shiny autograph pens.

Does my tone sound a little snarky? It is (sigh), only because I am totally, totally jealous of everyone who gets to be at BEA this week and especially of the shiny writing debutantes. I soooooo want to be one of those chosen authors who gets their two-hour signing slot at their publisher's booth.

BEA also offers a chance to snatch up ARCs. ARCs are Advanced Review Copies - books that won't be out until later this year, but if you pay $700.00 (yes, that is the correct figure I've just typed) to attend BEA you are able to purchase ARCs before they become available to the masses.

The ARCs I really want to get my hands on are Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver and Guillermo del Toro's The Strain.

Moreover BEA presents a fascinating glimpse of the book industry. Now I know any mention of the "industry" side of writing and publishing makes most writers curl up into a fetal position and I can hardly blame them, but I do harbor a (morbid?) fascination with the juggernaut of agents, editors, publishers, and distributors congregation in a single frenzied space of days to make the printing world go round.

I'd like to see it. I hope someday I will and as a participant, not just a spectator.

On another note, my neighborhood is currently subject to a strange natural phenomenon: a cotton explosion.

In front of our home grows a massive cottonwood tree and at the same time each year it sends millions of fluffy white spheres into the air.
The atmosphere is so thick with parachuting seeds a glance out the window would make you think it's snowing in May (unfortunately in Minnesota that would not be a completely unheard of occurence, but thankfully in this case that isn't what's happening).
(Many thanks to Gwyn and Rocco for posing in this photo, under normal circumstances they'd be standing only on green grass rather than a layer of what looks like a cross between snow and dense cobwebs. Go spring!)

Help (The Good Kind)

Shel Silverstein might be my favorite philosopher.*
(Reader: "Huh? Isn't he a children's poet?" The answer: Yes, but bear with me.)

Silverstein's darkly funny, unpredictable descriptions of life ring true to experience and keep me hopeful in the face of its daily pitfalls.

One of my favorite pieces, "Helping," appeared in Free to Be You and Me.


Writers need to become well-versed in the necessity of asking for and graciously accepting help.

I knew my agent would be great for my writing because he loved the story and he "got it," when we discussed the full arc of the series he made suggestions for the plot that I'd already written (but he hadn't yet read.) Even so, engaging another person (other than my critique partner) in the revision stretched the boundaries of my comfort zone.

As much as we long for public acknowledgment and that fabulous "yes!" from an agent, once your work is out there it's no longer yours alone. Editing becomes a shared exercise and investment of time and effort.

My agent's ideas are fabulous and reflect how much he understands my writing and the story I'm creating, so when I wrote the additions he'd suggested they took the novel to a new level and I was thrilled. Scenes that hadn't existed prior to our conversations have become some of my favorites. But that doesn't mean that making the changes to a book I'd submitted as "complete" was easy.

Without help from family and friends (who support, love, and believe in us), crit partners (who help us through the rough patches in writing), and agents & editors (who bring us to the finish line), writers would be lost at sea without a compass.

Don't be afraid of help. As my yoga teacher reminds us in each class during the balance sequence: "Don't be afraid to fall, everyone falls. When you fall just get right back in it. This isn't about perfection, it's about progress."

*My one exception to Silverstein's work is "The Giving Tree." I hate this story, it's about an abusive relationship - I realize that's a controversial statement, but it is true.

The Call

Phone rang at 6:22 a.m. Seattle time. When the phone rings that early in the morning, several thoughts flash through my mind: Who is calling? Wrong number? Emergency? Errant fax machine (this happens too often)?

This morning's call was one of the best I've ever received, which is a strong statement in my case. I don't usually become coherent before 9 a.m. But in this scenario I was wide awake instantly: the phone call was from an agent who wants to represent my novel.

HOORAY is too flat a word to describe how thrilled I am. Said agent will remain anonymous since we're at the very beginning of this process, but I will say I couldn't be happier about this agent's enthusiasm for my project and the reputation of the agency. Now I'll ask for all your crossed-fingers that we find an editor who shares the excitement about the series.

In venerable Underpants Gnomes' tradition I'm handing off my work to this equation:
Phase 1: Write novel
Phase 2: ? (mysterious agent work)
Phase 3: Published!

Of course this is an exaggeration; I understand an agent's role in this process and I'm ecstatic to have an industry pro invested in my work. I was too excited to return to sleep, so I got up and wandered around Seattle enjoying the soft gray morning light and the thrill of being a step closer to my dream of a writing career. Near Pike Place Market I came across this quote, stamped in bronze on the sidewalk:

"I always knew that at last I would take this road,
but yesterday I did not know it would be today."

There are moments when everything in the world falls in place, and I'm dancing with the earth itself.