News
The Unnameables picked!
Ellen's already shared this good news over at her blog, but The Unnameables has been picked up by the Junior Library Guild and will be featured in its catalogue as of October 2008. Woot!
Tab-closer
It's been a busy few days around kt literary headquarters, and I have loads of news and links to share with you. So let's get to it!
- Seventeen's Summer Book Club is featuring Suite Scarlett by Maureen Johnson
- Teen and tween librarian Green Bean Teen Queen reviewed Alyson Noel's Cruel Summer
- The Bermudez Triangle by MJ is available as an audio download from Audible. Hear the book that was banned in Oklahoma!
- On July 13th in Hollywood, Alyson Noel will be participating in the first ever Rock n' Read Festival. More details on the website or on Alyson's blog.
- On a sad note, Tasha Tudor passed away on Wednesday. I loved her illustrations of The Secret Garden.
- The famed and fabulous dancer Cyd Charisse also passed away last week. If you're not a musical geek like me, you may know the name as the movie star the main character of Rachel Cohn's Gingerbread is named for. (Not a kt literary client, but still an awesome book.)
SUMMERtime... and the reading is easy
Cuidad Magazine shares their thoughts on Alyson Noel's Cruel Summer. In brief:
Noel convincingly captures Colby's self-transformation as the character comes full circle and realizes that perhaps instead of fighting life and all the things out of her control, she should let go and embrace them. Through the typing fingers of Colby Cavendish, Noel teaches her readers that all the years of suffering through teenage awkwardness are just a phase and, in the end, if a person allows it, she can learn more about herself than she ever thought possible
Linkapalooza! (or why to write YA)
Like many agents, I regularly get email links to sites that mention my authors, my agency, or myself. Today I found this nice mention of SAVING ZOE by Alyson Noel, from author Amanda Ashby, and this review of DEVILISH by Maureen Johnson from Trashionista. But I also love to follow the references and see where they lead, hoping to find something great to post about. (Because if you think coming up with a daily post is easy, you're a wee bit insane!) So today I was thrilled to follow another mention of Maureen Johnson to this wonderful list of Reasons to Write YA, from aspiring author Mary Danielson. I'm not necessarily sure I agree with every reason she lists, but it's definite food for thought.
What about you? What are YOUR reasons to write YA? Or for any other age range or genre? The comments are open!
Strange happenings...
Something odd seems to be happening around the world in Australia, where new kt literary client Lili Wilkinson is blogging. I do hope it doesn't come here. It's all very weird.
Be safe, Lili. We're thinking of you.
Events!
BEA Recap
Sorry for the sudden drop off in posting last week, but the official opening of BEA came with a flurry of work, and meetings, and hastily made appointments, and free books, and more. Hectic, even if it seemed more sedate than the most recent New York-based BEA. For me, of course, it was a nice, easy flight from Denver to LA, and only one hour adjustment to make -- easy-peasy. For my New York colleagues -- not so much.
I had a very informative, useful fair, though, and am happy to share some of my impressions.
Clutter - Peter Walsh, the organizational guru from TLC's Clean Sweep, was on hand signing copies of his new book Does this Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat? I grabbed a copy and an autograph, and shared my feeling that the fair was all about picking up more clutter -- anathema to his ideals. For my purposes (and to keep to his), I kept my freebies contained in one bag at a time, and only picked up fabric, flat-bottomed totes that could be reused for groceries.
I mostly only picked up YA titles -- although I made exceptions for the sequel to The Eight, a new book called The Gargoyle, and a nifty road atlas of the US -- but there were loads of great ones to grab. I made a beeline to a galley of John Green's Paper Towns and lined up for a signed copies of Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher and Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. Most exciting freebie? Neil Gaiman's new title The Graveyard Book. Neil spoke on Friday morning at a children's breakfast also featuring Jon Scieska, Eoin Colfer, Sherman Alexie, and Judy "f**king" Blume, to quote Alexie. The writers amusingly shared their fangeek moments with each other, and cursed a blue streak appropriate to the "@$$-crack of dawn."
Multi-platform was a big theme, and I attended a presentation on Saturday morning on "Maximizing the Multi-Platform Potential in Children's Publishing", with speakers from HarperCollins, Scholastic, and B*tween Productions. All emphasized that the book cannot be the only avenue for readers to connect to the story, touching on blogs, websites, contests, networking sites, and more. Diane Naughton, HC's Marketing VP, mentioned their "Author Assistant" program, which helps new authors build and host websites -- which reminded me of the question I'd answered on my blog some time ago. Revised answer -- Harper doesn't own all their author blogs, but they're happy to do so if an author doesn't have the time, expertise, or wherewithal to build and host a site of their own. Scholastic's forthcoming series The 39 Clues looks to be the future of multi-platform publishing, (they call it "multidimensionality") with an online game component that allows readers to find 29 of the 39 clues themselves -- only 10 will be revealed in the series.
Also a theme for the weekend? Four-quadrant appeal. Fellow Denver agent Kristin Nelson mentioned this in her blog last week, after her first meetings with film people, and I heard it myself any number of times. This is the new holy grail of film producers -- a cinematic experience that will grab the four major audience demographics: women, men, children, and teens. It's a difficult mix of romance, story, action, broad humor, and the more elusive "it" factor.
Other than that, BEA is a great time to wander the halls, catch up with colleagues, and make early guesses as to what we'll be talking about in six months' time. Oh, and to ogle Alec Baldwin.
Upcoming Conferences and Events
I'm off on Wednesday to Los Angeles for BEA and the Pitch Slam Session at the Writer's Digest Books Writers Conference. If you won't be in LA to pitch me, or just say hi, here's a few more upcoming events where I'll be speaking or meeting with authors. Hope to see you at one of them! And if you're part of an organization that would like to speak with me about attending a conference or workshop, please email me at events@ktliterary.com.
June 20th - Lighthouse Writers Workshop LitFest
August 16th - SCBWI San Francisco/South Agents' Day
September 12th-14th - Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Colorado Gold Writers Conference
September 26th-27th - 2nd Annual Kidlit Bloggers Conference
October 18th - Heart of Denver meeting
SCBWI-WWA recap
Had a really brilliant time at the SCBWI Western Washington annual conference this past weekend. The chapter put together a truly impressive line-up, organized a phenomenal good time, and did it all with a smile on their faces. Huge props to Sara and Jolie and Jaime and Joni and Laurie and everyone else who worked behind the scenes to pull it all together. Some thoughts:
- A killer combination punch in Mo Willems' and Chris Crutcher's keynote speeches on Saturday. Mo had all of the agents and editors in the room gasping as he told prospective writers not to read (more specifically, to "write", since people who read are called "readers," not "writers") and that the way to get published is simple: BE SUPERLATIVE. I was also deeply impressed and repeated this to a number of people I spoke with -- in talking about picture books, Mo said the words and the pictures should neither one of them alone be understandable. Of course, he said it more wittily, but the gist was there.
- In Sunday's closing keynote, Arthur Levine of Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic, spoke about the cornerstones of good fiction: plot, theme, character, and voice. Any one of them alone might work, but won't be as memorable as all together working in concert. He compared the book and film versions of the first Harry Potter -- the book had plot AND theme AND character AND especially voice, whereas the film manged to tell the story (plot), but without the voice and overarching theme, felt flat.
- I had the pleasure of participating with Arthur on a "First Pages" panel, where we took turns reading the first pages of attendees' manuscripts, then commenting on whether we'd read more, why, or why not. What a fantastic way to cover a lot of material very quickly, and give a lot of attendees a chance to have a professional eye look at their work!
- I also did 12 more detailed manuscript critiques, of 5 pages or less, in ten minute blocks throughout the weekend. Some real possibilities there, as well as a few others I could see working with other people after some editing.
- Speaking of other people, it was such a pleasure to see friends, colleagues, and people I'd like to get to know better, to call both. Betsy Bird, NYPL Librarian Extraordinaire and blogger, spoke a number of times over the weekend, and it's my goal to get mentioned in one of her "best of" website reviews. I got a master class in illustration from the vibrant and lovely Laini Taylor, graphic genius Jim Di Bartolo, and S&S Art Director Laurent Linn. I also was able to better get to know my agent colleagues Marcia Wernick, Rosemary Stimola, and Stephen Barbara. I think it's important for writers to know that we do try to be civil, that it's not about stealing clients from other agents, and that we're all aware we have a lot to learn from each other.
- Regional Writing Groups Rock! I knew this from the Eden Writers Workshop I went to last fall in Utah, but I was reminded this weekend how very strong the regional groups can be -- whether that's because they're far outside the "traditional" New York publishing community, or just because like finds like, but I was way impressed by the number of published authors, award winners, and aspiring writers in just this one local area.
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