"Space Lion" by Yoko Kanno (from the anime "Cowboy Bebop")

I listen to a lot of anime music while I write and as I have gone through various incarnations of this story over the past few years I have listened to this song many times.

In the beginning, there was a dream.

It was one of those dreams that had a lot of emotional punch for me but when literally translated into a story, it didn't make much sense to anybody else. It had time travel, a complicated game, a car called Turtle. It had a boy who thought he was protecting a girl by sending her home to her mother.

This dream struck me and stuck with me for years. I obsessed over it, turning it into a short story I polished over and over. I put my mediocre art talents to work and started making it into an online comic book. And finally I tried my hand at making it a young adult novel.

( Read more... )

"Greek Song" by Rufus Wainwright

I had the great pleasure of meeting fabulousfrock at the SCBWI Miami conference over the weekend, and got to spend a long time talking to her on Friday night.

Came back home, promptly got very sick with bronchitis (minus) but a few days off work meant I had plenty of free time to read her debut, MAGIC UNDER GLASS (plus).

Fell asleep and had fever dreams wherein I analyzed the book in-depth . . . and when I woke up I realized how my thoughts were actually pretty spot-on.

I think one of the best things in this book--which seems to be applicable to all good books--is the flow of power. In any story there is a driving energy or power, flowing to or from characters. Sometimes one character is weak and another is strong--either in a good way (I'll carry you for awhile) or in a bad way (I'll prey on your weakness). Sometimes a character gives his power away and finally learns to stop sabotaging himself. Sometimes a character shows intense personal power and when she falters she makes a mistake that costs her something very important. Thinking back over other books I've loved I can almost visualize this flow of power. For a creative writing class I taught last year I made a huge like 16-foot long plot breakdown of Nancy Werlin's RULES OF SURVIVAL. Now I want to go back and look at power in that book--because there are lots of different kinds of power at play in that story . . .

But anyways, back to Jackie's most excellent debut . . . which you just haveta read. I mean, really, you HAVEta.

( Spoilers )

Go and read this story. You will not be disappointed, I promise!

I had a wonderful time at the SCBWI Miami conference over the weekend! It's so nice sitting here this morning doing some followup emails, friending new people on facebook, following the ALA awards on Twitter, and looking over my conference notes. Being a YA author is a dream come true!

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Hearing about a sequel to Frances Hodgson Burnett's A LITTLE PRINCESS would normally give me pause. I read and reread that book as a child and watched and rewatched the wonderful BBC adaptation of it.

But add "written by Hilary McKay" to that phrase and you have won me over. Hilary McKay is one of my favorite middle-grade authors. Her characters just pop off the page. Their world, their conversations, their feelings all seem so real. And she has an incredible talent for making me laugh, then bringing tears to my eyes, then making me laugh again, sometimes just in one page. I can't wait to read WISHING FOR TOMORROW.

There was a good discussion awhile back on Verla Kay's Blue Boards about the responsibility that comes with writing for young adults. How much is too much, some wondered. When does your book cease being an exploration on the topic and become an instruction manual? Can teens be influenced by darker and edgier YA books and start exploring eating disorders, self-injury and sex because of the books they read?

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But I have good reasons!

I have been working on a ms I am totally in love with. You know when you work and work and work and it finally just clicks and it's the most awesome feeling ever? Yep, that's me right now.

And also . . . I got promoted! I am now the head of Youth Services at a newly renovated branch in my system. We are working hard to get everything ready for our grand opening on December 12. Definitely missing my old job and co-workers but loving my new branch and new co-workers and excited about getting to know my patrons.

( Here are a couple pictures of my new office )

I am working on a new project.

I coincidentally started working on it right before 11/1 so I registered for Nanowrimo and entered my word counts minus the 7,000 I wrote before 11/1.

And tonight . . . I finished it! Well, the bare-bones first draft of it. I made lots and lots of notes of things I need to go back and fix and change and improve. And I am continuing to make notes.

But for the first time I am really happy with this story! I've been trying to make it work for years.

I have had so much fun writing this draft these past few weeks . . . looking forward to diving back in for revisions in a couple of days after letting it rest a bit.

Now all it needs is a title . . .

Last night during my "Writing the Novel" session I was talking about branches of action, something Adrian Fogelin mentioned at an SCBWI workshop a few years ago. Aka--leaving out boring everyday details and focusing on the parts of your story where characters make definitive choices. I said "'Amanda continued giving her presentation until 7:30' is not interesting, and you could probably gloss over that and go on to the next interesting thing I did. However, 'Amanda suddenly ran from the room screaming' is much more interesting--what made me do that? What happens after that?"

Five minutes later, two of my teens (16-17 year old boys) jumped up and ran screaming from the room. (They came back a couple of minutes later.) It was SO FUNNY. I just kept talking about dialogue and broke for a moment to say--see, THAT's interesting, that's something worth writing about!

I love my teens. :)

I am doing Nano if you want to friend me. Username same as here, acoppedge.

So sad to hear that Norma Fox Mazer passed away.

Back in March I emailed her to let her know that THE MISSING GIRL was on my library's 2009 Favorite Books for Young Adults list. I also took the opportunity to share a memory from my own childhood--bringing home UP IN SETH'S ROOM and having my mom forbid me from reading it! I told her it was neat to have come full circle from being a library-loving teen to being a teen librarian myself, and thanked her for writing so many wonderful books for teens over the years. She was so happy to hear the book was on our list and said my story made her day.

Goodbye to one of the greats. Her career as a writer is truly inspiring, in quality, in connection to her readership and in longevity.

Amid a flurry of coughing and nose-blowing, I am braving the internets to tell you:

The hype is true.

LEVIATHAN by Scott Westerfeld is pure liquid awesome.

Adventure-wise it reminds me somewhat of the adventurous parts of the HIS DARK MATERIALS trilogy. For serious.

Style-wise it is steampunk heaven. Full of great descriptions of Clanker and Darwinist technology but never over-full. Guaranteed to send thirteen-year-old boys scrambling for mechanical pencils and graph paper so they can sketch, inspired by Westerfeld's descriptions and Keith Thompson's art.

I couldn't stop telling people about this book as I was reading it. And I may have hugged it several times as well, for emphasis. And I may have hugged it when I was alone too because I loved it that much.

As always I really appreciated this book on three levels. First as an adult reader. Second as a teen librarian, knowing I have another book to add to my "great young teen boy book and not too mature to give to younger kids who are good readers." This is a tricky age to write for! And third, I appreciate it remembering the kid reader I was and knowing how much this book would have captured my imagination and brought me back to read and reread. I know this book is going to be that fondly remembered childhood book for many readers, and will be that book that really switches on a love of reading for a lot of kids, especially some boys who have just not found a book to grab them yet.

And if this doesn't get made into a movie I will be really, really surprised.

Happy, happy, happy book birthday to megancrewe! Today is the release day for her debut GIVE UP THE GHOST.

This is how it feels to have just finished reading a book which is now one of my all-time favorites.

I am going to bask in this feeling for a moment.

Sometimes when I read really good books I despair of ever being able to write anything even half as moving, touching and true. But MARCELO just makes me want to aspire to greatness, to plumb more challenging emotional depths, to breathe life into characters who feel even more real, to try even harder to get the music in my head to match what comes out on paper, as Marcelo might put it.

If you have this on your to-read list, I recommend moving it up. And if it's not on your to-read list, I recommend putting it there.

*basking*

I watched a movie last night where just not much was HAPPENING, despite the title, if you catch my drift. Even Rifftrax couldn't save it!

So here is my editor appreciation week post:

THANK YOU editors who save us from ourselves and help us turn our good stories into great stories. Lack of collaboration and unwillingness to "compromise artistic vision" is sometimes painfully obvious and stories almost always suffer for it.

Last night was my first Writing the Novel session. It went so well! I had 25 teens attend. They asked great questions and seemed excited about session 2, wahoo!

( Pictures )

I am always either early or really late to the party when it comes to reviewing books. If I get an ARC I can review it early. But if I'm greedily pawing through new crates of library books, it means I've had to wait a couple of months for our books to get bought, labeled, barcoded and sent to us to go on the shelves.

I just got done reading SAY THE WORD by onegrapeshy. I am never much of one for liking too much book summary before I read a book so I tend not to give them too much myself. But summaries can easily be found if you like 'em. :)

Why I loved it:

I love it when books have a very specific and complex plot/characters which reveals a universal human truth. All the characters in this book continually surprise you with their depth. No one is 100% good. No one is 100% bad. The main character Shawna's growth over the course of the book is frustrating, rewarding and heartbreaking all at the same time.

Not only is this a great and enjoyable story all on its own, I also feel like it could be extremely helpful for teens who are in similarly complex and confusing situations. I love it when a book provides some insight into how to deal with problems while never ever ever even remotely skating into didactic territory. And this can be a very difficult feat to achieve.

And I love it when I know characters will stay with me. Some books I read and enjoy or even enjoy immensely, but later I will not recall a whole lot about the story or characters. But I know Shawna, Arye, Schmule and Fran are going to stay with me, and I will think of them from time to time because they all really made an impression on me.

My agent is going to do a 10-page critique for the winner of my Teen Creative Writing Group contest! She is made of awesome!

I'm doing a 4-session series on Writing the Novel starting this Thursday and continuing through December. It is going to be so fun! And my teens are going to be so excited to hear about the critique! I can't wait for Thursday!

Here's the blurb on our website. (And our webmaster put in the Meyer/Westerfeld tagline, not me, ha!)

I try to read a lot of chapter ones when I work in the teen room to get an idea of the new books we get so I can tailor my recommendations and get a sense of our collection.

Right as I am getting my to-read pile down to a nice manageable size it has once again shot up like a beanstalk. Just now I read chapter 1 of MARCELO IN THE REAL WORLD by Francisco X. Stork and I had to check it out. Also dangerous having my library card on the back of my staff ID so it is readily accessible all the time . . . and the self-check machine makes it so fast and simple . . . the library is a dangerous place for book addicts. ;)