What To Do? What To Do?

According to Stop Me If You've Read This in the L.A. Times, it's hard to come up with a good book title that hasn't been used before. There's lots of repeats.

This is actually a load off my mind, because I still have to come up with a title for the new, new book that hasn't been finished yet. I'd been thinking of trying Fun With Hannah and Brandon, but now that I see that a lot of titles aren't original, anyway, why not just go with Fun With Dick and Jane? I could change the characters names to fit the title. In fact...that might be kind of retro and weird.

I haven't been working on those books much because I've been spending some time on another little project that sort of falls into the marketing category, of course. When I get back to work on Hannah and Brandon, I will post updates on the title issue. It was originally called Playing With Hannah. Going way back, it was called Prince Whiskers, which was a great name, but there is no Prince Whiskers in the book now, so I'm not comfortable using it.

(Link from ArtsJournal.com)

My Teen Girl Book Obsession

According to Chasing Ray, a blog I just discovered this morning through Adbooks, which is discussing YA blogs, the new Vanity Fair has an article on Cecily von Ziegesar of Gossip Girl fame--or infamy. Now I have to try to find the thing. What Chasing Ray had to say about the article was so...provocative...that I think I'd better read it myself before commenting about why I am so provoked.

I've started The A-List by Zoey Dean. So far, I have to say that it makes Best Friends for Never (April 8th post) look like art.

More Vampires

I've been binging on vampires this spring. In addition to Twilight, which I talked about a while back (and which the folks at Adbooks say is wildly popular), I've finished Peeps by Scott Westerfeld.



Peeps is definitely a good book, with a very engaging nineteen-year-old main character. (I mention the age because I often read books described as YA with twelve-year-old main characters. ????) I think I'd describe it as a conspiracy thriller that just happens to include vampires rather than a straight vampire book. It reminded me a bit of Sweetblood by Pete Hautman, which I talked about back in July of last year. The main character in Sweetblood believes that back before diabetes was recognized and treatable, the symptoms suffered by diabetics led to the vampire legends. In the world of Peeps, vampires are created by parasites. Infected humans are known as "parasite positives" or "peeps."

Our hero, Cal, was infected by a vampire during his first sexual encounter (There's a lesson for you there, kiddies.), but, it turns out, he's a carrier. So while he has a lot of peep characteristics--he's super strong, always hungry, and craves sex--he's not a maniac the way peeps usually are.

The craving sex part actually makes sense. Read the book.

Cal now works for a super-secret organization that's been fighting vampires for centuries. He can never have a sex again so long as he lives because, being a carrier, he'd spread the vampire parasite to his partner. Sounds a little bit like a teen problem novel, doesn't it?

As I was reading--and enjoying--Peeps, though, I wondered what about this book made it a YA novel. Did Cal have to be a teenager? Could Harrison Ford play him in the movie?

I decided the book is YA. Adolescence is a time of transition, and Cal has made a big one. YA books often involve separating from family or finding your identity in the family. Cal is hunting for the woman who infected him, his progenitor, which you could say is sort of a pseudo-parent. Adolescent literature is often about searching for your place in the scheme of things. Now that poor Cal is what he is, just what will his role in life be?

Of course, all of this won't keep Harrison Ford from trying to play Cal in the movie.

Every other chapter in Peeps is a mini-lesson on a parasite. Don't skip them. The ending will make a lot more sense if you've down your homework.

My next vampire book is The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, which I am finding just a little bit slow.

To Critique Or Not To Critique

Chris Barton at Bartography is considering getting involved with a critique group again. I had a chance at the end of February to join one. I know that lots of people find them useful, swear by them even. I've done the writers' group thing twice, though, and I can't say I found them all that terrific.

The first group I was asked to join was made up only of published children's writers, and it met once a month. The group only lasted a few months. (I think the force behind the group was a member of two critique groups, and this one petered out. Or maybe they continued meeting and just didn't tell me.) I had just had my first book published, and I was already working with an editor on my second one. I can't recall if I ever brought a manuscript to the group because I won't discuss a manuscript with anyone once I'm working with an editor, and I can't remember if I got to the point of starting something else that I could discuss with them.

I really, really enjoyed hearing about what these people were doing professionally, though. What conferences they went to, who they knew, all that kind of stuff. If the group had stayed together, I might have done some good networking through it.

I was a member of the second group for several years, off and on. I was the only published writer in this one, and we didn't limit ourselves to children's literature. I was interested in publishing adult short stories by that point, and I had a lot of them filed away that I retooled for discussion. This was in addition to whatever I was working on with an editor, because, remember, once I'm with an editor nobody sees what we're doing but the two of us.

Originally we just read aloud at the group meetings, which meant we were there for quite a while and the critiquing was sort of haphazard because it was all first impressions. We also met every week for a long time. Every week is a lot.
I got some very good feedback from some of these people, but nothing that resulted in published work.

We finally started meeting twice a month and bringing manuscripts to distribute, read at home, and then comment on at the next meeting. That meant I was spending a couple of hours of work time reading other peoples' manuscripts and then a couple of hours at the meeting. That's the equivalent of more than half a day every two weeks. And I still wasn't getting anything published.

My work habits just aren't that terrific that I can afford to spend that much time on something that wasn't getting results. So I finally quit.

I did make one friend there who I'm still seeing. And, interestingly enough, even as we speak I have a short story out at an on-line journal right now that was extensively revised after getting feedback from a guy who came to only one meeting. (He was really good.)

When I read about writers who are part of critique groups, I'm always a little envious. At first. Then I remember that they just didn't work for me.

Do Kids Read These?

I have enjoyed a few art books for kids in my day and have even read a few to young ones. But, truthfully, I've never seen or heard of a kid reading one, and I've never known of another adult who looked at them.

But my social circle is somewhat restricted.

Thanks to Bartography for the link.

"Kids Like Us"

In an interview on NPR, Beverly Cleary explains that, back in the 1940s when she was working as a librarian, boys would come up to her and ask, "Where are the books about kids like us?"

Leading her, of course, to go out and write some. The rest is history.

She also tells an excellent story about how seemingly unrelated events came together to inspire The Mouse and the Motorcycle.

For that link we owe a thank you to Blog of a Bookslut.

How Weird Is This?

The New York Times carried an article on April 7 called Responses to Naomi Wolf's Essay on Young Adult Fiction. The article was about blog responses. The blog posts cited were almost a month old.

What is going on here? I guess The Times' attitude is that not everyone reads blogs and thus this content will be news to those people. But, still, the information was nearly a month old! I linked to a couple of those blogs almost a month ago!

Thank you, Chicken Spaghetti, for that one.

Teen Posses' Literary Grandmothers?

At Readerville, we are discussing Edith Wharton's Xingu. The story is about a group of pretentious and shallow women who "pursue Culture in bands."

Having just read Best Friends For Never by Lisi Harrison, I immediately started thinking of these women as a posse. Instead of wealthy teen girls forming a tight backbiting group, you have wealthy (or at least very comfortable) adult women forming a tight backbiting group. In Xingu the materialism of teen posse stories is replaced by the women's concept of culture and art. The trappings of culture and art are status items for these women just as material things are status items in today's teen books.

You even have an outsider girl, Mrs. Roby. The fact that a man finds her to be "the most agreeable woman he had ever met" confirms her status as outside the female clique. At the end of the story, the clique is getting ready to reject the outsider just as teen posses are always trying to do.

Hey, I bet this is an analogy your average college professor doesn't see every day.

Not As Bad As It Could Have Been

I'm sure everyone is dying to know what I think of the three girls' series everyone was in such an uproar about after Naomi Wolf wrote about them back in March. Well, I am finally ready to weigh in on one novel in The Clique series by Lisi Harrison.

To get right to the point, if Best Friends For Never is any indication, this particular series for the younger end of the teen girl spectrum will only harm the morals of those girls who have already been corrupted by materialism and greed or are so incredibly impressionable that they probably would be harmed by anything they read. One reviewer referred to the book (the second or third in the series) as "soap operatic fun," and the characters do remind me of the dramatic and demanding teens I remember from my mother's soaps.

Best Friends For Never is the story of Maissie, a wealthy, cruel snot, and Claire, a sort-of-poor and sort-of-noble girl next door. The girls are brought together by their parents, who are friends. Claire's family lives in the guest house on Maissie's family's estate. Claire very much wants to be friends with Maissie, though I can't imagine why because, as I mentioned, Maissie is a cruel snot.

I have to admire making a character as unlikable as Maissie a focal point of a book. And I think we are supposed to believe Maissie is quite awful. Conventional wisdom says readers won't want to relate to an awful person. Perhaps teaming her up with Claire gets around that problem. Claire is there for us to relate to.

I also think this book has a traditional moral code under all the nastiness and greed. Occasionally we see that Maissie is still a child. Candy is a big symbol for innocence here, one associated with Claire who enjoys eating it. But Maissie on occasion breaks down and eats some, too. This witchie girl's main confident is her dog, and the fact that the communication can go only one way isn't lost on her. The two girls attend an exclusive school (How does Claire's family afford that?) whose initials are OCD. Kids in the upper grades and middle school probably won't realize that that also stands for obsessive compulsive disorder, but adult readers should. Maissie is definitely a compulsive shopper, buying more than she can possibily use and maybe more than she even wants. A beautiful classmate who has had plastic surgery just happens to be really dense. She can fix her face, but not her mind. And at the end, Maissie loses the contest she has entered and the boy she wants. She doesn't come out on top. For the time being, that is, because those plot lines are left up in the air. If all the books end like this, The Clique is more of a serial than a series.

The moral code may not be apparent to all readers because, while the book isn't badly written, it's not really well written, either. Changes of scene are marked by announcements of location and time, much like journal entries. This means there's no transitional material. The characters are all stereotypes right out of teen movies. Many of Maissie's friends are interchangeable. Claire is a confusing character, always missing her more innocent friends back in Florida and recognizing what Maissie is but wanting to be part of her crowd, too. We don't really see what there is about Claire that would attract a wealthy boy from another private school to her rather than Maissie. A great deal of the description in the book is limited to the names of products. The girls wear Jimmy Choo boots and carry Coach bags, for instance. For the thousands of readers who have only the vaguest idea of what the various brands are, that's no description at all.

I think this particular volume in The Clique series could have been a satire or could have been a really good book on the humanity of a nasty girl. At any rate, I don't think it's going to do many girls a lot of harm.

If you want to read something interesting, go to the Amazon listing for Best Friends For Never and read the 50 plus reviews from readers. Most of them read like book reports or reader responses.

And now I have to go on to The A-List.

A Night Out

I went out last night to hear author Ellen Wittlinger speak at a nearby library. I had never heard of Wittlinger, but I probably should have. Her book, Hard Love, was a Printz Honor Book in 2000 and has won a decent list of awards.

Last night Ellen read from another book, Sandpiper, which sounded just fine, if perhaps a little on the relationship and issue side for my taste. Then she read from an advance readers' copy of her new book, Blind Faith, which won't be out until this summer. When Ellen talked about Blind Faith, it sounded as if it might be about the mystical mother/daughter bond. I don't actually understand that touchy-feely mother/daughter stuff. Neither does my mother.

But when Ellen got to the actual reading, said mother and daughter were approached by a medium at a family funeral asking if they'd like to get in touch with the dearly departed. You know me. It was at that point that I started to get interested.

So I'll be looking for Blind Faith this summer.

A Mystery to Me

I finally caught Howl's Moving Castle on DVD. If I hadn't read the book, I wouldn't have had a clue what was going on. In fact, by the end of the movie, I didn't have a clue what was going on anyway.

To me the novel was absolutely made by the presence of one great character, Howl. In the movie he was very lackluster. And a little prone to mood swings. He seemed like a pretty regular guy at first, then fell apart because of a bad dye job. His out- there personality appeared earlier in the book and was more evenly sustained.

This movie was very well reviewed and was an Academy Award nominee. (I don't know if it won.) Another example of Gail just not getting it.

Somebody Gets Gail

It pays to ego surf. Though I would have found the April 5 review for one of my books at Reading YA:Readers' Response, anyway, because I often make a quick stop there.

"...Gauthier kind of makes fun of we earnest, non-leather wearing, tofu-eating types." Nah. I love you guys. When I was a college student in Vermont, I thought I was going to be one of you. Then I left the state and look at me now.

I'm Already Bored With This

Page Burners: Sex and the teenage girl in Newsday is more (see March 13th post) on the moral fiber--or lack thereof--in series teen books like The Gossip Girls, The A-List, ya-da, ya-da.

It's interesting the way mainstream press is so interested in controversy in YA. Remember how much press Welcome to Lizard Motel received? And that was just about whether or not the educational establishment was pushing depressing books.

I still have some of these Gossip Girl-type novels waiting for me upstairs. I have a hard time getting excited about reading them. Especially when I hear them described as "'Sex and the City' for teens," as they are in the Newsday article. I have never been able to sit through an entire episode of Sex and the City. I just want to shake those women and say, "Would you please get a life?"

Thanks to Blog of a Bookslut for the link.

In The Planning Stages

May 18th is publication day for my new book, Happy Kid!

People who don't write think publication days are big events, like weddings or royal christenings. Publication days are extremely run-of-the-mill. The books are available for sale that day, but that has absolutely no impact on the authors' lives. Our publication days are not big news, very small potatoes as far as the rest of the world is concerned. Nothing happens. In all likelihood, if we go into bookstores on the big day most of us won't even find our books there. Particularly if you're a children's writer. Most bookstores carry only hardcovers from big name children's authors.

I still have to make dinner on publication days. I may have forgotten some of them were happening. I wouldn't be surprised if I cleaned a few toilets or did some vacuuming on publication days.

So this afternoon I suddenly had this idea to mark the day. A contest. Some lucky people will win autographed copies of Happy Kid! on May 18th so that my publication day will be noteworthy for them, at least.

Details will follow.

I Guess It's Okay To Talk About This

No, I'm not talking about something dirty. I'm talking about the book offer I received in February. I just signed and mailed the contracts out today. The publisher still has to sign off, so it's not carved in stone yet. I won't give out the publisher's name.

I will say, however, that it's for two books. This is the first time I've been offered a two-book deal.

This is wonderful and everything, but now I have to write them.

Another One of Them Carnival Thingies

The Third Carnival of Children's Blogs is us up Semicolon. I guess it's just as well that we still haven't figured out how to do permalinks because the carnival had a theme this month. Poetry. The only poetry post I have is the one from last week that involves an Anne Sexton reading and skinnydipping. Totally inappropriate. Just totally, totally inappropriate.

A Hot Read

I've been hearing that the YA book Twilight by Stephanie Meyer is flying off library shelves. I can see why. The book is about hot, steamy, teen sex without the sex. I mean, just look at the opening screen at the official website. The book is called a "love story with bite." Very true. I don't like love stories, myself. I guess I liked the bite part of this one.

Isabella leaves her home with her mother to stay with her father in the state of Washington. Evidently it's overcast there a lot of the time, which is good for vampires. Not for the reason you're thinking, though. (Read the book.) At her new school she can't help but notice a group of incredibly good looking siblings seated together each day at the cafeteria during lunch. They never eat. One thing leads to another, and she and Edward the Beautiful enter into a classic "I can't stand you! I can't stand you! Wait! I just noticed! You're the hottest thing on two feet! I've gotta have you" relationship.

Yeah, I know. That's a cliche. But it's better in Twilight. You know. Hotter.

The vampire and victim thing has had a sexual feeling to it since Dracula, and maybe before for all I know. According to a recent article in Time, vampire romances are very popular right now. Vampires are the ultimate bad boy, it seems. Personally, I thought this vampire/teen romance works better than the (admittedly few) vampire/woman romances I've read. Personally, I always find the latter a little unbelievable because I expect an adult woman to have some kind of sense of self-preservation. But teenage girls have a reputation for being attracted
to bad boys, and I can believe that a young girl would think she'd rather be dead than not be with this guy she is so in love with right this minute.

We're discussing this book at adbooks. We're all coming up with all kinds of flaws in the story. Too much talking about the relationship, for one. (We adults grew tired of that long ago.) And why don't the young vampires go nuts and stake themselves after having lived as high school students in one place or another for the better part of seventy or eighty years?

But a lot of us agree, while we were reading the book, we really enjoyed it.

There are supposed to be two sequels to Twilight. New Moon will be out this fall. I don't hold out much hope for it, myself. Sexual tension was the big attraction with the first book, and I think it's going to be very hard to maintain. Plus, the relationship was left a little vague at the end of the first book. That's probably the best we can expect. In my reading experience, vampire/human relationships never come to a good end.

As it just so happens, I'm reading another good teen vampire book right now. And I've got an adult vampire book waiting for me. I'm guessing that will be it for me for vampire stories for a while.

One Fantastic Day

I spoke at an American Association of University Women's luncheon yesterday, and it went extremely well. I spoke at one last year around this time and went nuts getting ready for it. Because I'd already spent a lot of time prepping for other speaking engagements these last few months, I didn't get into worrying about this one too much. I revised last year's talk, liked it better, and just practiced it a few times. I did wonder a bit on the drive there if maybe that had been a mistake. I find that the severity of a situation descreases in direct proportion to the amount of time one spends worrying about it. I didn't worry about this talk so the potential for it blowing up in my face was great.

But it didn't. People bought my books. Some teachers and a librarian stopped by, made purchases, and talked. People said they liked my speech. I enjoyed the other speakers. The meal was good.

It's very, very rare that a public appearance goes this well for me. I usually do well at schools, but otherwise I'm pretty disappointed in myself.

I Seem To Find Something About Children's Books Everywhere

I recently read most of Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose 1983-2005 by Margaret Atwood. Atwood and I go way back, though she doesn't know it. I read some of her poetry while I was in college studying Canadian Literature because I was trying to get in touch with my Canadian roots. Of course, Atwood's roots are English Canadian while mine are French Canadian, which meant we didn't connect all that well. Especially since I didn't understand her poetry. But I continued reading her fiction and was a fan of The Handmaid's Tale and Alias Grace, though I couldn't get through The Blind Assassin.

Okay, what does this have to do with kidlit, you're probably asking. Well, Atwood has written six children's books, most recently Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda. And some day I will read some of them. Really.

What I did want to talk about today was something from Writing with Intent. The book includes an afterword by Atwood for Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maude Montgomery. She says:

"...for a Canadian woman--once a Canadian girl--Anne is a truism. Readers of my generation, and of several generations before and since, do not think of Anne as 'written.' It has simply always been there."

I think that is true of many children's books. Some people might say it's true of books for adults, too. But we read adult books as adults. We remember a before. Little Women and Little Men have always been there.

Of course, Anne of Green Gables may be in a league of its own. I don't know if we have anything in the U.S. that compares to the Anne obsession in Prince Edward Island. As you approach the province, you find Anne becoming more and more of a presence, with Anne dolls and knick knacks being sold in all kinds of weird places in New Brunswick.

Yeah, I've been to both Orchard House and Fruitlands, but I've never seen Jo March potholders or chocolates, the way I saw Anne Shirley potholders and chocolates in P.E.I.. You have to see that place to believe it.