ElaineMarie Alphin's Blog

Honor, Honesty and Integrity

2011-07-28T09:16:00.006-06:00

These are the virtues I have always admired and aspired to. I have searched for these virtues in selecting my friends and my associates. I was not surprised to glimpse them only fleetingly as a child and teenager, but for some reason I expected to see them more often in the adult world. Instead, as an adult I see more dishonorable people, more perjurers, more individuals who seem not only to not care about integrity, but not to even know what the word means, and those who do not seem to recognize it as a virtue worth possessing.

Too many people I run into these days are calculating and out for as much as they can get, not caring who

they run over in their mad dash for success, or even for mere creature comforts. In other words, most of them would be sorted into Slytherin. There are times they do not even seem to profit, just to damage or defame someone else, and count it as some perverse victory.

I know - that sounds more like the angst-ridden plot of a young adult novel. And such jealousy, such competitive undercutting would ring true for that age group. But as adults we tell teens that bullying, cheating, lying about each other behind their backs - it will all get better when they grow up. But the truth is, it won't. We can only arm ourselves better to deal with it.

The handful of honorable men and women will attempt to surround themselves with others who possess the honor, honesty and integrity that they admire, and will remain shocked by the actions of the dishonorable people they encounter. The best attempt to change this that a writer can make is to honestly write about the dishonesty that young people can expect to find in the world they grow into, and to show them that the only possible way to change it is to hold the people with whom they associate to the same high standards they admire, and to shine the light on dishonor whenever they encounter it. Otherwise they (and we) will all remain the confused and frustrated teens we once were, who were shaken to the core when first we encountered injustice.

I am currently on a writing retreat with my writers group. I have been looking forward to this retreat since last year's retreat. I have eagerly been anticipating this time away from ordinary, day-to-day life to concentrate on revising my new young adult novel. And I'm making good progress. But at the same time, eating away at my concentration is outrageous injustice that my family is facing - due to the dishonor and malicious perjury of business associates. It infuriates me and it erodes the very idea that there is any sense of honor in the world we live in.

Every encounter with dishonor diminishes all that it touches - and makes it increasingly difficult to proceed with work and maintain one's own integrity. It is not fair to my family to put what they're going through out of my head in order to concentrate solely on my writing at this retreat, yet it's not fair to my book to let the injustice of the real world intrude into the world of my story. I'm trying to find a way to balance the two of them. I suppose I'll find out tomorrow, after our retreat ends, how well I've succeeded.

Fiction Series Rant

2011-07-10T17:10:00.009-06:00

Am I the only reader who detests fiction series? All right - not all series. Not completed series that astound me by how well thought-out the books are, and how perfectly they fit together and progress (think the Harry Potter series, for instance). But in-progress series books drive me mad. I start reading a book that doesn't advertise something frustrating on the cover or title page, such as "the first book in the X series," only to reach the end and realize by the lack of complete resolution that it's going to lead to a series, and I groan aloud.

When I was a kid, I liked series

books like Nancy Drew or Encyclopedia Brown - a series that was really a collection of books or stories bound together by a central character. There were already a lot of completed books waiting to be read, and it didn't really matter what order I read them in. But today it frustrates me no end to stumble onto a series in progress. You have to wait at least a year for the next book, and with a lengthy series you have to struggle to find the patience to wait for the next and the next for years to come. Really - how many kids can hold on that long? At least the Harry Potter series grows with its readers. A ten-year-old who discovered Sorcerer's Stone and grew up with the series found herself only a little older than Harry by the time Rowling completed the series.

I was fortunate to come upon the Harry Potter books partway through the series' publication process. Although it was agony to wait (relatively) patiently for the final books, I was able to read the first several straight through, one after the other without pause. And each book was complete in terms of plot, building to a satisfying resolution, even though the complete series built to one overarching plot beyond the individual books. What a delight to discover that minor details in Sorcerer's Stone had their payoff in Deathly Hallows!

But few series are that satisfying. The plotting and writing are rarely of the same quality in each book. Even when individual books are excellent (such as the first two books in The Hunger Games series), the whole series fails on its payoff when the final book ends up relying on twists such as character inconsistencies that diminish the whole. And even though teen readers might have grown up with Bella in The Twilight series, they were betrayed by the breaking-down of the resolution pattern in Breaking Dawn which hurt the series as a whole.

Chapter book series and some middle grade series are satisfying, both because they are shorter and written (and therefore published) faster, and because most of them rely on the Nancy Drew and Encyclopedia Brown series rules: the same or similar characters in each book, with plots that can be enjoyed in any order, not leaving readers desperate to find out what happens next.

YA authors, please consider writing more stand-along books. A sixteen-year-old reader who falls in love with the first book in your series will be in college and possibly graduated and married before the series is over! Her reading interests will have matured and, unless your writing skills are on par with Rowling's, she may never make it to the end of your series. However, if you write a single perfect book, she will read it and may never forget it. Isn't that what you really want?

The Month that Disappeared

2011-06-03T15:37:00.007-06:00

Sometimes so much happens in a month that it's hard to remember to write about it here. May was that sort of month. Between talking to readers about my books, answering intriguing questions about writing that made me think, celebrating special occasions (my husband's birthday and our anniversary both fall during the month of May), reading several new books by friends and other writers I admire, and writing an entire first draft of a new middle grade historical fiction WIP, May simply disappeared. And here it is June already, and I realize I've written nothing since April! It's not that I haven't been thinking about the writing life, but rather that I've been living it too fully to write about it.

May also brought me some writing good news! An Unspeakable Crime won the Gold Medal in the Juvenile-Teens-YA Nonfiction category of the Independent Publisher Book Awards, otherwise known as an IPPY Award. As one of my friends pointed out: how cool is it to win an award that rhymes with Yippee!!

For those who are interested in the business side of the writing life, most publishers pay writers their royalties twice a year: in April and in October. The royalties in April are paid based on sales figures in the second half of the previous year; and the royalties in October are paid based on sales figures in the first half of that year. Some publishers pay writers on 1 April and some publishers pay writers on 30 April, according to their in-house accounting procedures. So by the time the Post Office delivers my mail, I receive a portion of my royalties in May. That means I found out in May 2011 how my sales in the second half of 2010 went. (Not too badly.) But this May I got a surprise!

My royalties include book sales and subrights rights sales (sales of rights to businesses, as opposed to sales of physical or e-books). Some years ago, a movie company optioned one of my books, Counterfeit Son, and since renewed the option. Well, sometimes in the fall of 2010, they decided to exercise the option, and their payment showed up in my April royalty check, which I received in May. That means my book is going to be the basis for a movie!

I think that calls for another May Yippee, even if it is June now.

A Plea to Teachers and School Librarians

2011-04-28T11:42:00.005-06:00

I love getting letters from readers (of all ages) and I always reply. However, it breaks my heart when I get a letter, as I recently did, that a student wrote six months ago and mailed to my publisher, confident (I'm sure) that I would reply within the week. Often, student letters write that they're doing a project for class, and ask specific questions for their project. I answer the questions when I reply, but I know in my heart that my answers are going to arrive far too late to be of any use in a project that was due last semester, and that the student who wrote them will probably hate me for life and never read another one of my books.

So, please, Teachers and School Librarians, if you are assigning a project to write to me (or to any author) or assisting students in figuring out how to contact me, do not tell your students to use the publisher's address. I'm not sure why, but it seems to take publishers a very long time to forward it to their authors. Of course, it also seems to take many of them a long time to answer their authors' questions and other correspondence as well, but we know the drill by now. Students can't be expected to know they'll have to wait so long.

First, have your students check the author's web page. I have my snailmail address on my home page and a link to my e-mail address on every page. Most writers have contact information - if not their home address, their agent's address. Agents are much speedier than publishers about getting any correspondence to their clients.

If you can't find any contact information on the author's web page, try Googling the author's name plus the residence information shown on the book's flap or the "About the Author" section in the book. Yes, we move over time, but that's a start. A little time spent Google-searching can save months of time waiting for a reply.

Unless you're combining author research with teaching letter-writing skills, urge your students to e-mail for the fastest possible reply. I must admit that I've received e-mails stating that the student has a project due tomorrow morning and can I summarize the plot of my book, identify the climax, describe the characters, identify the theme, etc. for him or her? And I answer these also, although I confess I tell those students that I cannot do their project for them, but they have to read the book. Even with legitimate personal questions such as how I came to write that particular book, or why I had this character do that, it's better to e-mail earlier than the night before the book report or paper or project is due, in case I'm out of town and unable to check my e-mail.

Here's the thing about corresponding with authors: we do not want to disappoint our readers - ever. Please, please help us keep your students happy and satisfied by making it easy for us to answer them speedily.

Balance Life and Writing with Kristi Holl

2011-03-31T12:52:00.006-06:00

We writers tend to look at our work and our process as the most important thing in our lives. We read books about writing, about specific techniques that will help us write better. We buy software to help us write faster and more effectively. We look for ways to wring out every last second of the day that we can spend on our writing. In other words, we frequently overlook our lives themselves. At best this leaves us crippled in our writing.

Our lives shape our experiences, which shapes our writing. Most of us realize this. But do we stop to think about how the quality of our lives shapes the quality of our writing? Stressed lives produce stressed writing. But how can we escape the emotions and stresses that complicate our day-to-day lives? It seems as if it would be great to live in a safe, supportive writers' retreat year-round. But realistically, even the most imaginative writer I know realizes that's not going to happen. And it wouldn't be good for us if we could do it, anyway.

We share with fellow writers stories of writing through stress and dealing with writing issues like procrastination or writer's block, but when we're not with our writers group or enjoying daily coffee breaks or visits with writing friends, what do we do? I have a suggestion: we should all go to Kristi Holl's website and download her More Writers First Aid in pdf form or for your Kindle. It is one of the few practical how-to books on dealing with the emotions, stress and issues in our personal life that prevent us from doing our best writing and enjoying the process more than ever.

Kristi (I'm delighted to disclose that she is a longtime writing friend of mine) also offers practical how-to-write booklets at her site, such as Writing Mysteries for Young People and 50 Tension Techniques. Her years of experience and teaching allow her to give her readers simple, direct, easy-to-follow writing tips in these booklets. But the best writing tips are useless if you're strung so tight, or such a perfectionist, or a perpetual procrastinator, or someone who clings unknowingly to poor writing habits. Kristi's More Writers First Aid helps the writer, whether that writer has published many books or is only just getting started, recognize how she's sabotaging herself and shows her how to make wiser decisions about balancing life and writing.

I admit, I was predisposed to like this book because of the teddy bear on the cover - I know I write better when I've got a teddy bear for company. But I wasn't prepared to love it until I began dipping into the book and recognized so many of my own problems in her practical advice in dealing with burn-out, rejections, facing fears, writing in pain, and derailing our own writing. What is so helpful about the book is that Kristi doesn't write from way above us lowly mortals, telling us how to solve our problems; she generously writes as if she has experienced every problem we face, and shares how she has lived through it, or triumphed over it. Reading this book is like having a terrific visit with a friend. Even if all your friends are busy, you know that Kristi isn't too busy to spend some time with you, and help you through that rough spot so you can balance the ups and downs of life with your writing to give yourself write better than you ever thought you could, and to be happier doing it than you've ever been.

Jumping into the ebook market

2011-03-21T15:47:00.009-06:00

When ebooks became the new trend, I wasn't really sure how they'd go. Would teens and middle graders really want to read books on their computers? Would they be willing to invest in ebook readers?

It turns out that they are. And I can't blame them. I bought a Kindle two years ago and fell in love with being able to carry my library of favorite books around with me so easily. Last year my wonderful husband got me an iPad, and now I carry around even more books on it, as well as music, movies and the web. Now I wonder, would any of my readers actually want to read my books on their ebook readers?

Several of my publishers have brought out some of my YA titles in ebook format, and I've been thrilled to see the books available, but with the delays in the length of time it takes publishers to inform authors of subsidiary sales and the royalties they've earned, I still have no idea whether anyone is buying them.

So I decided to take one of my early ghost stories, Tournament of Time, and do a little experiment. I controlled ebook rights to it, so I formatted it for Smashwords (much easier than I expected, using their helpful style guide) and uploaded it there at $2.99. I'm also in the process of getting it approved for the iBookstore, since I love reading on my iPad, and I'm sure other iPad readers feel the same way - if given the opportunity to buy an ebook in a variety of formats, most of us would go for the iBook version that could be read on our iPad or iPhone. If you enjoy ebooks, mysteries, and English history, check out my take on the murder of the Princes in the Tower in Tournament of Time. Decide whether you're Team Richard or Team Henry, then find out whodunnit.

I've already had several downloads since the book came out this morning, so I'm thinking it's off to a good start! And I hope you enjoy ghostly history mysteries, and ebooks, as much as I do.

The Second Draft

2011-03-09T00:35:00.004-07:00

Writers like to talk about the first draft, and then the excitement (or the torture) of revision. But for me there's a pretty major step in between those two parts of the process. That's the second draft.

For me, the second draft isn't a revision, or a re-envisioning of the book I set out to write. The second draft is when I read through my first draft and add in details that I realize I left out in my rush to complete the first draft (the phase I like to think of as taking a roller coaster ride with my characters.) There's no time for pausing to consider the perfect word or the small, descriptive details that accompany the main action while you, as the writer, are riding the roller coaster. The second draft is the time to consider those.

The second draft is also the time when I look at what I've written and recognize the subtle threads that are woven through the story as a whole. These threads may only peek through here and there in the first draft, because they may be so subtle that I didn't recognize their significance while I was on the roller coaster. Now they spring out at me in vivid relief, and as I work on the second draft I can pull those threads through, so they find their proper place in the book as a whole.

The second draft is also the opportunity for adding in facts. I do a great deal of research before I get on that first draft roller coaster, but once I've taken off I always run up against questions that I discover I need to answer before the manuscript is ready to be revised. Interrupting the roller coaster ride in order to look up these facts can upset the flow of the writing,

so I leave notes or gaps in the first draft to remind me to find out about this or that, and the second draft is my chance to look up those facts and fit them in correctly. These can't be big facts that will alter the way your characters behave, or course, or how your plot turns out - those have to be answered before I climb on the roller coaster. But the second draft is my chance to research those little facts I didn't know I needed to discover when I first started writing.

Sometimes I don't even realize when my first draft turns into my second draft. This evening my husband asked how close I was to the end of the book. As I tried to explain that I'd already written the end, I realized what I've been doing these last couple of days was pulling threads through and adding in those descriptive details and those additional facts. I realized I've completed my first draft, and I'm partway through my second draft. That means my new book should be ready to give my critique group soon, and then read to revise and send to my agent. I've got to admit, I'm thrilled to realize I'm well into my second draft!

Instant Gratification, Frustration, and the Internet

2011-02-15T09:44:00.007-07:00

Over the years, my book buying habits have changed. I used to walk into a bookstore, eager to spend the next hour or two browsing, actually reading some of each book I considered buying. I read various review magazines, and I might go into the store with a list of titles I was interested in. I'd talk with the bookstore personnel, and often come up with recommendations for even more books.

Then online bookstores exploded into the market, offering many titles I couldn't find in my local bookstores. Nevertheless, I was slow to fill my bookshelves with online purchases. I liked to be able to dip into the book before committing myself to its purchase.

All that changed with e-books. Now I could download a sample from the book to my e-reader (I got a Kindle first, and then an iPad), and satisfy my craving for a dip before buying. And, as I did on my bookstore trips, once I decided I liked the book I could buy it immediately: my yearning for instant gratification was not only encouraged, but satisfied.

However, the internet changed more than just the ability to download e-books instantly. It altered not only book selling but review protocol. Librarians and other readers and writers always loved the joy of collecting ARCs at BEA and the ALA conventions, but as blogs spread across the internet, reviews came earlier and earlier, as if blog reviewers were excited to report "I just read this terrific book and I'm going to whet your desire for it, but you won't be able to see it for another six months!"

When I read an enticing review for a book, I expect that it may not be out until next month, but there's nothing so depressing as reading a review in November for a book that won't be out until April!

The internet has set up the expectation of instant gratification, so as soon as I read a review that intrigues me, I immediately check to see if I can download a sample of the book now, and I fully expect to buy the complete book as soon as I finish that sample if I like it as much as I hope. I don't mind pre-ordering something I expect to enjoy if it's going to be released next week or next month, but I've grown too impatient to wait for four or five months!

Blog reviewers, please wait to post your reviews until it's a little closer to the book's actual release date, to minimize your faithful readers' frustration. Chances are your enthusiastic review will excite me about the book, but by the time it comes out 5 months from now, chances are I'll have forgotten its title and why you convinced me I'd love it. Our online world has conditioned us to immediacy - we now expect instant gratification and have no patience for waiting. It's great to tantalize us with a list of ARCs you picked up, but couldn't you hold your reviews until closer to each title's release? I think it will lower my reading blood pressure, and make me love you more. Then again, I suppose blog reviewers are eager to publish their reviews as soon as possible - perhaps it's not fair to expect them to be immune to the desire for instant gratification themselves.

Take Time to Celebrate!

2011-01-28T17:33:00.005-07:00

I was very touched when I heard Marion Dane Bauer's story about not properly celebrating her Newbery Honor win for On My Honor. And I've taken to heart her advice to celebrate each step of the way. As writer, it used to be true that ours was a solitary journey, but thanks to our writers groups, thanks to the internet, thanks to Facebook, we're now active participants in a larger community that allows us to have virtual celebrations with our friends and colleagues any time we want!

I celebrate a good writing day by updating my Facebook status, and share good news about great reviews or awards with my writers group by bringing

chocolate to our meetings. (My previous writers group celebrated with cookies - different foods, but both great ways to share good news with your friends.

Still, the writing itself, at least the first draft, is something done alone. And I do have a more private celebration ritual for good news or awards for one of my books - one that doesn't involve eating. I celebrate by getting myself a new fountain pen. It's a way to celebrate the writing, and my personal participation in it. No, I don't write my first drafts by fountain pen - but I write my notes for each book, and my journal, and my handwritten letters with fountain pens. I cherish the way the ink flows, and how a fountain pen solidly fills my hand. And I always love the way children and teachers point at it and say, "Look! A real writer's pen."

My fountain pens aren't magic, but they're special to me, and I was delighted to start writing with the newest addition to my working collection, the silver one at the bottom in this photo. We all have good writing news to celebrate much more often than we give ourselves credit for: finishing a scene, finishing a chapter, completing a first draft, trusting our first draft to our critique group, completing a second draft, completing a revision, placing the manuscript, signing a contract, completing revisions for the publisher, seeing reviews, holding the first copy in our hands. Make sure you do something to celebrate each step of the way, with writing friends, and perhaps even a personal celebration ritual of your own.

Tis the Season to Reward Writers

2011-01-18T00:33:00.007-07:00

No matter what the Today Show thinks, January is the time for the children's and teens' lit community to reward writers and illustrators and to celebrate those awards. I love January! It's the time when I discover what I've missed in my previous year's reading, and have the opportunity to download as many books as I can afford for my iPad. Fortunately this past Christmas I was blessed with lots of ebook gift cards! I've just finished Moon Over Manifest (how could I have missed that one?) and Jenni Holm's Turtle in Paradise which I like more and more as I think about it more and more. I also loved A.S. King's Please Ignore Vera Dietz - I shall never see ghosts the same way again. And I'm still reading (and loving) Dash and Lily's Book of Dares.

This year I'm also delighted to announce that my book, An Unspeakable Crime: The Prosecution and Persecution of Leo Frank has been honored in the round of January award announcements. An Unspeakable Crime was named an Honor Book in the Social Studies - Grades 7-12 category by the Society of School Librarians International, and was also named a 2011 Sydney Taylor Notable Book for Teens. It has also been honored as a Cybils Finalist in the Nonfiction Book (Middle Grade and Young Adult) category, and a National Jewish Book Award Finalist in the Children's and Young Adult Literature category.

I am overjoyed to share my book's recognition for the same reason that I'm delighted to learn about other books that have been honored: just as I am eager to read those excellent books I mentioned above, I hope that readers will discover An Unspeakable Crime. That's why we write, after all, in the hopes that someone will read our book, and any recognition that makes it more likely for others to read it is a wonderful thing. If you're curious and want to find out about this 1913 legal case, please click here to watch a video about my research for this book. And many thanks to the organizations and committees that honored my book.

Writers' Leap of Faith

2011-01-09T14:46:00.005-07:00

Happy New Year! Time for new resolutions, new starts, and new experimentation. Sometimes it's hard, however, to take a leap of faith and try something new, especially when it comes to writing.

Have you found a writing method that works for you? A method of planning your novel and writing that first draft that seems foolproof? A method that has worked for you reliably in the past, one with which you feel comfortable? You're confident in your writing because you're familiar with it, and you can see your word count build up as your characters grow and work their way through a plot with a beginning, middle and climax that all occur at the right proportional points in your manuscript. Well, congratulations!

But perhaps this trustworthy method isn't really serving you as well as if did the first time you experimented with it, and were delighted with the new aspects of your novel that it helped you discover then. Be honest: since you've been writing with this method, have you continued

making new discoveries and pushing your ideas to their limits? Sometimes you need to shake up your procedure, or you can fall prey to stultifying sameness that compromises the complexity of your ideas.

So start the New Year by experimenting with some new writing methods.

Check out Martha Alderson's terrific Blockbuster Plots books and videos.

Explore software like Dramatica or Scrivener. Check out my own book on Character and Plot development. These are all tools - they won't write your book for you, but they'll help you look at your idea through new eyes, asking new questions that might help you make new discoveries about your characters and their story, and explore avenues with exciting potential that you hadn't considered with your comfortable method.

Never let yourself become complacent in your writing. Complacency can stifle your imagination and prevent you from tackling the hard questions that could force you to confront uncomfortable ideas. Those uncomfortable nudges are the very ideas that could elevate your comfortable book to something challenging and remarkable and new.

Merry Christmas, or Happy Holidays, to all!

2010-12-23T08:33:00.004-07:00

All my Christmas shopping is done - the presents are all wrapped and either under our tree or en route to friends by priority mail, the Christmas cookies are baked and frosted (and sampled), the groceries are in the refrigerator for Christmas meals. As much as I feel triumphant, however, I also feel a bit sad. The preparations for Christmas, the anticipation of how my friends and family will enjoy their gifts - these are what I love best about the holidays, even more than Christmas morning itself and the fun of opening presents. I truly believe this is the season of giving.

I wish I could be a spirit in every household to which I sent gifts - I'd love to watch my friends' children (and my friends) open the presents I sent them. But the best I can do is send some of my spirit with the gifts, and be thankful that my friends are mostly writers, who will write to tell me how those small pieces of my love for them were received. Then I can vicariously share in their holiday joy from afar.

Spend as much of the holidays as you can with people you love. Christmas, more than Facebook or the internet, is about truly connecting with a larger community than your household. I believe we send gifts because we're reaching out to the people we care about, showing our love in boxes and gift bags. We do that many times during the year: on birthdays, at random moments when we just have the feeling a friend needs a lift. But this winter holiday season of Christmas is magical because nearly everyone reaches out to everyone else they know, and even to some people they don't know, through charity, to share that love, at the same time.

Enjoy the holidays. Eat too much and laugh too much and hug beyond your personal space comfort bubble. Let the world in and revel in it. That's my wish for everyone whose spirit I've touched this year, and other years, and for everyone whose spirit has touched me. Give of yourselves, to share this magical season, until your heart overflows.

Genres - Helpful or Hurtful?

2010-11-26T10:15:00.007-07:00

Genres tend to mystify me, and I'm not sure they're really doing much of a service to readers, labeling books in the simplest possible terms.

I write novels. I admit I didn't think much about genres when I started publishing - I thought about the target age of my readers, but not the genre of the book I was writing for them. Then, after Counterfeit Son was published, I got a phone call from my editor telling me it had been nominated for an Edgar Award.

Wonderful! But I had to ask her, what was an Edgar Award? She told me it was for Best Young Adult Mystery.

Wonderful! Except I hadn't thought of Counterfeit Son as being a mystery. It was a novel about coming to terms with exactly how much responsibility one person owed another person. I was honored to be nominated, but the nomination was something of a mystery to me.

Then I began thinking about my other books, and I realized that most of them were mysteries - I'd used techniques of mystery to tell the story I'd wanted to write. I was even more honored when Counterfeit Son won the Edgar Award for Best Young Adult Mystery. And the following year Ghost Soldier was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery, another tremendous honor, even though I thought the book was more a novel about knowing when to hold onto family and when to let go, than a mystery.

So genres can benefit writers unexpectedly. But I think genres can also do writers a disservice sometimes. I've recently finished a novel about the need to protect words and books from being twisted and misrepresented. It takes place in our world, perhaps a few years in the future, and I thought of it as sort of a foray into science fiction, or speculative fiction (a term I prefer). But with the current interest in dystopian literature, it's being called dystopian. And editors have rather specific ideas about what they want to see as dystopian. So when they read my manuscript, thinking dystopian, they have problems with it not fitting neatly into the dystopian template they have in their mind.

Not so wonderful. I know genres can help readers find the sort of books they want, but I think that pigeon-holing can also cut readers off from books they might well enjoy if they came to those books without pre-formed expectations. What do you think? Do genres hinder more often than help, or vice versa?

Old Friends

2010-11-10T14:08:00.004-07:00

This year I joined a Facebook Group in which all the members are trying to read 100 books in 2010. Every month we all post the titles of the books we read. This has been a fabulous source of recommendations for new books to read, and I'm thoroughly enjoying my participation. While I've discovered many new titles and authors this year, I also find myself returning to old friends, re-reading classics like The Outsiders, and Edward Eager's Magic books, and more modern classics like the Harry Potter books. And there's nothing that give me greater pleasure than receiving an e-mail from a reader who tells me he (or she) has read and re-read one of my books, like Ghost Cadet, and considers it an old friend.

I really love discovering new books which will become old friends and be re-read in their turn in time, but there's no question that I also treasure my time curled up with old friends, especially when life gets difficult. There's nothing more comforting in tough times than a cup of mint tea and an old friend, although these days I more often than not find myself reading my old friends on my new iPad. I'm not clinging to old friends as a way to avoid moving forward in the literary world, either in terms of not wanting to discover new friends, or not wanting to use new technology.

I guess I'm still a Girl Scout at heart, remembering when we used to sing around the campfire:
Make new friends
But keep the old
One is silver
And the other gold.

I'm not sure whether my old book friends are silver or gold, but I treasure both the old and the new. Do you find yourself returning to old friends as you read, also?

Goodbye, Haunted House...

2010-10-02T15:46:00.006-06:00

...I'm going to miss you.

Since I write ghost stories for middle school readers, I often get the same question when I visit a school: "Have you ever seen a ghost?" For years I had to answer, "Not yet," which saddened my enthusiastic fans. Then we moved to Bozeman, and my husband found a haunted house for us at 3242 Gardenbrook Lane. He didn't know it was haunted, because the house's ghost chimed, and my dear husband is rather deaf. But I heard it, loud, clear, and irregular enough in its chimes that we often seemed to be carrying on a conversation as I responded in turn.

At first, I'll admit, I was kind of spooked. I'd be minding my own business, writing, watching TV, playing games on my Mac, and then I'd hear this chime. I'd ask my husband, "Did you hear that?", knowing even as I asked that he wouldn't have. He didn't always hear the question. But the chimes seemed friendly, and after a while I started talking to the spirit, and discovered we got along very well. How wonderful it was to be able to tell young readers at schools that I might not have seen a ghost exactly, but I'd heard one in my very own house and we had interesting conversations (even if the chimes sounded without benefit of a translator, we still seemed to understand each other).

Where did the ghost come from? I don't know, and I never minded - we got on well together. Perhaps Keegan, the builder, built on a piece of land where someone had been buried in time long past? It was a new development - no house had been built there before, so someone could have been laid to rest beneath our home. It's possible.

But now we're moving, so I guess I'll never find out. I hope the new owners, Steve Parks and Cristina Boyles, like my ghost friend and are nice to it. Or, if they intend to sell the house, I hope they find buyers who get on well with the ghost. I'm sure if they make it feel welcome, it will welcome them in turn. As for me, I'm left with photos of my old home, and with memories of the ghost who befriended me.

Illegal Downloads of My (and Your!) Books

2010-09-08T09:56:00.004-06:00

We all love to read a free book. That's why we have library cards. But these days too many people who love free books have computers instead of library cards and frequent online sites where they can download books for free - books which are for sale in stores - books whose sale should bring authors income they have legitimately earned. I know I've been frustrated to find some of my books available for free downloads. Amy King has written a terrific blog post that nails the issue, so I'd very much like to refer you to her "A Pirate's Dare."

The one thing I'd like to add is that I can understand people who want to have an electronic copy on their ebook reader of a print book they've legitimately purchased and paid for . I have been known to purchase the print book for my bookshelf, the audiobook from Audible.com for my iPod, and the ebook from Amazon or iBooks so I can have the book with me even when I'm traveling between locations. However - there are some favorites that I cannot purchase because they are not available as ebooks. I can certainly understand why someone would type or scan in a much-loved book in order to have a personal traveling digital version - for private usage, until these titles became available for purchase.

I wish the copyright holders of works by deceased authors who are not in the public domain would contract for their books to be available as ebooks - and I wish publishers would offer fair terms for such ebook editions. Everyone is trying to get as large a piece of the pie as they can: publishers are trying to give the authors as small a royalty as possible, authors are trying to get as large a royalty as possible (and I'm in that group), and readers are trying to amass as many books as possible. The sad thing is the larger the piece of the pie everyone grabs for, the less anyone gets. Unless you go to the library, anyway.

Endorphins and Writing

2010-08-27T21:37:00.008-06:00

My husband's work keeps him on the road, away from home way too much of the time - which means there are too many nights when it's just me and my teddy bear trying to fall asleep. Some nights I toss and turn, worrying about things that are beyond my power to control. I've found I sleep best when I lie in bed and think about the book that's currently in progress.

I've heard that writers shouldn't do that, because either it keeps you awake all night or you forget any insights you had by the time you wake up in the morning. I don't find that's a problem for me. I keep my current WIP notebook within easy reach, and my teddy bear doesn't mind my turning on the light when inspiration strikes. As soon as a scene or an insight from my MC comes into focus, I'm sitting up in bed and writing it down, so it's safely preserved for my more wakeful writer persona of the next morning.

And here's my discovery: writing seems to be as good as making love when it comes to releasing hormones! Making good love releases endorphins that activate the body's opiate receptors - in other words, endorphins make you slide happily into sleep. So does tapping into your book's soul. As soon as I've written down my new insight and switched off the light, I slip happily into sleep and have a good night. Okay, being with my husband is even better for a loving night's sleep, but it doesn't increase my word count or my character insights.

Whichever option you have tonight, sweet dreams.

On Fire

2010-08-18T10:00:00.006-06:00

No, I'm not talking about Katniss, the Girl on Fire (though I do already have a cool Mockingjay t-shirt that I can't wait to wear while I'm reading the book, which I've pre-ordered). I'm talking about something a member of my writers' group said after I reported to them on everything I've been up to since landing my new agent, Jill Corcoran. My friend told me I was on fire with writing, now that I didn't have to think about the business aspect of the work.

I think she's right. Ever since I started writing, lo these many years ago, I've worked at submitting all my manuscripts on my own and dealing with the business end of the craft by negotiating my own contracts. But this business aspect has sapped more and more of my creative energy as publishers have made the business of being a writer increasingly difficult. Now that I've found an agent who believes in me and has shouldered that burden with gusto, I feel free to focus on the writing aspect. That doesn't mean I'm ignoring the concept of marketing entirely and writing in a vacuum, because if you're not cognizant of market demand you're not doing your creativity any favors! But I can concentrate on what I want to write, with the idea of how it fits into market requirements as a background to the work, not as the next phase of responsibility I have to take on myself.

So I've worked on planning out three chapter books in a series and started a new YA novel, Fire at Will, and I feel as if I'm fizzing with creative energy and excitement. In short, I feel as enthusiastic as I used to feel when I started writing. I know I'll still have revision work with editors as Permanent Record and other books are sold, and I'm looking forward to it, as I used to look forward to every phase of this craft, but being able to focus on only the creative side of the business is incredibly liberating. My friend was right - I'm on fire with the thrill of writing all over again, thanks to partnering with my agent!

My New Agent

2010-07-28T16:49:00.004-06:00

I'm delighted to report that I have just signed with Jill Corcoran of Herman Agency!

For more than 20 years I have marketed my books on my own, and while I enjoyed the excitement of researching new publishing opportunities and was grateful to the editors who approached me, recent mergers and editors moving more frequently from house to house made me decide it was time to seek a professional agent.

Searching for the right agent is a lot like getting engaged! You need to get to know a potential agent to decide whether you'll be able to work well together for a start, and also to decide whether you'll be able to continue working together for a career. I've thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Jill - and it doesn't hurt that she loves my new YA novel, Permanent Record! So we've crossed the threshold and signed the contracts, and I'm looking forward to our new relationship, and to our future books, with enthusiasm.

Politics and the Power of the Written Word

2010-07-16T16:21:00.003-06:00

I've been reflecting on the debate among many of my colleagues about whether they should express their political opinions in their blogs or on social networks. Some are concerned that their politics might have a negative impact on potential readers. Others believe that they are their political beliefs, so why not express those beliefs publicly?

I have strong political opinions, but I believe they are between me and my voting booth. However, those opinions do spring directly from my philosophy and my ethics, and those are a matter of record. Every book I write is a public expression of my ethics. Any one of my readers already knows what concerns me, what principles guide me, and what I believe is important, or should be important, to citizens of the 21st century.

So why not go ahead and announce my political leanings? Why not go the whole way and recommend candidates to support in the midterm elections, or the 2012 presidential election for that matter?

Because there's no reason any of my readers should be swayed by my political recommendations. I'm no political pundit: I'm a writer. If a reader of my books finds that he or she agrees with my philosophy, it's very possible that he or she would choose to support a political candidate that I would also like. At the very least, the process of his or her choosing would reflect moral principles that I'd admire.

But I can see real dangers in bluntly announcing my political philosophy, as opposed to showing my moral philosophy. While our ethics certainly inform our politics, it's way too easy to make a snap judgement about someone (and, by extension, about as yet unread books that person has written) on the basis of a hot button issue, rather than judging an author on the larger view of his or her moral principles expressed in their books.

One author I used to admire greatly expressed a political opinion that demonstrated his extreme bigotry in a way that his books never did. I have since been unable to look at his books, even the ones I particularly loved, in the same way. If he had only kept his political opinions between himself and his voting booth, I would certainly have purchased, and probably enjoyed, his new novel. Now I shall probably never read it.

While I am not worried in the least that my politics will brand me as a bigot, I would hate for those politics to chase away any potential reader who might disagree with me on a political issue, but who would discover that he or she shared my ethics if only he or she had the opportunity to be moved by the ideas expressed in my books.

Writers do have the power to move the world, with the fulcrum of our books and the lever of our principles. At the ballot box, each of us is only one vote, but we can inspire thousands and thousands of readers with our books. Why would I ever want to run the risk of alienating a single potential reader who might be at odds with their interpretation of my political stance, but who could be inspired by the ideas expressed in my books themselves?

Is College Required for Writers?

2010-05-19T18:12:00.005-06:00

I've just completed the last of my school talks this spring, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was speaking to single class groups, and the terrific thing about that is that I'm able to answer so many more questions from each student. I closed this speaking season talking with elementary school students, but I've spoken with a great many high school students and middle school students this spring, and many of these older students ask me about college.

Some of these enterprising students want to know what they should major in if they want to become writers. Some of them ask me whether they should go to college at all. These are important questions, and I try to answer them honestly.

I tell them:
Don't take creative writing in college. Their teacher will teach students the way he or she writes, not the special way of writing that each student has within him or her. Instead, take classes analyzing great writers - I took classes in Shakespeare, Dickens, Kafka, Milton, and groups of novelists (18th c. American writers, for example, and an overview course in "the novel"). Seeing how other writers have created powerful literature will give students ideas about how they can come up with their own ways of writing moving stories or books.

Write for their college newspaper, because the discipline of meeting deadlines with good copy will stand them in good stead in writing regularly for the rest of their lives.

Don't go to college expecting that a degree will help get a job as a writer upon graduation, because there are no magic courses that will help them sell their Great American Novel. However, if they take as many different types of courses as they can, and open their minds and hearts to the information they can take away from those courses, from the professors they talk with outside the classrooms, from the students they meet and with whom they discuss life, then they'll develop their own unique ways of thinking. If they can think creatively and critically and for themselves, then that will become the soul of their writing. College is useful to broaden minds for writers; it's not a punchcard that will guarantee profitable work.

I never took a creative writing course at Rice University. I majored in English, Political Science and History. I wrote for the student newspaper (Rice had no journalism department) and also wrote four novels before I graduated. College is for studying the world around you and beginning to apply what you've seen, before you have to make a living at it. Three of those books were, well, terrible. They were practice novels, I suppose. But the fourth one had real promise. I kept working on it as I learned more about writing as a published author and finally, 25 years after I completed the first draft in college, Harcourt published SIMON SAYS. To this day, I get more passionate emails from teen readers about that book than any other.

College will give a future writer a handsome degree to hang on your wall, terrific friends you'll never forget, and the experience and intellectual background to see the world around you in a unique way that will forever inspire your future writing. Just don't expect a paying job to greet you on your graduation.

Sleep Writing - Part 2

2010-05-11T17:35:00.007-06:00

The last piece of sleep advice that conference speakers like to give writers is: "Record your dreams - you may find wonderful stories in them." I resisted this advice for years.

Perhaps I was hampered by a story my mother used to tell me. She had a recurring dream in which she would get out of bed, sit down at a desk, and begin writing by hand. She would write through the long hours of the night and finally stop at dawn, with a stack of manuscript pages to show for her efforts.

At that point my mother would wake up. She always remembered the dream in detail, and she knew she had written a bestseller. The only catch was - she couldn't remember a word of what she had written.This might be an understandable dream for a writer, but my mother wasn't one. In fact, she tried to discourage me from becoming a writer. "Be a doctor," she advised, "and write in your spare time."

I, however, couldn't imagine writing in my spare time any more than I could imagine creating stories from my dreams. They made perfect sense while I was asleep, but they lacked coherence in the light of my computer monitor, and faded into wisps of insubstantial plot and character. So I was astounded to wake one morning from a vivid dream that would not let me go.

I'd dreamed of a boy in a dark, smelly cellar. The boy stood in a small room, in front of the open drawer of a file cabinet, reading through a file of news clippings. And I knew exactly what he was doing. His name was Cameron, and he was the son of a serial killer. His father locked him in the cellar while he tortured and murdered the young boys who were his victims. Then the man made Cameron help him bury the boys in the cellar, but the smell never completely went away.

Serial killers always keep souvenirs from their victims, and Cameron's father kept news clippings about the search for the missing boys in a file cabinet in his cellar. But his son had found them and read them until he knew the dead boys almost better than he knew himself. And when his father was killed in an attempted arrest, Cameron decided to take on the identity of one of the murdered boys, and try to begin a new life with a real family, as an impostor.

That morning, with the dream still fresh in my mind, I wrote what would become the prologue of COUNTERFEIT SON. Six months of research and writing later, the novel was finished. When the book was published, it was chosen immediately for the YALSA Quick Picks list and went on to win an Edgar for Best Young Adult mystery and quite a few other honors.

Do I keep a pad at my bedside these days so I can write down my dreams? You bet I do. Lightning doesn't usually strike twice, but I've since had another vivid dream that I turned into a story called "Gatekeeper" available from iPulp. Who knows what I'll dream tonight? I'm now a believer in making my sleep work for me.

Sleep Writing - Part 1

2010-05-06T11:06:00.007-06:00

I love attending writing conferences. I particularly love listening to writers share their techniques for maximizing their writing time. Much of this has to do with sleep. As Snoopy, the world-famous author, often said, "Sleep is life" and we writers often sleep when we could be writing. In fact, speakers frequently advise attendees to get up early and write while their family sleeps. That's probably terrific advice, if you're conscious in the early morning hours.

At 5 AM I'm incoherent. I'm doing amazingly well if I can find the keys to pick out: "I am a writer. I am writing now." But progress on a book at that hour? Forget it. I used to write after my husband went to sleep, since I'm more conscious at night and better able to wake my characters up at late hours. While working on my latest book, however, I've been waking up around 7:30 or 8 (or 8:30 or...), lying in bed and thinking about the book, and getting immediately to work on it without any distractions (do not pass the kitchen, do not eat breakfast, do not watch the morning news).

This is more in keeping with another suggestion conference speakers like to make: "Keep a notepad by your bed. Inspiration can strike while you're sleeping." When I'm deeply in the world of a book, I always try to think about it just as I'm falling asleep. And I'll often wake up with terrific ideas that came to my subconscious while my conscious brain was sleeping.

I rely on this technique when I'm working through a problem with a book. When I was writing Ghost Soldier, I realized I'd done such a good job in the first part of the book of making Alexander frightened of a Civil War ghost and determined not to help him, that I had no idea how Alexander would end up making friends with the ghost so they could work together in the remainder of the book. So I slept on it.

I woke up with the melody of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" running through my head.

I already knew that Alexander spent his evenings sitting on the back porch playing his alto recorder to annoy his father. I realized he was going to start playing "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" one evening, deliberately playing it angrily, to hurt the ghost because he never got to march home to his family. But as Alexander plays it, he hears an eerie, reedy harmony weaving itself around his mellow recorder melody. When he looks around, he sees that the ghost has joined him, playing his own ghostly harmonica. It's a song the ghost knew well because it was popular when he was alive, and it doesn't hurt him at all. Instead, his harmony calms Alexander. Somehow it's hard to be angry at someone after you've made music together. The song opens Alexander up to listen to the ghost, befriend him and agree to help him.

Where did the idea come from? Somewhere in my subconscious as I slept. And sometimes the subconscious can be even more generous in your sleep - but I'll cover that in Part 2.

A Remarkable Concurrence of Events

2010-04-27T08:49:00.006-06:00

A coincidence is defined as "a remarkable concurrence of events without apparent causal connection." When I lead writing workshops, I warn writers to avoid coincidences that work to the main character's advantage. A malign coincidence that makes things worse for the main character can sometimes be okay, as readers are prone to believe coincidences for the worst much more than coincidences for the better.

But recently I've been thinking about books that rely on coincidence and still work. I reread one of my favorites books, I Am David by Anne Holm (much, much better than the movie!) and it occurred to me in this rereading just how many coincidences there were in it. David's final scene could never have happened without several critical coincidences working to help him. His meeting the artist in order to acquire a vital piece of information always struck me, from my very first reading, as way too convenient. Yet the book works for me.

Right after that (a coincidence?) I read The Line by Teri Hall, and was again struck by the remarkable coincidence that, of all the "Others" Rachel might conceivably meet, she meets a boy who knows someone she has always wanted to learn more about. What are the odds? Yet, again, the book works for me.

Then it occurred to me that some critics have called the end of my own book, Counterfeit Son, a coincidence, and yet it won the Edgar Award, which means it certainly worked for the judges, and it has worked for many readers. And I remembered how I met my husband, Art - a coincidence if there ever was one, that required my coming back to work at my college bookstore years after I had graduated, his masters professor going on sabbatical during Art's last semester so that Art ended up teaching a 300 level history seminar that usually attracted 5-10 students, and Art's having made so many friends among the athletes that 100 signed up for the seminar and he came to the bookstore to order more books at just the right moment for me to see him and fall in love.

Even though fact is always stranger than fiction, and all writers know we shouldn't write anything that really happened in our lives exactly the way it happened as part of our fiction, maybe coincidences aren't all that unbelievable after all. But they certainly are remarkable.

If Music Be the Food of Prose...

2010-04-14T12:40:00.004-06:00

Many writers I know like to listen to music while they write, to get in the mood. Back in college, I used to listen to music while I wrote, but it wasn't so much to get me into the mood of the book as it was to take me out of the mood of the dorm. I'd sit at my typewriter in my own little corner of the room and play Broadway musicals and even sing along while I wrote. I must have been a lot better at multitasking then, because I wrote Simon Says while listening to a lot of Sondheim, and the two have little in common beyond the S alliteration.

These days I work better in absolute silence, which is actually much harder to come by than good music. Somehow, with someone else's perfect lyrics echoing in my head I have more trouble finding my way through to the words I need for the book I'm writing. But music hasn't entirely disappeared from my literary world I love to listen to music when I read, and often when I pre-write. And sometimes my reading points me in the direction of good music.

Last night I finished reading David Levithan Love is the Higher Law, a novel about three teens living through and reacting to 9/11. Two of them see reflections of their complex feelings about the event in the music they listen to and the concerts they attend. After I read the last page I went straight to iTunes to check out the songs mentioned in the book, and promptly downloaded two albums.

As I write this, I'm listening to songs from the Singles album by Travis, songs I'd never heard before because I'd never heard of Travis. Thanks for the introduction, David Levithan.

I guess I can still write to music, after all!

Resurrection is Hard Work

2010-03-17T09:43:00.007-06:00

I've just finished going over the final layout pages for the re-issue of my very first book for young readers, Ghost Cadet, about the Battle of New Market during the War Between the States. It's going to be beautiful! But I hadn't expected it to be so much work to bring this book back to life for the teachers who had been clamoring for its return (it's used in curriculum in many schools, and their class sets were falling apart).

I had assumed that it was a simple matter of re-printing the text of the original version, once I got the rights back from the original publisher who let it go out of print. After all, that's what friends have done when they self-pubbed a new edition of one of their books that has gone out of print, or went through one of the Author's Guild or SCBWI recommended publishers to re-issue one of their OP books, usually through Print on Demand. But I figured it would be a better plan to go to a legitimate publisher who actually knew something about children's books and marketing and such important details.

Paula Morrow at Boxing Day Books agreed to bring back Ghost Cadet, on a standard royalty arrangement, with a regular print run instead of POD, which made the cover price much more reasonable for children (and schools, especially given budget cuts). But instead of just re-printing the original text, she reminded me that her job was editing, and she challenged me to actually do some revision, including bringing the text up to date.

At first I wasn't sure about changing a book that had been so successful as it was. I was also concerned that making any changes would make it harder for teachers who probably still used their old hardcover books to read to their students. Plus, it meant more work. But a lot of the points Paula raised made sense. This wasn't a book set in the 1990's; it was always intended to be set in the reader's "now." So I needed to add a generation between the War Between the States (Civil War, to my non-Southern readers) and the present. And, obviously, the twentieth-century had to become the twenty-first century.

Once I started making changes like that, I loosened up and found myself following her guidance and updating and revising many details in the book. There was a poetic sentence I'd always liked, but I'd also always wondered if it really fit the tone of the rest of the book. Without my asking, Paula pointed out that it didn't, so that sentence got cut. There was also a question that students always asked about how the ghost had done something important in the very first chapter - Paula asked the same question, so I made changes throughout the text to answer it this time around.

The new Ghost Cadet isn't a different book, but it's more contemporary book for twenty-first century readers, and it's worth all the time I've taken away from my Work-In-Progress to revise, check the copyedited ms. ellipsis by comma by exclamation point (who knew I'd used so many exclamation points when I was a younger, less experienced writer?!?), work through the galleys, and write lots of e-mails. Ghost Cadet is on its way to the printer now, and Boxing Day Books will have it available by May, in good time for New Market Day. The time spent on this book, and the work invested in it, is a reminder that the writing and revision and publishing process is always hard work - but always worth it.

What's in a Name?

2010-02-25T15:36:00.003-07:00

Whenever I visit a school, I'm always asked how to pronounce my name for the introduction. And more than half the time, the teacher's or librarian's or principal's face falls, as she or he realizes that everyone in the school has been pronouncing my name wrong throughout their entire preparation for my visit. (Not that I would have corrected them unless they asked - if teachers and librarians have gotten the student body enthusiastic enough about my visit to read my books, they can pretty much pronounce my name any way they want and I'll just smile.)

But wouldn't it be helpful for a teacher or librarian to know how to pronounce my name when first introducing my books to students?

The nice people at TeachingBooks.net had me make an audio recording of the way I pronounce my name, and also invited me to tell you a little bit about my name. Click here to listen to it: Elaine Marie Alphin.

Now, as long as you think dolphin when you think about me, you'll never have trouble pronouncing my name again! I really must write a book about dolphins someday, I suppose....

Don't Hold Anything Back

2010-02-08T09:59:00.007-07:00

Some writers hold back a little in a manuscript. They don't want to risk leaving their well of ideas empty for their next project. To me, that's like the Indianapolis Colts holding back when they were undefeated at 14 and 0. Their front office didn't want to risk injury because they wanted to guarantee that the Colts could go into the playoffs healthy. So what happens? Dwight Freeney gets injured anyway in the playoffs; in practice, Reggie Wayne worsens the right knee injury that has plagued him throughout the season; and, despite all of Peyton Manning's determination and preparation, the Colts lose dramatically to the Saints in the Super Bowl. Why? The New Orleans Saints never held back. They left everything on the field in every game all season and post season, while they were undefeated, and even when they started losing. They still played with heart. The Colts management played it safe and the players lost heart. Winning - and writing - is all about heart.

Never hold back when you're writing. Put everything you've got into every manuscript you write. More ideas will come for your next project, ideas better suited for that project, but if you shortchange what you're writing now, chances are you (and your current manuscript) will lose heart, and won't be able to go the distance. You have to be willing to risk it all, and put it all on the page. The Indianapolis front office wasn't willing to take risks - New Orleans risked it all on tricky plays like an unexpected onside kick, and today the people of New Orleans are starting their Mardi Gras celebration early with their Saints and the Lombardi trophy in hand. The Colts are going home, having fallen short. Don't let your manuscript fall short because you held something back.

Food for Thought

2010-01-20T18:24:00.003-07:00

There's definitely a relationship between what I read and what I feel like eating. A good 25 years ago, I vividly remember sitting in a pizza parlor in upstate New York, reading Jane's House. Every time I've packed that book for a move, unpacked it at my new home, or just seen it on my library bookshelves, I find myself thinking about pepperoni pizza, and longing for a New York slice.

I was reminded of that today. After seeing the film Julie & Julia with friends last year, of course I read Julie Powell's book (I really must read My Life in France, also). I then promptly requested both the DVD of the movie, and Mastering the Art of French Cooking for Christmas. My husband, possibly the best Santa Claus ever, made sure they were both under the tree for me. He even watched the DVD, and loved it. He also wondered when I would start serving him meals from the cookbook. He's out of town on business right now, but I decided to start right in, and experimented with a terrific omelette a la Julia for brunch this morning. I'd never have strayed from my ordinary omelets if not for these books.

Inspiration for food often comes from my reading. When Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out, I eagerly attended a midnight release party and enthusiastically swapped theories for hours with friends (and total strangers) in the bookstore. I got my copy at 12:02 and raced home to start reading. At some point it occurred to me that it had been a long time since I'd last eaten. As Harry, Ron and Hermione were on the run at the time, camping out and eating lean, that's probably not too surprising. But they were reduced to eating toadstools - not too appetizing. I read on. Then Hermione found eggs and bread at a lonely farm and made scrambled eggs on toast. Yes! I set the book aside long enough to scramble some eggs and toast some bread, and got back to reading. There are probably still a few crumbs in the middle of Chapter 15, The Goblin's Revenge.

Memorable books provide food for thought in more ways than one.

Endings and Beginnings

2009-12-31T18:29:00.003-07:00

Many people I know like beginnings - they like spring, and dawn. Personally, I have always preferred twilight, and autumn. I like endings. To me, endings offer the promise of that new beginning before it has begun. Once trees are budding in the spring, and once dawn's first light touches the sky, the new season or the new dawn is underway. It feels to me as if its course has already been set. But while the old season or old day - or old year - is in the process of ending, the future is filled with limitless possibility. Its course has not yet been set.

New Year's Eve feels the same way to me - full of promise. And this is not only the end of a year, it is also the end of a decade. It's been kind of a tough decade for me, dealing with physical injuries and difficult moves. But with 2009 drawing to a close, the new decade appears full of limitless possibility. Nothing is yet set in stone. Books I have yet to read could introduce me to wonderful new authors and beautiful writing. Books I have yet to write could be the most intense and insightful and moving works that I have ever written.

It's all still possible.

I wish everybody one last night of possibility. May you treasure the potential that 2010 offers, before time shows you its reality. This is a night for dreaming.

Reading and Writing Friendships

2009-12-15T08:03:00.003-07:00

It's been snowing. The river outside my office window has frozen in choppy waves and the ice is frosted in white. It's the perfect time to curl up with a book, whether that's a manuscript in progress or someone else's book to read. Most people are under the impression that writers and readers are solitary souls with no interest in companionship. Nothing could be further from the truth! Writers and readers are surrounded by friends, whether those friends are fellow writers in a community spreading from our local critique group to online contacts on the other side of the world, or friends we discover in the books we read or the books we write, who walk off their pages and make their homes in our hearts.

Often as I read a book while I was an aspiring author, I'd wish I were brave enough to write to the person who'd written that book, and tell him or her how much I loved those characters and their story. "And one day," I dreamed of adding, "I'll be published just like you." But I never wrote. What if they saw me as a stalking fan? Even worse, what if they never wrote back?

One of those books was About David, by Susan Beth Pfeffer. Lynn, the narrator walked off the pages of that book to become a friend. I even liked difficult, damaged, and dangerous David. And I very much admired the author. I lived in upstate New York at the time, and worked part-time at my local library. When I discovered that Ms. Pfeffer was speaking to a group of librarians in our region, I convinced my librarian boss to let me go along. This much-admired author was a great speaker, as friendly and intriguing and human as her books. But I still couldn't manage to introduce myself as an aspiring writer and a fan, although I went home and over the years have read my way steadily through her books.

A few years ago, I saw she had a new book out, Life As We Knew It. Miranda, experiencing the changes in her family's life after a meteor strikes the moon and knocks it off course, stepped off the pages of her diary and made herself my friend. She was no noble heroine who saved the day by setting the moon back in its place - she was a prickly teenager who was angry that the world was ending around her when she just wanted life to get back to normal so she could have a boyfriend and a proper date - and fudge. Yet she grew through the book into a teenager who still wished for those things, but accepted that she wouldn't get them, and treasured what she had in terms of family all the more.

After I finished reading this book, I felt the familiar desire to write to this author. But by then I was a published writer myself. I looked online, and to my delight, I found that Susan Beth Pfeffer had a blog! And an e-mail address! And so - I took the plunge. I wrote to her. And I made a friend, not only of the characters in a book this time, but also of their author.

I've just finished reading the ARC of the third, and probably last, book in her moon series, This World We Live In. (There was a second book in the middle, the dead & the gone, which I've also read and enjoyed, but if I write much more this blog post will grow to epic length...) I'm marveling at how my friendships have deepened, both with Sue and with Miranda, who is still prickly and fights with her mother, but has also grown into a strong, unflinching young woman who makes hard choices out of love - more like her mother than she yet realizes - and is able to act on those hard choices with tenderness. I don't want to write a formal review of this bleak, yet beautiful book - I just want to treasure the way my relationships with character and author have moved forward.

Between my friendship with Miranda and my friendship with Sue Pfeffer, I'm not alone at all as I look out at the snowy expanse.

Giving Thanks

2009-11-26T11:06:00.005-07:00

It's been a challenging year with family health issues and worries, seeing a much-admired editor leave publishing, and spending way too much time away from home. But I still have much to be thankful for today.

I'm thankful for my new editor, who has proven wonderful to work with: swift to respond, thoughtful in his comments, enthusiastic about our future work together, and who introduced me to Web 2.0 life.

I'm thankful that An Unspeakable Crime, the book I completed with that new editor, is ready to be released in 2010, and has already been chosen as a Junior Library Guild Spring selection.

I'm thankful that I was able to take some retreat time, all on my own, to concentrate on my new novel and make some serious progress in writing the first draft.

I'm thankful for all my readers, especially the ones who take the time to write to me and tell me how my books have moved them.

I'm thankful that I have been welcomed into so many schools this spring and autumn, and been able to talk to thousands of students about my love of writing - and I'm thankful for being able to believe that I may have inspired some of them to follow their dreams, and perhaps even become fellow writers.

I'm thankful for my friends in Bozeman, who haven't forgotten me despite my months away from home, and are planning our writers group's annual Christmas party for a time when I'll be able to attend. And I'm thankful for my friends in Chamberlain who have invited me and my husband to Thanksgiving dinner so we won't be alone on the holiday.

Most of all, today as every day, I'm thankful for my husband, who has encouraged and supported my writing from the day we met, and who continues to earn his place in my dedications.

Perhaps this year has had more to be thankful for than it has had challenges, after all.

School Visit Energy

2009-10-15T09:26:00.006-06:00

I'm halfway through the autumn (or winter, since it's been snowing around here) school visit season. Halfway through school lunches (which are considerably better than what I remember from my own school days - or perhaps I've just been lucky). Halfway through the muscle-building exercise of lugging presentation materials into schools - or, if I'm very lucky, halfway through the character-building exercise of persuading kindly souls at the schools to lug the presentation materials in for me.

But, mostly, I'm halfway through the incredibly energizing experience of facing my readers and sharing my ideas about writing with them. To stand in front of groups as large as a couple hundred or as small as a dozen, and see eyes light up, and pick a question from a sea of wildly waving hands, is to feel my heart lift. To share the tension as the group, no matter what its size, falls completely silent and motionless when I share with them certain books (A Bear for Miguel for the youngest students, The Ghost Cadet with upper elementary and middle school, and The Perfect Shot with teenagers), is to know for certain that the book is touching every one of them in the gym or library or auditorium or cafeteria.

After the stillness, after the questions, after the younger students crowd around me at the end, after the teenagers hang around, too cool to talk while their peers are leaving the presentation, but eager to tell me about their own writing and their dreams, I pack up and get back on the road for the next school, delighted that I drove so far to have that hour with those students, and eager to get back to my own writing so I can complete the next book for them.

On the Road Again

2009-09-28T07:36:00.003-06:00

The school visit season is entering into full swing, and I'm trying to keep momentum going on my new novel, coordinating with teachers and librarians about what I'll be doing at their schools, figuring out how to do laundry efficiently on the road, and, most of all, trying to work out where I'm going.

I always ask for directions to the school, and I've gotten quite a collection of interesting responses over the years. One teacher told me to turn at the corner where the gas station used to be. When I asked her what I'd see now, since the gas station was no longer there, she gave me a street name to turn on. Unfortunately, that was the nickname used by people whose great-greats had been born in that town, not the name that was currently on the street sign.

Even more interesting was the time that I received directions a week before a school visit, only to find they led me straight into a road closure, and a detour that vaguely directed me into a woods, and never led me out of them. I had to backtrack until I found a different road that led me to an interstate that brought me into town the long way. When I asked the teacher how long the detour had been there, she said the road had been closed since the previous year, but she'd forgotten about it when she told me to come that way.

Just this week I received directions to drive on one road for 36 miles, then turn north and cross the railroad tracks. No mention of what road number or street name I'm supposed to turn on. I certainly hope that both my odometer and her measurement of 36 miles are accurate, and I actually find the right road and, ultimately, the school.

Apparently, everyone feels that where they live is so familiar to them, that anyone coming to visit must pick up on their local street nicknames or demolished landmarks by osmosis. Perhaps I don't think that way because, as a writer, I need to describe settings that readers haven't seen before in my books. Perhaps I run into problems simply because I'm geographically challenged. While I would never mistake North for South on a road (thanks to the compass in my car), I feel confident that I could certainly cross railway tracks at the wrong place without a street name (preferably the current and correct street name).

As I pack up my presentation materials and load the car to take my act on the road for the next two weeks, I'm certainly hoping that I'm able to find the nine schools, one library, and one Book Festival site where I'm supposed to speak, plus all the hotels along the way. I'm quite sure the experience will be an adventure.

Inviting Readers to Read

2009-09-09T09:54:00.003-06:00

Publishers are being urged to reach out to children of color, to children whose family differs from the conventional, to children who feel overlooked or alienated by books that are currently available. Zetta Elliott offers some excellent reasons for this need in her blog. As a writer with a Latino heritage, the question of whether more books about children in specific groups will inspire more children to read makes me examine my own reasons for writing about the characters I choose - or the characters who choose me.

I believe that young readers (including teenagers) read to get a handle on who they are. They read to see what the characters in books do in challenging circumstances, and then ask themselves whether they would do the same thing, or something different. Kids and teens who already love to read willingly read about characters like themselves and unlike themselves, making friends with the characters and then approving or disapproving of their decisions at the climax. With each critical evaluation, they are shaping the person they are growing into.

But I suspect that kids who are not willing readers may find it harder to submerge themselves in the world of a book, any book, until they find a doorway inviting them in. They want to find a friend in the book's cast of characters, and they want to measure their own feelings and judgment against that character's, but difficulties in the act of reading, and a story situation that they can't imagine themselves into, can throw up barriers - not for every reader, but for enough to make this a legitimate concern. If the book makes its world welcoming to less willing readers, perhaps they will put in the extra effort to read it, and once they discover the thrill of vicariously sharing the main character's journey, they'll be more willing to try the next book and the next - until they're stretching to read books about characters very different from themselves, and feeling comfortable and confident about evaluating those characters' decisions in terms of what they as readers would do.

To my mind, books that reflect the worlds of unwilling readers aren't the end of the publisher's and librarian's journey to create more readers - they're the beginning of the reader's journey to discover the power of a book to show them themselves. And, as a writer, my own journey takes me through the lives of many characters of varying genders, racial and religious backgrounds, sexual orientations, and family situations. My writer's journey has led me to the novel I'm working on right now, Permanent Record, in which one of my main characters is Latino, as are many of the secondary characters. We'll see how Ramón makes his way through the story arc, and what readers think of him by the end.

Writing for a Touchdown

2009-08-23T21:39:00.003-06:00

Football has had unexpected influences on my writing life. I didn't always know I cared about it. But when I lived abroad for a year, researching my English ghost story, Tournament of Time, I realized I missed the sport. Neither soccer nor rugby quite seemed to inspire me. I came home to Houston and began watching football like a lifetime fan— writing my novel after work every afternoon and evening, except for Monday Night Football. When the opening music filled my one-room apartment, I swiveled away from my typewriter and toward the screen.

When I met my husband-to-be, two things about him struck me immediately. He believed in my dream of writing for children, even though I had only published some magazine pieces for adults up to that point. And he loved football. We discovered this mutual passion on our first date—the night before the Super Bowl. Needless to say, we watched that game together.

Unfortunately, my characters refuse to play football. I knew my main character in The Perfect Shot was an athlete with a strong sense of fair play. Wonderful, I told myself - he can be a quarterback. "No," Brian replied. "I'm a point guard." I said "Nonsense - there are no point guards in football." "You're right," he told me. "I play basketball." So I had to master basketball plays and terminology in order to write that book.

Now I'm writing about another athlete in Permanent Record. Once again I assured myself that I could write about a football player. But Ramón informed me he was a shortstop, and produced photos and baseball cards of his heroes to prove that he lived and breathed baseball, not football. So, once again, I'm struggling to familiarize myself with a sport that's not one I know intimately. But someday, I assure myself, I will write about a football player, and not have to do so much research into unfamiliar territory.

So why my fascination with football? As I was writing Simon Says, about a group of teenagers at a boarding school for fine arts, I was surprised when my main character, a painter, felt compelled to paint a moment from a football game his father dragged him to:

All I want to do is paint the receiver, hanging in mid-air, his fingertips brushing the rough, pebbly texture of the ball. He knows that three defenders, each one twice his size, are about to crash into him, but he makes himself tune them out, straining to clasp that ball to his chest and bring it safely to earth with him.

Maybe that’s why I feel so drawn to football - every time I write a manuscript I love and send it out, it seems as if a whole squad of editorial readers who reject it, and critics who dislike it, are leaping up at me like those defending players. But I hold onto the manuscript - yard by yard, down the field, editor by editor until I find the right one, and then its publication is my touchdown and a letter from a reader my extra point. And none of the tackles and rejections along the way matter any more.

Shower Writing

2009-08-15T18:35:00.003-06:00

My writing retreat is drawing near the end - back to the real world with its distractions. But there's one technique I must remember when I'm struggling to make time to write: the power of standing in the shower, especially a long one while I wash my hair.

When I lead writing workshops, I often tell the attendees that, if they run into a situation where they're not sure what to write next, they should walk away from their computer or pad of paper, and do something that will get their hands dirty (weeding, or working on engines are two good activities). As soon as the imagination knows your hands are too grubby to write, it lets loose a flood of ideas on how to get past the current writing blockade. Then you trick your imagination by having a pencil handy that you don't mind getting muddy or greasy, and write down your idea before it can get away. But showers are even better.

I spend my time in the shower thinking about my characters - not about them taking showers, but about what they're doing in the upcoming chapter. I allow them to carry on conversations and take action - apparently, the notion that I can't write while my hands are covered in soap or shampoo frees up my imagination wonderfully. Whole scenes write themselves. The trick is to get out of the shower and write them down immediately. What I write doesn't have to be perfect; I just get what I've imagined down on paper. Then, after my hair is brushed out, I can keystroke it into my Mac and tweak and polish as I go.

Presto: my imagination is satisfied, my drive to move forward with my manuscript is satisfied, and since a shower a day is good for one's health (and for the comfort of everybody in one's vicinity), it's a terrific way to make good progress every day.

Making Yourself Write

2009-08-05T23:42:00.004-06:00

When I was in college, I had no trouble whatsoever making time to write. In four years I wrote four novels, had a paying newspaper job, was active with the theatre group, and graduated with three majors (my university didn't offer minors). One of those novels was even ultimately published, once I had learned a good deal more about novel writing. But the point is that I must have known how to manage my time - taking all those classes successfully and enjoying myself with the theatre crowd and doing a great deal of writing.

When I got out of college, I took part time jobs, lived cheaply, and kept on writing both fiction and journalism. After I became a full-time writer, I usually managed to produce more than one book a year, balancing the novels with shorter nonfiction books. But somewhere along the way I discovered I was having trouble getting the writing done.

First it was because I was in a terrible auto wreck, and my right wrist was seriously damaged. (I am very right-handed.) It took almost four years to find the right surgeon (who had just gotten FDA approval for a prosthetic wrist joint) to repair the damage. During those years I struggled to write, and was generously helped by writer friends who gifted me with dictation software for my Mac. That software got me through the crisis of deadlines that had to be met despite the injury. Several of my editors were more than understanding, but publishers can't wait forever, and I refused to be permanently sidelined by my wrist. Fortunately, after the surgery, my wrist is back to typing energetically, at all hours of the day or night.

But since then I've found it more and more difficult to overcome writing complications. Case in point: I am on a writer's retreat to make serious headway on my new novel. I got out of bed yesterday morning with a swollen, painful left ankle. It had been fine when I went to bed and dreamed about my characters. But sometime in the night, I (or my teddy bear) did something to it. Yesterday, I barely managed a page of usable writing, because my ankle hurt enough to make me sick to my stomach. I tried taking Advil, I tried propping it up (a pillow on the top of a cooler makes a very nice ankle support), I tried to lose myself in the book, but it just wouldn't work. I went to bed hoping the ankle pain would disappear as mysteriously as it had appeared.

But when I woke up this morning - I think you can guess what I found. That's right - I hobbled to my computer with my ankle still hurting. And I asked myself: what magic had I employed back in college to accomplish everything? I distinctly remember taking some rather serious spills off my bike (just a ten-speed, but you can still fall hard when you're pedalling full out and hit a city pothole). I'm sure I was sick, and I know I slept in and missed many a morning class. But I never missed a deadline for either a paper or a newspaper article, and I finished one novel for each year I was there. What did I do?

I honestly can't remember, but today I decided that, with that sublime confidence that only a teenager can possess, I must simply not have cared whether I was sick or injured. I had writing to do, so I did it. And today I did just that. I told my ankle to just sit there and be glad I wasn't walking on it, and I wrote. And I produced 8 good pages today. And this blog entry.

Of course, I'm going to have to hobble to bed, and I know I hope again that the pain will miraculously disappear, but even if it doesn't, I'm determined to rise and write again. That's the only way to finish a book.

And an ankle has very little to do with the writing process, after all.

Retreating to Write

2009-07-24T09:15:00.005-06:00

Sometimes, no matter how enthusiastic you are about the book you want to write, life gets in the way. Distractions from other (paying) work and stress about family crises get in the way of creativity - not to mention in the way of time to write! So this summer I decided to take some time off for a one-woman writing retreat.

I headed down to Wyoming to combine writing time with a few necessary visits to my chiropractor. The drive went well, I had all my reference materials and all my plotting notebooks, I felt inspired and excited. And when I arrived and set up in my distraction-free workspace, I discovered two things: the air conditioning was dead, and that part of Wyoming was on track for near-record-breaking temperatures. Oh - and the air conditioning repair people were booked solid due to the temperatures and the fact that most people had neglected their air conditioning repairs until the summer heat got to be a really big problem.

The idea of my writing retreat had been to get away from distractions. To my surprise, heat can be as much of a distraction as other work and stress. When you feel as if you're melting away at 85 degrees in your office (yes, I got a room thermometer to confirm just how hot it was), it's hard to concentrate on the fates of your characters. Fortunately my husband (who'd been the cause of some of the stress, and work, and other previous distractions) pulled some strings from afar and arranged for an air conditioning repairman to come work some magic later today to give me some cool air. Ah, if only I could wave my wand, say Reparo! and do the job myself. But clearly, not attending Hogwarts has left me at a disadvantage here. So I shall just keep my fingers crossed and hope that the repairman has more practice with Reparo, and that the house will cool down by evening.

Oh, and I should add that I'd intended for my book to take place in the fall, but I'm beginning to think that setting it in the spring, with the threat of summer heat coming on, will be a more intense time of year. After all, you can light fires, pile on extra clothes, pad yourself with newspapers, and find shelter to stay warm in winter. There's a limit to how many clothes you can take off in the heat, and you'll still feel wilted and sweaty and cranky. See? My writing retreat has yielded results already.

Missing ALA - particularly the YALSA BBYA discussion

2009-07-12T12:23:00.005-06:00

Many friends and colleagues are in Chicago for the ALA Annual Conference this weekend. I'm stuck at home this year, consoling myself with progress on my new novel and happy anticipation of attending the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in a couple of days.

But I'm also worrying about the intense discussions going on about whether YALSA will disband the Best Books for Young Adults list and create, instead, a popular reader's choice list selected from online votes instead of face-to-face discussion. I know that lists come and go, and are often reincarnated under new names - one of my books was named an ALA Recommended Book for Reluctant Young Adult readers shortly before that list was abandoned, to be replaced by the newer Quick Picks list.

Quick Picks is definitely pithier as a title, but both lists were connected by the fact that librarians actually read a collection of books and debated their virtues before compiling the list. The situation is different when a reader's choice list is decided by popularity instead of quality, and even less rigorous when any member can simply post virtual comments from their computer work station.

I'm glad to see reviewers and bloggers posting their opinions (nearly all opposing the plan to disband the BBYA list), but I'm dismayed that the YALSA Executive Committee would suggest eliminating the BBYA Committee without asking the membership its opinion. This is a change that would have a powerful impact on the way librarians choose which books they can buy for their collections within their budgetary constraints. Inclusion in the BBYA list can boost exposure for less well-publicized books and can lead to those titles appearing on state lists and reaching a much larger readership.

I hope librarians and authors are speaking out against this plan, loudly and clearly, to every YALSA board member they encounter in Chicago. Popularity is nice, but having a list where quality counts seems as if it would be a hands-down winner in terms of usefulness. Right now I wish I were in Chicago so I could speak out against this plan, and speak up for the important principles of transparency in committee decisions and quality in list selection.

Father's Day Stories

2009-06-21T09:30:00.005-06:00

As a small child I tended to make a lot of noise early in the morning. My mother was a night person who patiently put up with my early morning energy during the week while Dad went to work, but on weekends he took charge of me. A morning person, he'd whisk me outside where I could shout and run around, letting my mother sleep in.

But Dad did more than exercise my body to burn off excess energy on those weekend mornings. He exercised my imagination. We lived in San Francisco, and he would take me for walks along Land's End, where we were more likely to run into a surprised fox than another person. As we walked through the foggy morning, with the surf crashing against the rocks below us, Dad would tell me stories.

Dad had come to America from El Salvador as a teenager. He learned his new language well enough to write and publish poetry in English, became a naturalized citizen, and would ultimately become Vice President Richard E. Bonilla at the United Nations. On those early mornings in San Francisco, however, he opened my mind to the idea that stories weren't just something published in books. They came from someone's imagination. Dad loved history, so he told me lots of stories from history. He gave the historical characters dialogue and personalities from his imagination, and brought them to life for my delight. I can still see him acting out the story of a nobleman laying his cloak over a mud puddle for Queen Elizabeth - at the same time explaining that it might have been Sir Walter Raleigh or it might not, but what mattered was the story.

I loved listening to my father's stories so much that I wanted to make up stories that were as good as his. So while he went to work during the week, I struggled to make up stories that I could tell him during our next morning walk. I didn't know very much history at the time, so my efforts were more contemporary. But I discovered that making up stories was even more fun than listening to them. And I began to look at the shelves and shelves of books in the library, and think: someone made that story up, someone like Dad and like me. And if they could do it...

It's often said that the squeaky wheel gets the oil. Well, I was the noisy, energetic child who got the story - and with it, the idea that I could become a writer, and one day see my stories on those library shelves. Thanks, Dad. Even though I've grown into a night person, like my mother, and no longer get up early in the morning, bubbling over with high-volume energy, I've also grown into a writer who's up late at night working on her new story.

New Ways to Visit Readers on the Internet

2009-06-15T12:44:00.007-06:00

A few months ago, the internet was merely a way for me to introduce readers to my books on my website, respond to emails from readers and librarians and teachers, and, I'll admit it, a great source of hidden object games for my Mac. But the net has suddenly expanded into a more powerful networking tool than I had anticipated, through Facebook and this blog, and also to a new way of doing more affordable school visits.

With budgets being cut across the nation (schools seem to be on the lower end of government financial expenditure), a lot of authors I know have faced school visit cancellations and a decrease in the number of new invitations. To my delight, I've received more invitations to speak to schools in the 2009-2010 school year than ever, and most of them are thanks to the internet.

The honorarium is usually the least of the cost of bringing an author to a school, unless you're lucky enough to have one living down the block. The real expense comes from the travel costs. But having a virtual author visit eliminates travel expenses completely. I've always offered typed chats with a class in a chat room, but that wasn't as personal as seeing the author face-to-face through a camera lens. I'd done some video chats in the past, but they usually involved traveling to a school that had a distance learning lab so their equipment could be used to transmit my talk to other schools. It was a good start, but it was still expensive, because the other schools had to pay for the use of that equipment as well as the author honorarium. But current software takes expensive equipment out of the equation.

Using my Mac iChat (something included on every Apple computer) and the built-in camera, I can talk to students in a classroom with no extra expenses. Even if the school uses PCs instead of Macs, either a teacher has a MacBook or the school has a PC with an AIM network. Plug the school's computer into a large screen, and a group of kids can see me easily. Timing become more flexible, as we can have either a single class visit at a single affordable price, or schedule several class chats during a day for a full day's honorarium, something that can't be done as easily if the author has traveled several hundred miles to take time out of her writing schedule to speak to students.

More and more friends are starting to do these virtual school visits. Okay, I miss the hugs from the kindergarten students, and I miss the cookies that kind-hearted teachers bake to share with me, and the other real moments of a school visit, but I don't miss the hours of driving and I'm sure the school administrators don't miss writing the check for the travel expenses. We both miss autographing, but I send signed bookplates for students after our virtual visit, so they have a little something solid to remember the experience. Who knew the internet could put an author from Montana into a school in Indiana so easily, affordably, and instantaneously?

School Mystery Success

2009-06-04T13:59:00.002-06:00

As the school year draws to a close, I'd like to share a unique school visit experience. A writing friend, Kiri Jorgensen, who teaches gifted and talented students at the Monforton School (a relatively small K-8 school) approached me with a plan for the whole school to write a mystery.

I visited the school in the beginning of the year, and spent two days talking to all the grades about writing in general and writing mysteries in particular. In preparation, Kiri and I met to plan out some basic parameters for the school's mystery. Then she met with the students to brainstorm ideas. She settled on their idea that a sixth-grade class would take a camping trip for a week to Yellowstone Park, and one by one kids' Palm Pilots would disappear. Suspicion would fall on the main character, Phil, who felt a responsibility to his father to "keep the family name in good shape," and was therefore desperate to prove he wasn't the thief.

Kiri wrote the first chapter, to get the kids started, and we tweaked it together. When I visited the school, I worked with the students to brainstorm ways Phil could try to solve the mystery, obstacles that would make it hard for him, ways that clues could be hidden, and methods to create atmosphere and build tension. Following my visit, Kiri met with one grade each month, from third grade to eighth grade, to plot one chapter in the mystery. Then she worked with one gifted and talented student from that grade to write the chapter itself. The children in kindergarten, first and second grades illustrated the chapters.

Each chapter was posted online at The Monforton Mystery. I would read it and then post comments on a special school blog, suggesting ways that the students in the next month's grade might build on the plot development in that chapter. The project culminated in a contest: any student could write his or her own ending to the mystery. And write they did - even several second graders submitted contest entries! Kiri and I read the chapters, and both agreed on the winner, though on the spur of the moment we decided to also award an Honorable Mention for another chapter that we both thought came very close.

Last week I returned for an school-wide assembly where the students who had written each chapter were recognized. Then every student who had submitted a contest entry was awarded a journal and movie passes, and I gave the Honorable Mention writer an autographed copy of my mystery, Ghost Soldier. I read the winning chapter aloud to the student body, who hung on every twist and turn of Phil's trap to catch the thief, and loved the ending. The winning writer also received Ghost Soldier, and a cash prize.

What a wonderful school-wide project! I was delighted to be a part of it, and to give the students the satisfaction of not just reading mysteries, and discovering how mysteries were crafted, but also the joy of writing and owning their own mystery book that is now published online, and also in print for them to check out in their school library. Kudos to Kiri Jorgensen for coming up with this terrific idea, and for giving her students such a wonderful experience. This is something it would be exciting for other schools to try, and I hope they do.

Who's Eligible to Write What?

2009-05-20T10:55:00.003-06:00

Roger Sutton has an excellent, thought-provoking post at Read Roger that ends with his commenting that:

"But let me just add: after a year in which two of the biggest buzzed books, Kingdom on the Waves and Chains, were by white people writing in the voice of African Americans, let me just say that EA is NUTS to think white writers are excluded from publishing about blacks by virtue of their exclusion from the CSK."

Many of the comments argue that it is unreasonable for white writers to greedily want recognition for writing in the voice of African Americans, prompting me to comment the following (I include it here since my blog is young, and the people who might be just finding me might not see my comment at Roger's blog):

"The whole concept of who is eligible to write about what has always troubled me. I am a woman, yet I write mostly books about boys. Should I be ineligible to do so because of my gender? Somehow the boys I write for don't seem to object.

"I wrote a book set in El Salvador, A Bear for Miguel. My editor loved it, but she said she knew she was going to have trouble getting it through acquisitions because of authenticity. How could I as a white American (she had met me in person), be expected to be able to write about El Salvador? I mentioned that my father had come to America from El Salvador. She relaxed visibly and assured me that, in that case, it would be no problem. Yet I have never been to El Salvador myself. Did my father's experience make my book more authentic?

"I believe that an important part of the writer's job is to put herself (or himself) into another person's or character's soul. If we do our job well, it should not be an issue of how authentic we are in terms of sharing the same ethnic heritage, gender, or religion. The sole issue should be how compelling and believable that character is, and whether the reader accepts that character as being truthful in his or her thinking and behavior.

"I am finishing work on a nonfiction book about a Jewish man on trial for murder in 1913 Georgia, An Unspeakable Crime. I am not Jewish, I am not a man, and I've only been to Georgia twice, but I do not think this makes me unfit for the job of writing this book, nor should it make the book ineligible for attention from Jewish, male or Georgia readers. Oh, wait - my mother was born in Georgia. Perhaps An Unspeakable Crime will be considered authentic thanks to her."

Orwell was just off by a few years...

2009-05-16T13:26:00.003-06:00

Yesterday evening I heard a noise at our door. When my husband checked it out, he found a Census Bureau volunteer who seemed a bit flustered to be noticed. She explained she was just "shooting our door for GPS" in preparation for the next census.

With our medical records going online, our homes going into the GPS system, and our cell phones tracking our movements, it seems we're getting closer every day to the world that Orwell envisioned.

If you haven't yet discovered it, I'd recommend you read Cory Doctorow's Little Brother. It's a riveting tale of government out of control and a sharp teenager who decides to tackle the system. And because Doctorow believes in the free distribution of information (and also that ebooks sell print books), he offers free downloads of his book here. Check it out.

And be on the outlook for Census Bureau people armed with GPS.

The Beginning

2009-05-14T08:56:00.000-06:00

I'm finally getting started at blogging, thanks to being nudged by my wonderful new editor at Carolrhoda. We'll see where this leads!

While I'm thinking of insightful things to write here, and getting deeper into my YA novel in progress, Permanent Record, I'll just send you over to my website to get to know me better: www.elainemariealphin.com.