Seasonal Favorites

So as we creep closer and closer to the best holiday of the whole entire year all I can think about is scary books. What I'm noticing though is it's not so much that I want to read any scary book it's more than I want to go back and read old favorites. For me that means Stephen King in general and It in specific. It isn't really King's best novel (for my money that's either The Stand, The Dead Zone or Misery) but it's the one that freaks me out the most and the one I seem to want to go back to every year around this time.

That made me start thinking about other seasonal books. Old favorites we go back to at some particular time of the year. For me it's It around Halloween and A Christmas Carol around Christmas. (original, I know) Now there are the obvious connections to the seasons in these books, but it also occurs to me that these seasonal favorites are generally books we read first as kids. As great as Christmas and Halloween are now, we don't really approach them with the awe we did as a kid. We don't believe in them as much. I think perpetually returning to these books and movies is a way to recapture a bit of what these holidays felt like when we were younger.

So I'm curious, do you guys have any seasonal favorites? Halloween books? Christmas books? Summertime books? What puts you all in the spirit?

Changing of the guard - swift or slow?

This morning I was thinking about how hard it is to change the powers that be – both in real life and in books. In books, overthrow/change has to be plausible, effective, and within the realm of possibility for the main characters.


History lends a hand in creating believable scenarios. A couple that immediately come to my mind are:

King Henry the VIII – without his powerful position, and his desire for a male heir (a goal of a living male heir to the throne was never attained), the Church of England would not have been started. Henry was willing to buck the Pope, get excommunicated, and start his own religion – all so he could divorce and remarry at will, in his quest for a male heir.

Hitler – I don’t want to dwell on this one. But, it must be noted that his rocketing rise to power and the horrific influence he had is worth studying – not only in the pursuit of writing a similar character, but in creating a credible timeline for change.

So – my question for y’all is… Do you pay attention to the time element in your sci-fi/dystopian worlds? Does it bother you if something happens in light speed when logically /historically it’s taken much longer?

What do you think?

What Story Do You Want?

One question that I keep getting a lot is: What book do you wish you had when you were a kid?

I grew up with some great classics: I had ENDER'S GAME and Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quartet, and CS Lewis, and Patricia Wrede, and so many more.

But there's no denying that there are a few books I wish I had back then.

• Harry Potter. I was in college when I started reading (the third book had just come out, and so I read all three at once, then started the wait for Book 4). And while it was so much fun reading those book--and I love how I got to anticipate them and go to the midnight buyings, etc.--I do wish that I could have had the magic of those worlds as a kid.
• ELLA ENCHANTED by Gail Carson Levine. That book is brilliant--but what I love the most is the end, and how Ella has to make a hard decision...and does. That's a book I could have used when I was younger.
• 13 LITTLE BLUE ENVELOPES by Maureen Johnson. Ginny, the main character, is scared--but she goes out on an adventure anyway. She did the things I wanted to do when I was younger, but was always afraid to do. I wish I could have read about how she did them first.
• RAMPANT by Diana Peterfreund. Young me would have loved the concept of killer unicorns, but I think a lot of the underlying message of the books would have been just as important to young me, whether I knew it or not.

What about you? What are some books that you wished you had when you were younger?

Plotter vs. Pantser

A couple of weekends ago, I presented at a SCBWI regional conference. During an authors' roundtable, the topic of plotters vs. pantsers came up. That is, do you outline your novel or write it by the seat of your pants? I forget how many raised their hands for each, but the bottom line, we decided, was that you really do the same amount of work either way.  Plotters do the majority of work up front; pantsers do it in the revision process.

I'm decidedly a plotter when it comes to writing novels. (I do pants short stories, though.) However, as I was listening to how some other authors approached the business of getting published, I realized I had been a complete pantser in that regard. One particular author (cough, Beth, cough) talked about her very methodical approach to querying. She had an actual plan and goals!

I, on the other hand, have to admit I sold Memento Nora by the seat of my pants. After I'd written (and workshopped) it, I attended the Mid-Atlantic SCBWI regional conference and then subbed MN to three of the four editors who'd been on a panel. My current editor was one of those panelists. Don't get me wrong. I love working with her and the good folks of Marshall Cavendish. I just mean that I totally lucked out!  But then I had to do some work (play catch-up) in regards to getting an agent and learning about the business.

So moral of the story is that whether you're a plotter or pantser--in writing or business--you still got to do the same amount of work, just at different stages of the process.

Are you a plotter or a pantser? In which areas?

Is Your Talk Better Than Your Walk?

You may have seen this quote around lately, but in case not, this is from This American Life's Ira Glass and it just kills me, it's so perfect.  I don't think I've ever read anything that more succinctly states the problem for people just starting out in the arts.

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

Sure, what he's saying about perseverance is fairly common but what really grabs me is the stuff about how your taste, your ability to discern good work from bad, develops much sooner than your ability to create your own work. Essentially, we can all talk the talk way before we can walk the walk and that is the source of a lot of people's frustration. You're discerning enough to know your work isn't good enough before you have the ability to do anything about it. So all the work we do, all the writing and re-writing, is about practicing so much that we eventually close that gap and, as Glass says, make your work "as good as your ambitions."

With just one book to my credit, I definitely think of myself as some one just starting out and I know for me, I know my work isn't as good as my ambitions yet. What Glass is talking about is without a doubt my biggest frustration.  I guess it's nice to hear someone put it so succinctly and show that it's perfectly natural and a state we all go through.

What about you all? Is your talk better than your walk? Does it make you as nuts as it does me?

UFOs - what do you think?

Apparently August was a busy month for UFO sightings.

http://www.space.com/12995-ufo-sightings-reports-spike-august-summer.html

And - there have been recent discussions on the internet about whether aliens would be friendly or just come to enslave and/or eat us all. (I bet we taste like chicken.)

Of course, there have been numerous books & films made on both sides of the fence... some of my favs are:

The Brother from Another Planet

It Came from Outer Space

ET: The Extra Terrestrial

And, my personal favorite,
Men in Black

I have to admit, I did not personally spot any UFOs in my star-gazing this past August. But, what about you? Ever seen a UFO? Or ever wanted to see one?

Whatcha Reading?

Er.... it's 2pm here, and it's my day to post. Ooops. My only excuse: I just got back to the East Coast yesterday, and let's pretend everything is three hours earlier, ok? :)

Let's also pretend that I didn't spend all morning with my nose in a book so good that I forgot to do my online duties... (The book, btw, is FRACTURE by Megan Miranda and will be out this upcoming January!)

I've been reading a slew of post-apoc and spec fic lately, actually:

• THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER by Michelle Hodkin: A creepy read perfect for Halloween. Read it now and get in the mood of October! It's about a girl who is the sole survivor of a horrible accident that killed her friends...but as time goes on, you learn it wasn't exactly an accident...and the girl may be more involved in it than even she knew...
• SHATTER ME by Taraheh Mafi: Out soon, this novel is about a girl with the power to kill those she touches, a la Rogue from X-Men. It has a very unique writing style, incorporating the cross-outs that the title has on the cover.
• FEVER by Lauren deStefano: The sequel to WITHER, I begged, borrowed, stole this novel. Just started it, but I can tell that it's going to be just as awesome, if not moreso, than the first book, about a world where people die much too young and a girl who's been kidnapped in order to procreate.

So: what have you been reading?