A book takes flight

People are always amazed at what treasures they find in their attics or, in this case, the hay lofts of their horse barns. Most rarely expect to have spirits emerge from old photographs, unless they're S. T. Lile, author of the new young adult novel THE TAIL GUNNER. 

From a box of dusty World War II photographs left behind by her dad came the story of Bish, a bomber boy on a final mission. Join Lile on Sunday, March 1 at the Museum of Flight anytime between 2-5pm for the official launch of THE TAIL GUNNER. There will be a plane-spotting challenge in the World War II gallery, door prizes, a crazy pants contest (read the book to find out why), and even authentic wartime taste treats. 

Please RSVP at http://stephanielile.com so there will be enough SPAM (and so the museum will know how many people to expect)!

Jennifer Longo's debut--cupcakes included!

Please join Jennifer Longo for books and cupcakes and signing of books and more cupcakes and champagne and general merriment as we celebrate the publication of Jen's debut novel, Six Feel Over It! All-ages, some reading and prizes, and did we mention...CUPCAKES! A bunch of 11-year-olds will be playing music,. You do NOT want to miss this! 

Hope to see you there!

Where: Island Books, Mercer Island

When: Sunday, September 14 at 3pm

YA novel class at Hugo House

Want to really invest in writing or completing that YA manuscript idea that has been knocking around in your brain? SCBWI member and YA novelist Stephanie Kuehnert is teaching a year-long YA novel writing class at the Hugo House in Seattle.

It starts next Wednesday, September 17 and runs until the end of May, providing an intensive path toward finishing a publishable draft of a manuscript. The first third will focus on generative, craft activities designed to get your novel moving. The rest of the class will be comprised of workshops and small group activities to help you meet your goals. It will conclude with a weekend intensive on publishing including a visit from a kidlit agent.

There are still a couple of seats remaining!

You can find out more about Stephanie and the class and register by clicking here.

Stephanie is the author of the novels I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone and Ballads of Suburbia.

The whole pointe

Debut YA author Paddy Eger reads from 84 Ribbons, the coming-of-age story told through a teen's pursuit of a professional ballet career.


Eger will appear at Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park, on Saturday, March 15 at 6:30pm.

Martha Brockenbrough's new book deal!

Congratulations are in order!

The ever-industrious Martha Brockenbrough shared the announcement today that her new YA novel, The Game of Love and Death, has been bought by Arthur A. Levine Books!

The story features two teens from different rungs of 1920s Seattle society, who are brought together by forces beyond their control. There's jazz, there's heartbreak, and there's a city we all recognize in its infancy. Publication is slated for 2015.

What wonderful news to start the day!

Stacey R. Campbell's YA debut out today

Anacortes author Stacey R. Campbell's debut YA novel, Hush (Green Darner Press, a new imprint of Gemelli Press), releases today as an e-book, and the paperback will follow in mid-January. Please see her website for more details and information about Stacey, as well as her Facebook fan page.

The first in a planned series of Lakeview books,
Hush begins the story of a quest to find a missing heir to one of Europe's thrones, from the exclusive grounds of a boarding school to the United Kingdom. And it begins the story of Blakely and Max, and how their paths cross in the search for the truth.




Congratulations, Stacey! 

Help the Fat Kid Rule the World!

There will be a screening of Fat Kid Rules the World (filmed in Seattle and based on the amazing Printz Honor winning YA novel by K.L. Going) on August 28th at SIFF Cinema Uptown...

BUT, only if they can sell more tickets to the screening. They currently need 11 more to make it happen. So grab a fellow YA lover and make a night of it!

Details and tickets can be found here. 

See the trailer:

Wrecked!

We love a book event for a good cause! Anna Davies is in Seattle doing readings for her YA novel Wrecked! 

First event:

Secret Garden Books in Ballard, 7pm on Friday, June 8th. 10% of book sale proceeds from this event will go to Camp Goodtimes West, a camp for children with cancer and their siblings. 

Second event:

Liberty Bay Books in Poulsbo, 4pm on Saturday, June 9th.

Anna is also an editor at Cosmopolitan magazine and ghostwrote a few Gossip Girl novels and Vampire Diaries books and (off-the-record!) is happy to discuss all of these at the signing. 

Tweet annakdavies with questions—and there will be cupcakes at the events! 

Location: Secret Garden Books, 2214 NW Market St, Seattle, WA

secretgardenbooks.com

Time: 7pm, Friday, June 8th

Location: Liberty Bay Books, 18881 Front St NE

libertybaybooks.com

Time: 4pm, Saturday, June 9th

Today's YA Scene

Not sure how we missed this, but some time ago Publisher's Weekly (PW) had a great roundup of some new and interesting YA publishers and imprints:

"Looking beyond the houses responsible for many of the bold-faced headliners at the top of bestseller lists, one finds an enthusiastic group of publishers, some newcomers to YA. . . . Here's a look at some of these publishers' offerings and observations."

If you write for young adults, you'll want to read the full article, Today's YA Scene: New Players, Innovative Directions, Fresh Voices, and perhaps even add a few of them to your next submission list!

Second Annual YA Novel Discovery Competition

Get in Front of Top YA Editors and Agents with ONLY the First 250 Words of Your YA Novel!

Have a young adult novel—or a YA novel idea—tucked away for a rainy day? Are you putting off pitching your idea simply because you’re not sure how to pitch an agent? No problem! All you have to do is submit the first 250 words of your novel and you can win both exposure to editors, and a reading of your manuscript from one of New York ’s TOP literary agents Regina Brooks.

Regina Brooks is the founder of Serendipity Literary Agency and the author of Writing Great Books for Young Adults. Brooks has been instrumental at establishing and building the careers of many YA writers, including three-time National Book Award Honoree and Michael Printz Honoree Marilyn Nelson, as well as Sundee Frazier—a Coretta Scott King Award winner, an Oprah Book Pick and an Al Roker book club selection. As an agent, she is known for her ability to turn raw talent into successful authors.

ADDITIONALLY: The top 20 submissions will all be read by a panel of five judges comprised of top YA editors at Random House, Scholastic, Candlewick, Harlequin, Sourcebooks and Penguin. The first 100 will receive free autographed copies of Writing Great Books for Young Adults by Regina Brooks. Of the 20, they will pick the top five submissions and provide each author with commentary. These five winners will also receive a free ONE YEAR subscription to The Writer magazine. ONE Grand Prize Winner will win a full manuscript reading and editorial consultation from Regina Brooks and free 10-week writing course courtesy of the Gotham Writer’s Workshop.

Please submit all entries via the contest website. One entry per person; anyone age 13+ can apply. Open to the U.S. & Canada (void where prohibited). Entries for the YA Novel Discovery Contest will be accepted from 12:01 a.m. (ET) November 1 until 11:59 p.m. (ET), November 30.

NOVEMBER is NaNoWriMo, and in honor of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo.org)—an international event where aspiring novelists are encouraged to write an entire novel in 30 days—this contest is meant to encourage the aspiring YA author to get started on that novel by offering an incentive for completing the first 250 words.

So apply now here!

GREAT PRIZES: The Grand Prize Winner will have the opportunity to submit an entire manuscript to YA literary agent Regina Brooks AND receive a free, 10-week writing course, courtesy of Gotham Writers' Workshop.

The Top Five Entrants (including the Grand Prize winner) will receive a 15-minute, one-on-one pitch session with Regina Brooks, one of New York ’s premier literary agents for young adult books. They will also receive commentary on their submissions by editors at HarperCollins, Penguin, Harlequin, Random House, and Sourcebooks. In addition, they will receive a year’s subscription to The Writer magazine!

The Top 20 Entrants will receive autographed copies of Writing Great Books for Young Adults by Regina Brooks.

JUDGING: YA literary agent Regina Brooks and her team , will read all of the entries and determine the top 20 submissions. These submissions will then be read by Nancy Mercado, Executive Editor at Roaring Brook Press (Macmillan); Nicole Raymond, Editor at Candlewick; Cheryl Klein, Senior Editor at Arthur Levine Books (Scholastic); Leila Sales, Editor Viking (Penguin) Evette Porter, Editor at Harlequin and Leah Hultenschmidt, Executive Editor at Sourcebooks. These judges will whittle the top 20 down to five, and each of the five winners will be provided commentary on their submissions

Writing "Edgy" Fiction

Thanks to Liz Mills, for sending this link to Cynthia Leitich Smith's blog. Cynthia interviews Ricki Thompson, author of CITY OF CANNIBALS, who gives her thoughts and process on writing "edgy" fiction.

As an artist, I have a responsibility to speak the truth. And the truth is, teenagers live in an “edgy” place. What could be edgier than attempting to balance on the tenuous cusp of adulthood? When teens aren’t engaging in “edgy” behavior, they’re likely thinking, fantasizing, or reading about it. How can I write for and about teens if I don’t write “edgy?”

To read more from this author, check out Cynthia Leitich Smith's blog.

LA Times catching on to YA literature

This article won't surprise any of us, but it's still nice to see:

It used to be that the only adults who read young adult literature were those who had a vested interest -- teachers or librarians or parents who either needed or wanted to keep an eye on developing readers' tastes.

But increasingly, adults are reading YA books with no ulterior motives. Attracted by well-written, fast-paced and engaging stories that span the gamut of genres and subjects, such readers have mainstreamed a niche long derided as just for kids.

Thanks to huge crossover hits like Stephenie Meyer's bloodsucking "Twilight" saga, Suzanne Collins' fight-to-the-death "The Hunger Games" trilogy, Rick Riordan's "The Lightning Thief" and Markus Zusak's Nazi-era "The Book Thief," YA is one of the few bright spots in an otherwise bleak publishing market. Where adult hardcover sales were down 17.8% for the first half of 2009 versus the same period in 2008, children's/young adult hardcovers were up 30.7%.

Read the rest.

Pacific Coast Children's Writers Workshop

Take part in a team-taught seminar for writers of character-driven MG and YA novels at the eighth annual Pacific Coast Children's Writers Workshop.

It'll be held Aug 20-22 at the Pajaro Dunes private beachfront facilities near Santa Cruz, CA. There are spots for 30 savvy and/or published writers, "active observers," and teen readers and writers.

Faculty includes Kate Harrison, a senior editor at Dial Books/Penguin; Ted Malawer, an agent at Upstart Crow Literary; and author-consultant Laura Backes, publisher of Children's Book Insider.

The theme is "A Novelist's Toolkit: Architecture, Archetypes, and Arcs."

There are open critique clinics, master classes and interactive pre-workshop assignments. For the most critique options and lowest fees, apply by April 10 or asap. Limited enrollment may be open through July.

For more info, or to apply to work in the teen program, contact Director Nancy Sondel through the Children's Writers Workshop site.

Tips on honing your YA voice

Alan Rinzler's blog has some tips from agents for aspiring YA writers:

Wanna write a scorcher for the booming YA market? OK, here’s the secret: The first thing you need to do is create an authentic, quirky, true-to-life voice. The story and characterizations in Young Adult fiction are crucial too, of course, but the most important element is that distinctive narrative personality.

The strongest and most powerful voice is a first person “I” narrator that draws the reader right inside a young character’s head. Third-person can also work.

Always go for an honest voice that captures how teens really think and talk to each other. Never talk down. Never be phony or try to sound cool. That’s the bottom-line advice from three very active literary agents in the genre. Scroll down for more from our interview.

Read the tips from agents.

Note: there is a sort of confusion conflation of young adult and middle grade. So ignore that part and the part that talks about the length of these books. :-)

Ripped from the headlines

Wouldn't this make a funny plot for a novel? From the New York Times:

A Facebook Movement, Against Mom and Dad
By SUSAN DOMINUS

They feel her pain. At the Spence School and Greenwich High and Fullerton Union High and Nyack High and Narragansett High, teenagers and near-teenagers, 806 as of Friday morning, are waving a virtual flag for Tess Chapin, a 15-year-old from Sunnyside, Queens, who has been grounded for five weeks. By the time you are reading this, Tess’s Facebook group — “1000 to get tess ungrounded” — may well have reached its stated membership goal.

This is teenage rebellion, electronic style — peaceful, organized and, apparently, contagious.

So basically, Tess explains on her group page, she made an honest late-night mistake. Her parents flipped, and they grounded her for five weeks — “thats my childhood right there,” she wrote. “please join so I can convice them to unground me. please please please.”

On Monday, the official start of what Tess calls her “groundation,” she circulated a petition during sixth period and after school at Millennium High School in Lower Manhattan, where she is a sophomore. At a friend’s suggestion, once she got home, Tess basically put the petition online by starting the Facebook group, which she categorized under Organizations: Advocacy. The group promptly took off, proving that no adolescent experience, in the age of social networking, is too small to start a movement.

Read the rest.

The three-act, eight-sequence structure

If you're struggling with the structure of your novel, hop on over to the blog of Alexandra Sokoloff, a novelist and screenwriter who's broken down structure into manageable bits.

Here's the top of a post on how you can use index cards to tame your work in progress:

But the real secret of film writing and filmmaking, that we are going to steal for our novel writing, is that most movies are a Three-Act, Eight-Sequence structure. Yes, most movies can be broken up into 8 discrete 12-15-minute sequences, each of which has a beginning, middle and end.

I swear.

The eight-sequence structure evolved from the early days of film when movies were divided into reels (physical film reels), each holding about ten minutes of film (movies were also shorter, proportionately!). The projectionist had to manually change each reel as it finished. Early screenwriters incorporated this rhythm into their writing, developing sequences that lasted exactly the length of a reel, and modern films still follow that same storytelling rhythm.

And the eight-sequence structure actually translates beautifully to novel structuring, although you might end up with a few more sequences in the end. So I want to get you familiar with the eight-sequence structure in film first, and we’ll go on to talk about the application to novels.

And here's the rest.

Amazon and Penguin's Breakthrough Novel Award adds YA category!

The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for 2010 will add a separate category for young-adult fiction. The winner will receive a publishing contract with Penguin, which includes a $15,000 advance. From Amazon:

If you're an author with an unpublished or previously self-published novel waiting to be discovered, visit CreateSpace to learn more about the next Breakthrough Novel Award and sign up for regular updates on the contest. Open submissions for manuscripts will begin on January 25, 2010 through February 7, 2010.

See the official contest rules for more information on how to enter.

In the meantime, be sure to stay tuned to this page for more updates from the contest team and join in discussions with new and returning writers in our author forum below.

Good luck, and be sure to let us know if you win!

YA writers: you have to read this

Here's an excerpt from the TIME magazine book critic's view on adult novels:

There was a time when difficult literature was exciting. T.S. Eliot once famously read to a whole football stadium full of fans. And it's still exciting—when Eliot does it. But in contemporary writers it has just become a drag. Which is probably why millions of adults are cheating on the literary novel with the young-adult novel, where the unblushing embrace of storytelling is allowed, even encouraged. Sales of hardcover young-adult books are up 30.7% so far this year, through June, according to the Association of American Publishers, while adult hardcovers are down 17.8%. Nam Le's "The Boat," one of the best-reviewed books of fiction of 2008, has sold 16,000 copies in hardcover and trade paperback, according to Nielsen Bookscan (which admittedly doesn't include all book retailers). In the first quarter of 2009 alone, the author of the "Twilight" series, Stephenie Meyer, sold eight million books. What are those readers looking for? You'll find critics who say they have bad taste, or that they're lazy and can't hack it in the big leagues. But that's not the case. They need something they're not getting elsewhere. Let's be honest: Why do so many adults read Suzanne Collins's young-adult novel "The Hunger Games" instead of contemporary literary fiction? Because "The Hunger Games" doesn't bore them.

And here's a larger bit of analysis on the importance of plot/story in the novel. It's not totally new--Michael Chabon was on his horse about this a few years back. But it's still worth a read.

Like telling yarns?

A new online publication for YA lit enthusiasts seeks submissions:

YARN, a new online literary magazine for Young Adult readers, is seeking fiction, poetry, and essays for its debut issue. Writing should be of special interest to 14-18 year old readers, but can be written by writers of any age or background. Submissions by teens are especially encouraged. YARN’s mission is to publish the highest quality creative writing for everyone who enjoys young adult lit. Published quarterly, YARN will feature short fiction and creative essays, poetry, and an author interview.

Our interactive sections will allow for comments on stories, as well as reviews of recent YA books. We distinguish ourselves from other teen lit mags by seeking to discover new teen writers, and publish them alongside established writers of the YA genre. Issue 1 will go live in Winter 2010, but a little taste of our site is currently available at www.yareview.net (where you can also find our submission guidelines).

How Scott Westerfeld imagined Leviathan

Here's a brief excerpt of his bit on John Scalzi's blog:

Leviathan is often described as a steampunk series, and fair enough (walking tanks!). But it hews closer to alternate history than most steampunk, with the son of the Archduke Ferdinand a character, and the timeline for the early war matching our own history closely. But in a way, the most “alternate” thing about it for me was simply writing an illustrated novel.

For one thing, I had to become an art director. (To maintain creative control, I agreed to pay Keith with my own money rather than the publisher’s. This is not the usual way with an illustrated book.) This new role meant knowing all sorts of details that a prose novelist could ignore. Sure, before writing this series, I would often claim to have imagined every scene down to the last detail. But that was all lies! Turns out, I didn’t really know what kind of wallpaper was in this room, or what sort of boots that character had on at that moment.

Read the whole thing.