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Laurie Ann Thompson

Laurie Ann Thompson

Some recent reads: great narrative nonfiction

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Most of my recent read­ing has been cre­ative or nar­ra­tive non­fic­tion.  Before the hol­i­days, I was read­ing THE BOY WHO HARNESSED THE WIND by William Kamk­wam­ba and Bryan Meal­er. I’m in awe of, and frankly a lit­tle intim­i­dat­ed by, the lev­el of detail they go into. I don’t think I’d ever be able to inter­view a sub­ject enough to get that kind of back­ground. Of course, in this case, the sub­ject is also one of the authors, so maybe that col­lab­o­ra­tion is the secret.

For Christ­mas, my hus­band got me Jean­nette Walls’ HALF-BROKE HORSES. It’s fic­tion, but was heav­i­ly researched and based on the true life sto­ry of the author’s grand­moth­er. I think a non­fic­tion writer can learn a lot by study­ing this book. The writ­ing is sim­ple, engag­ing, and beau­ti­ful all at the same time. The biggest take-away from this one, though, is voice. As a read­er, you can hear the grandmother’s voice and feel her per­son­al­i­ty while you’re read­ing, and that, in turn, allows you sneak peeks inside her char­ac­ter and go beyond what the author is telling you directly.

San­ta brought my daugh­ter Jim Murphy’s AN AMERICAN PLAGUE: THE TRUE AND TERRIFYING STORY OF THE YELLOW FEVER EPIDEMIC OF 1793. (San­ta has good taste in books, no?) This book is pure non­fic­tion, but it reads like a nov­el. The strong devel­op­ment of the set­ting feels like you are right there Philadel­phia (thank good­ness it doesn’t have scratch and sniff stick­ers!). The ten­sion is ris­ing at a fever pitch (for­give the pun) as the fever itself spreads. And the writ­ing is pure poet­ry. Check out this clos­ing para­graph of Chap­ter 2:

“On Sat­ur­day, August 25, a sav­age storm hit the city, bring­ing winds and tor­rents of rain. Water cas­cad­ed of roofs, splashed loud­ly onto the side­walks, and ran in bur­bling rivers through the streets. The howl­ing wind and pound­ing rain made a fright­ful noise, and yet through it all a sin­gle, chill­ing sound could still be heard—the awful tolling of the church bells.” [they rang the bells to announce a death]

My tech­ni­cal writer/journalist ten­den­cies would have been to say some­thing like, “x num­ber of peo­ple died that day.” Con­cise, fac­tu­al… and bor­ing! The para­graph above does so much more. Then, the clos­ing para­graph of Chap­ter 3 kicks it up anoth­er notch:

“Philadel­phia was a city in pan­ic and flight. It did not even help when May­or Clark­son act­ed on anoth­er rec­om­men­da­tion from the Col­lege of Physi­cians. The tolling bells that had so thor­ough­ly ter­ri­fied every­one were ordered to remain still. The great silence that fol­lowed did lit­tle to com­fort those left behind. It was too much like the eter­nal silence of the grave.”

Chills, right? And that’s only Chap­ter 3.
I also love the design of this book. The fac­ing page of every new chap­ter is a pho­to­graph­ic repro­duc­tion of a pri­ma­ry source rel­e­vant to the chap­ter: a news­pa­per page, let­ter, gov­ern­ment report, etc. You can gloss over them if you want with­out miss­ing any of the sto­ry, but you can also find your­self rev­el­ing in the thrill of going through the pri­ma­ry source mate­r­i­al for your­self. I love that they chose to do it this way, espe­cial­ly in a book for children.

Final­ly, I recent­ly read the pic­ture book BIBLIOBURRO by Jeanette Win­ter. This book is so sim­ple, so con­cise, but yet so beau­ti­ful­ly told. The art­work is gor­geous, but it’s also a mas­ter­piece of say­ing every­thing you want to say, and noth­ing more. What struck me as par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing about this one is that she chose to tell the whole sto­ry in present tense, even though the point in time changes part of the way into the sto­ry! And it works.

Anoth­er thing that struck me about this book is the sub­ject. It’s about some­one no one (at least in the U.S.) has ever heard of deliv­er­ing books to remote vil­lages by bur­ro. Hav­ing been told that you can’t sell a book these days about some­one no one has ever heard of, no mat­ter how inter­est­ing their sto­ry is, I’m thrilled to see that a respect­ed pub­lish­er like Beach Lane Books took a chance on this one. I hope they con­tin­ue to seek out those inter­est­ing yet under­re­port­ed sto­ries that more of us need to hear about.

What are your recent non­fic­tion favorites, and what makes them stand out for you?

The interview tightrope

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I’ve been work­ing on and off for years on a biog­ra­phy for kids. It’s get­ting real­ly close, but there’s still some­thing miss­ing. In a few weeks, though, I final­ly get to meet and inter­view the sub­ject, Emmanuel Oso­fu Yeboah, in per­son! No, I’m not fly­ing to his home in Ghana (bum­mer), but he’ll be in San Diego this month after rid­ing in the Chal­lenged Ath­lete’s Foun­da­tion Mil­lion Dol­lar Chal­lenge (a sev­en-day, 620-mile bike ride down the Cal­i­for­nia coast­line from San Fran­cis­co to San Diego). The meet­ing is sched­uled, and the plane tick­ets are pur­chased. Yay!
On one hand I’m shak­ing with excite­ment about meet­ing him sim­ply because he’s a per­son­al hero of mine. I find him to be so inter­est­ing and his sto­ry to be so inspi­ra­tional. In the five years since I first heard of him and his accom­plish­ments, I’ve not grown tired of read­ing, talk­ing, or writ­ing about him.
And I’m absolute­ly thrilled to get the chance to inter­view him in per­son. The phone and email inter­views haven’t been as pro­duc­tive as I’d like; they always feel way too for­mal. An in-per­son inter­view will hope­ful­ly allow me to final­ly fill in some of the gaps in my research. Even more impor­tant­ly, I want my read­ers to real­ly get to know him. If I have got­ten to know him myself, I’ll have a much bet­ter chance of shar­ing his char­ac­ter with my readers.
I also want to reas­sure him that I’m seri­ous about this project, and not a dream­er or a freak. (Okay, so it may be fair to say I’m both of those things, but not about this project!) An in-per­son inter­view feels like the piece that’s been miss­ing all along. I believe it will allow me to, final­ly, make this man­u­script into a book.

Pho­to used with per­mis­sion from flickr.com’s foxtongue

That’s where the nerves come in, though. What if he does think I’m too much of a dream­er or a freak? What if go all fan-girl on him and can’t think straight? What if I go too far the oth­er way and come off as too force­ful, too seri­ous? What if I can’t estab­lish the con­nec­tion I’m look­ing for or don’t get the answers I need? What­ev­er the rea­son, if I can’t take the man­u­script to the next step after this inter­view, will I ever be able to get it there? It’s feel­ing a bit like do or die time.
So, I’m feel­ing all the excite­ment and nerves of a tightrope walk­er before the big event. I want to be pre­pared to get all that I need as an inter­view­er (because I might not get anoth­er chance), but I don’t want to get so focused that I miss the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make a human con­nec­tion with an amaz­ing individual.
Any tips on strik­ing the right balance?

Writing to Change the World

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Recent­ly, Vic­ki Cobb post­ed on the I.N.K. (Inter­est­ing Non­fic­tion for Kids) blog about writ­ing to change the world. I’ve been pon­der­ing this post for days. On one hand I think all authors, espe­cial­ly those of us who right non­fic­tion for kids, are try­ing to change the world to some degree (maybe more than Vic­ki alludes, even). Yet that seems like such a lofty, overblown, and, dare I say pre­ten­tious?, goal–one that many of us would hes­i­tate to say out loud (thank you, Vic­ki!). After all, as begin­ning writ­ers we are told over and over again, “Don’t teach!” Of course, non­fic­tion by its very nature must teach. So I’ve strug­gled with bal­anc­ing my desire to teach, inspire, empow­er and yes, influ­ence young read­ers with the need to remain impar­tial and sim­ply tell the sto­ry. Not enough emo­tion and the writ­ing is dry and bor­ing. Too much pas­sion and it comes off as overzeal­ous and preachy. Strik­ing a healthy bal­ance is where the work, and the mag­ic, lies.
Today I attend­ed a writ­ing inten­sive offered by Car­men T. Bernier-Grand. One of the exer­cis­es she had us do was sim­ply to make a list of the rea­sons we we write. Here is what I wrote:
Why do I write? I write:

  • to empow­er children
  • to give kids a voice, espe­cial­ly those who haven’t yet felt heard
  • to teach
  • to help kids dis­cov­er their authen­tic selves
  • to help them hon­or and respect those authen­tic selves
  • to share what is impor­tant to me with future generations
  • to make the world a bet­ter place going forward

In short, I do write to change the world, one read­er at the time. I guess I’ll just try to keep it a secret from the kids.

    Alchemy and Karen Cushman!

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    Oh, this is so much fun! Not only is there a brand-new book out from one of my all-time favorite authors, but I got to read an ear­ly copy (squeee!) and inter­view the author for my blog (huz­zah)!

    First, let me gush a lit­tle about how much I enjoyed read­ing Alche­my and Meg­gy Swann. There’s an awful lot for read­ers of any age to love in this lit­tle book: from the open­ing scene where we start right in with action and a bit of a mys­tery, to the feisty but kind-heart­ed hero­ine, to the his­tor­i­cal rich­ness, to the won­der­ful array of cre­ative insults. It’s tru­ly got some­thing for every­one. If you’re not already a fan of Karen Cush­man, this book will sure­ly trans­form you into one. And now, let’s meet the alchemist herself—welcome, Karen!

    LT: First, I love the par­al­lels between the father’s search for alchem­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion and Meggy’s per­son­al trans­for­ma­tion. What made you start think­ing about alche­my as a book sub­ject, and was the par­al­lel planned from the outset?
    KC: I found alche­my an intrigu­ing idea but did­n’t real­ly have an idea about how I’d use it in a book until I thought more about trans­for­ma­tion, about that very par­al­lel between alchem­i­cal and per­son­al trans­for­ma­tion.  I love how the ides of change works for both and how trans­for­ma­tion may not hap­pen exact­ly as they want­ed or expected.

     

    LT: I think you real­ly gave us an accu­rate por­tray­al at what it’s like to feel dif­fer­ent and/or unwant­ed and the mis­guid­ed but all-too-com­mon defense mech­a­nism of push­ing peo­ple away before they can reject us, and it is these under­stand­able flaws that make Meg­gy such an inter­est­ing and uni­ver­sal­ly appeal­ing char­ac­ter. Did you know you were shoot­ing for that at the start, or did those aspects of char­ac­ter evolve nat­u­ral­ly as you wrote the story?
    KC: Meg­gy start­ed out much sweet­er and more com­pli­ant but as I under­stood more about her and her strug­gles, I real­ized she prob­a­bly would not have respond­ed or act­ed in such under­stand­ing ways.  So, yes, those aspects of char­ac­ter evolved as I wrote the story.

     

    LT: I find it fair­ly dif­fi­cult (but extreme­ly enter­tain­ing) to pic­ture you hurl­ing insults at any­one, but Meg­gy seems to have no trou­ble what­so­ev­er. How exact­ly did you come up with Meggy’s many inven­tive invectives?
    KC: I found an invalu­able lit­tle book called Shake­speare’s Insults and bor­rowed some of those.  And there is a web­site called the Shake­speare­an Insult Kit (www.pangloss.com/seidel/shake_rule.html) that allowed me to come up with intrigu­ing com­bi­na­tions.  It was great fun.

     

    LT: I can tell you did a ton of research for this book. Do you think you’ll reuse any of it in future sto­ries? Will we see Meg­gy again? (I need to see her reunit­ed with her goose!)
    KC: I had­n’t planned on a Meg­gy sequel but young read­ers have said they like the idea.  First I’d have to fin­ish a new book, Will Spar­row’s Road, where I will use a lot of what I learned about Eliz­a­bethan England.

     

    LT: How about non­fic­tion? I’m a pri­mar­i­ly non­fic­tion writer who dab­bles in research-based fic­tion when some­thing I’m research­ing gets my imag­i­na­tion going. Have you ever or do you think you will ever dab­ble in non­fic­tion? You’ve cer­tain­ly got the research part down!
    KC: So far it’s the “what if?” of sto­ries that has my atten­tion.  I love sit­ting in my chair and mak­ing things up.  But I dab­ble in non­fic­tion when I write my author’s notes.  The notes for Meg­gy Swann were espe­cial­ly fun to do.

     

    LT: I love that you “like to write about gut­sy girls fig­ur­ing out who they are,” and I love gut­sy girls, even if some of us don’t get gut­sy or fig­ure out who we are until we’re actu­al­ly mid­dle-aged women (who, me?). Which real-life gut­sy girls (and women) have inspired you most?
    KC: Some of my female heroes are Jane Addams of Chicago’s Hull House, the anthro­pol­o­gist Mar­garet Mead, Eleanor Roo­sevelt, and genius illus­tra­tor Tri­na Schart Hyman—all gut­sy girls.

     

    LT: I’ve always said that I’ll feel like a suc­cess­ful writer when I receive one let­ter from a read­er say­ing that my book helped them in some way, and you’ve said that con­nect­ing with read­ers is what makes you feel proud­est of your work. What’s the best let­ter you’ve ever received from a reader?
    KC: I got a won­der­ful let­ter that said, “I nev­er read one of your books but now that you’ve come to my school, I am con­sid­er­ing try­ing to read one.”  But I trea­sure the ones that say “I nev­er thought about that before but…” or “Since I read your book, I know there are oth­er peo­ple who feel like I do.”

     

    LT: Alche­my and Meg­gy Swann, even more so than your oth­er books, I think, is a short­er book with more dif­fi­cult lan­guage. Was there ever any ques­tion, from you or your pub­lish­er, about audi­ence, age, and/or read­ing ability?
    KC: No, I think Dinah, my edi­tor, thinks as I do that we should give young peo­ple more cred­it for their under­stand­ing. And I tried to use words that could be under­stood through con­text or ono­matopoeia.  It was great fun search­ing the­saurus­es and the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary.

     

    LT: I love that answer and com­plete­ly share the belief that we should chal­lenge and believe in chil­dren rather than sell them short. Since you men­tioned Dinah, can you tell us what it’s like to work with the leg­endary Dinah Steven­son?
    KC: Leg­endary?  Is Dinah old enough to be leg­endary?  I was assigned to work with Dinah when Clar­i­on bought my first book–an amaz­ing stroke of luck.  Dinah is a great edi­tor, intel­li­gent, insight­ful, and not at all pushy, and she makes my work much bet­ter and rich­er than it would be with­out her.  That does­n’t mean I don’t snarl and throw things when I get one of her famous 17-page edi­to­r­i­al let­ters, and I don’t fol­low every sug­ges­tion she makes but I do think about them care­ful­ly.  And she always reminds me it’s my book and I should write it my way.

     

    LT: Age has noth­ing to do with it—only the esteem she’s earned with­in the indus­try! You’ve been very loy­al to Dinah and to Clar­i­on over the years (and I must admit that Clar­i­on is one of my dream pub­lish­ers!). They’re inter­est­ing because they’re a rather small imprint with a small list, but owned by a huge con­glom­er­ate. How do think this has helped or hurt you?
    KC: I think Clar­i­on’s small size has meant there’s a small­er list and few­er oth­er authors.  I can have a per­son­al rela­tion­ship with every­one on the staff and feel they know me.  I like that.  And I’m sure the sup­port Clar­i­on gets from Houghton Mif­flin Har­court ben­e­fits me in ways I don’t even know.  So far I have felt no drawbacks.

     

    LT: Final­ly, any advice for up-and-com­ing wanna-be’s?
    KC: I tell most women who come to me for advice that they prob­a­bly are just too young yet—I was fifty, after all, before I start­ed writ­ing.  Beyond that I rec­om­mend what most writ­ers do—lots of read­ing, much writ­ing, cri­tique groups, and sup­port groups of like-mind­ed folks like the SCBWI.

     

    LT: Phew, that’s good to know—I’ve got a few more years yet. What a relief! Thanks so much, Karen. As always, it was won­der­ful to talk with you, made even more so by hav­ing such a delight­ful book to discuss. 

     

     

    ** Dis­claimer: I received a free advance review copy of this book from the publisher.

    Good news: ONE IS ENOUGH won an award!

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    In my last post, I was so busy gush­ing about the con­fer­ence awe­some­ness I for­got to men­tion the best news of all!
    My man­u­script for ONE IS ENOUGH, a pic­ture-book biog­ra­phy about Emmanuel Ofo­su Yeboah, was one of those nom­i­nat­ed for the SCBWI West­ern Wash­ing­ton 2010 Out­stand­ing Work-in-Progress awards! Here’s the offi­cial slide:

    This award is giv­en by the fac­ul­ty man­u­script con­sul­tants, who select their favorite manuscripts–those they feel show the most promise of being even­tu­al­ly published–for the hon­or. I am espe­cial­ly tick­led because my con­sul­ta­tion was with an edi­tor I real­ly like per­son­al­ly who works for a pub­lish­ing imprint whose list I would be incred­i­bly hon­ored to be a mem­ber of. Bet­ter yet, her revi­sion notes make per­fect sense to me. Of course, I still have to find a way to imple­ment them.
    Con­grat­u­la­tions to all of the hon­orees! Now let’s get back to our key­boards, use what we’ve learned to pol­ish those man­u­scripts until they shine, and then sum­mon the courage to send them out into the world. I’ll be keep­ing my fin­gers crossed!

    SCBWI conferences: so many kinds of awesome

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    I’m final­ly start­ing to be able to come down from the high that was last week­end’s SCBWI West­ern Wash­ing­ton’s Writ­ing and Illus­trat­ing for Chil­dren con­fer­ence. After an extend­ed peri­od of not enough sleep, too much forced extro­ver­sion, and total detail over­whelm, I expect­ed to be exhaust­ed, but instead I was com­plete­ly ener­gized. It was so many kinds of awe­some for me. I actu­al­ly broke into tears dri­ving home (the good kind, to be sure), and I’ve been walk­ing around with a sil­ly grin on my face ever since.

    First of all, just being in the same room with that many peo­ple who care about the same thing I do is a gift. I’ve felt that at every writer’s con­fer­ence I’ve ever been to, and that in itself is rea­son enough to go. As a recov­er­ing pleas­er, I guess I’m still a total suck­er for validation.
    More than that, though, was the shift in my own real­i­ty. I had three  goals for this conference:

    1. Try to relax and enjoy the moment. I have a strong per­fec­tion­ist streak and can be a total con­trol freak some­times, but this year I was able to (most­ly) just let go and make the best of it.
    2. Con­nect with peo­ple rather than their roles. I have always felt self-con­scious around the faculty—those gate­keep­ers and suc­cess sto­ries whom I so admire and respect—but this year I felt like I could’ve brought all of them home to my messy house for beer and burg­ers (prob­a­bly more of a tes­ta­ment to their humil­i­ty and grace than any per­son­al growth on my part!).
    3. Get more com­fort­able speak­ing to a crowd. I have always been ter­ri­fied of pub­lic speak­ing, but this year it was not only easy, it was actu­al­ly fun!

    I’ve wished and worked for these qual­i­ties all my life, and they final­ly chose to man­i­fest them­selves last week­end. I feel like Lai­ni Taylor’s Mag­pie Wind­witch, stuff­ing my most nox­ious demons into a fine glass bot­tle and pound­ing the cork in tight—banishing them to dark­ness where they can no longer exer­cise their evil powers.
    So, the trick now is to go back to the soli­tary work of writ­ing and revis­ing with­out the task list spread­sheet, inex­orable dead­line, or gold­en “boss” pin. I can’t del­e­gate any­thing away to my more com­pe­tent friends, no one will be stop­ping me in the hall to thank me for my efforts, and there will be no stand­ing ova­tion when it’s done. But I still have more goals to achieve (and more demons to ban­ish), so it’s back to work I go with a renewed sense of con­fi­dence and optimism.
    How about you: did you have pre-con­fer­ence goals, do you feel like you achieved them, and what’s up next on your to-do list?

    Interview with Michael Bourret, agent

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    Michael Bour­ret is an agent with Dys­tel and Goderich, and recent­ly opened their brand-new West Coast office. I’ve heard Michael speak at a few of the nation­al SCBWI con­fer­ences, and it’s always a plea­sure. Don’t miss him at the SCBWI West­ern Wash­ing­ton con­fer­ence this weekend!

    L: Wel­come, Michael! Thanks so much for tak­ing the time to answer some ques­tions for me! Your var­i­ous bios and mar­ket list­ings say you accept all kinds of non­fic­tion, and I know you rep­re­sent adult non­fic­tion, but I don’t see any non­fic­tion for kids among your titles. Why is that? Please give us some insight on the juve­nile non­fic­tion mar­ket from an agent’s perspective.
    M: Thanks for hav­ing me, Lau­rie! And I’m excit­ed that you’re ask­ing about juve­nile non­fic­tion, and I’ll be real­ly hon­est: I don’t know much about it. It isn’t a cat­e­go­ry that I’ve pur­sued, aside from the amaz­ing pic­ture books of Anne Rockwell’s. I think that juve­nile non­fic­tion has most­ly been left to the aca­d­e­m­ic pub­lish­ers, in part because it isn’t as glam­orous as nov­els. But that may well be chang­ing, as is the very def­i­n­i­tion of cat­e­go­ry. I’m see­ing a lot more inno­va­tion and a new approach, includ­ing more mem­oir and oth­er nar­ra­tive nonfiction.
    L: Sev­er­al children’s non­fic­tion titles received quite a lot of atten­tion this year, espe­cial­ly Phillip Hoose’s CLAUDETTE COLVIN and Deb­o­rah Heiligman’s CHARLES AND EMMA. Do you think this will have any effect on the market?
    M: Any com­mer­cial suc­cess will have an effect on the mar­ket, and the crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial response to both of these books cer­tain­ly got my atten­tion. I’m not sure we’ll see a flood of non­fic­tion, but I do think we’ll see some smart books com­ing from major pub­lish­ers bet­ter known for their fiction.
    L: You don’t rep­re­sent pic­ture books, either—is that a per­son­al pref­er­ence, a mat­ter of indus­try knowl­edge and exper­tise, or a pure­ly finan­cial deci­sion  (or one of the oth­er rea­sons fel­low agent Michael Stearns blogged about here)?
    M: I do rep­re­sent some pic­ture books, actu­al­ly, but it’s not an area in which I’m look­ing to grown. The mar­ket is dif­fi­cult, espe­cial­ly for writ­ers, and since they’re the ones I rep­re­sent, it just doesn’t make sense for me to con­tin­ue look­ing for new clients.
    L: Is there any­thing you wish would show up your query pile that just hasn’t been there (be care­ful what you wish for!)?
    M: As I said in anoth­er inter­view recent­ly, with how many queries I get, it’s hard to say that there’s any­thing I haven’t seen! I’d rather not see books that chase trends, but that said, I love to see how peo­ple can approach well-worn ideas in a new way. I recent­ly signed up a nov­el based on a Poe sto­ry that I’m very excit­ed about, and I’d love to see more dark, psy­cho­log­i­cal thrillers. Some­thing that makes my skin crawl would be great!
    L: Tell us about your agent­ing style: Are you very edi­to­r­i­al? Phone or email? Hands-on through­out the whole process or mitts off until the final product?
    M: All agents have to be edi­to­r­i­al, but I’m not some­one who’s going to line edit a man­u­script. It’s just not where my skills lie. I do love to devel­op ideas with authors—helping them to turn a vague notion into some­thing that sup­ports a book-length nar­ra­tive. I’m more of a phone than email per­son, but I spend much more time on email! I wish peo­ple uti­lized the phone more; a con­ver­sa­tion has a cer­tain give-and-take that can help get to the point more quick­ly. I’m pret­ty hands on, and as I say to new clients, I like to know every­thing. That way I can antic­i­pate and pre­empt issues they may not even see arising.
    L: What aspects do you like most about being an agent? Least? Pet peeves (please don’t say blog inter­views, please don’t say blog interviews…)?
    M: I like that every day is dif­fer­ent. I like pitch­ing to edi­tors, I like dis­cussing ideas with clients, I love find­ing new voic­es. I love build­ing rela­tion­ships and match­ing authors and edi­tors. I like dis­cussing big-pic­ture ideas with my col­leagues, both in-house at DGLM and with the pub­lish­ing world at large on Twit­ter and through our blog. It’s hard to say that I don’t like a part of my job, but I don’t like how long things take. I’m real­ly impa­tient. I don’t have any major pub­lish­ing pet peeves, but I do wish we could all be more kind and respect­ful. It’s a chal­leng­ing busi­ness, and emo­tions run high, but we need to remem­ber that we’re all in it together.
    L: Besides the man­u­script itself, what oth­er fac­tors do you con­sid­er when decid­ing whether or not to offer rep­re­sen­ta­tion (plat­form, online pres­ence, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, spe­cial­iza­tion, rec­om­men­da­tions, affil­i­a­tions, etc.)?
    M: The man­u­script is what mat­ters. If that doesn’t knock my socks off, noth­ing else mat­ters. In a query, how­ev­er, men­tion­ing a large plat­form, and award win, or even mem­ber­ship in rep­utable orga­ni­za­tions like SCBWI will make me pay more atten­tion. But then it comes back to the man­u­script again. It’s got to be great.
    L: Besides care­ful­ly read­ing mar­ket guides, surf­ing the web and send­ing tar­get­ed queries, what can we authors do to ensure a good fit, both when sub­mit­ting and when con­sid­er­ing an offer of representation?
    M: If you’re doing your home­work and research in advance, the only oth­er thing you need to do is inter­view the agent. It’s impor­tant for both writer and agent to chat and make sure that they get along and can have a con­ver­sa­tion. If you’re afraid of your agent, the rela­tion­ship isn’t going to work. If you don’t feel like your agent is enthu­si­as­tic about your sub­mis­sion, the rela­tion­ship won’t work. I tell peo­ple all the time that they should wait for a good match and not just take the first offer. It’s hard to do, I know, but I think the advice is sound.
    L: I think authors put so much time and effort into find­ing an agent, that then inter­view­ing an inter­est­ed agent feels a bit intim­i­dat­ing. What kinds of ques­tions do you think authors should ask to deter­mine if an agent will be a good match?
    M: Authors should ask agents about the edi­to­r­i­al vision for the book, how they work day-to-day and how the sub­mis­sion will work, how often they can expect to be in touch, and then they should dis­cuss the future—what do both the author and agent see for the author’s career down the line? It’s impor­tant that you’re on the same page as your agent about these things.
    L: Do you have any upcom­ing client titles you’d like to high­light for us?

    The past cou­ple of months have seen the excit­ing releas­es of Eleventh Grade Burns by Heather Brew­er and Gone by Lisa McMann, the release of which got both series onto the New York Times list. The com­ing months will see the release of Restor­ing Har­mo­ny by Joëlle Antho­ny and Shoot­ing Kab­ul by N.H. Sen­zai, two debuts that I’m real­ly proud of. In addi­tion, the fan­tas­tic Suzanne Selfors’s fifth book Smells Like Dog is also out short­ly, along with Dale Basye’s third book in the twist­ed “Heck” series, Blimpo. And that’s just through May!

    L: Is there any­thing else you wished that I had asked, but didn’t? Feel free to write your own ques­tion here. =)
    M: This has been a ter­rif­ic and thor­ough inter­view. I’ve got noth­ing to add, but thanks so much for think­ing of me!
    L: Thank YOU, Michael! I real­ly appre­ci­ate the time and thought you put into this, and we’re look­ing for­ward to hear­ing more at the con­fer­ence this weekend. 

    Ah, sweet rejection

    by

    My goal for this year is to receive as many as rejec­tions as pos­si­ble. I can be a little—okay, a lot—perfectionistic about where and when I send out sub­mis­sions, so the inten­tion of this goal was to push me to accom­plish the part of pub­lish­ing that I can con­trol, sub­mit­ting, and let go of the part I can’t con­trol, sell­ing. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this has­n’t worked out so well, as it seems most places either aren’t even read­ing the work or are only reply­ing if inter­est­ed, and are thus deny­ing me of the small sat­is­fac­tion of the rejec­tion let­ter as proof I did SOMETHING. So, I think I will have to revise my goal and tweak my process so that I can cel­e­brate, and tan­gi­bly see, every sub­mis­sion, whether I receive an answer or not. How do you do that with­out wast­ing paper? I’d love to hear your ideas!
    There’s some good news, though (well, kin­da)! Yes­ter­day I received a rejec­tion let­ter for a very begin­ning-lev­el easy read­er I’d sent to Scholas­tic’s Cart­wheel imprint. I sus­pect­ed it was prob­a­bly not per­fect­ly right for them, but I love them so much I just had to try (fight­ing that per­fec­tion thing again). Well, it was a rejec­tion, but it was per­son­al­ized, friend­ly, and dis­cussed my par­tic­u­lar man­u­script and why they decid­ed to pass. In fact, I have to agree with their assess­ment, although I still believe there’s a place for this man­u­script with a dif­fer­ent list. So, yes, it’s a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing, but I’ll still send out a big vir­tu­al thank you to Scholastic/Cartwheel. I final­ly have some­thing for the rejec­tion file, and can at least rev­el in the suc­cess of failing!

    ‘Suc­cess is going from fail­ure to fail­ure with no loss of enthu­si­asm.’ —Win­ston Churchill

    A poem for writers

    by

    For St. Patrick­’s Day, my daugh­ter had some fun writ­ing lim­er­icks. Here is my favorite:

    Writ­ing
    Write I will,
    for­ev­er still,
    you, me
    cre­ativ­i­ty is the key,
    Oh, write I will.

    Ah, a girl after my own heart. I guess the apple does­n’t fall far from the tree in this case!

    Interview with Sara Crowe, agent

    by

    Sara is an agent with Har­vey Klinger, Inc. in New York City. I was lucky enough to be able to hang out with Sara last Jan­u­ary pri­or to the 11th Annu­al SCBWI Inter­na­tion­al Win­ter Con­fer­ence. Yes, she is every bit as cute and friend­ly as she appears in the pho­to below, so if you’re going to attend our con­fer­ence this April, be sure to tell her hello!


    L: Wel­come, Sara! Thanks so much for tak­ing the time to answer some ques­tions for me! Let’s jump right in at the top of my list… with a rather tricky one. Your var­i­ous bios and list­ings say you accept non­fic­tion, but I don’t see any non­fic­tion for kids among your titles. Am I miss­ing it? If not, what do you sup­pose are the rea­sons? Do you just not get many non­fic­tion sub­mis­sions, are they hard­er to sell, is it just hard­er to find one that grabs you per­son­al­ly, or some com­bi­na­tion of those? Give us some insight on the juve­nile non­fic­tion mar­ket from an agent’s perspective.
    S: Hi Lau­rie! Thanks for hav­ing me! What my web­site says about what I rep­re­sent is this: I am an agent with Har­vey Klinger, Inc., a full ser­vice bou­tique lit­er­ary agency in New York where I rep­re­sent both adult and chil­dren’s titles. On the adult side, I rep­re­sent com­mer­cial and lit­er­ary fic­tion and a range of non­fic­tion. On the chil­dren’s side, my list includes YA and mid­dle grade fic­tion, as well as pic­ture books.
    S: So, I am upfront about my lack of non­fic­tion on the chil­dren’s side. How­ev­er, I am very open to queries for chil­dren’s non­fic­tion, and do hope to find more. Many of my favorite books as a child were non­fic­tion, and it is some­thing I remain inter­est­ed in read­ing. My client Erin Vin­cent’s debut YA, GRIEF GIRL (Dela­corte, 2007) is a mem­oir, and I would love to see more YA mem­oir. I am also work­ing on two non­fic­tion projects at the moment—one pic­ture book and one biog­ra­phy for children.
    S: I do rep­re­sent a lot more fic­tion, though, so when it comes down to it, I am not as famil­iar with the juve­nile non­fic­tion mar­ket, and the chances are slim­mer that I will be the right fit for a non­fic­tion book. If it does grab me per­son­al­ly, and if I can come up with a great list of edi­tors to send it to and am 100% sure there is a mar­ket for it, I will take it on!

     

    L: Okay, that was sort of a doozy—thanks for play­ing along and giv­ing such a can­did answer! Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this one is prob­a­bly even worse. I see you’re not tak­ing pic­ture book sub­mis­sions at this time, which seems to be a trend among agents. Can you tell us why? What do you think about the cur­rent state of the pic­ture-book indus­try? What can pic­ture-book authors do to help them break in?
    S: I prob­a­bly should take that off my site and the agen­cy’s site. I get many pic­ture book queries, what­ev­er it says online, and they did not seem to slow at all when I post­ed that notice. (Inci­den­tal­ly, it says every­where online that I do not like to receive snail mail queries, but those keep com­ing too, and I respond to them!)
    S: I sold a debut pic­ture book recent­ly, by Matthea Har­vey, to Schwartz & Wade, and one of my cur­rent pic­ture books, on sub­mis­sion now, is non­fic­tion. I just took on a pic­ture book from a query that real­ly grabbed me. So like with non­fic­tion, I will take on the right pic­ture book project for me—but I will take on much few­er pic­ture books than nov­els, and so it’s less like­ly I will be the right fit.

     

    L: Okay, you made that one seem easy, so this one should be a piece of cake… Tell us about your agent­ing style: Are you very edi­to­r­i­al? Phone or email? Hands-on through­out the whole process or mitts off until the final prod­uct? It’s clear your clients LOVE you, so what­ev­er it is, it’s working!
    S: Thank you! I am an edi­to­r­i­al agent and do think I am very hands-on. I edit every­thing I take on before it goes out to edi­tors. If I see any sweep­ing changes that I think need to be made before sub­mis­sion, I talk to the writer about that when we dis­cuss rep­re­sen­ta­tion. And the edit­ing does not stop with the first sale. I con­tin­ue to edit my authors’ books, and to dis­cuss their new book ideas with them. I usu­al­ly read major revi­sions before we send to the edi­tor, and I read and dis­cuss syn­opses and par­tials, or some­times just ideas, about what the author should do next. I am always on email, but some­times a phone call is the best thing for the sit­u­a­tion, and I am always hap­py to be on the phone.

     

    L: What aspects do you like most about being an agent? Least? Pet peeves?
    S: I tru­ly feel lucky every­day to have a job that is nev­er bor­ing, always chal­leng­ing, and that involves read­ing books that I love and talk­ing them up to any­one who will lis­ten. I love find­ing a new client, a new book to be excit­ed about. Call­ing an author, espe­cial­ly a debut author, to tell them their book will be pub­lished nev­er gets old. I love all of my agent roles: edit­ing, match­mak­ing, mak­ing deals, nego­ti­at­ing con­tracts. Its the kind of job that does­n’t end at the end of a day or week, though, and agents are always work­ing, even when they are try­ing to read for plea­sure. It is a job with­out bound­aries. That applies to every­one in pub­lish­ing, I think, writ­ers, too. I wish there were time to read when I am actu­al­ly at work! Real­ly, I just need there to be more time in a day.

     

    L: Oh, I think we all could use some of that! Besides the man­u­script itself, what oth­er fac­tors do you con­sid­er when decid­ing whether or not to offer rep­re­sen­ta­tion (plat­form, online pres­ence, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, spe­cial­iza­tion, rec­om­men­da­tions, affil­i­a­tions, etc.)?
    S: Unless it is adult non­fic­tion, where plat­form tru­ly mat­ters, I am only look­ing at the book first—and if I love it and feel con­fi­dent I can sell it, I am not con­cerned about a plat­form or an online pres­ence. I think for the most part, those things can wait until after the sale of the book to the pub­lish­er. Once we have sold it, I do think all authors should get online. Of course a blurb or rec­om­men­da­tion from a well known author is appeal­ing, as it might make the book eas­i­er to sell, but its not necessary.

     

    L: Besides care­ful­ly read­ing mar­ket guides, surf­ing the web and send­ing tar­get­ed queries, what can we authors do to ensure a good fit, both when sub­mit­ting and when con­sid­er­ing an offer of representation?
    S: I think that what you want to find is an agent who is pas­sion­ate about your book and your writ­ing, who has knowl­edge of the mar­ket­place, expe­ri­ence with your type of book and whose list is a place you think you belong and where you want to be. You can find much of this out with research, talk­ing with his or her oth­er clients, and by ask­ing the right ques­tions when you speak to the agent on the phone. As for queries, make them count! Spend the most time on your book descrip­tion as its the most impor­tant thing. And do not make it all about the query—make sure the man­u­script is in great shape before you start querying.

     

    L: Do you have any clients or titles you’d like to high­light for us?
    S: Two chil­dren’s books out in March: a mid­dle grade and a YA. IT’S RAINING CUPCAKES (Aladdin), Lisa Schroed­er’s mid­dle grade debut, is about Isabel, who dreams of see­ing the world but she’s nev­er left Ore­gon. When her best friend, Sophie, tells her of a bak­ing con­test whose win­ners trav­el to New York City, she eager­ly enters despite con­cerns about her moth­er, who is open­ing a cup­cake bak­ery. And SAVING MADDIE by Var­i­an John­son, just out with Dela­corte, about Josh, a preacher’s son, whose best child­hood friend, Mad­die has come back home a new person—gorgeous and trou­bled and with­out her faith. Can you save some­one who doesn’t want to be saved? And more impor­tant­ly, how do you save some­one with­out los­ing yourself?

     

    S: In April, I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER by Dan Wells is out with Tor Books. It is about a boy who is con­cerned he might be a ser­i­al killer, and so makes rules for him­self to avoid becom­ing one — but then a real one comes into town and starts killing peo­ple, and he has to break some of his rules to find the killer. Its a def­i­nite crossover title–a hor­ror nov­el with a lov­able teen pro­tag­o­nist and a great YA voice, though will be pub­lished here as an adult book. Its already out in Ger­many where its a best­seller, and is also out in the UK– where it was pub­lished as YA. Kirkus just gave it a starred review and wrote: “(An) unabashed­ly gory gem.… Buy mul­ti­ples where it won’t be banned.”

    S: Final­ly, Hol­ly Nicole Hox­ter’s YA debut, THE SNOWBALL EFFECT will be out from Harp­er in April! It’s about Lainey Pike, who is try­ing to make peace with her dead moth­er (not easy), take care of her five-year old broth­er who is now an orphan, and to learn to love with her estranged old­er sis­ter who is now back in her life as her guardian until she turns 18.

     

    L: Is there any­thing else you wished that I had asked, but didn’t?
    S: I have too much read­ing to do to come up with anoth­er question—but I loved answer­ing all of yours. Thanks so much, Lau­rie! I am real­ly look­ing for­ward to the conference!
    L: Thank YOU, Sara, for being so open, hon­est, and approach­able! I’m look­ing for­ward to see­ing you again in April and show­ing you around our neck of the woods.

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