Lisa Schoeder!

Over at the Class of 2k8 blog, it's Lisa Schroeder's week. She's on there now with an interview about her newly published verse novel, I Heart You, You Haunt Me. It's about a girl whose boyfriend dies but is reluctant to leave the world. So he haunts her! Early reports are that you need a tissue handy about halfway through.

The fact that the book is in verse makes it (surprisingly, to me) more accessible to reluctant teen readers, Lisa says. Simon & Schuster must have agreed, because their teen imprint, Simon Pulse, snapped it right up after her editor read it on his bus ride home.

I, meanwhile, am still slogging through my copy-edited manuscript. Should quotations from The Book be italic and quotes or just italic? What should be capped and what shouldn't? My characters use archaic language sometimes, which adds to the fun. Did you know that thou is first person singular, and ye is the first person plural? Try and keep track of that while figuring out about whether Sap Tree should have initial caps.

My best friend from high school, Shelly Perron, is a copy editor by profession and insisted on reading the manuscript. I couldn't imagine why, until I saw the results. Nothing against Harcourt's copy editor, who's amazing, but Shelly filled in some important gaps. For instance, at some point during my many revisions, I took out an exchange in which the Goatman told the main character, Medford Ruyuin, that he had arrived on Island by sailboat. And yet, in the existing manuscript, Medford still tells his friend Prudy how the Goatman got there.

Oh yeah? Shelly said. And how does Medford know that, hmmmm?

Heaven bless copy editors, that's all I can say.