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.
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Monday, January 21, 2008
Moving Day and a Review or Two
This is an old and yet new blog. I just decided to move here from Wordpress, and cut and pasted all my posts from the old blog onto here. The comments at the bottom of each post are from my previous life on Wordpress, just to be confusing.
There were many things I liked about Wordpress, but I couldn't make my blog look the way I wanted to. I think Wordpress is for those who really understand the digital world. Possibly the entire inanimate world.
The inanimate world and I have never been friends. Up to now, I’ve thought of computers and web sites as animate. But I guess they line up with the doorsteps and pill bottles, out to get me.
On to the world’s best animate objects: Books.
As the New Year dawned, I was finishing The Fall of Troy by Peter Ackroyd, prizewinning author of history, biography, and historical fiction (often, like this one, a mixture of the three). This odd little book is about Heinrich Schliemann (here renamed Heinrich Obermann)–the flamboyant archaeologist who uncovered what lots of people think was ancient Troy–and his young Greek wife, Sophia.
I don’t know enough about Schliemann to know where history ends and fiction begins. In Ackroyd’s version, Obermann is obsessed with finding the Troy depicted in Homer’s Iliad, but the realities of ancient life keep emerging inconveniently from the Turkish dust. Obermann steadfastly ignores, misinterprets, or falsifies his findings in the service of his obsession. As an archaeologist, moreover, he has a split personality: sometimes the truth-seeker, but more often the treasure-hunter with a cache of ancient gold hidden under the floorboards.
His wife, a scholarly lady who barely knows her new husband, keeps digging up increasingly disturbing evidence that he isn’t what he seems. She, too, tries to ignore the truth until it finally gets the better of her.
This is a quick read and a fun one, although the character of Obermann is so heavy-handed that it seems Ackroyd must have had it in for Schliemann for some reason. The character of Sofia makes up for him–nuanced, absorbing, mysterious in her own right. While this isn’t the best novel I’ve read, it made me want to read some of his others.
Since I finished Troy I’ve been reading Christmas presents, this year almost all mysteries. I started with The Dead Cat Bounce, one of the “Home Repair is Homicide” series by Sarah Graves of Eastport, Maine. I’ve wanted to read one of these for a long time and I wasn’t disappointed. As a writer “from away,” Graves does a pretty good job of depicting Maine people as intelligent and unquaint (although you should bear in mind that your informant is herself “from away”). The plot is OK, the characters 3D. She’s no P.D. James, but I had a good time.
I moved on to Janet Evanovich’s Lean Mean Thirteen, which made me laugh out loud in places. All her books are similar, so you don’t want to read two in a row. But if I can reread Pride & Prejudice every eighteen months or so, I can be an Evanovich fan that often, too. So there.
Comments (3)
There were many things I liked about Wordpress, but I couldn't make my blog look the way I wanted to. I think Wordpress is for those who really understand the digital world. Possibly the entire inanimate world.
The inanimate world and I have never been friends. Up to now, I’ve thought of computers and web sites as animate. But I guess they line up with the doorsteps and pill bottles, out to get me.
On to the world’s best animate objects: Books.
As the New Year dawned, I was finishing The Fall of Troy by Peter Ackroyd, prizewinning author of history, biography, and historical fiction (often, like this one, a mixture of the three). This odd little book is about Heinrich Schliemann (here renamed Heinrich Obermann)–the flamboyant archaeologist who uncovered what lots of people think was ancient Troy–and his young Greek wife, Sophia.
I don’t know enough about Schliemann to know where history ends and fiction begins. In Ackroyd’s version, Obermann is obsessed with finding the Troy depicted in Homer’s Iliad, but the realities of ancient life keep emerging inconveniently from the Turkish dust. Obermann steadfastly ignores, misinterprets, or falsifies his findings in the service of his obsession. As an archaeologist, moreover, he has a split personality: sometimes the truth-seeker, but more often the treasure-hunter with a cache of ancient gold hidden under the floorboards.
His wife, a scholarly lady who barely knows her new husband, keeps digging up increasingly disturbing evidence that he isn’t what he seems. She, too, tries to ignore the truth until it finally gets the better of her.
This is a quick read and a fun one, although the character of Obermann is so heavy-handed that it seems Ackroyd must have had it in for Schliemann for some reason. The character of Sofia makes up for him–nuanced, absorbing, mysterious in her own right. While this isn’t the best novel I’ve read, it made me want to read some of his others.
Since I finished Troy I’ve been reading Christmas presents, this year almost all mysteries. I started with The Dead Cat Bounce, one of the “Home Repair is Homicide” series by Sarah Graves of Eastport, Maine. I’ve wanted to read one of these for a long time and I wasn’t disappointed. As a writer “from away,” Graves does a pretty good job of depicting Maine people as intelligent and unquaint (although you should bear in mind that your informant is herself “from away”). The plot is OK, the characters 3D. She’s no P.D. James, but I had a good time.
I moved on to Janet Evanovich’s Lean Mean Thirteen, which made me laugh out loud in places. All her books are similar, so you don’t want to read two in a row. But if I can reread Pride & Prejudice every eighteen months or so, I can be an Evanovich fan that often, too. So there.
Comments (3)
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Literary Theft
The Class of 2k8 blog is getting to be quite a hoot.
Last week, the feature was Liz Gallagher, author of the newly published The Opposite of Invisible. Next week it’ll be Lisa Schroeder, whose I Heart You, You Haunt Me is also out this month.
This week, various class members are blogging about things they “stole” for their books. (Not, I think, deliberately planned to coincide with the current brouhaha about romance novelist Cassie Edwards .) In 2k8’s case, the thefts are the likes of Elizabeth Bunce taking the name of a dog from Jane Eyre and Sarah Prineas studying Tolkien’s Elvish language to give her magic spells a little…well, magic.
This worries me, because I can’t think of anything I stole for The Unnameables. I know there has to be something. How could there not be? My mind’s a trash heap of trivia–surely there must be a line from Narnia or Harry Potter in there waiting to hit the page.
The Unnameables does create and quote a publication called A Frugall Compendium of Home Arts and Farm Chores by Capability C. Craft (1680)–sort of a combination of the Old Farmer’s Almanac, Martha Stewart, and Miss Manners. I acknowledge in print a bunch of sources for the “tips” in the Compendium, my favorite being the sixteen-year-old George Washington’s Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour In Company and Conversation. I keep racking my brain to make sure I didn’t lift anything verbatim.
George’s reminders to himself about proper behavior bring home the fact that the Founding Fathers once were proper Englishmen. Here’s Tip #26: “In Pulling off your Hat to Persons of Distinction, as Noblemen, Justices, Churchmen &c make a Reverence, bowing more or less according to the Custom of the Better Bred, and Quality of the Person. Amongst your equals expect not always that they Should begin with you first, but to Pull off the Hat when there is no need is Affectation, in the Manner of Saluting and resaluting in words keep to the most usual Custom.”
This one’s my all-time favorite, though: ”9th Spit not in the Fire, nor Stoop low before it neither Put your Hands into the Flames to warm them, nor Set your Feet upon the Fire especially if there be meat before it.”
OMG. While looking for quotes from George I found this: “keep your feet firm and even.” I did incorporate those exact words into one of the Book’s behests. Hmm. Better check with my editor.
Paaaaranoia.
Comments (7)
Last week, the feature was Liz Gallagher, author of the newly published The Opposite of Invisible. Next week it’ll be Lisa Schroeder, whose I Heart You, You Haunt Me is also out this month.
This week, various class members are blogging about things they “stole” for their books. (Not, I think, deliberately planned to coincide with the current brouhaha about romance novelist Cassie Edwards .) In 2k8’s case, the thefts are the likes of Elizabeth Bunce taking the name of a dog from Jane Eyre and Sarah Prineas studying Tolkien’s Elvish language to give her magic spells a little…well, magic.
This worries me, because I can’t think of anything I stole for The Unnameables. I know there has to be something. How could there not be? My mind’s a trash heap of trivia–surely there must be a line from Narnia or Harry Potter in there waiting to hit the page.
The Unnameables does create and quote a publication called A Frugall Compendium of Home Arts and Farm Chores by Capability C. Craft (1680)–sort of a combination of the Old Farmer’s Almanac, Martha Stewart, and Miss Manners. I acknowledge in print a bunch of sources for the “tips” in the Compendium, my favorite being the sixteen-year-old George Washington’s Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour In Company and Conversation. I keep racking my brain to make sure I didn’t lift anything verbatim.
George’s reminders to himself about proper behavior bring home the fact that the Founding Fathers once were proper Englishmen. Here’s Tip #26: “In Pulling off your Hat to Persons of Distinction, as Noblemen, Justices, Churchmen &c make a Reverence, bowing more or less according to the Custom of the Better Bred, and Quality of the Person. Amongst your equals expect not always that they Should begin with you first, but to Pull off the Hat when there is no need is Affectation, in the Manner of Saluting and resaluting in words keep to the most usual Custom.”
This one’s my all-time favorite, though: ”9th Spit not in the Fire, nor Stoop low before it neither Put your Hands into the Flames to warm them, nor Set your Feet upon the Fire especially if there be meat before it.”
OMG. While looking for quotes from George I found this: “keep your feet firm and even.” I did incorporate those exact words into one of the Book’s behests. Hmm. Better check with my editor.
Paaaaranoia.
Comments (7)
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
A Freelance Ne'er-do-well
It's never too late.
I’ve been a paid writer for 33 years. But I'm on my third attempt at becoming a novelist. It might be working this time.
When you’re the child of Depression-era New Englanders, willfully leaving the paid workforce is the eighth deadly sin. I feel even uneasier about this because of how hard it was to land my first writing job in 1974, the early feminist era. (For example, an advertising executive told me in a job interview back then that the best way to become a copywriter was to start as a secretary. “Yeah,” said Idiot Girl. “I noticed all the male secretaries on my way in.” End of interview.)
That’s why, every time I quit a perfectly good writing job for no good reason, I always tell everyone I’m “going freelance.” This sounds much more dashing and grown-up than the truth: “I’m going to sit and stare at a keyboard, and after an hour or two of that I’m going to eat cookies. Then I’ll take a nap. After several months, I’ll panic and look for paying work.”
The two times before this one, when I was in my 30s, I panicked almost immediately. Both times I actually did end up freelancing. But instead of fantasy freelancing — writing for impressive national magazines while turning out fiction on the side—the first time I wrote employee newsletters for corporations (by my low standards, fairly lucrative) and the second time I wrote for tiny local newspapers in Maine (not lucrative by anyone’s standards, but a real hoot).
The second attempt involved moving to Downeast Maine just when hippies and yippies (my generation) had been replaced in the popular imagination by “young urban professionals,” known as yuppies. My partner, Rob, and I decided we were orfans—“older, rural freelance ne’er-do-wells.” One of my new friends in Maine made us T-shirts saying that, so we felt like a trend.
In 1984, just after Rob and I moved to Maine and just before I panicked, I managed to write a dreadful, 60-page kids' fantasy called Medford and the Goatman. Thrilled to have actually finished something, I “copyrighted” it by mailing it to myself—the local postmaster cheerfully stamping the date all over the envelope—then stuck it in a desk drawer and forgot about it.
(Sociology note: The postmaster was a woman. There’s no such thing as a postmistress, at least not in Maine. They’re called postmasters, male or female. Same with selectmen. One time, a rogue typesetter at my tiny local newspaper took it upon himself to change “selectman” to “selectwoman” where applicable, ignoring the stated preferences of the town officials themselves. The community thought we were idiots—well, they already knew that, but this confirmed it. The typesetter got fired.)
I ended up working full time as managing editor for one of the tiny local newspapers, and later as arts editor for the much larger county weekly. I was perfectly content, without even a nudge of a thought about that envelope in the desk drawer. Then, out of the blue, in the spring of 2003 I decided to take a dialogue workshop offered by Cynthia Thayer, a novelist who lives in the same county I do. I had a great time, and was shocked to find that I wasn’t as rusty as I’d expected to be.
Two months later, with no cooperation from my brain, I heard my mouth giving the county newspaper three months’ notice. I was going freelance, I told everyone. And I would write a kids’ book.
Imagine my surprise when I actually did write a book, with characters and a plot and everything. It was a brand new version of Medford and the Goatman, four times as long and at least twice as readable.
Even more shocking, local summer residents Genie and Bill Henderson liked the book (he’s the founder of the Pushcart Prize and they’re both published authors) and sent it to Kate Schafer, a colleague of Bill’s agent at Janklow & Nesbit. Kate took me on, and eventually sold Medford and the Goatman to the patient and inspired Kathy Dawson at Harcourt.
Three re-writes later, Medford is called The Unnameables and scheduled for publication October 1, targeted for ages 10 and older. I’ve written another, smaller book for younger kids, which is seasoning in a drawer at the moment, and am about a chapter away from finishing the rough draft of a third book for the same age group as The Unnameables.
I can’t believe I keep finishing books. I can’t believe one of them is getting published. No T-shirt could capture this experience.
I never felt younger. In fact, I have a zit forming.
I’ve been a paid writer for 33 years. But I'm on my third attempt at becoming a novelist. It might be working this time.
When you’re the child of Depression-era New Englanders, willfully leaving the paid workforce is the eighth deadly sin. I feel even uneasier about this because of how hard it was to land my first writing job in 1974, the early feminist era. (For example, an advertising executive told me in a job interview back then that the best way to become a copywriter was to start as a secretary. “Yeah,” said Idiot Girl. “I noticed all the male secretaries on my way in.” End of interview.)
That’s why, every time I quit a perfectly good writing job for no good reason, I always tell everyone I’m “going freelance.” This sounds much more dashing and grown-up than the truth: “I’m going to sit and stare at a keyboard, and after an hour or two of that I’m going to eat cookies. Then I’ll take a nap. After several months, I’ll panic and look for paying work.”
The two times before this one, when I was in my 30s, I panicked almost immediately. Both times I actually did end up freelancing. But instead of fantasy freelancing — writing for impressive national magazines while turning out fiction on the side—the first time I wrote employee newsletters for corporations (by my low standards, fairly lucrative) and the second time I wrote for tiny local newspapers in Maine (not lucrative by anyone’s standards, but a real hoot).
The second attempt involved moving to Downeast Maine just when hippies and yippies (my generation) had been replaced in the popular imagination by “young urban professionals,” known as yuppies. My partner, Rob, and I decided we were orfans—“older, rural freelance ne’er-do-wells.” One of my new friends in Maine made us T-shirts saying that, so we felt like a trend.
In 1984, just after Rob and I moved to Maine and just before I panicked, I managed to write a dreadful, 60-page kids' fantasy called Medford and the Goatman. Thrilled to have actually finished something, I “copyrighted” it by mailing it to myself—the local postmaster cheerfully stamping the date all over the envelope—then stuck it in a desk drawer and forgot about it.
(Sociology note: The postmaster was a woman. There’s no such thing as a postmistress, at least not in Maine. They’re called postmasters, male or female. Same with selectmen. One time, a rogue typesetter at my tiny local newspaper took it upon himself to change “selectman” to “selectwoman” where applicable, ignoring the stated preferences of the town officials themselves. The community thought we were idiots—well, they already knew that, but this confirmed it. The typesetter got fired.)
I ended up working full time as managing editor for one of the tiny local newspapers, and later as arts editor for the much larger county weekly. I was perfectly content, without even a nudge of a thought about that envelope in the desk drawer. Then, out of the blue, in the spring of 2003 I decided to take a dialogue workshop offered by Cynthia Thayer, a novelist who lives in the same county I do. I had a great time, and was shocked to find that I wasn’t as rusty as I’d expected to be.
Two months later, with no cooperation from my brain, I heard my mouth giving the county newspaper three months’ notice. I was going freelance, I told everyone. And I would write a kids’ book.
Imagine my surprise when I actually did write a book, with characters and a plot and everything. It was a brand new version of Medford and the Goatman, four times as long and at least twice as readable.
Even more shocking, local summer residents Genie and Bill Henderson liked the book (he’s the founder of the Pushcart Prize and they’re both published authors) and sent it to Kate Schafer, a colleague of Bill’s agent at Janklow & Nesbit. Kate took me on, and eventually sold Medford and the Goatman to the patient and inspired Kathy Dawson at Harcourt.
Three re-writes later, Medford is called The Unnameables and scheduled for publication October 1, targeted for ages 10 and older. I’ve written another, smaller book for younger kids, which is seasoning in a drawer at the moment, and am about a chapter away from finishing the rough draft of a third book for the same age group as The Unnameables.
I can’t believe I keep finishing books. I can’t believe one of them is getting published. No T-shirt could capture this experience.
I never felt younger. In fact, I have a zit forming.
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