Author Interview: Carrie Ryan on The Forest of Hands and Teeth & The Dead-Tossed Waves

Carrie Ryan is the young adult author of The Forest of Hands and Teeth (Delacorte, 2009) and The Dead-Tossed Waves (Delacorte, 2010).

A former lawyer, she now writes full time and lives with her fiancé, two fat cats and one large lazy dog in Charlotte, NC.

What were you like as a YA reader? Who were your favorite authors? What were your favorite titles?

I read anything and everything! I'm the youngest of three girls, so mostly I'd just rifle through my older sisters' bookshelves (this is probably why I got into romance novels at a very young age).

I remember spending many nights staying up late reading Christopher Pike and R.L. Stine. To this day, I credit them with making me a speed reader--I turned those pages so fast they were almost on fire.

What first inspired you to write for teens?

When I was still in high school I read an interview with a romance author who said she'd decided to write after finishing a book and thinking, I could do that.

As soon as I read those words, I thought the same thing: I could do that too.

For some reason, it just always stuck in my head that I'd write romance novels. It wasn't until 2006, when I really dedicated myself to writing, that I realized that I could write something other than romance, and that's when I realized that YA books were really exploding.

I remembered how much I adored reading as a teen, and it seemed like the most perfect fit! It sounds a bit lame, but until that point it had just never occurred to me that I could write for teens--I only needed a little nudge.

Could you tell us about your path to publication--any sprints or stumbles along the way?

I've been phenomenally lucky in my path to publication. A few months after starting in private practice as a lawyer, I realized that I didn't want to be doing that forever and I wondered what would have happened if I hadn't quit writing romance novels to go to law school.

I decided that I'd spend the next 10 years writing, revising, and submitting books (in addition to practicing law) and not allowing myself to quit when I hit stumbling blocks and rejections.

When NaNoWriMo came around in 2006, I knew I wanted to do it, but I had a collection of half-finished books and one of the rules of NaNo is that you have to start something new.

I whined about this to my fiancé, wondering what I should write next.

He said, "Write what you love."

I laughed and said, "the zombie apocalypse."

And he smiled and shrugged.

A few nights later on the way home from work, a first line popped into my head and I emailed it to myself.

Two weeks later, I'd written 20,000 words on this crazy post-apocalypse book with a voice I hadn't written in since college. I was loving every minute of it, but knew it would never sell--it was just too different. I didn't let that stop me, I kept writing because I loved it and my fiancé loved it.

When my critique partner, Diana Peterfreund, read what I had so far, she encouraged me to keep going (and I knew she was being honest cause she’d been "meh" about an earlier project of mine--thank goodness!).

I ran into the usual stumbling blocks: fear that I'd mess up the story, not knowing what happened next, etc.

Once the first draft was finished, I spent a lot of time revising--as much time or more than I'd spent writing the book in the first place!

I wanted to know when it got rejected that I’d given the book my best shot--there was nothing more I could have done.

As beta readers were going through my drafts, I spent a lot of time researching agents. I still didn't think the book had a shot (in fact, I thought agents would laugh at my query letter with the word "zombie" in it,) and so one of the agents I queried was someone I didn't know as much about but who'd recently repped a zombie book (so at least I knew he wouldn’t laugh too hard at me!).

A few weeks after I sent my query, I signed with that agent--Jim McCarthy at Dystel & Goderich. After a few revisions, he sent the manuscript out on a Friday afternoon, received a pre-empt offer Monday morning, and I'd signed by the end of the day.

Total and absolute dream come true.

Congratulations on the success of The Forest of Hands and Teeth (Delacorte, 2009, 2010)! Could you tell us a little about the book?

The Forest of Hands and Teeth is about a girl, Mary, who grows up in a village surrounded by a forest full of zombies about 150 years after the zombie apocalypse.

Her village has been totally cut off from the world and told by the ruling Sisterhood that they're the last humans left.

But Mary's grown up with stories about the ocean (which most people in the village think is a myth), and she thinks it's a place that's safe from the undead.

She just has to decide if she’s willing to risk the Forest to find out if there’s still a world beyond the fences. There’s also romance.

What was your initial inspiration for the story?

Like a lot of books, there were several random inspirations.

I became fascinated with zombies when my fiancé took me to see the remake of "Dawn of the Dead"(2004)(he then bought me The Zombie Survival Guide [by Max Brooks (Random House) and read it out loud to me when we should have been studying in law school).

Part of what I loved about the zombie books and movies was the idea of survival--how we cope with an event that totally devastates and alters our world.

It was around Halloween when my fiancé was talking about a short story idea set in a zombie world with a forest and a village. In his mind, it was right after the apocalypse and the village was at the edge of the forest. But in mine, it was generations later and the village was utterly cut off. Off and on, we talked about this world, but I really hadn’t planned on writing in it.

Then one day I read an article about the overfishing of tuna, and I thought how odd it would be for future generations to grow up in a world without tuna when most of us today have cans of it stacked away in our pantry.

This made me think about what we lose over time--how something so common in our world could be lost to another.

That evening when I was walking home from work a first line popped into my head. It dovetailed so perfectly with the world my fiancé and I’d been discussing that I ran with it!

What was the timeline between spark and publication, and what were the major events along the way?

I still have the email I sent to myself with that first line on Nov. 2, 2006. I finished the first draft that April and revised it through the summer.

In August 2007, my critique partner got tired of me waffling about sending out query letters so she sent one for me, spurring me into action. I signed with Jim around Sept. 20, 2007; and he sold the book Oct. 15 that year. Two days later, I had my first edit letter!

Much of the year is a blur of excitement and nerves--I really had no idea what to expect and what the timeline was for a book.

Definite high points included seeing the cover in February 2008, getting ARCs, going on a pre-publication tour and meeting George Romero (I got to sign a copy of my book to him, and he asked about movie rights! When I got home after meeting him, I had author copies sitting by my door--perfect timing!).

What were the challenges (literary, research, psychological, and logistical) in bringing it to life?

I'm not an outliner, so I definitely ran into challenges when I wasn't sure what should happen next in the book (I still face those challenges, but at least now I know I've figured it out in the past which gives me hope that I can do it again!).

Research was basically watching a lot of zombie movies and books and then building my own world. I spent time talking to my fiancé (who studied parasitology) and his brother (Ph.D. in biology) about the biological aspects of zombies. I also talked to doctors about wounds I inflicted on my characters, a forest firefighter about what that's like, etc.

One challenge I have whenever I write a book is the fear of closing off plots. I always think of a new book as an endless series of hallways with infinite doorways and each word you write and each plot point you decide, you're closing those doors.

It's sad to think of all the potential ideas that never make it.

What was it like being a debut author?

Amazing and terrifying and wonderful and every other emotion all combined together.

I was so lucky to be a part of a group of debut YA and middle grade authors called the 2009 Debutantes, and so we all went through the experience together, propping each other up, cheering each other on, sharing information and stories. Being with them really enriched the entire experience for me.

I go through these moments of thinking that having a book out is ordinary, and then sometimes I pinch myself and ask if this is all really real.

Congratulations on the release of The Dead-Tossed Waves (Delacorte, 2010)! Could you tell us about this novel?

The Dead-Tossed Waves is a companion to The Forest of Hands and Teeth and is told from the point of view of Mary's (the protagonist from the first book) daughter, Gabry.

Gabry grows up safe in a town by the ocean until one night, against her better judgment, she crosses the barrier to go hang out at an old amusement park with her friends (and the guy she has a crush on).

Being a book with zombies, things go terribly wrong, and she starts to realize that this safe little bubble she's lived in has really been a lie.

Now she has to decide if living a safe life is really living at all.

How was it different, craft-wise, writing your sophomore novel versus writing your first?

I'd actually never planned on writing a sequel--to me, The Forest of Hands and Teeth was a stand alone, but when my editor asked me if I would write more I jumped at the chance because I loved my protagonist and her world.

However, when I sat down to write more of her, I realized that I hadn’t set up any story arcs that would carry past the first book and this tripped me up.

Eventually I realized that Mary's story was pretty much finished, and I really wanted to write about a new character--someone who'd grown up in this town by the ocean.

But at the same time, I wanted to carry through some of the other threads and unanswered questions, so I figured the best solution was to have Mary still be a character, just not a major character.

Why spooky stories? Are you a spooky person?

What's funny to me is that I never thought of The Forest of Hands and Teeth and The Dead-Tossed Waves as being spooky stories! It was just the world my characters lived in, and I think I accepted it as much as they did.

In fact, I'm someone who is very easily scared--I still jump when I watch "Dawn of the Dead" (even though I’ve seen it a million times), and I still freak myself out at night when I'm home alone.

If you could go back in time and talk to your beginning-writer self, what would you tell her?

That it would work out and to relax a little. But at the same time, one of the things I loved about being a beginning writer is that I had all these amazing things to daydream about.

I remember after I sold my book thinking, what will I daydream about when I’m falling asleep at night now? And I realized that I had to find new dreams to focus on.

What can your readers look forward to next?

I just finished the third book in the series, The Dark and Hollow Places, which should come out in spring 2011.

For those who don't want to wait that long, I also have three short stories set in the same world coming out this year.

The first, "Hare Moon," is coming out in the Kiss Me Deadly anthology, edited by Trisha Telep (Running Press, July 2010) and is about Sister Tabitha when she was a teen.

The second, "Flotsam & Jetsam," is in The Living Dead 2 anthology edited by John Joseph Adams (Night Shade) and is about two boys on a life raft after the infection breaks out on their cruise ship.

Third is "Bougainvillea," coming out in the Zombies vs. Unicorns anthology edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier (McElderry, Sept. 2010). My story is set about 15 years after the Return on the island of Curacao--I'm so excited about all three stories!

Cynsational Notes

This is the first stop on Carrie's blog tour! Here's the whole line-up:

3/16: Cynsations
3/17: The Book Smugglers
3/18: MTVNews.com “Hollywood Crush”
3/19: The Page Flipper
3/20: Through A Glass, Darkly
3/21: readergirlz
3/22: Mundie Moms
3/23: Cheryl Rainfield
3/24: Just Blinded Books
3/25: The Story Siren
3/26: Bildungsroman
3/27: Beautiful Creatures

From March 22 to April 4, you also can visit with Carrie at RandomBuzzers!

See a video interview with Carrie from Christ Church Episcopal School:



Check out the book trailer for The Forest of Hands and Teeth:



And the book trailer for The Dead-Tossed Waves:

Teens Get to Do the Interview & Eternal Giveaway

Attention: Teen Readers!

As part of Café Skill's first ever You Do the Interview series, Karey Shane is hosting a giveaway of Eternal (Candlewick, 2010) and an opportunity to interview me, author Cynthia Leitich Smith.

Peek: "If the thought of coming up with questions feels daunting, no worries. I'll be happy to talk you through it. I'll forward the questions on to Cynthia and she'll send me back her answers."

To enter, simply comment here.

Eternal by Cynthia Leitich Smith Debuts at #5 on The New York Times Best Seller List

Oh, my! Oh, wow! Oh...I'm greatly honored--and stunned--to share the news that Eternal (Candlewick) has just debuted at #5 on The New York Times Best Seller List!

Children's Best Sellers - Paperback, to be exact. The full list is available to subscribers online and will appear in Sunday's paper (March 14, 2010).

It's the first time that one of my books has made the list, and to be candid, I'm a little teary and profoundly grateful.

And absolutely wowed and thrilled and, okay, I had to have both my agent and editor assure me that it was really for real, but they both said "yes!" and so... Yowza!

Thanks so much to all of you who have supported this novel and my writing for all these years!

Big heaping thanks to my YA readers--it's a pleasure and honor to work for you! In fact, it's my dream come true!

Thanks to the booksellers--a million times over! I know it's tough on the front lines right now, and I appreciate you!

Thanks to the teachers and librarians for everything y'all do! I wouldn't never made it this far without your support, and I'm hopeful that our future will be just as sparkly!

More personally, thanks to Deborah Wayshak, Jennifer Yoon, and everyone else at Candlewick Press as well as my Ginger Knowlton and Tracy Marchini at Curtis Brown Ltd., along with manuscript readers Anne Bustard, Tim Crow, Sean Petrie, and Greg Leitich Smith!

Thanks to Lisa Firke of Hit Those Keys for her web design efforts, to Shayne Leighton for designing the Eternal book trailer, and to Gene Brenek for designing the Eternal T-shirts and other goodies!

Thanks also to my creative communities in Austin, Texas (including Austin SCBWI and the Writers' League of Texas); at the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults, and around the U.S. and world!

It's quite possible that this post will set the exclamation-point record at Cynsations! Before signing off though, I want to take just one more moment to cheer and reflect.

Congratulations to Carrie Ryan, whose novel The Forest of Hands and Teeth (Delacorte) also debuted on the paperback list! Her companion novel, The Dead-Tossed Waves (Delacorte), releases on March 9!


It also occurs to me that--with Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Little, Brown) at #10--this may be the first time that two Native children's-YA authors have been on The New York Times list. How cool is that?


And, with All The World by Liz Garton Scanlon, illustrated by Marla Frazee (Beach Lane) listed at #8 among picture books, this may be the first time that two Austin-based children's-YA authors have made it in the same week. Note: Liz is the Austinite!

[I'm unsure on the "first-time" here, as All the World and Jacqueline Kelly's Newbery Honor Book The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate (Holt) were on the list at about the same time, but I'm not clear on whether they actually overlapped.]


And that's enough from me! Oh, wait! I have just one more thought...


Thanks to you, too, Zachary & Miranda! There's more of your story to come!

New Voice: Lauren Kate on Fallen

Lauren Kate is the first-time author of Fallen (Delacorte, 2009). From the promotional copy:

There's something achingly familiar about Daniel Grigori.

Mysterious and aloof, he captures Luce Price's attention from the moment she sees him on her first day at the Sword & Cross boarding school in sultry Savannah, Georgia. He's the one bright spot in a place where cell phones are forbidden, the other students are all screw-ups, and security cameras watch every move.

Even though Daniel wants nothing to do with Luce--and goes out of his way to make that very clear--she can't let it go. Drawn to him like a moth to a flame, she has to find out what Daniel is so desperate to keep secret . . . even if it kills her.

Dangerously exciting and darkly romantic, Fallen is a page turning thriller and the ultimate love story.

Are you a plotter or a plunger? Do you outline first, write to explore, or engage some combination of the two? Then where do you go from there? What about this approach appeals to you? What advice do you have for beginning writers struggling with plot?

Is it possible to be both a plotter and a plunger? Or a plunger who’s working on plotting? And sometimes a plotter who’s dying to plunge? I have struggled with plot for my whole writing career, and I’m still looking for the perfect mix of meticulousness and mystery.

Character is easy for me. Dialogue? Bring it on. Descriptions sometimes have to be pulled out of me like teeth, but I’ll give ‘em up eventually.

But plot? Most of the time I don’t have a clue. I’m the writer who spent six years working on a love story between a teen girl and her uncle—whose plot still needs a major kick in the pants to come to any sort of resolution.

I’m also the writer who kicked out four pseudonymous novels in two years with fun but very straightforward plots. You could say I was looking for a middle ground.

The two novels I have published on my own are getting closer to that. The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove (Razorbill, 2009) and Fallen were both meticulously plotted out before I wrote them. Character descriptions, paragraph-long synopses for each chapter, “big” endings, the whole deal.

Both outlines (along with a few chapters) were shared with writer-friends, agents and/or editors at very early stages.

And because the stories were larger and more complicated than I’d first realized, I actually did revisions on the outlines. Way more plotting than I’d ever done before.

At the end of plotting, when I was ready to plunge, it was comforting to sit down every day and know I had to write a chapter where X happened, followed by Y, and then Z.

But sometimes, it was also uninspiring. Suddenly, Y bored me, and Z felt really predictable. But it was in the outline, which fit together like a puzzle! What to do?

Eventually, I realized there were days when I would have to loosen my leash from my outlines, to let the story adapt and change organically as I went along. This was a very good decision, one that took me too long to make.

Right now, I’m in the middle of revising Torment (Fallen’s sequel). And honestly, the experience writing the first book and the second book has been night and day. Maybe it’s because much of the structure and world-building (see below) is already in place from the first book. Maybe it’s because I know the characters better.

But I know part of it is because I’m constantly refining my plotter-to-plunger ratio: freeing myself to stray when inspiration strikes, returning to my outline when I want to feel more grounded.

As a paranormal writer, how did you go about building your world?

When I started writing Fallen, I wasn’t really aware that I was building a world. Looking back, I wonder how that was possible. Because world-building seems like Step One in how to write paranormal fiction, doesn’t it?

I used to work in YA publishing and got to edit many paranormal and fantasy authors. Working with them, I was always very conscious of the ways in which they built and experimented with their worlds.

I even enjoyed being a task-master if they broke the rules they’d set up. "But you said a wizard could only come back from the dead eleven times! This makes twelve." That kind of thing.

But when it came to writing my own story, Fallen really began with the character. I had Lucinda and I had her conflict: she was looking for an escape from her past and a connection to something that felt real. That was where Daniel came in—bringing with him the beginnings of what I guess is called “the world.”

Suddenly, angels, demons, millennium-old curses, scores of reincarnations, and dueling forces of good and evil were all battling for a piece of the action in my little romance story. So it—the world, I mean—had to get bigger. Yank us into the world of Sword and Cross, my agent demanded when I sent him the first few chapters. Make it oppressive and inescapable and all-encompassing.

Oppressive? I had never written paranormal fiction in my life, and suddenly I wondered: could I do it?

Writers talk frequently about the worlds of fantasy and paranormal fiction, but of course, every novel has a world. A world is really just a setting, isn’t it? A setting whose bricks and mortar are really just description and imagination.

Even though, technically, Long Island already existed, Fitzgerald still had to build the world in The Great Gatsby (1925), didn’t he? You could say it’s just description, but the kind of description that informs everything else in the book—the protagonist, the conflicts, the emotional arcs of every character—that’s when description becomes world-building.

Turns out, it’s much less scary to think about world-building as imaginative description. The biggest difference between writing the worlds of straightforward contemporary fiction and paranormal fiction is that you get to make up fun new rules and dialect. I can’t say where most of these terms or rules come from. They just pop out of my mind onto the screen of my computer, and then I spend the rest of the series working through (and sometimes paying the price for) that little bit of impulsiveness.

For example, at the end of Fallen, I made an offhanded reference to a truce that is to last for eighteen days. Didn’t think too much about it, kind of just made it up. I had no idea that that one line would dictate the entire structure of the sequel, Torment. But once it went to the printer and I sat down to plot out Torment, eighteen days was what I had to work with, so eighteen days it was!

I’m not complaining, but I’ve learned to keep a notebook with a list of rules and terms for when I forget what I’ve tossed into Luce’s world. And I love the fact that I have three more books to work though, to let the world grow bigger, denser, and more complicated over the course of the series.

As you can see, building the world of my books is something I’m still figuring out, but I’m learning how to make the most of it, and sometimes even to enjoy it.

Cynsational Notes

The New Voices Series is a celebration of debut authors of 2009. Note: interviews with the debut authors of 2010 are scheduled to begin soon.

Guest Post: Author Amelia Atwater-Rhodes on World-Building & Token of Darkness Giveaway

By Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

One of the most exciting challenges I face when writing fantasy is world-building.

With a brand new book in a brand new world, the challenge is to figure the world out. What cultures exist, and how do they interact? How does magic work, and what are its limitations?

This is a fun stage, though the first book in a new world is normally a mess, because I spend a lot of time walking around, looking through a character’s eyes and going, “That’s cool. What do I do with it?”

In the Forests of the Night (Laurel Leaf, 2000) was the sixth or seventh book I wrote in Nyeusigrube. It took me that long to develop the world enough in my own mind to write a coherent story within it.

Once I, as the author, have a sense of the world, I need to figure out a way to communicate it to the reader without drowning them in info-dump that slows the plot.

Imagine writing a story about a girl who has ridden horses all her life, who goes to compete at professional horse-racing. There is probably no reason that anyone in that story is going to take the time to say, "A horse is a tall animal with four hooves. It’s thinner than a cow, with slender legs…" Everyone in the story knows what a horse is; they might think or talk about technical details ("Oh, I need to remember to get new shoes for that horse"), but they will not bother to describe the animal itself. That’s fine, because most people reading the story already know what a horse is.

In fantasy, however, a writer is often faced with a circumstance where the character is encountering something that is as familiar as a horse to him, but unfamiliar to the reader. This might include animals, or land features, or cultural norms, or something else entirely.

Either way, the challenge is to somehow communicate to the reader what this thing is, and that it is normal to the character, without the narrator taking the time to make an aside that interrupts the narrative flow and seems odd for the character himself.

The Kiesha’ra Series was especially challenging in this way; I often needed to clarify the world for my editor, so she could help me figure out how to explain to the reader.

Then, of course, there is the challenge of a well-developed world: Maintaining canon.

I sometimes have people say to me, “It’s fantasy. You can do whatever you want.”

Whatever has been established for the world needs to have consistency through stories, or a very good reason for changing.

In In the Forests of the Night, Risika says there are ghosts; in Token of Darkness (Delacorte, 2010), it is an important plot-point that Ryan le Coire says ghosts do not exist. Both books are canon.

In this case, the apparent contradiction is solved by a matter of semantics: Risika isn’t a witch, and she uses the term "ghost" in a different way than Ryan does. However, since no one in Token of Darkness knows Risika (Ryan certainly knows of her, but it is unlikely that they have met), and they certainly have no access to her interior narration, I needed to find a way as writer to acknowledge and clarify the apparent contradiction without Cooper stepping aside to say, “In Forests, Risika claims…”

Some people think writing fantasy is easier, because you can do “anything.” Maybe they are right, but writing fantasy for publication is harder.

In the real world, I can assume most people are familiar with basic facts of reality.

In fantasy, even the law of gravity sometimes needs to be clarified.

Token of Darkness Giveaway

Enter to win one of five copies of Token of Darkness (Delacorte, 2010)! To enter, email me (scroll and click envelope) with your name and snail/street mail address and type "Token of Darkness" in the subject line.

Facebook, JacketFlap, MySpace, and Twitter readers are welcome to just privately message me with the title in the header or comment on the interview post; I'll write you for contact information, if you win.

Deadline: midnight CST March 6. Note: U.S. entries only. Sponsored by Random House.

Amelia's Online Tour

Surf by all the stops on Amelia's online tour!

March 1: Tales of the Ravenous Reader (direct link)

March 2: Park Avenue Princess (direct link)

March 3: The Story Siren (direct link)

March 4: Cynsations/Cynthia Leitich Smith

March 5: The Book Butterfly

March 8: Books by Their Covers

Cynsational Notes

In addition, you can also visit with Amelia this week at Random Buzzers!

See also Den of Shadows!

Visit with Cynthia Leitich Smith at TRT Book Club & Comment to Win Eternal and an Eternal T-shirt

Come join me today at the TRT (Teens Read Too) Book Club!

There, you'll find a new Q&A interview.

And in the comments section, you're invited to ask questions or share your thoughts for a chance to win a paperback copy of Eternal (Candlewick, 2010)(excerpt) and your choice of an Eternal T-shirt!

Surf by and say howdy here!

And take a peek at the Eternal T-shirts (designed by Gene Brenek (illustrator interview) below (other colors available):

Cynsational Notes

Eternal is a YA Gothic fantasy, with some humor and strong romantic elements, set in the same universe as Tantalize (2007, 2008). The two casts will crossover in Blessed (Feb. 2011). There's also a fourth (untitled) forthcoming prose novel in the series, and graphic novel adaptations of Tantalize (Feb. 2011) and Eternal are also in the works. The series is published Candlewick Press.

Spooky News

Story Secrets: Ice by Sarah Beth Durst from Holly Cupala. Peek: "I wrote this book as a love letter to my husband. It's about true love... the kind of love where you'd go east of the sun and west of the moon for each other. So this novel is very closed to my heart. It's also about polar bears, one of the coolest animals ever. No pun intended."

The Call (Yes, the call. With the agent!) by Kristina McBride. Peek: "I had spent two years writing three novels, countless hours researching agents to query, double that in time spent on perfecting the query letters, and finally, after everything, I was going to speak to an actual, real-life literary agent sitting in one of those crazy tall buildings in NYC! After freaking out for a few hours, I decided that I needed a plan."

Before Accepting Agent Representation by Kathleen Temean from Writing and Illustrating: Sharing Information About Writing and Illustrating for Children. Peek: "Don't skip this crucial step because you're worried that questions will scare him off, or that the offer won’t last. This isn't a TV promo, it's a potential business partnership. His offer is on the table, waiting patiently for your consideration and ultimate response."

Interview with Nancy Holder by Malinda Lo from The Enchanted Inkpot. Peek: "It's just as hard to write a short story as a novel, and harder to write a comic book. The comic book form is incredibly difficult, and I'm humbled by the artistry of my betters (and grateful for my great artists). I used to prefer writing short stories, but I like the sense of continuity and flow that I can get from working on a novel. But really, what I like to do is write. "

Stages of Revision by Natalie Whipple at Between Fact and Fiction. Peek: "The plot is your base—your story relies on this as a firm foundation. If you have weak areas, you risk readers putting down your book. Because of that, my first revisions always revolve around tightening the plot." Souce: Nathan Bransford - Literary Agent.

Social Networking: What a Children's Publisher Expects: A Conversation with Donna Spurlock from Charlesbridge Marketing by Harold Underdown from The Purple Crayon Blog. Peek: ""It's always been the case (even at Charlesbridge) that a few books are your 'lead books' and they get the majority of the marketing dollars. Here it's been more of an even distribution, but when a book starts to pull ahead in sales, or we know going in that a Jerry Pallotta or Mitali Perkins is going to be working overtime to promote the book, we get behind them more financially. Authors need to do the legwork to get to that point. And it's their personality that's going to do it." Read a Cynsations interview with Harold.

How to Write a Great Query Letter: An Example That Worked by Cheryl Klein, editor at Arthur A. Levine Books from Brooklyn Arden. Peek: "Gbemi [Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich ] has kindly allowed me to reprint her original letter here and annotate it...."

Top 10: Selling Your First Children's Novel by Jen Nadol from 2010: A Book Odyssey. Peek: "54% of Tenners got an agent with less than 10 queries, but 17% of us queried more than 40 agents before getting an offer. As one of that 17%, I can vouch that persistence (read: stubbornness) pays off...to a point. "

Looking at the Agent Search by Lisa Schroeder from Crowe's Nest. Peek: "I didn’t whine publicly about the rejections. You never know who might be reading, so it’s important to keep that frustration under control and always be professional. Have writer friends you can vent to, or set up a special locked LiveJournal account for friends to read only." Read a Cynsations interview with Lisa.

Key to Marketing Your Book: Time Well Spent by Nathan Bransford - Literary Agent. Peek: "Needless to say: unless you were born with more hours in the day than the rest of us, doing everything is not possible." Read a Cynsations interview with Nathan.

Be Kind to Failure by Tami Lewis Brown from Cynsations. Peek: "Creativity is all about moving into new directions. Taking chances. Being risky. Breaking the rules. And when you break those rules you're upsetting the applecart, for others and for yourself. You're grabbing failure by the neck and giving it a good strong shake."

The Writer’s Page: Hot Dog, Katsa! by Kristin Cashore from The Horn Book. Peek: "Writing fantasy happens to be all about limitations. It's about keeping to the rules; it’s about building a world that’s believable to the reader because it’s both comprehensive and consistent; it’s about assembling a body, a structure, that stands up on its own."

Official Jekel Loves Hyde Book Trailer Contest from author Beth Fantaskey. Awesome first-pace prizes include meeting the author! Deadline: March 15.

Whole Novel Workshop for Fantasy with authors Laura Ruby and Anne Ursu from May 1 to May 8 from Highlights Foundation. Peek: "The Whole Novel Workshop offers writers the rare opportunity to have the entire draft of a novel read and critiqued prior to the workshop, followed by a week of intense, one-on-one mentoring."

Expert Scoop with Agent Jennifer Rofé of Andrea Brown Literary Agency from The Brown Bookshelf: United in Story. Peek: "Ten percent of my clients are 'people of color.' Though this isn’t a primary factor in my selection process, I do find myself attracted to stories featuring multicultural characters where race isn't the issue."

In Which I Am the Bearer of Very Bad News by Kiersten White from Kiersten Writes. Note: Kiersten is the debut author of Paranormalcy (HarperTeen, 2010). Peek: "Expect submissions to be hard. Expect to be something of an emotional wreck. But expect to succeed. And work toward this success by being smart about things. What should you do while you're on submission?"

Screening Room

In the video below, YA author Lisa Schroeder talks about How to Do a Drive-By Book Signing. Short, sweet, and nicely illustrative. Read a Cynsations interview with Lisa.



Check out the book trailer for Darklight by Lesley Livingston (HarperTeen, 2009). Read a Cynsations interview with Lesley.



Check out the book trailers for Hearts at Stake (The Drake Chronicles) by Alyxandra Harvey (Walker, 2009).





Thanks to reader Clandestine Mariane from the Philippines for creating this fan book trailer to celebrate Eternal (Candlewick, 2009, 2010).



More Personally

I'm thrilled to be back at Cynsations after my winter hiatus teaching at the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults winter 2010 residency in Montpelier! Note: VCFA is now accepting applications from international students!

While in Vermont, I was honored to learn that I'd been featured as Author of the Month at Fully Booked Bookstores in the Philippines! It was such a thrill to hear from so many new readers because of that great news.

Thanks to D.L. Keur from The Deepening: World of Fiction for featuring Eternal (Candlewick, 2009, 2010).

Austin Area Events

Congratulations to the incoming Austin SCBWI regional advisor Debbie Gonzales on her new leadership role in the chapter (and to the members, who'll wildly benefit from her efforts).

Author Bethany Hegedus will speak on "scene and structure" ("If You Build It, They Will Read") from 11 a.m. to noon Feb. 13 at BookPeople in conjunction with Austin SCBWI. Note: "bring a notebook and get ready to examine Aristotle's Incline and the 7 Key Scenes every book needs. Please be familiar with Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo (Candlewick, 2000)..., as Bethany will discuss the Seven Key Scenes used to build this gem of a book."

More Cynsational Events

The Greater Houston Teen Book Convention is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. April 10 at Alief Taylor High School, and admission is free! Speakers include keynoter Sharon Draper and:

• Cynthia Leitich Smith
  
• Beth Fantaskey
• Marjetta Geerling
  
• Jon Skovron
  
• Judson Roberts
  
• Jimmy Gownley
• George O'Connor
  
• Terry Moore
• Gayle Forman
• The Fillbach brothers
  
• Elizabeth Eulberg
• Paula Morris

Spooky News & Giveaways

For those holiday vacationers who may have missed it, last week I posted my Cynsational Books of 2009. I'd like to highlight just a couple more: The Dust of 100 Dogs by A.S. King (Flux, 2009) as well as The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod series by Heather Brewer (Dutton, ongoing). Read a Cynsations interview with A.S.

Here's the book trailer for The Dust of 100 Dogs:



Here's the book trailer for Tenth Grade Bleeds (Dutton, 2009). Note: Heather is also highly recommended as a speaker. I had the pleasure of being on a panel with her in Westlake, Texas, last fall and was absolutely wowed by her savvy, smarts, and ability to connect with tweens.



This just in! Here's the new book trailer for Eleventh Grade Burns (Dutton, Feb. 2010).


New Releases

Here's a book trailer for Chasing Brooklyn by Lisa Schroeder (Simon Pulse, 2010). Read a new interview with Lisa by Tabitha Olsen from Writer Musings. Peek: "Because I started with picture books, where you need to be succinct as possible, I do think it helped me with the verse. I seem to do well in getting to the heart of a scene and figuring out how to get the emotional truth with just the right choice of words."



Here's a book trailer for Captivate by Carrie Jones (Bloomsbury, 2010). Read a new interview with Carrie from Fantastic Book Review. Enter to win a copy of Captivate.



Welcome YA Rebels

Vloggers YA Rebels describe themselves as "seven young adult authors giving you the behind the scenes drama!" Notes: now posting regularly; video includes cameo by John Green.



More News & Giveaways

10 Things I've Learned about the Writing Biz by Charlene Teglia from Genreality. Peek: "Don’t discount your business abilities and leave that up to other people because you’re 'just a writer'. You're also an independent business person and uniquely gifted with the ability to come up with solid ideas." Source: Elizabeth Scott.

Win an ARC of Everlasting by Angie Frazier (Scholastic, 2010) from Angie Frazier: Adventures of a YA Novelist. Deadline: midnight EST Jan. 8. Learn more about Everlasting.

How I Got My Agent by Anna Staniszewski. Peek: "Sometimes you have to be willing to put one project aside, as I did, and realize that it might not be the one that's going to get you an agent/get you published/etc. That's why you should never stop writing, because you never know which manuscript will grab someone's attention."

Manuscript Blindness by Brian Yansky from Brian's Blog: Writer Talk. Peek: "You have to look at the worth of your scenes in terms of the whole. Do they all belong? If they do belong, have you devoted the right amount of emphasis to each?" Read a Cynsations interview with Brian.

Top Ten Questions Dutton Editors Ask Themselves When Looking At A Manuscript from Kathy Temean at Writing and Illustrating: Sharing Information About Writing and Illustrating for Children. Peek: "Does the action of the story move at a good pace and hold our interest? Does tension build as the story moves forward?" Source: Janet Reid, Literary Agent.

Melanie Kroupa to Join Marshall Cavendish by Lynn Andriani from Publishers Weekly. Peek: "Kroupa will be joining Marshall Cavendish Children's Books as an editor-at-large on Jan. 1, reporting to publisher Margery Cuyler. Kroupa will work for the publisher, which is located in Tarrytown, N.Y., from her office in Dedham, Mass."

Mary Cole of Andrea Brown Literary Agency on Urban Fantasy by Parker Peevyhouse from The Spectacle. Peek: "Believe it or not, some of the most successful urban fantasy stories are also some of the funniest, and that has everything to do with voice. Without humor, personality and wit, 'dark' and 'gritty' will soon become 'bleak' and 'grating.'"

Congratulations to David Lubar on the release of Dead Guy Spy (Starscape, 2010), the second book in his Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie series! Peek: "Nathan Abercrombie is getting used to his rotten life as a half-dead zombie. The good thing is he doesn't feel any pain. The bad thing is his body can't heal, so he has to be really careful not to break anything. But that's hard to do when his wrestling-obsessed gym teacher, Mr. Lomux, matches him up with Rodney the bully, who's looking for any excuse to break his bones. Then one day, Nathan is approached by the secret organization B.U.M.—aka the Bureau of Useful Misadventures—which offers him a cure in exchange for his help. Nathan jumps at the chance to become the world's first zombie spy, but soon discovers that B.U.M. isn’t quite what it seems. Can Nathan trust them?" Read a Cynsations interview with David.

Marvelous Marketer: Nathan Bransford (Literary Agent) by Shelli at Market My Words. Peek: "Traditionally it wasn't really the agent's job to promote books, but I think that may be changing somewhat with the times."
MG/YA SFF Virtual Conference by Tiffany Trent from Eudaimonium: Finding the Gold. Peek: "So, I want to try an experiment. I'm planning on holding a one-day virtual conference sometime in late March or April. I want this to be a truly useful conference to writers and aficionados of MG/YA SFF. Many of us see the same panels over and over again at conferences, making us feel like we've wasted time and money. How might we do it differently? What panels would you like to see that you haven't seen?"

Revision by Brian Yansky from Brian's Blog: Writer Talk. Peek: "...there's a time during revision where you have to be more analytical. The story is in place and the characters are real, and your manuscript feels like all the elements are fitting together. To get to this evolutionary moment in the manuscript, you had to depend on your creative side: instinct and imagination and inspiration. But now you need the analytical side that evaluates." Note: Brian shares a scene-by-scene list of questions to consider for revision. Read a Cynsations interview with Brian.

Comment Challenge 2010 from MotherReader. Peek: "Since it is said that it takes twenty-one days to form a new habit, we’re going to run the Comment Challenge for the next three weeks — starting Friday, Jan. 8, and running through Thursday, Jan. 28, 2010. The goal is to comment on at least five kidlitosphere blogs a day."

Author Interview: Natalie Standiford on How To Say Goodbye in Robot (Scholastic, 2009) from Teenreads.com. Peek: "Once a real story starts to gel, I write a loose plot outline. Some books have complicated plots and require a more detailed outline. I always end up changing things as I write anyway. But I like to know what's going to happen so I can keep the story focused and sharpen every detail into an arrow that points toward the end."

Is Your 'But' Too Big? by John Gibbs from An Englishman in New Jersey. Peek: "Be wary of such people. Many of them carry a virus, Excusitis, a mental affliction which can kill writing dreams by causing the person suffering from it to doubt themselves and their ability. Symptoms include excessive use of the phrases like 'I wanted to be a writer, but...', 'I’ve always thought I had a book in me, but...', 'I love writing, but...'"

Writing Links from Cynthia Leitich Smith Children's-YA Literature Resources features lots to know about agents, book design & art direction, editors & publishers, education, illustration, promotion, publishing, and writing. See also Inspiration in Writing Children's & YA Books and Perspiration: Self Study.

R.J. Anderson talks about Rebel, the sequel to Knife (Orchard UK)(titled Faery Rebels: Spell Hunter in the U.S. from HarperCollins). Source: The Enchanted Inkpot. Read a Cynsations interview with R.J.




Kidlitosphere Diversity Discussion

PaperTigers Reading the World Challenge 2010. Peek: "Choose one book from/about/by or illustrated by someone from each of the seven continents – that’s: Africa; Antarctica; Asia; Australasia; Europe; North America; South America. Have the books read aloud to you or read them yourself; share them as part of a book-group or in class. Combine your choices with other reading challenges. The books can be picture-books, poetry, fiction, non-fiction...the choice is yours."

Kids of Color in Middle Grade Science Fiction and Fantasy--a look back at the 98 books nominated for the Cybils from Charlotte's Library: Fantasy and Science Fiction Books for Children and Teenagers. Peek: "Here are the kids of color I found, the ones who got enough page-time to be memorable."

More Personally

My holiday highlights included reading Nightshade by debut author Andrea Cremer (Philomel, Oct. 2010). It was my great pleasure to send in a blurb for the novel, which you can read here.

Spooky Books of 2009

Congratulations to the children's-YA authors and illustrators of 2009! And thank you to everyone who discussed and debated and cheered and championed this year's books! Just for fun, here are a few of my favorites.

Graphic Middle Grade

Joey Fly: Private Eye by Aaron Reynolds, illustrated by Neil Numberman (Henry Holt, 2009). Read a Cynsations interview with Aaron and Neil. Peek: "I love bugs and I love mysteries, so this seemed to be a great smash-up of those two ideas."

Middle Grade/Tween

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin (Little, Brown, 2009). Read a Cynsations interview with Grace. Peek: "It is an Asian-themed folktale-inspired fantasy where a brave young girl named Minli journeys to change her family's fortune, traveling farther than she ever imagined."

YA Realistic Fiction

The Morgue and Me by John C. Ford (Viking, 2009). Read a Cynsations interview with John. Peek: "Nobody would (or should) care about the 'Double Indemnity' allusion, but it got me thinking. In 'Double Indemnity,' the main character is a jaded insurance salesman. Certainly, an 18-year-old's frame of mind would be much different than his, but how?"

YA Fantasy

Ash by Malinda Lo (Little, Brown, 2009). Read a Cynsations interview with Malinda. Peek: "When I began work on my second draft, I thought long and hard about whether I wanted to turn the story in that direction. Did I truly want to write a 'lesbian Cinderella'?"



Candor by Pam Bachorz (Egmont, 2009). Read a Cynsations interview with Pam. Peek: "Even with all my preparation, I still ask myself at the start of each chapter: 'What really should be happening next? Does my story wire leave anything out? Can I skip ahead to something more interesting?'"



Evil? by Timothy Carter (Flux, 2009). Publishers Weekly said, "A book that doesn't take itself too seriously, but will leave readers with plenty to consider, as it addresses themes of morality, sexuality and faith."


Shadowed Summer by Saundra Mitchell (Delacorte, 2009). Read a Cynsations interview with Saundra. Peek: "So Iris settled down with me to think about that--to roll that idea over with me: we don't know what other people contain. And that means no one else will ever know what we contain, either."



Silver Phoenix: Beyond the Kingdom of Xia by Cindy Pon (Greenwillow, 2009). Read a Cynsations interview with Cindy. Peek: "I remember my first grade teacher writing my name on the board because I didn't know the alphabet, much less how to spell."



Soul Enchilada by David Macinnis Gill (Greenwillow, 2009). Read a Cynsations interview with David. Peek: "The challenge came from the setting, El Paso. I have never been to West Texas, so I needed a ton of information on places, names, locales, smells, sounds, and attitudes."



Watersmeet by Ellen Jensen Abbott (Marshall Cavendish, 2009). Read a Cynsations interview with Ellen. Peek: "In world building, you have to follow your decisions to their natural conclusions. If one of my dwarves lives primarily underground, how can she farm? If centaurs can speak with hoofed animals (as my centaurs can), would they eat them? How much faster would a faun move across given terrain than a human?"

Companions/Sequels

Don't miss companion books/sequels to earlier YA fantasy favorites: Ballad by Maggie Stiefvater (Flux, 2009); Black is for Beginnings by Laurie Faria Stolarz (Flux, 2009)(graphic format); Darklight by Lesley Livingston (HarperCollins, 2009); Dead Girl in Love by Linda Joy Singleton (Flux, 2009); and Fade by Lisa McMann (Simon Pulse, 2009).

Cynsational Notes

Quick caveats: (a) I haven't read every 2009 book published, though I did read 300+ (down from last year; note that picture books are very short); (b) to varying degrees, I know or have met some (but not most) of the creators above--if I cut everyone I knew, potential picks would be significantly reduced in number; (c) I will continue to read and feature 2009 titles in 2010 and beyond; (d) these are highlights, not predictions, not an all-inclusive list of my favorites.

Beyond that, I made an effort to sidestep bestsellers as well as previous ALA and NBA honorees, though one or two may have sneaked in. I decided not to list books by my advisees or that I read in manuscript or contributed to myself. Or put another way, yes, I loved VCFA graduate Julie Berry's The Amaranth Enchantment (Bloomsbury, 2009) and Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci's Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd (Little, Brown, 2009), but they don't need the help and/or I'm a bit too close to them for our purposes here.

Likewise, I'd like to cheer my Candlewick editor, Deborah Noyes (Wayshak) on the release of Sideshow: Ten Original Tales of Freaks, Illusionists, and Other Matters Odd and Magical (Candlewick, 2009). Note: in addition to my short stories in Geektastic and Sideshow, I also published a YA Gothic fantasy novel, Eternal (Candlewick, 2009).

A few quick observations... It's arguably the year of the debut author, I have an ongoing commitment to supporting new voices, and the combination of those forces definitely shows here. In terms of titles by and about diverse folks, the big news is a tentative foothold in YA fantasy, including high fantasy, and people of all backgrounds writing cross-culturally.