Hurry Up & Wait!

Ask any writer what the worst thing about this industry is and you'll most likely hear...waiting. It seems like an endless loop of hurry-up-and-wait. We hurry to turn things in and then we wait and wait and waaaait some more. Just ask Teri Brown, author of Read My Lips.

My first sale took forever, but I’ll make the first sale story much, much shorter. My first book didn’t sell, much to my agent’s disappointment, (and mine!) but we had high hopes for the second one. In September of 06, we sent it out to a ton of editors. The first rejections were fairly quick, like in the first couple of weeks. Then the waiting began. Over the next eight months, we waited, following up from time to time. A rejection would trickle in here and there until our large list of editors had dwindled. I was working on my next book, but losing heart. Then we got news. A new editor at Simon Pulse, who had recently taken over for the editor we had submitted to back in September, happened to come across my manuscript. She was conversing with my agent on a different book and asked if mine were still available because she was really “enjoying the read.”

Do you want to know how many times I read that sentence? I lost track after like, 100. My agent sent her a quick note telling her it was still available. A few days later the editor wrote back saying she loved it and hoped to have an offer by the next week. It was positive enough that I began doing the happy dance, though part of me couldn’t believe it until the actual offer came in. And there it was. Read My Lips had sold. All it took was eight months, an editor leaving, and a new editor discovering the manuscript. So one thing I’ve learned in this business… never give up!

No doubt about it, sticktoitveness is key! Tomorrow Terri Clark will share her story of dogged determination.

A Bouncing Baby Book

In keeping with yesterday's baby theme, we introduce you to the first book baby of Lisa Schroeder, author of the current YA sensation I HEART YOU, YOU HAUNT ME.

My first book sale was in the spring of 2004. I had been seriously writing and submitting stories since 2001, and was about to surpass the 100 mark for total number of rejections. (Now that's persistence!)

I remember I was at work, trying not to fall asleep, because I had been up with a very sick child all night. My husband stayed home with that very sick child while I trudged into work.

Around 2:00, my husband called me and said, "an editor just called you! You're supposed to call her back!"

I grabbed my cell phone and ran outside, wondering if I was going to miss her since I was the West coast and she was on the East coast. When she answered, I said something like, "This is Lisa Schroeder, and I'm so glad you haven't left for the day." She said, "And miss telling you the exciting news? No way!"

She was calling to tell me that Sterling Publishing was interested in publishing my picture book story, BABY CAN'T SLEEP. It was one of my favorite picture book stories that I wrote, so of course I was thrilled.

Today, BABY CAN'T SLEEP is still available, in hard cover as well as a board book format, which makes me happy, since it's my first "baby" and all.

Awww. Don't we just love babies and happy endings? Tomorrow we're going to hear another story about persistence from Teri Brown.

Realizing Dreams

They say April showers bring May flowers. This month we're hoping to plant the seeds of inspiration. THREE of our authors will be debuting in the coming weeks, but for now we're going to talk about realizing dreams.

To be considered a writer it only one takes thing...writing! To be considered a published writer it takes that first sale. This week we'll be sharing our first sale stories. Some are funny, some will make you verklempt and some will remind you why you should always remain persistent. May those of you reading these stories have exciting sales tales of your own blooming as we speak!

First up is Kristin O'Donnell Tubb's rather, ahem, embarassing story....

The scene: Early February, 2007. My editor, Wendy Loggia, calls my cell phone. I am nine months pregnant. I am AT THE OB/GYN.

Wendy: "Hello, Kristin? It's Wendy Loggia from Random House."

Me: "Oh my gosh! It's so good to hear from you! I'm at my gynocologist's office right now."

Wendy: silence

Me: "Oh, um - I should say, I'm not in the office right now - I mean, I am, but I'm checking out. I'm done." Shut up Kristin. "I mean - I'm scheduling my induction for my new baby. I was newly pregnant when we met, remember?" Shut UP, Kristin. "Everything's great! Healthy baby! I'm scheduling his arrival right now. That's why I'm at...my...OB's office..."

Wendy: laughing "I think this is a first for me."

Me: unbelievably mortified "Uh, me too?"

Wendy: "So I wanted to talk to you more about this wonderful story you sent me..."

And that was that! There, in my OB/GYN's office, I was offered my first book deal. Two weeks later, my son was born. It was one heckuva month.

You gotta love two new babies! Join us tomorrow when Lisa Schroeder talks about her baby...BABY CAN'T SLEEP

The Texas Library Association

Last month, 2k8er Stacy Nyikos, 2k9er Bev Patt, 2k9er Gabriele Goldstone, and author Linda Joy Singleton participated on a Cultural Diversity panel at the Texas Library Association's annual conference. They talked about multiculturalism in their writing. And they were so amazing that they've already been asked back for next year!

( left to right) Stacy Nyikos, Bev Patt, Miriam Hees, Lila Guzman, Linda Joy Singleton, and Gabriele Goldstone




Here are some books that were available for free at the conference. If you look closely and really squint, you can make out the following books by 2k8ers: Emerald Tablet by P.J. Hoover, I So Don't Do Mysteries by Barrie Summy and Bewitching Season by Marissa Doyle.

It's just too fun for words!

Marissa's Last Launch-Week Post

Today is the last day of Marissa Doyle's launch week for her uberly fantastic young adult historical, Bewitching Season.

Which means it's our last opportunity to pick her brain.



Hmmm....hmmmm...hmmm
What should we ask her?



We've got it!

Inspiration! When you’re struggling for ideas, Marissa, what do you do to get recharged?



And Marissa says...


Ideas are never the problem. I have notebooks full of ideas for stories, some with synopses already written. Ideas are a dime a dozen, which is why writers crack up when someone walks up to them and says, “I’ve got this great idea for a book! I’ll tell you what is it and you can write it, and then we’ll sell it and split the money.”

Struggling occurs when I’m in the middle of a story. I’m more of a plotter than a pantser; that is, I have a pretty good idea about the arc of my story before I start writing it though of course it can change and usually does. Changes mostly happen because as I write, the characters become more and more their own people, and if I have it plotted that character X is supposed to behave this way and do this, but he won’t because that’s just not who he is anymore…well, it can be a problem.

The best thing to do at this point is get up from the computer and do something else that has nothing to do with words, something that occupies the surface of the mind and leaves the rest of my brain free to work on the problem. Quilting is great for this, though there’s always the danger that I’ll get sucked into it too deeply and start going through fabric and flipping through designs and planning a new one...and then the creative part of my brain gets occupied with the quilt instead of the book. So I try to leave little stacks of cut-out pieces of fabric by my sewing machine, ready to be sewn together just in case I need them.

Driving is a great place to work out book problems too, preferably on familiar roads. But an even better place is the shower. Again, I think it’s that doing something familiar and rote--and what’s more rote than shampooing your hair?-- that occupies the “front” of the brain and allows the deeper bits to get to work without distraction.

I wish I could add doing housework to the list. My house would be a lot cleaner if dusting and vacuuming were more conducive to working on solving story problems, though folding laundry is boring enough to be useful.




Marissa, thank you for a wonderful week on the blog. It's been a treat getting to know you better. We wish you every single kind of success there is with Bewitching Season and your writing career!

Totally Important Post!

TWO of our 2k8 books have been chosen for the Association of Booksellers for Children's (ABC) New Voices project: The Opposite of Invisible by Liz Gallagher and Magic Thief by Sarah Prineas. To give you an idea of how amazing this news is, only FOURTEEN books are chosen each year! Woot! Woot!

AND Magic Thief is a Top Ten Book Sense Pick for spring/summer 2008!

A BIG FAT THANK YOU and shout out to And Another Book Read for the fabulous review you gave Read My Lips by Teri Brown.

ANOTHER big fat thank you and shout out to Literate Lives for a wonderfully wonderful review of The Gollywhopper Games by Jody Feldman.

AND guess who loves Bewitching Season by Marissa Doyle? The Looking Glass Review!

With all this great 2k8 news, all of Broadway might be cheering!

Then again, it might just be us.

We're a pretty noisy class.

Day 4: Marissa Doyle on "Inspiration by Teacher"...

Today, Marissa Doyle, author of the historical young adult novel, Bewitching Season, talks about which teacher inspired her to become a writer. Take it away, Marissa...

The teacher who got me started writing was…

I think that it was actually one teacher and assignments given by two other teachers that helped make me a writer. Coincidentally, they were in grades 3, 5, and 7.

In third grade my teacher, Miss Billington, was very happy to let us go to the bookshelf and read when we’d finished our classwork…but she also liked us to do projects about the books we read when we were done reading them. I cut my hands into ribbons carving a dugout canoe from a hideous bright gold bar of Dial soap after reading a book about Pocahontas, so it was with great relief that at Halloween we were given the option to write and illustrate a spooky story. My illustrations were (and still are) limited to stick figures…but I had a great time writing about a little girl named Geraldine who didn’t believe in Halloween and who ended up being sacrificed to the Halloween God for her impiety by an outraged group of witches, ghosts, and vampires. I’ve since come to prefer happier endings, but I still remember how exciting it was to create that story.






In seventh grade I discovered the usefulness of writing prompts when my English teacher Mrs. LaBelle sent around little bags of words in strict order (adjective-adjective-noun-verb-adverb-adverbial phrase) that we had to pull one word out of, then write a paragraph or story based on the sentence we formed. Almost miraculously, my sentence read, “Several confused stewardesses fell bitterly without stopping”. No, I didn’t peek when I pulled my words…and darn, I had fun with that topic sentence.





But my fifth grade Language Arts teacher, Mr. Souza, gave me the most valuable writing gifts of all--those of discipline and craft. He assigned us projects that involved A LOT of writing--chapter summaries (I wrote a summary of every single chapter of Little Women, all fifty-odd of them), informational paragraphs culled from reading the classroom encyclopedia, or our own original stories and opinion pieces. By the end of that year, we'd each written a couple hundred one or two paragraph essays. You’d better believe I learned grammar and usage…and how to sit my backside in a chair and just write.

Thanks, you three.