M.P. Barker--Archivist/Historian/Author

Okay, M.P., it's time for us, as your classmates, to come clean about something.

Ahem. Ahem.

We're in awe of you.

You are an archivist and historian. And a published author. Wow.

So, tell us about your cast of characters ... from your incredibly unique perspective ...

M.P. Barker: First of all, thank you. Second, one of the great things about working in an archives is that I have lots and lots of old photographs and book illustrations to browse through if I'm trying to get an idea for a character.

And I'm happy to show you some of the characters from A Difficult Boy. By the way, all these images are from the archives at the Connecticut Valley Historical Museum and are used with permission.


Mr. Lyman is the meany that my two main characters, Ethan and Daniel, work for.



And here’s the lovely Mrs. Lyman.



This handsome Civil War veteran was my model for Silas, the Lymans’ oldest son.



Although not quite as plump as I imagine Lizzie, the Lyman’s dairymaid, to be, this gal has just the right twinkle in her eye:


The hardest characters to find were my two boys. I still haven’t found a Daniel that matches the one in my head (no offense to Marc Tauss, the artist who created the striking cover image for the book). As for Ethan, I found a couple of old photos that were sort of close, but not exactly right.

Then one day I was out with a couple of friends. (These, by the way, were the friends who made me write 5 pages a day until the book was finished, so they knew the story better than just about anyone else.)

We were at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA (an amazing museum—more great art in one small town than you’d ever imagine—and Williamstown is also the home of the famous summer theater where Christopher Reeve got his start).

This painting, Thomas Gainsborough’s "Elizabeth and Thomas Linley" just stopped me dead in my tracks. “Do you know who that is?” I said to my friends, who looked at me like “Well, duh, read the label.” When I told them it was Ethan, they just went “Whoa—yeah, that’s him!” Check out this link.

Want an idea of what kind of house the Lymans live in?

Here are links to a couple of historic houses that are similar:

The Seguine Mansion, Staten Island, NY

The Maxfield Inn, Naples, NY

The Alexander House, Springfield, MA (shown here being moved—this one is just around the corner from the museum where I work)


So, friends out there in the blogosphere, can you see why we're in awe of M.P.?

Day 2: Our Very Own M.P. Barker

And here she is! Our wonderfully talented M.P. Barker!



2k8: So, M.P., yesterday you told us what sparked the idea for A Difficult Boy. Now, we want to know more, more, more. How did the book actually come about?

M.P. Barker: Well, I started doing character sketches and fragments of scenes, and, after a while I had enough of them that a vague semblance of a plot began to emerge. I showed them to some friends who promptly challenged me to write five pages a week until I was finished. About two years later, I had 700 pages—an actual book…well, enough for two or three actual books. Then I spent the next eight years revising and revising and revising and shopping it around, trying to find a publisher.

2k8: M.P. is the Mistress of Revision. See how she works her magic here, on Darcy Pattison's blog.

Okay. Back to A Difficult Boy. Give us the dirt on how it found a publisher.

M.P. Barker: Ummmm….how much time do you have? It’s mostly a story of “nos” that meant “maybe” and “yeses” that meant “no.”

A friend (I have such good friends!) told me about the PEN New England Children’s Book Caucus Discovery Award contest (whew! That’s a mouthful, ain’t it?). “Yeah, right,” I said, “Like I have a chance at that.” But I entered anyway and nearly fell over when I got the call telling me I was one of the winners. The prize? My MS (manuscript) bypassed the slush pile and went directly into the hands of an editor—not a lackey or assistant or intern. (By this time, the MS was down to a mere 500 pages.)

After reading it, the editor said “no” but she’d give it another look if I revised it. I got it down to 350 pages, sent it back, waited and waited and waited and waited. Finally, I got a “yes” that inexplicably turned into a “no” four months later—this was after the MS had languished with this publisher—contractless--for two years. (To be fair, the editor was very helpful, and making her suggested changes improved and shortened the MS greatly, so it wasn’t a total waste of time.)

Once I’d recovered from my semi-suicidal depression, I started kicking myself over how stupid I’d been for not getting an agent while my MS was sitting with publisher #1. If I’d had an agent, s/he could have forced a decision one way or another a lot sooner.

So I resolved not to waste any more time and started sending out at least one query a day until I got an agent. For those of you into statistics, I sent out 137 queries—25% got no answer at all, 62% were rejected (mostly form letters or postcards), 20% requested a partial MS, and 10% asked for a full.

It took me about five months to find my agent, William Reiss of John Hawkins and Associates. He initially said, “No.” (More on that later this week.) I wrote back to ask him if there was anything I could do that might make him reconsider. A week later, he wrote back, said he’d changed his mind, and voila! An agent for moi! It took him about nine months to find me a publisher, another two months negotiating the contract, then about six months to get editorial comments and another six months of revisions before the MS was finalized and off to the printer. Phew! Have I put you to sleep yet?

2k8: Wow! M.P., you are incredibly persistent!


A Difficult Boy is a PEN New England Children's Book Caucus Discovery Award winner.

2k8: Did anything surprise you or catch you off guard when you were writing your book?

M.P. Barker: Hmmm…besides the fact that I actually got an agent and a publisher? I think how strongly the characters just took over. For example, there was this peddler who was supposed to be just sort of a walk-on part. He was supposed to be a young, skinny guy who sees Daniel and Ethan riding their master’s horse and mentions it to someone, which gets the boys in trouble—three or four paragraphs, tops.

When I started writing him, though, he turned out to be this middle-aged, short, dumpy, trollish little guy with an uncanny knack for figuring people out. He ended up challenging Daniel to a horse race, came back later in the book, and re-appears as a major character in the sequel I’m working on now.

Then there was Silas, the eldest son of Ethan and Daniel’s master. He had this sort of stand-offish, brooding attitude that I couldn’t figure out until I got close to the end of the book. Then this whole story about a deep, dark secret from his past poured out, and I felt like I was just taking dictation and wondering “Where the heck did THAT come from?” When it was done, all of a sudden his character made total sense to me.

2k8: Imagine you have an offer from your dream press to publish your dream book, no matter how insane or unmarketable or sane or marketable it might be. What story do you want to write next/someday and why?

M.P. Barker: My first dream book is the one I’m planning to concentrate on once the sequel to A Difficult Boy is finished.

The working title is The Sea Captain’s Daughter, and it’s about the wife and daughter of a sea captain who is lost at sea and how they cope after he’s gone. A very strong-willed female botanist/explorer/botanical illustrator moves in with them and turns their lives upside-down. It’s told in the form of logbooks written by the wife and daughter, which are addressed to the sea captain—a practice they’d started when he was alive, and which they continue after his disappearance.

I’ve only written about 40-50 pages so far, still trying to figure out where the story is going and who these people really are, but this is another one where the characters have taken over. As I’d originally envisioned the story, the mother was supposed to die, leaving the daughter free to go adventuring with the botanist. But like that old guy in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Iris (the mom) said “I’m not dead yet” and it looks like she’s going to have some interesting adventures of her own.

If I had a publisher with an unlimited budget, I think it would be really cool to incorporate floral borders and plates done in the style of 19th-century botanical illustrations.

My second dream book would be any one that would involve a publisher paying me large amounts of money to travel around the world—especially to places that have good food, warm climates, and nice beaches.

2k8: That's all very fine. As long as you turn it into a field trip and take along the entire class!

M.P. Barker: Sounds fun to me!

2k8: Awwww. And our hardcore question of the day: What question won't most people know to ask you? What's your answer?


M.P. Barker: Would you like some chocolate? Oh, yes, please!

Put your hands together for ... M.P. Barker

Please welcome M.P. Barker, debut young adult author of A Difficult Boy.


M.P. is a very interesting and unique member of the Class of 2k8. And we wish you all got a chance to hang around her the way we do. But since you don't, we're doing this interview to help you get to know her. 

Best of all, M.P. is letting us give away her biggest secret.

Here goes ...

M.P. Barker is a TIME TRAVELER!

M.P. Barker: Actually, I'm an archivist and historian. Which, I guess, is sort of the same thing.

2k8: But you worked in nineteenth-century rural New England, right?

M.P. Barker: I was a costumed historical interpreter at Old Sturbridge Village. I milked cows, mucked out barns and found inspiration for my historical novel, A Difficult Boy.

2k8: That mucking out of barns sounds ewwww. But the rest sounds very cool. Are you still time traveling?

M.P. Barker: Well, I work now as an archivist at the Connecticut Valley Historical Museum. This gives me the opportunity to read other people's diaries and letters and snoop through their photo albums.

2k8: Love it! Old-time gossip! What else do you do?

M.P. Barker: I'm also a freelance historical consultant. I've written exhibit text, scripts for historical dramatizations, nominations to the National Register of Historic Places, fundraising materials, and planning studies.

Thanks, M.P. And, now, onto A Difficult Boy. First off, here's the wonderful cover.

cover art credit: Marc Tauss

And here's the flap copy:

It's 1839. Nine-year-old Ethan doesn't want to be an indentured servant. But his family has no other way to pay off their debt, so Ethan must work for Mr. Lyman, a wealthy shopkeeper in their Massachusetts town. At first, Ethan tries to make friends with the Lymans’ other indentured servant, Daniel, a moody Irish teenager. But Daniel, as everyone says, is a difficult boy, and wants nothing to do with him. Then Ethan is shocked to see Mr. Lyman beat Daniel. Soon, Ethan, too, is suffering Mr. Lyman’s blows. Self-preservation finally drives the two boys together, and they begin to form a friendship, but when the boys discover a dark secret about the patron, their lives may be changed forever.



2k8: How in the world did you ever come up with this fantastic idea for a book?

M.P. Barker: I was cataloguing some documents in the archives and came across a 275-year-old bill that an indentured servant’s master had sent to the boy’s mother, charging her for the cost of finding and bringing back her runaway son. That got me thinking: Why did the boy run away? What would happen if his mother couldn’t pay the bill? What kind of crummy cheapskate was that master?

photo credit: Connecticut Valley Historical Museum, from their archives

2k8: And how did the bill become your novel?

M.P. Barker: Well, the document was still on my mind when I went to my weekly writing group. So I began doing a few character sketches. Since I didn’t know as much about the 1770s as I ought to, I transferred the time to the 1830s, which I did know about from working at Sturbridge Village. Once the characters started growing, they began to take on their own lives, as characters have a way of doing, and I sort of lost control. My first draft was 700 pages! Luckily for readers, the published version is now just shy of 300 pages with two discontented indentured servants (one of them Irish), one cruel master with a closet full of skeletons, one son of said cruel master with a deep, dark secret of his own, one dairymaid with a serious crush on the master’s son, and one mysterious peddler who wanders in and out inadvertently stirring up trouble.

2k8: Those characters sound fascinating!

M.P. Barker: Thanks! Turning that material into historical fiction was an adventure and a challenge. I wanted to create characters that readers could identify with, while allowing them to see that those characters aren’t merely modern people wearing funny clothes and living without indoor plumbing. Daniel’s and Ethan’s thoughts and beliefs are very different from ours, yet they grapple with familiar problems: prejudice, abuse, poverty, grief, and loneliness. And they cherish the same things that matter to kids and adults today: loyalty, kindness, trust and most of all, friendship.

2k8: Congratulations, M.P. You are a published author now! And, hey, don't forget you're featured on our blog this entire week. So, make sure you time-travel your little self back here for Tuesday's interview.

Book Trailer for The Lucky Place!

The book trailer for Zu Vincent's The Lucky Place is, in a word, FANTASTIC!





The Lucky Place is, in a word, FANTASTIC!

We heart you Zu Vincent! We heart The Lucky Place!

Day 5: Zu Vincent: The Future

"Plotting my next move." (Zu Vincent)


2k8: So, Zu, what do you think happens to Cassie and her mom as Cassie gets older?

Zu Vincent: I know what happens; I’ve already written the companion book. The Lucky Place ends when Cassie is twelve and the next novel picks up there and takes her through age eighteen. In writing about this family, it turned out that The Lucky Place is more a story about a father and daughter, but the new story centers around a mother and daughter. Cassie’s mother, Belle, really goes off the deep in my next novel. So does her brother Jamie. The sixties hit with a vengence and all hell breaks lose. It’s a pretty wild ride.


2k8: What’s the most satisfying part of the writer’s life?

Zu Vincent: Doing what I love and having so many wonderful friends who do the same thing to share it with.


2k8: What are you writing now?

Zu Vincent: I’m completing what might be called a literary mystery about a kidnapped boy and a senile old lady who hopes to save him. Its subtext is the perils of old age—a time in our lives which oddly enough has a real parallel to adolescence, the time of life Cassie is just entering in The Lucky Place.


So, interested in reading a chapter of The Lucky Place?
Click here. Hint: You need to register first, then click on "Library."

And check out Teen Libris where Zu has an essay, "Mind the Gap", in the anthology Through the Wardrobe.


We're honored, Zu, to have been a part of your exciting launch week! We'll be following your bright, bright literary future!

Totally Important Post!

We just got word that ... drum roll, please ...

A Curse Dark As Gold by Elizabeth C. Bunce

and

The Gollywhopper Games by Jody Feldman

were nominated for the American Library Association's Best Books for Young Adults award!!!

Yowzer! We're so proud!!

Zu Vincent: Getting Down to Brass Tacks

Okay, Zu, let's get down to brass tacks.
Talk to us about vignettes.
Talk to us about The Lucky Place.

Author Jacqueline Woodson notes that your book is written in vignettes. Why did you choose this style?

Zu Vincent: I think the style chose me. After the fact I can say that it works because there’s a theme running through the book about how home movies, in particular, offer us a slice of life. And that theme plays into the style of short, quick scenes which give you glimpse after glimpse of these characters that eventually add up to a complete story. At the same time, each vignette has to stand on its own, as a kind of story within a story. The challenge for me as a writer was to have Cassie’s voice mature through these vignettes as she grew up on the page. And the voice had to, in turn, reflect her emotional growth in the novel.

What’s your favorite part of the book?

Zu Vincent: I think it’s that overall, I was able to write in vignette form, because the voice just took over and came rushing out that way from beginning to end. That was so satisfying. And I love the characters, every one of them. I love River City and the suburbs, which feel like a character as much as Cassie, Jamie, Ellis or Belle.


Cassie’s brother Jamie likes to dance and is teased as being too feminine by his peers. It’s also a source of tension between him and Ellis, Cassie’s stepfather. Can you talk about the role gender plays in the book?

Cassie’s devoted to both her brother and her stepdad, and it’s true that the two have a lot of tension between them, since Ellis, while compassionate, is more of a man’s man. He doesn’t understand Jamie and at the same time Jamie is angry at the loss of his real father, so he resents Ellis.

This is a big source of fear for Cassie. She’s scared Jamie will move away with their dad and Ellis won’t think of her and Jamie as his “real” children somehow. That he’ll be disappointed in them.

But like so many kids, Cassie loves both Ellis and Jamie for who they are, even as the possiblity that her brother is gay creates a lot of pain for him that Cassie shares. This dynamic gave me the opportunity to explore how children feel growing up in the midst of all this conflict. From the inside, Cassie only knows Jamie through her experience of him, just as she only understands Ellis and her father, Sikes, through their humanity.

I think this kind of divided loyalty is tearing up a lot of kids these days who find themselves in broken families, and it can happen in many ways when new, blended families don’t see eye to eye.



This image hung in my studio while I wrote The Lucky Place, and the truck appears in the novel.

Tomorrow: Zu Vincent and the future!