Shameless Saturday

Yep, it's time once again for a little 2k8 horn-tooting!!

If you have a few minutes, clickity-click on some of the linkety-links below and enjoy getting to know about some of our authors and titles.

The fabulous Little Willow sure has been busy!

Check out this interview she did with Kristin O'Donnell Tubb, author of AUTUMN WINIFRED OLIVER DOES THINGS DIFFERENT.

Next up, Little Willow reviewed Nancy Viau's book, SAMANTHA HANSEN HAS ROCKS IN HER HEAD. "Samantha Hansen Has Rocks In Her Head by Nancy Viau is fun and funny. I'm sure young readers will dig Samantha, especially those who like the Clementine books by Sara Pennypacker."

She also talked to Nancy about the writing of the book and asked some very interesting questions in this interview.

I think Samantha Hansen might say, "You rock, Little Willow!"

For another review of SAMANTHA HANSEN HAS ROCKS IN HER HEAD, you can read Book Review Maniac's review which includes this praise, "I ab-so-lutely enjoyed this book. It was well written and the plot was great. It had me thinking what Samantha was thinking and wondering what she was wondering. And I even got a little bit mad when she was."

The amazing Cynthia Leitich Smith interviewed Zu Vincent about her book, THE LUCKY PLACE. You already know Cynsations is THE place to get the scoop on must-read books!

Finally - we leave you with a fabulous contest! Terri Clark is giving away TWO early copies of her September 2 release, SLEEPLESS. If you'd like a chance to win a copy of this YA thriller and an official RWA tote bag visit her BLOG for details.

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!

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!

Day 3: Zu, the Writer

Today, Zu Vincent, author of The Lucky Place, talks with us about her passion for writing.

"Traveling in Ireland inspired me to write a story about a man duped by a leprechaun."

(Zu Vincent on her short story, "The Good People")


2k8: When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

Zu Vincent: I composed my first poem when I was three, and the sheer joy of mixing words with emotions made me decide then and there I was going to write. Even though I didn’t yet know how to put words on paper.

Fueling that, I think, was a passion for language. I fell hard for books when I was really little. I remember my first book—a collection of poems and fairy tales bought from a door to door salesman—I can still smell the ink on those glossy pages and see the fascinating art and mysterious stories.

I grew up writing and when I wasn’t writing I was listening to words in my head. A story ran through me all the time. I “wrote” about everything, rearranging words, events and images until I was pleased with them, as if the whole world needed setting down in a book.


2k8: How did this desire to write become reality?

Zu Vincent: I don’t know if writing is as much a career as a vocation, which means you do it for love even in the leanest times. I started out by teaching myself. Before I could afford my first computer I practiced writing stories on my dad’s old Underwood typewriter, propped on the kitchen table. But I did take a night class early on. It was taught by a caustic, old-school journalist who demanded we publish or perish before the class was over. So I wrote a short story that actually sold. I don’t know who was more surprised, me or the teacher. But I was hooked.


2k8: How has freelancing helped you as a novelist?

Zu Vincent: By interviewing so many people I’ve met a great cast of characters. And in doing research I’ve learned a little bit about a lot of incredible places. I’ve studied art, science, history, building, you name it. I’ve done a lot of traveling. But most of all I’ve studied people, which is a writer’s dream. And in interviews people are so willing to give of their emotional selves if you’re willing to listen. It’s that connection that makes a story come alive. So the fiction writer in me delights in interviewing because it always leaves me knowing a bit more about life.

Coming tomorrow ... details on The Lucky Place and what it's like to write in vignettes!

Day 2: Let's Really Get to Know Zu Vincent!

Before we start today's interview, Zu Vincent has something to say...

Thank you to my friends at 2K8. It’s fantastic launching The Lucky Place here!



2k8: And, now, onto the interview. Did anything surprise you or catch you off guard when you were writing your book?

Zu Vincent: I was surprised that I could move from writing for adults to writing YA. There’s something incredible happening in young adult literature today. Some wonderful, edgy reads are being brought out under young adult imprints. And as Blake Nelson, author of Paranoid Park said in an NPR interview last week, the genre has exploded and “now everybody wants to come to the party.” So I’m pretty excited to be a part of this. And what’s great and perhaps still a secret is how many adults are being drawn to books on the YA shelves.

2k8: How did The Lucky Place first find a publisher?

Zu Vincent: I wrote The Lucky Place while working at Vermont College on my MFA. It began as a story of a girl with two fathers that I was writing as my creative thesis. The novel sold before I graduated thanks to Carolyn Coman, who passed it on to Front Street. I knew I was taking a chance writing in vignette form, but I was lucky because my wonderful editor, Joy Neaves, loved it and felt it was right for her list.


2k8: What inspired The Lucky Place?

Zu Vincent: This little girl whose father left her at the races when she was three. I wanted to know what happens to her. She thinks it’s her fault because she let go of her dad’s hand, and now she just wants to keep hold of everyone. Her mom and step dad and her brothers. But she can’t. So how does she survive when what she wants most is a happy family and her family keeps crumbling?

Besides, The Lucky Place is a coming of age story and I’ve always loved coming of age stories. I think that time in our lives stays with us out of all proportion to the actual years we live it. We carry so much with us from childhood, even if it was unhappy. Childhood is where we first learn to love, and are first loved, where we first learn how to be in life. Writing is about finding meaning, finding what makes us more human, that was my larger inspiration for The Lucky Place.

2k8: Where do you do most of your writing?

Zu Vincent: Right now it’s in a studio, which is upstairs and full of glass so it feels like you’re in a tree house. A big window looks into the pines where a crazed squirrel does the rumba and drum-beats his branch. Sometimes he leaps over to the last tree that hangs on the edge the canyon.

The canyon is carved from lava rock and split by distant creek, filled with forest and caves and topped by “still active” volcanoes. I think what’s out there beyond the glass is as much my studio as anything.


I like what Joyce Carol Oates says, that “in public, we become public figures. But in private, we ‘become’ the individuals we are.” And for a writer, no place is more private than a studio. No place speaks more about our private selves.

Psst. This just in: Zu Vincent has a great essay on writing revisions over on Darcy Pattison's blog.

Introducing ... Zu Vincent!

 

Yes, folks, it's another exciting launch week at the Class of 2k8! We proudly raise our glasses of cyber bubbly to debut author Zu Vincent and her young adult novel, The Lucky Place.

Without further ado, here's the beautiful cover:

And we want to tell you about The Lucky Place:

“Here’s what I think. I think having two daddies is like riding the elephant. You don’t know until you get up there what an elephant smells like, or how high you will be on the elephant’s back. But then you realize. And the basket tips one way and then the other, like you might fall, every time the elephant steps.”

Her drunken father lost her at the races when she was three. Her down and out mother believes in luck. Her wild brother wants to be a dancing star. And her new father’s secret could destroy them all. But when the chips are down in an ordinary life, the view from a young girl’s heart can still look extraordinary.

Now, let's meet Zu!

Zu Vincent holds an MFA from Vermont College where she began writing a story about fathers and daughters that became The Lucky Place. She was awarded Harcourt’s post-grad semester at Vermont College in 2006. Her photos and features have appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines including Harper’s, Yoga Journal and Flyfishing, and she’s written non-fiction books for Scholastic, Harcourt, Signet and Plume. In addition her essays and short stories have appeared in several literary journals and anthologies including Through The Wardrobe, edited by Herbie Brennan.


So, Zu, tell us how The Lucky Place began…

Isabelle Allende calls writing “an exercise in nostalgia,” a long, slow dance in an ever-widening circle of memory. I like that. I think we forge the details of this dance from love and longing, remembered place and the rub of character against character. In this way all novels are true, even if they aren’t factual. For example, the title for The Lucky Place came from a childhood memory about a white horse. When my mom would see this white horse in the field near our home, she’d lick her thumb and stamp it on her palm for luck. I remember being sure this would work, that our family would stay charmed forever.

But nobody’s family stays charmed forever. And in The Lucky Place, I created Cassie and Jamie, threw them into a messy family relationship and watched what happens when this early magical belief meets reality.

Advance praise for The Lucky Place:

“A quietly powerful and important story. Zu’s vignettes weave a novel that, from moment to moment, takes your breath—then gently hands it back to you again. Lovely.” 

—Jacqueline Woodson, author of Hush

“The Lucky Place is a pitch-perfect little symphony.” 

—Tim Wynne-Jones, author of The Maestro

“A magical book—joyful and heartbreaking—singing with life. Zu leads us gently into the heart and soul of a girl we come to love. I didn’t want it to end.” 

— Susan Wooldridge, author of Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words

Come back and visit as we spend the week getting to know more about our classmate, Zu Vincent, and The Lucky Place!

You can also visit Zu at her website: http://www.zuvincent.com