This is another great British MG. Set in a small town in Wales where their claim to fame is more rain than anywhere else in the UK, it’s about…well, I’m not going to tell you because if I do, I’ll spoil it. The beginnings a bit of a mystery. I will say it’s got loads of dry British humor, outstanding voice, interesting characters, and that little something extra that makes it special. I will also say that they did Americanize it, which is my pet peeve (American spelling, exchanging words, etc.), but you can’t really get away from that unless you buy the British edition. I guess that since I lived in England I think everyone should be able to figure out that a jumper is a sweater, but maybe that’s not true! Anyway, I do think you will enjoy this and I highly recommend it. And as a point of irony, the author has written such screenplays as Welcome to Sarajevo and Hilary and Jackie, which couldn’t be much further away than a MG book set in Wales! Enjoy.

I’d once thought of writing a book about two families who swapped kids, so when I saw the title of this book, I thought, “Old Slow Joe, missed the boat.” However, that’s not what this book is about, so you never know…any editors out there like that idea? Okay, I digress. This is a great read. It’s British YA, although it might pass for MG. It’s got a really great hook (premise) and I liked how well developed all the characters are. It keeps you guessing and makes you want to keep reading, which is always good. If you have a boy in your household who tends to be a reluctant reader, because this book’s got the bonus of having a male protagonist, it would be a good one to pass his way. I’d definitely look for more books by this author.

Hi, Everyone.

I’ve finally posted a few of my articles in the nonfiction section. Forgive the goofy formatting on some of it. I’d rather get back to writing my novel than goof around with it anymore! Also, the audio on the contact page should now be working, and hopefully it’s not freezing up anymore either. I love my designers! Have a great weekend. Don’t forget, FREE BOOKS ON MONDAY!

Originally published in the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Bulletin, March/April 2007

It’s very easy to fall in love with your characters, but it can be detrimental to your plotting. How many times have you heard a writer affectionately refer to his or her manuscript as “my baby”? I practically never call my young adult novels by their titles, but lovingly refer to them as “Kami’s book”, “Molly’s book” and “Susan’s book” and I do that because these three main characters have become best friends to me.

When you’ve finished the writing, love them all you want, but while you’re working on that first draft (or twentieth) it doesn’t help you much at all to care about them. It’s not hard to remember to keep the character’s main desire from them because that’s Writing 101. However, in the past I inadvertently became so close to my characters that every time they wanted something small, they got it. Why? Because I couldn’t bear to see them go without, be disappointed, or deprive them of anything they desired. The main problem with that was then my manuscripts didn’t have any dramatic tension, no action.

It’s also very easy to fall into the habit of giving your characters what they want because not only is it easier, but your brain is very good at disguising this as moving the plot forward. For example, in my first draft of Kami’s book, my character needed a job when she returned to her hometown. They’d loved her at her old job, so when she walked in the front doors her boss welcomed her back. It made the most sense because she really needed some money to find an apartment and she only had two weeks to sort herself out. There was never any question about her finding a job because if she didn’t, she’d have to return to her parents’ house, end of story. My plan was that finding the apartment was going to be the hard part and getting the job quickly moved the story forward effectively.

However, when I went back through the manuscript and consciously tried to make things harder on Kami, I realized how much more interesting it would be if she walked into her former place of employment and the boss she’d worked for had been fired for stealing. Now, not only did she not have a job, but she was suspect because she’d worked for the thief. That eliminated all the company’s other locations for possible employment and forced her to rethink her plan. Now, as a writer, you might have read the above example and thought, “Well, duh,” and you’d be right. It was kind of an obvious one, after the fact. However, as far as importance of plot points go, on a scale of one to a hundred, it was somewhere in the 30 range, so it was easier to have missed than you might think. That’s why once I’ve got the general story down, I specifically look for places I’ve been too nice and try to make them more challenging for my character. Once you’ve fixed the “big” ones, then it’s time to look for the little ones. When I think I’ve finished a manuscript, I go over it beat by beat, looking for scenes that have fallen through the cracks. They don’t really harm the manuscript as a whole, but I can make my writing so much stronger if I change them. While you do want your character to get some things they want (otherwise the reader will feel really badly for them and probably also a little depressed), it’s not a bad idea for someone to take the last jelly doughnut, leaving him with glazed, or for her to have to sleep in her car for a night because she forgot her house key.

The reason to do this is because tension begets tension and will lead you new places. For instance, your character gets home late at night and has forgotten her house key. She can wake everyone up, maybe get a dressing down and then the story goes on OR she can sleep in her car, get a crick in her neck which in turn affects everything that happens the next day in a physically painful way. By being a little harder on her, you’ve created more dramatic tension, but you haven’t really even changed the story.

When you read someone else’s manuscript, detecting where they’ve been too easy on a character is much more obvious. That’s why, when I hand my draft over to my critique group, I specifically ask them to look for things that seem a little too coincidental, lazy, or have that deus ex machina feeling. Don’t worry about being mean, concern yourself with not being mean enough. We all want to be a nice person, but when you’re writing, being tough is your job and you’re only making the characters and the story stronger. There will be plenty of time for you to love them after you’ve made their life as hard as possible. Like on that book tour.

Originally published in the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators bulletin, September/October 2006

For some writers, the query is much harder to write than the manuscript. However, agents across the board are begging you not to succumb to services like Agent Wizard (http://www.wizards4word.com/agent.html) and Scriptblaster (www.scriptblaster.com) who do the work for you for a small fee. Recently, literary agents have been hit with a deluge of form-type query letters that truly do you more harm than good because they make it hard for agents to sift out the quality from the bad.

These form queries are personal to the extent that they have the author’s credentials and information plugged into them, but the wording in all of them is similar and can also be abrupt and abrasive. Phrasing like, “Should I send it off to you now and do you like hard copy or by email?” is a real turn-off to agents. Worse than the hard sell approach, services like these sometimes talk about the writer in the third person, as if they’ve hired a publicist to do the letter writing for them, even though they don’t have representation yet, and are often unpublished. This can make the writer look ridiculously self-important in the eyes of an agent.

What’s more, agents do talk amongst themselves, and when five or six of them receive exactly the same query from the same author, they’re all likely to reject it. Although these services claim to have done the research for you, it’s quite obvious they haven’t, simply by the way they send your query out to everyone.

If you really don’t think you can’t pull off the query yourself, there are services that aren’t so obnoxious, but they don’t come cheaply, and it’s debatable how effective they really are. One such service in particular, offers a free assessment of your query and first ten pages of a manuscript. As an experiment, I sent my samples into them and I got a personal email back from the owner, discussing the strengths and weaknesses of my manuscript and query.

She suggested heavy rewrites of my query and synopsis, stressing that I needed her services if I expected any sucess. Interestingly enough, the query and synopsis I sent to her had previously generated four positive responses from editors asking for the entire manuscript. From what I could tell, the benefit of their service was its hands on approach, but it really wasn’t anything that a writer couldn’t get from his/her critique group. And the price quoted was upwards of three hundred dollars for query and synopsis editing, and to generate a list of possible agents, which seemed ridiculously high to me.

Agents are people trying to do a job and simply typing their name into a letter does not personalize your query. You, as a writer, want someone to care about your book, your thoughts, and your career ups and downs. The best thing you can do is research agents personally, and learn about them from live journals, blogs, conferences, and their websites so that you know they’re a good match for you. Ask other writers for agent recommendations, let your critique group have a look at your synopsis, write, rewrite, and rewrite it again. But most importantly, trust your own abilities as a writer. You wouldn’t even need a query if you hadn’t completed a major work of art already, so get back to work and finish the job yourself.

Originally published in the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Bulletin, January/February 2005

Today I’m interviewing yours truly. Not only will it let me introduce myself, but it gives me another week to get some other authors interviewed. I will ask each author to answer five of ten questions and submit a brief bio. When possible, I’ll read their books and post about them on Need To Read that day. Feel free to ask questions of the author in the comments section and maybe they’ll answer them.

Okay, now on to me.

Name: Joelle Anthony

Occupation: Young adult writer

Q. What were your favorite books when you were a teen?

A. Well, I’d like to say they were the Betsy-Tacy books because those are my all time favorites, but honestly, when I was a teen, I was way into those Fireside romance novels. I used to take my allowance to the mall and buy one book and then read it on Saturday night. Yeah…can you say dateless? Well, if you’re sitting home alone, it was comforting to read about other girls doing that too…of course, by the end, they’d always won their guy’s heart.

Q. What’s on your iPod right now?

A. I only listen to music when I work out, so it’s got to be upbeat. I’m really into fiddle tunes. I know…sounds geeky, but you’d be surprised how energized it can make you. I sometimes work out to my husband’s CDs too…can’t get enough of him, I reckon!

Q. What do you read in the bathroom?

A. Come on, everyone does, right? I tend to read magazines. I like Self and Consumer Reports.

Q. What’s the best piece of advice anyone ever gave you (or you read in a book)?

A. Leap and the net will appear. – Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

Q. What’s the riskiest thing you ever did and how’d it work out for you?

A. Moving to London after college with $1500, a work permit, but no job. It worked out great. I am not the world’s best job hunter, so I mostly sat around watching Wimbledon on the hostel TV until I was almost out of money. Then I scrambled for a job and got one way out in the country in the north of England as  a housekeeper at Outward Bound. Sixteen years later I still have friends I met there that I visit.

Hi. If you’re a writer, Thursday’s your day to tell me about it. Feel free to introduce yourself, tell me what you like to write, and anything else of interest. Also, I’ll try to have some fun writer exercises up here that we can do together, or other writerly things on future Thursdays. This is for any writer, not just teens.

There are only two things I ask. One, keep it clean, there are kids here. And the other is if you’re under 18, please post with either a username or your first name only. Internet safety, especially for teens, is one of my highest priorities. I’m glad you stopped by. Oh, and if you want to post a story, please send it to me first through my contact page. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to post them or not, but we’ll play it by ear. Thanks!

Last year I read roughly 125 books. Looking through my log, I was surprised to see that probably 15% were adult fiction. I don’t think of myself as reading adult fiction, but I guess I do sometimes. I probably read some nonfiction too, but I rarely remember to log it in my file.

So far, this year I’ve read 29 books. That puts me on pace to about 85-90 books this year. One reason I read more last year is because I traveled a lot. When I travel, I don’t write. When I don’t write, I have to read to stay sane. This year, I’m writing more. Also, I think I suffered a little reader’s burnout earlier this year. In the last few months I’ve probably started reading half a dozen books that I didn’t end up finishing. Most of the time I quit after just a few pages or chapters, but once or twice I got half way or even further into a book and gave up.

Do you finish everything you start reading?

I mostly write young adult fiction. I am currently working on a new novel which came to me in a surprising way. I have a manuscript called TRUE BLUE BABY which has generated a fair amount of interest, but needs a little work (see the music page to learn more about it). Anyway, the other day I was contemplating how to approach the revision when it struck me that my character’s story really begins the year before! TBB is a complete story, but I suddenly started having all kinds of ideas for a book that would come before it. Since I haven’t sold it, I thought, “Why not?” So that’s what I’m working on now. In the future, I’ll post more about my writing habits, but for today, I’m still trying to work out how this fabulous new website works! Someday I’ll even add pictures. I know I can, I know I can, I know I can!Thanks for stopping by. Come back tomorrow and we’ll talk about your writing.Cheers, Joëlle  

I think there is a chipmunk living in my office, courtesy of Grinder. He brought us one the other day, let it go under the couch and then went back outside to see what else he could find. We left the door open all day, but despite that, I’ve seen the chipmunk both in the music room, and in my office since. I did not see it yesterday…that means I need to clean my office because the last time I saw him, he was running from Miss Sophie (our white kitty) and hiding under a pile of things I need to file.

Last night we were woken up by animal-in-distress squeals, quickly followed by the not so sweet eau de skunk wafting in through our bedroom window. We had mistakenly thought Mr. Fatboy (our grey kitty) had scared the skunk off to greener pastures…nope. Still here.

One cool thing did happen yesterday though. Because of the recent freezing weather, the oak trees still don’t have any leaves. The birds waited around for a while but realized they better get on with it and they’re building their nests anyway. The nests are in plain sight for a change because there aren’t any leaves to hide them! So…I was examining a nest yesterday and discovered the birds had used a big tuft of orange cat hair from when I brushed Grinder on the porch the other day.

 Any wildlife living in your house? Anyone want a chipmunk?

Hi, All.

Well, the book I just read didn’t really pass muster with me, so I’m not going to mention it here. It was by an author that I love, so it just goes to show that even if you find a great author, everything they write, might not be for you. I’ll be picking up something tonight, so I’ll keep you posted!

I know that people really like dogs because they come when you call them and they’re so glad to see you, as if they’re amazed you can leave the house and ever come back. And dogs are cool. I know some dogs I like. But we don’t call our house Chez Gatos for nothing. This is the home of the cats and we’re allowed to live here as long as we provide food, water, and a good place to hide during tornadoes. Grinder is our twenty-one toed, orange cat who also goes by the name of OM (pronounced OHHHM and stands for Orange Menace), Mr. Knucklehead, and Spartacus. What he answers to is that little clicking sound you can make with your tongue. He thinks that’s his name. What I love about him is that if I step outside, no matter how far away he’s ventured, if he sees me, he comes running. I mean RUNNING! And he doesn’t stop until he gets to me and I pet him. He also spends a lot of time helping me write, just by being cute and sitting on my desk. Do any of your animals help you with your job?

Hi. I’ve been reading even while I haven’t been blogging (surprise, surprise!). Here are a few books that I’ve read recently that you might want to check out.

THE ISABEL FACTOR by Gayle Friesen – Canadian YA

I adore this book. This is just fantastic. I can’t say enough good things about it. I wish I could write this well. Don’t miss it.

VICTORY SONG by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni – historical fiction

This is a great read. It’s fast-paced and offers up a great picture of rural India in the nineteen-thirties. It’s somewhere between MG and YA.

SQUASHED by Joan Bauer – YA

Well, if you’ve read my blog, you already know that Joan Bauer can do no wrong, and this is fabulous. I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone!

I also read four MG novels, two by Jerry Spinelli and two by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. They were great, but you already know that you can count on those two, so I’m not going to bother going to find them in my stacks and give you the names!

Lastly…

I’D TELL YOU I LOVE YOU, BUT THEN I’D HAVE TO KILL YOU by Ally Carter

Okay, why do I write when someone out there is writing something this fun and hilarious and everyone’s going to want to read this instead of my book? Just kidding, but I did love this. If you haven’t checked this out yet, get it right away. It’s Harry Potter meets Artemis Fowl meets James Bond, but with a mostly girl cast. The best part? There’s gonna be a sequel this fall! The author has a great website too. www.allycarter.com

Hi, Everyone. Thanks for stopping by. I’m still playing with all the features of the site and hopefully will get more familiar with it soon. I know I told some of you that you’d get an “audio surprise” if you used the contact form and for some of you it didn’t work. My designers have disabled it for now, but hopefully it will be back up soon. It’s pretty cool when it’s working. In the meantime, if you need a music fix, there are three Victor songs/tunes on the Music page and don’t miss my video on the bio page.

I’m still not sure how I want this front page to look…a blog, just news, or what, but I will continue to update Need To Read regularly so drop on by there for tips on great reads. Again, thanks for stopping by and if you’re reading this, then I guess it means I’ve figured out how to do one thing.

Thanks for stopping by and helping me celebrate the launch of my new writing website. You can find out a little about me, what I’m writing, the books I’m reading, and how music has influenced my writing. I’ll be posting news as it happens (hopefully very good news, very soon!), and I’ve got a whole bunch of great links to other writers and fabulous websites that you might want to check out. You can use the Contact page to send me your thoughts or comments, and as always, you’re welcome to comment on either my regular blog or Need To Read. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you’ll come back again soon.