Five reasons why I prefer YA over adult fiction.

A long and rambling tale…

I thought about putting this post on Need To Read, but it’s quite close to my heart. The story starts back when I was about thirteen. I was at the public library, it must’ve been summer because I didn’t read much during the school year, and I was browsing the shelves. Actually, I think I was looking for something in particular, and this was before computers so you just had to hunt for what you wanted on the shelf. Anyway, instead of finding what I wanted, I saw a novel (YA) that looked interesting called The Summer People by John Rowe Townsend (the link is something I wrote about it a couple of years ago).

I checked it out. I thought it was very unusual, being British, set near WWII (forgive me John, if I’ve chosen the wrong war…I haven’t read it in a while and I dropped my copy in the bath and need to replace it still), and it was quite the romance and also a coming of age story. I don’t suppose that I understood the half of it, at least not the British terms. Anyway, I told my mother she would like it, she read it, she loved it, we went back for more by the author. The library had about four or five even though the author had written twenty books or so. We loved them all.

Fast forward ten years. I was living in England then, near a small town in the north called Penrith. The town has a lovely independent bookstore (which I still love to visit), called Bluebell Bookshop and upstairs, in their fabulously well-stocked children’s section, they had more than a dozen John Rowe Townsend books that I’d never heard of. I bought them all! It occurred to me at the time that I might be able to get the others at the local library, and sure enough, they had the ones that I hadn’t read and couldn’t find to buy, including a new book called CRANFORD REVISITED. I read it, I loved it, and I had no idea at the time, or for years to come, that I had totally missed the point!

Fast forward one more year. I was back home and just on a whim, I decided to write my new favorite author, Mr. Townsend. Guess what? Yep. He wrote back. For the last seventeen years we have corresponded. Two years ago, when I was in England again, I went to Cambridge and met John and his partner, Jill Paton Walsh. They had me to their lovely home, fed me lunch, gave me a whirlwind tour of Cambridge, and John sent me on my way with my very own copy of CRANFORD REVISITED because it was the only book of his I didn’t have.

And now, I’m finally getting to the point of all this chit chat! Gosh, if this was a manuscript, my critique group would say, “That is all back story. When does your story actually start? You need to cut!” But my critique group is not getting their helpful paws on this story and I’ll blather if I want to! You can’t stop me! It’s my blog.

So…for those of you still reading…Here is what I found out when I looked a bit closer at JRT’s book CRANFORD REVISITED. It’s called “revisited” because it is exactly that. In the 1850s (or so), Elizabeth Gaskell wrote a lovely book about a fictional English village called Cranford. JRT’s book is a look at that fictional town, told in the 1980s in a modern style. It is a tribute of sorts. I finally, finally, finally got my hands on the original CRANFORD, read it over the last week, and then re-read JRT’s book. And guess what? By reading Gaskell’s book first, JRTs book is about ten times as enjoyable and charming as the first two times I read it, and it was great then!

If you’re wondering about Mrs. Gaskell’s work, and if it would suit you, I think it is a bit tamer (passion-wise) than Jane Austen, but certainly as funny, and funnier at times, but along those lines. It’s set half a century later, but people still visit and gossip and the aristocracy is still a big deal which allows people to move up or down, depending on their mettle or whims. All in all, extremely charming if that’s your sort of thing. And while reading JRT’s CRANFORD REVISITED is recommended no matter what, you’ll like it more if you read them both. If you can find his. If not, try John, himself.

Oh! And guess what I just discovered? I should really cast films. As I was reading JRT’s CR, I was thinking, “They should make a movie of this starring Judi Dench.” I just went to Amazon to get a copy of the cover of CRANFORD and guess what? Well, they haven’t made John’s book into a movie, but they did do Gaskell’s book as a mini-series. Starring….yep! Judi Dench! It gets five stars on Amazon, so I’m sure that it’s only a matter of time before the BBC lays their hands on John’s book and makes it into a mini-series too! One can always hope, anyway. It certainly couldn’t happen to a nicer man!

So…there you are, writing away, and suddenly your character boards a plane for Pretoria, South Africa (can you even fly there? I have no idea…it might be a tiny village for all I know, or a huge metropolis) or your character’s father lives in Albuquerque (which you chose because it’s a great word). But what do Pretoria or Albuquerque look like? Well, have I got the website for you!

My husband is a photographer and he just joined a network of blogs linking together over five hundred photographers who are taking daily pictures of various locations worldwide. Every day, amateur and professional photographers in these rural areas, towns, villages, cities, and sometimes even specific neighbourhoods, take a single photo and post it on their blog. To find the blog for the place you’re interested in, go to City Daily Photo. One of the particularly cool things is that as people post, it is updated every hour with new photos. That means if you just want to look for interesting places, you can do it by photos. And if you want to look for specific places, you can do a search or use their interactive world map.

I think as a writer this is a fantastic resource! And if you want to see my husband’s blog for our island, click this link. Oh, and by the way, yes…I did have his permission to use the photo on this post. Just…you know…so you don’t think I violated his copyright (the way he sometimes does by snagging pictures I took and saying, “Oh, I’m sure I took this one…look how good it is!“).

  Just for fun, here are five things that just seem so easy for everyone else, but pose a challenge for me.

1. Typing in those random letters to prove I’m not spam. XKKlefhp It always takes me two or three tries to get my posts to take on blogspot because if it’s not a real word, I can’t really type it!

2. Looking at a crowd and estimating how many people are there. When someone says, “Oh, you were at XXXX last night? How many people showed up?” I seriously have no idea. I can’t tell you if there were ten or fifty or five hundred. Okay, maybe if there were only ten, I could make a reasonable guess.

3.  Peel, cut, and core an apple into even pieces. I figured that once I became a mom, I’d automatically be able to do it, but since I am only a mom to my kitties and they don’t like apples, the magic has not happened!

4.  Fry tofu. Okay, maybe not everyone can do this but I am a cook, a vegetarian, AND I watched Tyler Florence on the Food Network do a whole episode of Food 911 just about cooking tofu. Cooking is something I’m good at. Why can’t I do this?

5.  Find Waldo.

Click here to find out!

Adult Fiction – At first, I was just going to leave it at WOW, but then I decided I couldn’t. This truly is one of the best books I’ve ever read. It has everything. And I mean everything. A unique perspective, a strong voice, humour, drama, love, friendship, loyalty… I truly can’t recommend this book enough.

From a writer’s point of view, it is beautifully crafted. I hesitate to say that lest you think it’s contrived, but I don’t mean that at all. I just mean that I can appreciate and see things because I know (in theory) how to put a novel together and he’s done a stunning job. I am definitely going to get my hands on his other books.

Several times while reading, I stopped and read a passage aloud to my husband. I only do that if I know he’s not going to read the book OR I can read a particular passage without giving anything away. In this case, I am sure he will read the book someday (although it has to go back to the library because someone else has requested it, so he can’t read it right now), but the book is sprinkled with these lovely passages that one can read aloud and not spoil anything. There is a great paragraph about how people don’t listen to each other. I would love to type it in here, but I’m not really sure if that’s kosher. Anyway, after hearing it, my husband said, “The book is worth reading just for that passage. Everyone should read this book.” I couldn’t agree more.

Read the amazing story of this book’s rocky road to publication here.

See the book trailer here.

P.S. If you’re a dog-lover, you MUST read this book, but if you’re just a dog-tolerator or a dog-liker (as I am), you should read it too. You might find that you see dogs a little differently after reading this book.

I had to turn off comments because this got targeted for spam. Sorry. You can send me any comments or leave them on the homepage.

WOW!!!!!

More about this book

Yay! My agent loves my revision. And we now have a title too! It only took me three months, yes, three months to come up with it. And it was last night, when I was adding a final chapter to the book (we had cut the epilogue, but my agent thought I needed some of it as a last chapter) and I got to the last line of the book that the title hit me! Wooohooo! You have no idea how much of a relief this is to me because NO ONE who had read it could come up with anything for a new title. The old title was HANDSOME MOLLY, which we loved and worked well, but seemed too old fashioned. The new one is a secret for now!

And this also means I can start my new project that has been percolating. Yay me! I’m finally writing again and it feels good. What’s your good news this week?

I’ve listed a few books on Need To Read, if you’re interested…

Here’s what I’ve been reading. As I mentioned before, I’m letting myself off the hook as far as writing long blog posts about each book, but these are recommendations. Anything I read that I don’t think is that great will not be listed here, so you’re safe to pick from any of these and enjoy!

THIS LULLABY by Sarah Dessen – another hit from a very good writer

LOCK AND KEY by Sarah Dessen- I think this is her best book yet (also her latest)

THE CELBUTANTES IN THE CLUB by Antonio Pagliarulo (yes, I had to look up the spelling of his last name – twice!) – another fun book in this series (#2). I’m looking forward to #3!

PRINCESS MIA by Meg Cabot – the latest in the PD series. I think I liked this one the most of all of them…you can see that she’s aiming towards wrapping it all up though, which is sad! There’s one more book after this, scheduled to come out next year. Someday I’m going to buy a boxed set and read them all straight through.

THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN by Garth Stein – read the amazing story of this book’s rocky road to publication here . I’m only 44 pages into this book, but I loved it at page one.

One of the most endearing things about my husband is that he refuses to go to bed without me. That means if I’m not ready to go to bed when he is, usually because I’m reading (okay, always because I’m reading), then he gets horizontal on the couch, puts a cloth napkin over his face to block the light, and “rests his eyes” until I’m ready for bed. This is very, very sweet and I appreciate it. On the down side, the last thing he does before bed every night, on the nights we go at the same time, is clean out the kitty litter… He doesn’t do this before resting his eyes, however. That means that when I wake him up, I mean tell him the resting period is over and it’s time to go to bed, he stumbles off to the bedroom and is out cold before I get there….thus leaving me to empty the cat box. So the question each night is not, “Do I want to keep reading?” (because the answer is usually yes), but “Is the book good enough to warrant me facing that odoriferous box?” Two nights in a row the answer has been yes. Last night I was deep into The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (loved it!) and tonight I’m luxuriating in the world of Princess Mia, the latest in The Princess Diaries. As I cleaned out the cat box (just before writing this) I had to ask a question that I find myself facing whenever this happens. Do you think cats that have a pet door so they can go outside at any time really need a cat box, or are they just spoiled? I guess I’ll go rest my eyes and ponder it.

Sleep tight!

  So I was looking on the internet for some info and while Google did not bring up what I wanted, it did give me a gift I didn’t even know I needed to see. Sometimes Google might not give you what you want, but it gives you what you need…okay, okay, cheesy plagiarism, I know. Anyway, it brought up this great post by Meg Cabot, and although I do not have an editor yet, I do have a critique group and I do have an agent, and they all act as the sherriff for me at this time. And boy do I need them!

A while ago I said that I was on a reading hiatus. What I realized after about ten days is that I really just needed to change the way I read. Three and a half years ago I began trying to get an education by reading a lot of young adult books. If you click on the link above this, in the header, for the Red Hair article, you can read more about that experiment. I finally reached a sort of burn-out, but it wasn’t books as much as it was the fact that it had become a bit of a chore. I was writing an index card about each book, as well as blogging on Need To Read and I began to hate that. I’ve started reading again, and now I’m just keeping a personal list of what I read (just for reference) and when I have five or ten titles, I’ll add them to Need To Read, but not really bother to blog much about them. In other words, I’m reading for fun again!

And that brings me to the title of this post. This book was recommended to me by…oh, gosh…I always forget who…but I’m about 99% sure that it was my friend Kim from Idaho/Wyoming. Anyway, I never post about a book before I finish, but I am so enamored of this book I cannot wait to tell you all about it. I can’t even say how much I love it so far without gushing. I love the first fifty pages anyway! It’s just so beautiful.

The blurb on the front is: One of the best, most charming, honest, hilarious and life-affirming books to appear in years. — The Plain Dealer. I don’t know who The Plain Dealer is, but so far this quote is dead on. Check this one out for sure. And if you’ve read the whole thing already, don’t give anything away in the comments section!

Those of you who have been with me for a while know that I sometimes write essays about my cats or other animals. It’s a writing exercise and a way to blog about them and still sort of link it to writing… So here is today’s installment: When Cats Get Spoiled.

Looking back through history, it’s easy to see why people kept cats. It wasn’t because they come when you call them, sit in your lap when you need comfort, or eat leftover food like dogs or husbands do. Nope. It was because they caught mice. People kept them in the barn so it wasn’t overrun with the little grey menaces (although, it was often eventually overrun with kittens) and people even occasionally let them in the house to do their duty, ridding the pantry of unwanted vermin, earning their keep so to speak. I mean, there’s no such thing as a free saucer of milk, right? The cat catches a mouse, the cat gets rewarded with cream. Everyone’s happy.

Well, I’m here to say that today’s cats are spoiled. Perhaps we went wrong buying them those soft fleece lined beds. Or maybe it was the water glasses instead of bowls because they prefer glasses. Or possibly they feel entitled because even though they have a pet door, every time they paw at the French doors, we jump up and let them inside. Or outside. Or back in. Or out. Or…you get the picture.

It could be that we sit in the hard chairs and let them lounge in the velvet one in front of the fire. Or maybe it’s the special cat food we buy that comes out of the feeder on a timer so they never have to wait for a human to feed them. It’s possible that they think they are the King and Queen of the joint because if one of them curls up right in the middle of the bed between us and my husband has to get up to go to the bathroom, he snakes his way out from under the covers in order not to disturb the cat (of course, when it’s just the two of us and he has to get up, he just flings the covers back, either doubling mine up and roasting me or pulling them off both of us and freezing me…but that’s another post). Regardless of where we might’ve gone wrong with Miss Sophie and Grinder, they are treated really well and you’d think the least they can do is remember that their job is to RID the house of mice, NOT BRING THEM INSIDE.

Yes, that’s right. We are the proud owners of a mouse who we did not invite to live with us, but the cats think makes a jolly plaything indoors where they won’t get wet by the June rain, so they brought him inside and let him go. When I complained to my husband that I was not the least bit happy about this, his response was, “Oh, it’s just a mouse. You’ve had skunks, opossums, chipmunks, birds, and half a squirrel in the house before. What’s the big deal?” The BIG deal is it is a friggin’ mouse! And what’s more, just like the opossum and many chipmunks before him, he’s in MY office. Not the kitchen or the living room or the bathroom, but MY OFFICE. And where are the cats not allowed to go? That’s right. My office. This is one smart mouse.

So…what do you think I should name him?

Here are the culprits looking all sweet and innocent!

Today is author Sarah Dessen’s 38th birthday and on her blog she’s listing thirty-eight things she’s grateful for. At first I was kind of bummed that I hadn’t thought to do that on my birthday last April and then I decided, why not do it now? Here they are in the order I think of them.

Blessings & Gratitude! Forty things I’m grateful for:

1. My husband

2. My parents

3. My kitties

4. Applewood smoked cheddar cheese from England being available at my tiny village grocery store

5. My lovely office

6. Deer in the yard

7. Tea with milk (and how my husband brings it to me every morning while I’m writing)

8. The wood stove (especially in June when it seems crazy to build a fire, but we do it anyway)

9. Sunday Soup

10. The Betsy-Tacy books

11. Online writer friends

12. Eagles

13. Guacamole

14. My husband’s amazing musical talent and the fact that he can play lovely guitar all day long

15. Listening to Cubs radio over the internet

16. British sit-coms on DVD

17. To get to the post office, I have to walk through the enchanted forest

18. Being back on the west coast and virtually allergy-free

19. That our small town has a great recycle centre and thrift store (for getting rid of stuff in my case, and buying stuff in my husband’s case!)

20. Our big blue velvet chair for reading

21. All our new friends in our new town

22. Writing full-time

23. Being able to help others with their queries

24. Living in the woods

25. My wonderful kitchen

26. Knitting

27. Our fabulous local library

28. My health

29. Cuddling

30. Living near the ocean

31. Hot chocolate made with Cadbury Orange chocolate, milk, and cream

32. Fresh baked bread

33. Our neighbour, Carol

34. My wonderful agent, Michael Bourret

35. My critique group – Mum, Wanda, Eileen, and Victor

36. Health care

37. All the music in my life…not just my husband, but our friends and the CDs too

38. Silk long underwear (even in June)

39. My wonderful friend, Eileen Cook

40. The fact that it took me only minutes to compile this list and I could’ve gone on and on…

It’s quite possible that I’ve gone nuts, but what the heck? Here goes nothing.

Those of you who read my blog or are SCBWI members, know that over the last two years, I have studied query writing pretty intensely and when I was querying for agents, I had a pretty good partial/full request rate, which I attribute to my queries. Recently I have helped three writers with their queries. All three writers had previously written a query that they had received multiple rejections on before asking me for help. After working one-on-one with these three writers, their new queries all generated requests for partials/fulls. This has gotten me thinking about the whole elevator thing.

I once heard someone talking about how when you are in the movie biz, once people reach the top floor, they never send the elevator down to you, no matter how good of friends you might’ve been when you were both at the bottom floor. I am determined to send that elevator down every chance I get. Right now, I’m probably only on the fifth floor out of a hundred, but there are still people on floors 1-4 that I can help.

If you have a query letter that has received at least five rejections from agents, and you want some help, please send me a note through the Contact page. If you are just starting writing a query and still want some help, I’m open to that too, but I’m especially interested in helping people who have one that definitely isn’t working. You have to have a letter of some sort though as a jumping off place. Please do NOT send your query letter yet! Thanks!

I offer no guarantees, either on how soon I can get to your query (maybe I’ll get one request for help, maybe a hundred) or that your query will go on to generate requests for partials/fulls. But if you’re interested in getting some feedback, and are willing to at least CONSIDER what I have to say and do some of the exercises I’ve basically stolen from other people and put together to sort of create my own teaching technique, then maybe we can get your elevator on the move.

And if you want help from someone who’s a lot closer to the top floor, then drop over to agent Kristin Nelson’s blog where she’s done a long series on how to write the query letter.

  I’m not going to update for a few days because I’m getting great comments on the post about roles in writing/life (below) so I want to keep it near the top. However, I’m having fun over at my other blog, Sunday Soup.

When my husband and I first moved in together, we had each lived alone and were pretty pleased to find out that now there was someone else to do some of the household chores! We sort of felt our way along, dividing up chores figuring it out as we went. For example, I did most of the cooking and my husband did most of the eating.

For the more distasteful chores, we would decide who hated the job the most and they would get off the hook, but then the person who had gotten out of that job had to take some other horrible job that bothered the other person. For example, my husband was in charge of live and/or dead animals (and their parts) brought into the house by any of the cats, while I was responsible for other icky things cats do on the carpet (think about it, you can figure it out).

Because we lived rurally, we didn’t have garbage pick-up. That meant that we had to drive it to the drop-off. What this also meant was that for the first five years we were together, the job of “taking the garbage out” didn’t get “assigned” to either of us because we couldn’t just take it out to the can. Here in our new place, we do have garbage pick-up and we even have one of those animal proof cans outside, so now someone has to take the garbage out. Today I did a bunch of cooking, and while I compost all scraps, I still make some garbage (although for the last 2 week period we only had one small bag!) and today the kitchen garbage kept getting fuller and fuller and I kept thinking to myself, “When is he going to take the garbage out?”

After dinner, when we were scraping the plates, it suddenly hit me…even though it is probably twenty feet to the door and another ten feet to the outside garbage can, I was waiting for my husband to take out the garbage as if it were HIS job! And I figured out the reason. When I was a kid either my brother or my father took out the garbage. I know my mum would say I hardly ever emptied the dishwasher, and she’s probably right, but I know my brother NEVER did, just like I never took out the garbage. Anyway, I explained all this to my husband as I gave him the garbage and he took it out.
And now, I’m finally to the part about writing. It is so easy for us to fall into these roles in our daily life, either from childhood, society, or the relationships we’ve chosen. It doesn’t make these roles bad. If the woman likes to cook and the man feels good about taking out the garbage, then I don’t think that’s sexist. Nor do I think it is reverse sexism if it’s the other way. Or any combination. But what about when you’re writing? Are all of the people of power in your books men? What about the principal? The doctor? What about other roles? Is the school janitor a man or woman? Who fixes the cars in your book? Who knows how to change a tire? Who cooks? Who takes the garbage out? Who does the laundry? Stays home with a sick child? Does the grocery shopping? Pays the bills? Mows the lawn? Throws the birthday party? Barbecues? Drives the car when the family goes somewhere?

These are all things I think are worth exploring. I am a woman who writes primarily for teen girls. I feel like it’s an opportunity to write roles that empower women. I won’t force it for the sake of making a point, but if it fits, if it works, why not? I think the first time I remember really seeing something like this is in Jerry Spinelli’s book JASON AND MARCELINE. There is a scene where Jason is talking to his mother and the whole time they’re talking, she is changing the shower head. There’re no qualifiers in this scene. There’s no “Mom fixes everything because her Dad made her learn.” or “Mom learned how to fix stuff because my step-father is useless.” It is just a given that she knows what she’s doing and she does it. If you write it like that, then you’re not making a point, but simply putting women in roles doing things that they actually do, but you don’t often see in books or on TV or in movies.

What do you do that might generally be thought of as the opposite sex’s role? Have you used it in your book?