Original Content

I Did Think About A Little Video Something

2010-02-08T19:08:00.002-05:00

For a while now I've been thinking about adding some kind of little video bit to my website. I wanted something witty, something that didn't take itself too seriously, something like Mark Peter Hughes has done. I thought it would be something unique and up-to-date to add to my website, but at the same time something that I could do once and be finished.

I never pursued this idea because I was afraid my computer guy would snap if I brought it up. And now Mark Peter Hughes has done it, so I can't do it without looking far less unique and cutting edge than I was hoping for. So that's kind of a load off my mind.

Trout Fishing...What Does It Mean?

2010-02-07T19:53:00.004-05:00

I was cleaning my shower stall yesterday morning (I'll spare you the details other than to say it had been a while since I'd been in there with cleanser and a chisel) when I heard on NPR that Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan. Wow. That sure made the work go easier.

I'm not going to tell you that Trout Fishing in America is a great book for YAs. I will say that I read it when I was a YA. I'm not going to tell you I loved it. I will say, as I did a couple of years ago, that it gave me a "feeling of possibility."

In honor of Trout Fishing in America's rerelease, I have moved my personal--and very old--copy off the bookshelf and into the To Read basket. That means that at some point, you will be stuck reading about my experience rereading it.

Until then...

Oh, wait! Do you want to hear something weird? I went to church today, which happens about as often as I clean my shower stall. And what was the Scriptural reading? Fishers of men! (Luke 5: 1-11) Which, of course, led the minister to lead and finish with fishing stories.

Fishing stories...Trout Fishing in America...What does it all mean?

Ecolit Discussion Group

2010-02-05T18:40:00.003-05:00

Among the 700 messages that I just downloaded was a response giving me permission to tell you all about Ecolit, a discussion group for sharing information about children's and YA books relating to environmental issues. Looking over last month's posts, it looks as if there are opportunities there for book discussions and finding materials such as science blogs.

Regarding That Time Problem I Was Just Mentioning

2010-02-05T18:27:00.003-05:00

I've noticed that I haven't been receiving e-mails from any of my five listservs for a couple of weeks. That was okay. I didn't have time to deal with it recently, anyway. But this week, I began to get suspicious. And I've been getting odd e-mails from my Internet access provider regarding some kind of full mailbox. Couldn't imagine what those folks were talking about.

Then today I said to my computer guy, "Guy, do you suppose there's some connection between the e-mails I've been receiving from the Internet folks and the e-mails I haven't been receiving from all my listservs? Because I gotta wonder."

He looked into it, waved his hands over the computer keyboard, said a few incantations, and the next thing I knew, I had over 700 new e-mails downloading.

So now I'm more than 700 messages behind with the listservs and 363 posts behind with the blog reader.

Yeah, I'm gonna go sign up for Twitter! And Facebook, too!

Why I Might In The Future And, Once More, Why I'm Not Now

2010-02-05T14:04:00.003-05:00

Yes, yes. I'm about to whine about marketing again.

By way of Jill Corcoran Books, I found Lisa Schroeder's blog post on Twitter From One Author's Point Of View. She gives compelling reasons to jump on the Twitter train and, maybe, when I find myself with a new book contract and a new book, I'll get on board.

But, as I'm sure I've said here before, the time issue is a big one for me. I've had problems for several years with distraction, which has often burned up my writing time. I'm just getting that under control now, but a big part of the reason I'm finally getting it under control is due to the fact that because of family commitments I'm now down to working only three days a week. Notice I didn't say I'm down to writing three days a week. I've got three days a week to write, deal with business correspondence, prepare for any appearances that come up, maintain the website, blog, keep up with listservs, and keep up with what's happening at other blogs.

Does anyone else notice how writing gets buried in that list?

While I accept that Twitter is the cutting edge marketing tool for writers right now, keep in mind that the same was true for websites thirteen or fourteen years ago. Then came weblogs. Listservs were talked up to writers as a way to meet the right people. What I'm getting at here is, Twitter isn't going to be the end. Once I add Twitter to the mix, I'll be maintaining a website, a blog, staying up with the blogosphere, keeping up with listservs, and Twittering. Then it will be time to get started on something else.

If you noticed the dates on the blog posts I linked to above, you saw that I'm close to a month behind in my reading of blogs in my agent/editor category.

I did get some good work done this morning. Now I am off to do some business and then some early work/research for a new project.

So That Was What Ailed Him

2010-02-04T20:01:00.002-05:00

Last September, when I read Charles and Emma, I wondered why Charles Darwin was sick so often. In a Salon book review, he's said to have been a hypochondriac. He is one of the nine figures described in The Hypochondriacs: Nine Tormented Lives by Brian Dillon.

Chrestomanci, Chrestomanci! Come quickly!

2010-02-04T19:30:00.002-05:00

A character calls Chrestomanci with the above words in Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones. I did pretty much the same thing last night.

I had just started reading an adult novel that began with a stampede of circus animals. Way to go! But chapter two suddenly took us to a nursing home where an elderly man is living. I was reading along, feeling just a bit stunned, because we've just been through that situation. But I figured the character is going to be recalling the story for us, and if I can just grit my teeth and control my post- traumatic stress syndrome, he'll move into his past very soon.

Indeed, he did. In chapter three he is a college student who learns that his parents have both been killed.

At that point, I thought, first, This cannot possibly be good for me, and second, Chrestomanci, where are you?

He was on the stack of books on the floor next to the bed. I'm at the climactic point in Charmed Life and will finish that tonight before trying a Terry Pratchett novel. But I will keep my comfort books nearby, just in case.

Roundups For The Littlies

2010-02-03T19:41:00.004-05:00

The Reading Tub's Blog has started a monthly carnival of easy readers and short chapter books, which it is calling I Can Read. While at the January post, I learned that the Jean Little Library blog has a post on all the Cybil nominations for easy readers and beginning chapter books with links to reviews.

I became interested in chapter books while I was writing a couple of books for kids in the early grades. It seemed to me that a lot of the books written for younger kids are...well...not terrific. I read a dreadful early reader back in December, as a matter of fact. I was shocked...shocked, I tell you...by how bad it was. On top of that, these easier books don't seem to get a lot of attention from adults. Middle grade and YA are the hip and happening categories, probably because they're closer to what we like to read for ourselves.

The Hunt For Science Fiction

2010-02-02T19:42:00.002-05:00

Charlotte's Library, which is a blog specifically about fantasy and science fiction for children and teenagers, does weekly roundups of blog reviews of middle grade fantasy and science fiction. You'll also find posts there on new scifi and fantasy releases.

You'll have to go through all these yourselves to work out which are science fiction, but you should at least be able to find some there.

Things Aren't Bad All Over

2010-02-01T19:35:00.004-05:00

I met a couple of editors of engineering textbooks last week. I grabbed my chance to ask them if people were running scared in textbook publishing. Were editors dropping like flies? Were they becoming agents to try to stay employed?

Au contraire. They and, to their knowledge, other textbook publishers had had very good years. Met their goals and surpassed them, in fact.

I'm guessing that while the economy is bad, folks are heading to college and staying there, hoping to ride out financial hard times.

I also learned that textbook authors don't get advances, by the way. Just in case anyone is thinking of going that route.

Comfort Books

2010-02-01T18:38:00.005-05:00

The Gauthiers suffered through a rough half year, and things were particularly bad since the middle of November. One day last fall I was supposed to just leave some books off at the library and then race out of the building because I had so many things I needed to do related to sick family members. But I stayed to hunt for something that would divert me from the reality of my life. A book. Preferably part of a series so that I could read and read and stay plenty diverted.

I found nada that day, but later in the year I was in another library where I stumbled upon the second volume of The Chronicles of Chrestomanci by Diana Wynne Jones. I'll be discussing the Chrestomanci series in a later post, but for now it's enough to say that I found my diversion.

I bought Volume I of The Chronicles because I had to have it right away. The Pinhoe Egg is part of this series, and even though I'd read it before, with mixed feelings, I read it again. I read a book of short stories about Chrestomanci. I bought Volume III, even though by that point I'd read one of the two books it contains.

In fact, I bought everything Chrestomanci, whether I'd just read library editions or not, because I was afraid that some day I would need them again, and what if I couldn't get them because they were out of print? What if some day I wanted to give them to someone?

Last week, when things went from bad to worse here, I picked up one of the books, just a couple of months after having finished it, and started reading it again. Okay, it wasn't quite the escape it was the first time, but there was nothing else in the house that was better. I went to the library today and picked up a few things, but if they don't do it for me, I'll stick with Chrestomanci.

Chrestomanci is a figure in a magical world whose function is to control magic. He comes when people call him, and he fixes things. (Though I'll have more to say about that another time.) You don't have to be the psychological equivalent of a rocket scientist to see why someone experiencing bad times would be attracted to him.

We had a family member reading multiple volumes of Fox Trot last week. Another recalled during an earlier loss reading issue after issue of National Geographic. Clearly, when it comes to comfort, each goes his or her own way.

Feel free to suggest your favorite comfort book.

Where Is Gail?

2010-01-27T10:21:00.001-05:00

We're having a rough week at Chez Gauthier, so I don't expect to be posting until the weekend or even later.

My Family Thinks I've Made It

2010-01-23T19:25:00.004-05:00

I have some science fiction lovers in my family, and they were delighted to see that my last post was mentioned at io9 in a piece called Is The Golden Age Of YA Science Fiction Already Over?. I know I said I would stop talking about Tanita, but she's mentioned, too.

Be sure to read the comments.

Perhaps This Is Why We're Not Seeing More Science Fiction

2010-01-21T18:51:00.006-05:00

Earlier this month, Tanita said at Finding Wonderland that real science fiction is getting harder to find in YA. That was her experience after serving on the fantasy and science fiction panel for the Cybils. I served on that panel four (?) years ago and found the same thing to be true at that time in both YA and middle grade.

This past year while I've been doing agent research, I've found that quite a few of them aren't looking for science fiction. They don't say why, and it isn't necessary for them to do so. I, however, will be happy to speculate.

1. Perhaps they are already representing authors with science fiction material to sell and feel there is only so much of the stuff they can find a home for. This would make sense. However, since we're not seeing much science fiction being published, it seems unlikely that they already have their plates full of scifi that they're placing.

2. Perhaps they don't believe they can sell science fiction, so it would be foolhardy to accept new authors with scifi books to market. This would also make sense.

3. Perhaps they just don't like the genre, and not everyone can sell things they don't like. This is certainly understandable. I can think of several types of books I'd hate to have to promote to absolutely anyone, forget about editors.

Whatever the reason, agents are among the literary gatekeepers who control what is published. If they aren't interested in a genre, how is it going to get out into the marketplace?

Of course, all it's going to take is for one unknown writer to do for science fiction what Harry Potter did for fantasy and Twilight did for vampire romances and we'll be swimming in the stuff.

NOTE: I am not really Tanita's best friend. I've just been mentioning her a lot lately. I will go on to someone else soon.

Where Are The Village Criminals In Contemporary Kids' Lit?

2010-01-20T19:31:00.005-05:00

While on that retreat that I will be fondly recalling for months to come, I read another terrific book by Castle Freeman Jr (I've mentioned him before), this one called Go With Me. Go With Me was about three unlikely people banding together against what a minor character calls the "village criminal."

Now, Freeman's books are set in Vermont, and though they are contemporary books, they deal with a Vermont I knew growing up, not the arty-farty, bohemian bourgeois Vermont I experience while on retreat. Not that there's anything wrong with arty-farty, bohemian bourgeois. It's just my people are not arty-farty, bohemian bourgeois. We're the kind of people who say, "arty farty" (though not so much bohemian bourgeois).

I mention all that to explain why the "village criminal" thing struck a chord with me. I knew of village criminals when I was a kid. There were a couple of teenage village criminal drug dealers when I was a teenager and a truly legendary guy a few towns over who I believe was what would be described as a life-long offender of the petty theft type. My Uncle Mickey went to school with him.

A village criminal seems like a perfect character for a gothic or, perhaps comic, kids' book. But I can't think of any.

This may be because generic suburbs are the settings for so many kids' books, and in all the years I've lived in suburbia, I can't recall hearing about any village criminals. Crime isn't reserved for the "village criminal" in these parts. Town hall and insurance company employees are always getting arrested for embezzlement here, to say nothing of doctors ripping off Medicare if not committing far more unsavory crimes against their patients. We had some counterfeiters at the high school a few years ago. They were all nice eighth grade boys from good families, which was not how the village criminals I remember would be described.

I suspect village criminals don't appear in contemporary kids' books because no one would believe a town would produce just one.

I Can't Believe It! I Know Another Award Winner!

2010-01-20T19:17:00.003-05:00

Day-Glo Brothers by Chris Barton is a Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal (pause and take a breath) Honor Book.

I am doubly excited now.

Thank goodness Camille at BookMoot wrote a post that finally caught my eye. I had been flipping through all the award announcement posts at other blogs thinking, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Heard that...heard that... Until I got to BookMoot and realized, No, I hadn't heard that.

Oh, My Gosh! Tanita! It's Your Year!

2010-01-20T19:05:00.004-05:00

I just this minute learned that Mare's War by Tanita S. Davis was named a Coretta Scott King Award honor book. Or, I should say, the honor book, since only one was chosen this year, and it was Tanita's.

I am excited.

Thanks to Book Moot for the news.

Coming Soon

2010-01-19T19:53:00.003-05:00

I received some catalogs from Chronicle Books this past week. Thus I can now tell you that soon you will be able to buy a Pride and Prejudice and Zombies wall calendar for 2011, a Pride and Prejudice and Zombies journal ("The ideal accessory for the literary undead, this journal features beautiful, elegant pages�smattered with blood.") and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies postcards.

Run right out and up-date your wish lists, everybody!

Get Your Dose Of Musings On Historical Fiction

2010-01-19T19:44:00.002-05:00

One of the good things about falling way behind on your blog reading--maybe the only good thing--is that when a blogger is doing a series on a subject, you can sit down and read them all at once. You can do a study, so to speak.

I just finished one over at Oz and Ends on the subject of historical fiction. J.L. Bell began writing about it on January 8th and appears to have wrapped it up on January 15th. The Storm in the Barn, which just won the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, got the ball rolling.

Some Academic Sounding Stuff

2010-01-19T17:58:00.002-05:00

The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation is accepting applications for its Minigrant Program for Public Schools and Public Libraries. Note that the deadline for applications is September 15th.

The Malka Penn Children's Book Collection on Human Rights (scroll down) was established in 2005 as part of the Northeast Children's Literature Collection at The University of Connecticut. Michele Palmer, who writes under the name Malka Penn, has donated more than 160 books on human rights topics to the collection.

Michelle and I were in the same writers' group years ago.

A Mature Cinderella

2010-01-18T19:19:00.002-05:00

Back in my youth, it wasn't unusual to see feminist variations on Cinderella, in which we were treated to what happened after the heroine got the prince and was stuck with the reality of dealing with a man every day of her life. The point was that women couldn't rely on princes. So true, so true, but the tales tended to be a little strident and pedantic.

Cinderella in Autumn by Hilary Mantel is much better done and brings Cinderella into the reality of our celebrity obsessed world. Without giving anything away, I can say that the ending is terrific because, indeed, there's no convincing some people that a prince isn't the answer. You'd think they would learn, but no.

Today was child_lit day with my listserv reading, and that's where I found this link.

Wow, Tanita

2010-01-17T19:33:00.003-05:00

Tanita S. Davis has been nominated for a NAACP Image Award in the category Outstanding Literary Work--Youth/Teens for her book Mare's War. Does this mean she'll be at the televised awards ceremony? Are the winners for her category at least announced at the televised awards ceremony?

I love that Tanita says at her blog that finding out she was nominated was "beyond startling." Startling. I like that word, anyway, but I'm really enjoying it in this situation.

Good News, Bad News

2010-01-17T19:08:00.002-05:00

While I didn't check my e-mail during retreat week, a family member with me figured what the hell, he would. Thus I learned on Tuesday or Wednesday that A Girl, a Boy, and a Monster Cat will be published in Hebrew. I was very excited about this because things have been very slo-o-ow in the publishing world for Gail. Here it was, only January of 2010, and look how much better things were going!

Then we got home on Friday and learned about a rather big rejection. And it's still only January.

But Monster Cat is going to be published in Hebrew!

Retreat Weeks Can Be Productive

2010-01-15T19:46:00.004-05:00

So, here I am, back from my retreat. No, we did not stay in the cabin to the left. We hiked there on snowshoes yesterday. That's my back you see in the interior shot. I'm stripped down to my thermal undershirt, which, I believe, had a paint stain on one of the cuffs. Can't imagine how that happened. As my companion said, we didn't look as if we'd come up from the resort; we looked as if we'd come down from the mountain.

While retreating, I refused to check my e-mail. It was a lot easier than I would have thought, in part because Internet access was so slow at our timeshare unit last week that there wasn't a lot of temptation to go on-line. This morning I decided that I could live like that. Not without e-mail, but without checking it so often. Certainly without checking it first thing in the morning.

I check my e-mail first thing in the morning, and if I find things from family members, I feel compelled to blow off thirty or forty minutes of valuable workout/workbook/worktime responding. Or sometimes I get inquiries from people regarding appearances. I blow off valuable workout/workbook/worktime responding and almost always never hear from the inquirer again. Sometimes I'll see listserv e-mails I want to respond to. And there goes some more workout/workbook/worktime.

Wouldn't life be better, I thought as I lay on my wonderful bed at my mountain guesthouse, if I waited until mid-day to check my e-mail? Wouldn't my day be off to a much better start if I tended to my workouts and that so-called writing meditation I've been doing in my workbook and then got some real work behind me before I faced whatever turns up in the e-mail? Wouldn't I accomplish so much more? Wouldn't I at least feel better?

Then, while I was still lying there in bed, I came up with this idea regarding my listservs. Instead of wallowing around in all of them every day, why don't I assign each one one day of the week? I only check child_lit on its assigned day. I only check the kidlitosphere on its assigned day? I could go on and on re. all my listservs, but I'm sure you get my point.

With all the time I'll be saving with the e-mail plan, listserv assignments, and avoiding tabloid news stories, I should be able to write a new book every six months.

Stephen Huneck

2010-01-10T19:47:00.003-05:00

Vermont artist Stephen Huneck, who was also the author and illustrator of a number of children's books, has died. We have seen his work at a number of Vermont galleries over the last few years and were sorry to hear of his passing.