If the queries I receive are an indication, many writers see whatever story they've created as just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. "You think the story ends here?" they'll say. "Just you wait, mister! Just because Timmy and Jimmy rescued Wiggles the dog doesn't mean their adventure has ended!"I've blogged about unlikely sequels before and don't want to rehash too much of what I've already said, but I got to thinking recently about some children's books that had unexpected, and pretty damn good, follow-ups. Some examples include Beverly Cleary's Dear Mr. Henshaw and the subsequent Strider qualify, Richard Peck's trilogy of tales involving Grandma Dowdel, and Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, the lesser known follow-up to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.So I'm wondering, gentle readers, what titles you wished had produced sequels that never made it into print. Did you want to see what other sorts of violence could be committed to animals after finishing To Kill a Mockingbird? Perhaps wonder what sorts of colored plants sprout up in other locations at the end of Where the Red Fern Grows? If you could continue any classic book for children, which would it be?
It's been quite the year in the world of books and elsewhere, and no one is more aware of our ridiculous good fortune than all of us here at Upstart Crow Literary. So we are counting our blessings. And boy oh boy, do we have lots of reasons to give thanks as the holidays approach.Because we will be taking a break from our (almost) daily blogging to spend time with our loved ones, Chris, Danielle, Ted and I have compiled a list of the things that inspire us to clasp our hands together, roll our eyes heavenward, and say, Thank you!In no particular order, we present to you our first annual "Things the Agents at Upstart Crow Literary are Thankful For List."(just rolls off the tongue, don't it?)
There has been chatter lately of a new category in publishing, something that people refer to by the breezily condescending handle of "New Adult." If you haven't come across New Adult in your daily grazing of the blogs, there was a discussion of it during a twitter YA lit chat a week or so ago, a transcript of which you can read here. (You'll have to scroll down to 11 November at about nine pm). And there is a pretty cool contest for new writers being run by the brilliant Dan Weiss's new team at St. Martin's that ends today, and which you can read about here.The short of their proposal is this: A "new adult" category of books for high-teen readers through mid-twenties. The distinguishing elements of books in this category? They are concerned with the lives and challenges of this age of readership, but share with Young Adult literature a lightness of style and superficiality of tone and concerns. (Let me be clear: I love teen literature. It's where I've labored for two decades. But teen literature has more modest aims than straightforward adult literature, and that is as it should be.) This audience, it is reasoned, reads a ton of teen literature (they're the ones who have made the Twilight Saga and the Gossip Girl books crossover successes), and also may find the vast mix of different kinds of literature in general fiction to be too intimidating. They're the readers of Twilight, sure, but also Catcher in the Rye, and some would argue The Group and Bright Lights, Big City and The Bell Jar and any other book that vaguely fits this new catch-all genre.But why stop there? Champions for this category are happy to include any book they believe will lend it street cred, so they tap Lorrie Moore and Michael Chabon, but may as well just sweep in the early novels of Philip Roth, David Foster Wallace, Ann Patchett—we can go on and on. Any book, basically, that may speak to a reader in her early twenties. There is even talk of a special section in bookstores for "New Adults," where timid readers will be able to go and maximize their shopping time, being spoonfed literature that won't challenge them too much, won't strain their newly-developing frontal lobes.This is a slippery slope, of course, and it's easy to imagine an absurd Balkanization of bookstores. "Elderly and Disgruntled." "Stories for Shut-Ins." "Masculine Asses." "Pre-Feminist Thinkers." "Boobs Who Believe Ayn Rand Is the Shit." Is this really the way we want to infantilize a nation of readers? Isn't part of growing up about developing your own tastes? About learning what you like and don't like by being brave and crazy enough to read a book that might not be pre-approved for you? About testing the limits of your comprehension and pushing yourself into books that are uncomfortable? Sure, you'll escape that Walter Abish novel eventually and go back for a bracing dose of P.C. Cast, but the sampling of stranger things in the general fiction category, why, that's always seemed to me to be a safe way to sample life itself.I am all for marketing to early twenty-somethings. There are examples of books that hit that audience like an arrow to a bull's-eye, such as The Perks of Being a Wallflower, from the otherwise less-enormously successful MTV Books imprint. But to ghettoize such books in their own category? I know how I would have responded to such a thing as an early twenty-something: I would have run far and fast the other way. Back then, I was deciding for myself at last what was best for me, and I didn't need any sort of bookstore category to do my thinking for me, thank you very much.
There has been chatter lately of a new category in publishing, something that people refer to by the breezily condescending handle of "New Adult." If you haven't come across New Adult in your daily grazing of the blogs, there was a discussion of it during a twitter YA lit chat a week or so ago, a transcript of which you can read here. (You'll have to scroll down to 11 November at about nine pm). And there is a pretty cool contest for new writers being run by the brilliant Dan Weiss's new team at St. Martin's that ends today, and which you can read about here.The short of their proposal is this: A "new adult" category of books for high-teen readers through mid-twenties. The distinguishing elements of books in this category? They are concerned with the lives and challenges of this age of readership, but share with Young Adult literature a lightness of style and superficiality of tone and concerns. (Let me be clear: I love teen literature. It's where I've labored for two decades. But teen literature has more modest aims than straightforward adult literature, and that is as it should be.) This audience, it is reasoned, reads a ton of teen literature (they're the ones who have made the Twilight Saga and the Gossip Girl books crossover successes), and also may find the vast mix of different kinds of literature in general fiction to be too intimidating. They're the readers of Twilight, sure, but also Catcher in the Rye, and some would argue The Group and Bright Lights, Big City and The Bell Jar and any other book that vaguely fits this new catch-all genre.But why stop there? Champions for this category are happy to include any book they believe will lend it street cred, so they tap Lorrie Moore and Michael Chabon, but may as well just sweep in the early novels of Philip Roth, David Foster Wallace, Ann Patchett—we can go on and on. Any book, basically, that may speak to a reader in her early twenties. There is even talk of a special section in bookstores for "New Adults," where timid readers will be able to go and maximize their shopping time, being spoonfed literature that won't challenge them too much, won't strain their newly-developing frontal lobes.This is a slippery slope, of course, and it's easy to imagine an absurd Balkanization of bookstores. "Elderly and Disgruntled." "Stories for Shut-Ins." "Masculine Asses." "Pre-Feminist Thinkers." "Boobs Who Believe Ayn Rand Is the Shit." Is this really the way we want to infantilize a nation of readers? Isn't part of growing up about developing your own tastes? About learning what you like and don't like by being brave and crazy enough to read a book that might not be pre-approved for you? About testing the limits of your comprehension and pushing yourself into books that are uncomfortable? Sure, you'll escape that Walter Abish novel eventually and go back for a bracing dose of P.C. Cast, but the sampling of stranger things in the general fiction category, why, that's always seemed to me to be a safe way to sample life itself.I am all for marketing to early twenty-somethings. There are examples of books that hit that audience like an arrow to a bull's-eye, such as The Perks of Being a Wallflower, from the otherwise less-enormously successful MTV Books imprint. But to ghettoize such books in their own category? I know how I would have responded to such a thing as an early twenty-something: I would have run far and fast the other way. Back then, I was deciding for myself at last what was best for me, and I didn't need any sort of bookstore category to do my thinking for me, thank you very much.
So, lately I've been thinking a lot about Stephen King's Under the Dome. Not just because at 1,100 or so pages and three-and-a-half pounds, it kind of sits there like the guilty weight of all the things left undone in one's life. And not because I intend to read it when I have a spare month or three. No, more I've been thinking about it because of the flap copy on the jacket.There isn't any.Aside from the price and the usual gibberish publishers must slap on jackets, the flaps are as empty and clean as a newborn's conscience. On the front and spine are the author and title, the always-weird designation "A Novel," the publisher, and nothing else.At first, on seeing this, I thought, Whoa, that's nervy! Kudos! But later I realized: The book doesn't need flap copy. That's very rarely how books are sold these days, and in the case of a monstrous new Stephen King novel, flap copy is beside the point. Because we already know who he is (he has been doing this for a while), and, if we care, we already know what the book is about. How do we know this? The web, obviously. It has changed book-buying irrevocably, not just in terms of retailing, but in terms of customer behaviors.Not all that long ago, I bought many of the books I read based on a combination of factors—did I like the author? did the cover copy sound groovy? was the cover itself cool? did the gog-eyed twerp who worked the register at Circus Bookshelf recommend it? This is how I stumbled upon tons of good stuff as well as a lot of not-quite-good stuff. But nowadays, thanks to constant grazing on Facebook and Goodreads and various blogs and on and on, I go into the bookstore with preconceived ideas of just about every single book I see. And the ones I know nothing about? Those I barely see at all.Word of mouth—or word of net as the case may be—appears to be everything (short of an Oprah appearance). In fact, thanks to the web, we live in an era when word-of-mouth is much more powerful than just about any other factor in getting a book to sell. Is this the new model for how we buy books? Has browsing been reduced to the smallest of inducements for why we buy? If so, then the only way many books will succeed it in the marketplace is through quality—or instead, we'll call it "delivering the goods"—whether those goods are literary quality or some other story goods a la Twilight.I suspect this instant word-of-mouth world has been instrumental in killing the midlist in bookstores. Those so-so novels with their modest aims? They used to benefit enormously from readers browsing and not knowing what they were looking for. But because so few of us do that nowadays, those midlist books don't stand a chance.The implications for new writers are daunting. If your novel doesn't get talked about in an ohmygodyouhavetoreadthis sort of way, you're in trouble. Word will get out almost instantaneously about whether your book is great or just so-so, and the greatest flap copy and cover won't be able to save it. Even with a big marketing push, you can only count on that initial bump of people you've duped into picking you up and giving you a try. But you won't be able to count on career growth, because readers don't keep coming back to writers who suck, and they don't talk up bad books they've read. (Just ask G.P. Taylor, the writing vicar who gave us the execrable Shadowmancer. Many people bought that first book, but only a teeny tiny fraction bought the many novels he's published since.)Is this an oversimplification on my part? Why do you buy the books you buy? When is the last time you purchased a book about which you knew nothing until the moment you picked it up in the store? Does that even happen anymore?
I'll admit it: I can be a hater. Sometimes when I hear too much hype about a book/film/band I'm less inclined to check it out. Maybe I miss the pre-internet joy of being one of the select few to really love and appreciate something. Whatever the reason, when I heard everyone talking up Markus Zusak's The Book Thief, I didn't want to read it. The front cover, after all, claims, "It's the kind of book that can be life changing." Seriously? No thanks. For my job, however, it's best to familiarize myself with books that have worked, so I begrudgingly bought the paperback and shoved it on a shelf.When I finally got to reading, it didn't take long for me to concede that the book was special. In the simplest sense, The Book Thief is about a young girl who is taken into foster care in World War II Germany, learns to read and steal books, and who aids in hiding a Jewish man in the basement, although summing up the book like that is like saying Anna Karenina is about a woman and a train. It's full of tragedy, joy, sorrow, humor, and everything else that makes up a terrific work.I loved the idea of a story narrated by Death. I loved the staccato breaks within chapters, hitting the page like bursts of gunfire. I loved the multiple characters, and how we could jump from one section to focus on someone other than Liesel, the main protagonist.After I'd been reading the book for two months, I was still only halfway through, and I was beginning to be heckled at home. "You're still reading that?" said my detractor. The truth was, I didn't want the story to end.You see, while there are many surprises in the book, the one thing the reader knows is the ending. Death spells out what's to come early on. And it's almost with a sense of dread that I'd flip each page, knowing I'd be closer to the inevitable conclusion.Not only that, but I was also reading slowly because the writing was so damned good. Navigating the pages was like searching a field of rocks for pieces of diamonds. Some of Zusak's descriptions--"Rain like gray pencil shavings," "The light in the window was gray and orange, the color of summer's skin," "My cursed circular heartbeat, revolving like the crime it is in my deathly chest"--made me stop and shake my head over the strength of the language.Most of all, I loved the risks that Zusak takes. Making the narrator Death. Writing a complicated story set during WWII for young adults (although it was marketed to adults in Zusak's native Australia). The sprawling nature of the work. In the hands of a weaker writer, these choices could have been disastrous. But not only did they work, they worked with the kind of terrific accomplishment that can only come from great risk.The Book Thief is really a terrific novel, a hugely ambitious story that makes me pine for something 3/4ths as good landing on my desk one day.And hey, it proves that many times it's worth listening to the hype.
Ah, inspiration. The fickle beast. The elusive muse. That stupid, no-good, completely unreliable jerk. Some writers churn out good ideas by the dozens. Others wait for that one bold stroke of inspiration to strike them between the eyes.Whether it's through daydreaming, careful planning, or simply being aware of the world around you, everyone gets ideas in different ways. What's most important, of course, is what you DO with those ideas.Recently I was straightening up my apartment when I came across three small notebooks (pictured here for your amusement). I used to always have one of these on me, in my back left pocket, at all times through graduate school, when I was writing short stories, updates for a defunct blog, and jokes for The Onion (if you look closely, you can see the green notebook has "Onion" written very faintly across the top).I'm terrible at remembering things, especially jokes or ideas. I tried tons of methods to keep track--the notebooks, a small digital recorder, scraps of paper to jam into my wallet--and have since moved on to making notes in my phone if I have nothing else around, though now it's more notes on someone else's story than my own creative projects. Logging these ideas, however stupid they may be, has worked wonders for my productivity.It's easy to keep track of things when the ideas simply pop, but I'm always amazed at what people can do to try and stoke the inspiration juices. For me, nothing worked other than a deadline. If I needed to write 15 jokes by the end of the week, I'd stare at a blank wall until I had them.So I'm wondering what you do to keep tabs of the great ideas floating around in your head, and if you have methods for helping to produce them? Do you ask "what if" questions? Free write? Daydream? Poke at your brain with the tip of a pencil?
We've spoken quite a bit about the wonders of the digital age, from how it affects your own writing to how it can help market books to how it lets you connect with other tortured artists slaving away and being tortured while slaving away during torture.As I assume you're all aware (since you're spending time on this here blog right now), there are tons of distractions out there to pull you away from your writing. It's not just you, though. We agents can get distracted, too. For example, this is literally what happened as I sat down to write this blog post: I needed a picture. My first thought was to grab a screen shot from The Matrix of Neo with that big ol' plug sticking into the back of his head. While searching, I saw a photo of Monica Belluci, who appeared in the later Matrix films. Because I'm a sucker for gorgeous brunettes, I clicked on her photo (don't YOU do it! It's a trap!). Soon, instead of writing this post, I was looking at photos of a beautiful Italian actress. Simply unproductive, friends.Different people deal with distractions in different ways. According to writer lore, Pulitzer Prize winner John McPhee used to tie himself to a chair using the belt on his bathrobe. Suzanne Young, author of The Naughty List, recently chronicled her Twittercation (or Tweebbatical, as I would have called it) on her blog. When I need to get down to business and dive into a manuscript without worrying about emails, Twitter, or who was chosen as the cute puppy of the day, I turn off the wifi on my computer.How about you? Do you have to go to drastic lengths to get down and focus, or are you one of the lucky few who ignores Facebook, and blogs, and Youtube, and the wind blowing through the leaves outside and simply works?
Back in 2003, I was obliviously hustling through Madison Square Park, rushing from someplace unimportant to someplace equally unimportant, when my eye chanced upon a practically brand-new copy of Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man just sitting there naked and alone on a park bench. Thing is, I had been dying to read that very novel for a few months, ever since seeing the first of the fabulous William Powell/Myrna Loy vehicles. And there it was, placed in my path (or very nearly) by book angels or fate or the tempting demons who hound my every step.I skidded to a halt and glanced around. Had someone merely gotten up to can her garbage? To shoo a pigeon? To collar his dog? To bag up her child?* But no, there was no one around but the usual collection of odd jobs talking to themselves and the trees.So I nabbed the book, cried out, "Ha HA!" and hurried away, feeling it was a harbinger of great things to come.Later, I opened the book and discovered a BookCrossing.com label. I'd never before heard of this strange, passionate group who practice a kind of reading socialism, but here's the gist of what each registered member does: She reads a book, decides she doesn't need to own it forever and ever, so registers it on the site, prints out a label with that book's ID number, and sticks the label in or on the book. Then she leaves the book somewhere conspicuous for a stranger to find. That stranger then logs the book in on the site, maybe adds a note or two about it, then releases the book again somewhere else. Afterward, you can track your books as they make their weird peregrinations around the country and the world.In my case, I released my copy of The Thin Man in a cafe in San Diego. Someone picked it up there and took it to San Francisco, then gave it to a friend on her way to Los Angeles, where it has remained these past six years. Have been meaning to put more books out into the wild, but forgot about this site in the hurly-burly of the everyday. Still, perhaps I'll release a few books in Chicago when I am there this weekend.Does anyone else use Bookcrossings? What's the farthest your books have traveled?*I'm clearly still puzzling out this whole childcare thing.
The other day I came across a tattered, unlabeled sheet of paper I'd picked up somewhere. It is a list of questions a children's books buyer asks of picture books during sales calls.While some of these questions should not be on the mind of writers when they are approaching agents (specifically, those questions about packaging and the publisher), other questions having to do with target audience are so savvy that they are worth asking of your own manuscript—whether you are writing a novel or a picture book. These are the sorts of challenges put to your book after it has found an agent, after it has found a publisher, when it is facing that final hurdle to get real estate on a bookstore's shelf.Without further ado: Questions from a children's book buyer
But maybe I'm wrong, and writers shouldn't have any of this in mind. Certainly not while they work, but after they have a draft in hand? No? When do you think of the market? Before, during, after, never?[And apologies to anyone if this is your intellectual property that I picked up at a conference or wherever. There really are no identifying marks on the sheet. I'm happy to give credit or pull it entirely if you send word. Thanks —MS.]
