I thought I may as well pimp Brandon’s Fablehaven 5: Keys to the Demon Prisonrelease party tonight, even though it will certainly have a half-gajillion people attending as is.  If you’re interested, it’s being held at Cottonwood High School (5715 S. 1300 E.) in Salt Lake City, where Brandon went to school.  The event is scheduled to last from 6:00 p.m. to 11:00!  Five hours, crazy, huh.  I suspect that about an hour of that will be a cool presentation (similar to the release party I attended two years ago) and the next four hours will be people milling about having fun at games and stands while Brandon signs a book every ten seconds.  (For those trying to do the math, one book every ten seconds means six books a minute, 360 an hour, and 1440 over those four hours.  1440 books in an evening.  Makes you wonder why he bothers.)

Just for the record, Brandon Mull is a good writer, an even better storyteller, and a nice guy who works really hard on top of it.  He’s one success story that earns cheers from me, because he genuinely deserves it and has more than earned it by pounding the pavement.  So if you’re interested, go be a face in the crowd (mob?) and throw your support behind the already speeding train that is Mr. Mull.

Also, Sydney Salter is doing a little fundraiser for Room To Read, an organization that builds libraries and champions literacy world wide.  For every person who posts a comment on this blog posting she will donate a dollar.  So go!  Help and be heard!

Just updated my calendar, so all these events that I’m taking part in are included there if you’re interested and want a reminder.

First off, tonight I’ll be talking to Rick Walton’s BYU class on children’s publishing again. The class is about breaking into the business, and having one book out for roughly nine months I’m sure qualifies me. I really enjoyed the last time I visited the class, and expect to do so again tonight.

Next up, I’ll be taking part in a pair of events next week. The first will be a visit to East Sandy Elementary school on Thursday, March 4th. I’ll do an assembly for 3rd-6th grades at 1:30 p.m. Should be fun, as always.

The next day, Friday, March 5th, I’ll be presenting at UELMA’s Spring Conference (the Utah Educational Library Media Association), which is being held at Mountain View High School (665 West Center Street, Orem, UT). I’m slated to present at noon (as is James Dashner, who somehow always seems to follow me around. I will need to think of a particularly biting joke about him to use in my presentation to teach him a lesson). The presentation is called Goosebumps, Great Expectations? Tomato, Tomaeto, Potato, Potaeto…: Why the only poor story is a story not read. I’ve put together what should be a really fun workshop on archetypes in narrative, why they exist, and how they undergird the importance of libraries as a place where children can develop narrative literacy without the impositions on reading that come from other areas of their lives. We’ll talk about archetypal theory and see it in action in a wide variety of texts, learn who fills the Darth Vader role in Pride and Prejudice, and stuff like that. Any school librarians considering me for a visit to their school are encouraged to attend the breakout session. It will give you a good idea of what I have to offer as a teacher and presenter.

Finally, a pair of events on May 15th. In the morning I’ll be conducting a two-hour workshop on characterization and triple-duty writing (come to the workshop to see what that is) for the League of Utah Writers’ Spring Workshop. I’ll be holding the workshop from 9 – 11:00 in the morning. The event is free for League members, though I promise the experience will be worthwhile even if you have to pay. (Joining the League for $24 a year is cheaper, and well worth it for any local writer.) I’ll give more information about venue and other contributors when I learn more.

After the workshop, I’m driving to Provo to take part in the Provo Library’s Annual Provo Children’s Book Festival. I believe that I will be reading from Green Dragon Codex in the afternoon, but I’m not sure when. Of course, I’ll let you know as soon as I do. This is a great—and FREE—event, so anyone interested in children’s literature really should be there. The list of participants is just fantastic. When you start with names like Brandon Mull and Shannon Hale and don’t go down much at all from there, you know it’s going to be a quality experience. Also, those who know me are aware that I don’t do many readings, especially of my work for children. (Though I’m not too shabby at it, if you’re worried about that.) If you want to hear me read from GDC, this may be your only chance in the near future.

Finally, I try to announce other writing events in my local area when I hear about them (and when I remember to pass along the message). I’m not participating in this one this year, but the 2010 Teen Writers Conference is being held on Saturday, June 5th, at Weber State University. This is a really cool conference focused on encouraging teenage writers between the ages of 13 to 19. Josi Kilpack is kind of the driving force behind this conference, and she and other organizers have lined up a fantastic list of presenters and instructors, many of whom are good friends I respect a lot. If you’re a teen who writes or is interested in writing, or if you know such a person, please let them know about this event. It’s really a great opportunity for professional level instruction very early in a person’s development as a writer.

While the conference isn’t actually over for another few hours, it is for me.  Because I’m tired.  And my panels are all finished, so I’ve come back home to medicate my knees and tell you all the interesting (to me, at least) bits I remember.  (Things do have a tendency to blur at these things.)

Thursday

The conference started off with an interesting panel on writing style, after which I talked with Lisa Mangum about a requested manuscript of mine that’s apparently disappeared in some vortex at Shadow Mountain.  She said she isn’t in the vortex neighborhood (acquisitions) any more, but that believe it or not there is  bottom to the singularity and, yes, a fourteen month wait probably is a good sign in this case.  Having decided I would take what I could get in the optimism department, I headed to a presentation on open source software that made me aware of a few tools that may be very, very helpful.  (I’d never even heard of GIMP, which is apparently an open source graphic program in the vein of PhotoShop, for example.)  After this, I attended a panel on Mormons writing, reading, and editing horror fiction, mostly because Michael Collings (formerly of Pepperdine) took part, and I always love hearing him speak and teach.

Nathan Hale (who works with Shannon Hale on the Rapunzle graphic novels but is not her husband, brother, or othersuch, but is a scion of the Hale theater dynasty) then gave the day’s keynote address, which was a blend of three presentations that wasn’t exactly seemless and was better for it.  It was fun, as were the substantial number of flying fish (the helicopter rather than the standard species).   

Then came my first panel of the conference: Putting Romance in Fantasy.  Other panelists included Mette Harrison (who was a fine moderator in addition to contributing a great deal), Ami Chopine, Lesli Muir Lytle, and Anna del C. Dye.  We talked about romance as a concept apart from romance as a genre, which I thought was important, and I even thought to bust out one of my favorite Oscar Wilde quotes.  A number of people complimented me on the panel over the weekend, so I must have said something constructive, which is the goal.   

Soon after I took part in my second panel of the day, which addressed why so many mothers and dogs and such die in children’s stories.  My friend and former editor Stacy Whitman (who is moving to New York, hurray!) served as moderator and panelist as she pitched questions at two good friends, Julie Wright and Paul Genesse, and myself.  Much of the time was spent establishing the difference between a trope and a cliche, which is a really important distinction.

Oh, I almost forgot.  That night I was invited to a goodbye dinner for Stacy at Bangkok Grill in Orem (about 8th south and 3rd east, I believe).  It was quite a gathering.  Stacy went to BYU with Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Howard Taylor, and a bunch of others now in the writing/publishing world, and they kindly let me attend with the rest of the clan.  It was kind of a thing to see, about twenty-five or thirty of us, a surprising number published writers (some very famous).  Here’s all you need to know: 1) Bangkok Grill is very good (Howard knows his Thai food) so you should go.  Frequently.  2)  Talking about methods of procuring and utilitzing tape worms for medicinal use is not the best subject for dinner conversation, but it can and does happen.  3)  If you think a writer is an especially capable, interesting, or admirable kind of person, never, ever go to dinner with a gang of us.  I fit in that night.  That means you will be disappointed to the brink of suicide.  4) Eating spicy food at night does not hinder my sleep, for which I am profoundly grateful.       

Friday

I was on the first panel of the morning, which filled up despite the hour (9:00 am) because of a really strong lineup: Guest of Honor and NY Times Bestseller Brandon Sanderson, the certified and certifiable schlock genius Howard Taylor, good buddy and perpetual puzzle James Dashner, and Larry Correia and Karen Hoover, neither of whom I knew but both certainly held their own on this heavyweight panel.  I hope I did the same, because this session earned a lot of praise—perhaps because it ranged from imbibing Essence of Payton Manning (you will live a happier life if you don’t ask) to the redneck fairies in Larry’s work to Brandon’s taking “Rapunzel’s hair” and “Sponge Bob” and transmuting them into a story about a space elevator constructed of impervious, semi-divine keratin which facilitates the discovery of a race of sentient sponges.  Yeah, if you weren’t there, you missed out.  That fifty minutes will never be replicated.

Marty Brenneis was the day’s keynotes, and he showed how George Lucas’s special effects company did every single cool thing you’ve ever seen on film.  It was a blast!  (Very literally.)  

At noon I was scheduled for a signing, which eventually happened though it looked for a long time that it wouldn’t.  There was some miscommunication between event organizers and the BYU Bookstore, and myself along with quite a few other authors found none of our books were available to buy.  When I discovered this the previous day I allowed my frustration to get the better of me for a while, but a very kind and patient woman named Tami arranged for me to sell on consignment and all went swimmingly.  They even got a sign with my name printed out in three hours!  I’m telling you, that girl is magic.  I signed some books over the course of the hour and talked to more people, so it turned out great.  A few other ladies at the bookstore helped me along with Tami though I didn’t catch their names.  Thanks, ladies.       

An hour later came my second panel of the day on writing authentic child characters.  Other panelists were Julie Wright (a much better moderator than she gives herself credit for), Dene Low (Laura Card), Laura Bingham, Bron Bahlmann (who is sixteen and truly deserved his seat!), myself, and James Dashner doing his best Jeff Savage impression as Jeff didn’t make it.  (For the record, it was more of a James doing Jeff doing a spot-on James Dashner impression.)  Again, things went well.  I didn’t know Dene or Laura very well, but they were both impressive.  Bron made me feel both old and a touch slow, which is a striking concoction of inferiority.  I’m a bit embarrassed that I laughed when James explained his process of secondary character creation, but it wasn’t insulting at all, at least, it wasn’t meant to be.  It was a result of perplexity.  James just writes good stories, much in the way the wind blows.  He’s so instinctive where I’m analytic.  He’ll tell you frankly he doesn’t know how or why about much of his process and, equally frankly, it’s like an itch I can’t scratch.  I gotta know how that brain works!  I swear, if he’s ever foolish enough to take a nap near me when we’re alone I’m going to find some scissors or something and poke around in his brain.  James, you have been warned.

I wrapped up the day with a really interesting presentation by Bryan Beus, a visual artist who reminds me a lot of myself in his approach to art.  He presented on archetypes and the monomyth in narrative from a largely visual point of view, which I found fascinating.  It really was like looking at a very familiar subject through lenses just that much different from what you’re used to.  We talked for a minute afterward and it was clear that there was some methodological kinship there.  I’m really glad I went.

Saturday

I’m always a bit drained by the third day of a conference and I was only on one Saturday panel, so I planned on keeping things short.  The day started off pleasantly when Brandon Mull and I parked near each other and walked into the Wilkinson Center together.  We caught up a bit and talked shop.  Brandon is one of the very successful writers who has and continues to pound the pavement like a madman.  He’s visited, I don’t know, a thousand schools over the years?  Whatever the actual number, he’s a legend in the local children’s writing world for his energy and work ethic.  When you add that to a terrific storyteller and a genuinely nice guy, you get someone who’s always nice to cross paths with.

Again, my panel was the first of the day (though my second on romance, go figure).  Where before I was the only guy on the romance panel, this was all men: moderator John Brown (who I got to know at dinner on Thursday), fellow Dragonlance writer Dan Willis, and L.E. Modesitt Jr (Lee) in addition to myself.  I thought this panel was fantastic, though Lee did disagree with me a few times (ouch!).  I can’t complain, honestly.  This was a good panel with the four of us dealing with pretty nuanced stuff, from sociological theory to narrative craftsmanship.  There was a lot of interplay and, I think, really actionable information for those in attendance.  I was glad to be a part and look forward to future events with all these men (though the topic of romance seems unlike as a future place for us to meet up). 

Then I spent an hour or two talking with a lovely nineteen-year-old woman about her book—or, you might say, abusing her by suggesting so many options for revision it certainly gave her a headache.  I’d use her name, but she insists she’s a thirty-plus married with two children.  I don’t want to expose her identity as a bald (and very young)-faced liar.

Then I went to two panels on worldbuilding.

Then I came home to write to you.    

Other things I’ll report (which you may or may not want to know):

* People ask me to take pictures with them, and this happened three times at LTUE.  I always agree, but still find this to be extremely odd.  Rather like taking pictures of a can of soup.  There is nothing particularly off putting about a can of soup, certainly, but neither is it possessed of a rare aesthetic quality.  Whenever I’m asked to take a picture with someone, a single thought fills my head: stop looking so confused.

* James Dashner’s entrance in a room is sometimes accomplied by applause, only some of which is sarcastic.  Brandon Sanderson’s is accompanied by greater applause, none of it sarcastic.  Mine is accompanied by no applause.  All of this strikes me as logical.

* Paul Genesse wrote some very generous things (perhaps overly so) on his blog after our Thursday afternoon panel.  He actually posted it that day—after being on four panels!  Like Brandon Mull, Paul too is a machine in synthetic flesh.     

* The Brandons Mull and Sanderson signed books for my brother and his wife.  I will now be even cooler to their family.  (My nephew, who will be four tomorrow, thinks I’m pretty awesome already, so just wait until he can read the dedication to GDC.)

* Best panelist of the conference: L.E. Modesitt Jr.  Yeah, yeah, that guy who kind of sort of disagreed with me about some stuff.  I may not agree with him on everything, but I do most things—and the guy knows his craft and knows how to talk about it.  I admire and respect his balance of intellectual orientation in the disciplines of economics, politics, and other social dynamics with the truly idiosyncratic nature of telling a story.  He’s one who does it right, if you ask me (though he’d be the first to point out that a million other ways can be just as right).  The Brandons, Howard Taylor, and Dan Wells among others are always standouts, but this weekend’s cream was Lee (which, unfortunately, rose only on Saturday as he was supporting his wife with an event she is holding this weekend).  If you ever get a chance to hear Lee talk about writing, don’t pass it up, I’m telling you.    

* My friend Eric Swedin and I still have yet to appear on the same panel, which is beginning to threaten mathematical probability as we know it.  My five panels were, I believe, more than the allotment to anyone not a very special guest.  For his part, Eric is so omni-present at this thing that it is unofficially known as Life, the Universe, and Eric.  (This may become official next year depending on Eric’s generosity and the conference’s poverty.)  I’m impatient to sit with him at the same covered table brimming with mics and free water, do you hear me!

* At my book signing a lady picked up my book, started to read, and in about a minute laughed long and hard out loud.  That was cool.

* Yup, LTUE was all good.

Just a reminder that I’ll be at LTUE this weekend: Thursday - Saturday at BYU (3rd floor of the Wilkinson Student Center, as Marny kindly reminded me).  Also a reminder that the conference is FREE and that my charm will be in rare full display as I pontificate on romance and writing not once but twice.  And a comment that only the exceedingly lame and those with very good excuses will miss this event.  (A good excuse would involve death or dismemberment in some way; a healthy letting of blood alone won’t cut it.)

If my tidbit ethos alone is insufficient bait then don’t forget the main courses: Brandons Sanderson and Mull, L.E. Modesitt, James Dashner, Howard Taylor, Mette Ivie Harrison, Lisa Mangum, ad infinitum.  (Well, maybe not that long.)

And here, once more, is my schedule:

Thursday, Feb. 11th

2:00 pm: Putting Romance into Your Fantasy—Do you have to have a love story in Fantasy?  Why or why not?  If you do, how do you balance it with the action and adventure?  Other panelists will be Mette Ivie Harrison, Ami Chopine, Lesli Muir Lytle, and Anna del C. Dye.

4:00 pm: No More Dead Dogs (or Moms)—Why do mothers and dogs always die in children’s literature?  How do we pull at the heartstrings and give child characters independence without killing off dogs and moms?  Other panelists will be Julie Wright, my old editor Stacy Whitman, and Paul Genesse, all good friends so this should be fun.  Also, Stacy andI kind of invented this panel last year.

Friday, Feb. 12th

9:00 am: How to Become an Idea Factory—Where do you find ideas?  How do you go from an idea to a story?  Other panelists will be Brandon Sanderson, Howard Taylor, James Dashner, Larry Correia, and Karen Hoover.  There are some heavy hitters on this panel, so don’t miss it.

12:00 pm: I’ll be having a book signing.

2:00 pm: Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction for a Discerning Audience—How to write believable child characters.  Other panelists will be Julie Wright, Laura Bingham, Laura Card, and Bron Bahlmann Wilcox.  Just a heads up, I think I may take this one in two different directions.  It seems the panel is asking two questions: how to make speculative elements feel authentic, and how to write authentic children characters.  If you’re interested in either question I think you’ll get some interesting insights.

Saturday, Feb. 13th

9:00 am: A Guy’s Take on Writing Romance.  Other panelists will be L.E. Modesitt, Dan Willis, Aleta Clegg, and John Brown.

What do you call a bunch of librarians?  A pack?  A mob?  I hope it’s not a murder (it is for crows, you see).  Next month I’m presenting at the UELMA (Utah Educational Library Media Association) Spring Conference, where I’ll begin the session by pointing out that Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations and R.L. Stine’s Welcome to Dead House are essentially (in terms of archetype) the same story.  I’ve never known any books to generate such antipathy in elementary educators as the Goosebumps books, so I’m a little worried that the session will end prematurely in some violent episode. 

If it doesn’t, I’ll claim much more than a foundational sameness between Great Expectations and Welcome to Dead House; I’ll argue for the following texts being riffs on the same elemental story: Pride and Prejudice, The Harry Potter Series, The Graveyard Book, Holes, Much Ado about Nothing, Fablehaven, A Wrinkle in Time, The Tale of Despereaux, Last of the Mohicans, Dracula, Dune, Little Women, The Illiad, and the books of 1 and 2 Samuel from the Old Testament (the story of King David).  And just for the record, I am NOT making a comment on the veracity or lack of such of scripture.  Archetypal theory is about narrative, not fiction; it addresses the structure humans apply to everything, including facts and events, in order to construct meaning.

Sound implausible, all those books being the same story?  Well, if you’re not a librarian you may have to figure out how and why this is true on your own.  Then again, once I have a presentation in my toolbox I’m not one to let it rust in there.  If things go well I’ll see about doing the presentation other places.  Then the world can share in the wonderful knowledge that Mr. Darcy is Darth Vader, Japanese Kabuki is only technically and cosmetically different from classical Ballet, and not only do all the world’s great religions believe very similar things, but that these things are taught using the same story that undergirds life.

I’ll let you know how things go next month, as always.  But next on the docket is LTUE!

Sorry this is a few days late.   I thought about giving an account of Wednesday’s BYU class visit before this, but, well, I didn’t. 

For the record, the students in Rick Walton’s children’s book publishing industry class are the luckiest in the nation, certainly, and most likely this world and most others.  And no, not because I talked to them for an hour earlier this week.  (I’d like to think that wasn’t too detrimental.)  Do you know the people scheduled to stop by to talk to them this semester?  I don’t know all the names, but the Brandons Mull and Sanderson top the list, along with Chris Schoebinger from Shadow Mountain, just to start.  And that’s after Shannon Hale tried to undo any damage I did earlier in the evening on Wednesday.  If these students are prepared for the publishing climate after this class, they haven’t been listening.

Anyway, Wednesday was great.  I arrived and greeted Rick, who knew my name and had seen me around but I’m not sure he could place the name with the face until we shook hands.  Kristen Chandler was there as well, and it was great meeting her for the first time as well.  Then Rick called Kristen and me to the front of the class and asked us to answer questions for a little over an hour, which we did.  I was impressed by the questions we fielded, which ranged pretty widely in content, as we were addressing up-and-coming authors, editors, illustrators, agents, and one lawyer who Shannon couldn’t quite figure out why he was there.  (She decided it must have something to do with women, which is a good bet, because I’m convinced everything that’s the least bit confusing ties in some way to women.)  Then Shannon answered questions for the last hour plus, signed books, and, I assume, went home.  I must so assume because I said goodbye to everyone and left earlier. 

So, the postmortem (don’t you love how macabre that sounds): finally got to know Rick a little better, met Shannon and Kristen for the first time, and got to talk about my profession and passion to a very attentive and bright class of kindred spirits.  I hope Rick finds some reason—real or imagined—to have me back some time. 

The Saints just kicked off, so I’m needed elsewhere.

Hi everyone.  Back from my anything but relaxing three day hiatus from posting.  It’s nearing finals week at SLCC, which means constant chaos at the writing center.  Without the odd moments between sessions to post, I didn’t find time to even consider my blog yesterday.  So I’m posting early and trying to ignore the fact that I’ve still got to run for a half hour before work. 

So I must be brief: J. Scott Savage, known as Jeff in certain of his other lives, is a total rock star—at least for ten year olds.  Wednesday he kindly invited me to observe a school visit he did at Cherry Creek Elementary in Springville, UT, and I’ll tell you, those poor teachers would have preferred all their kids be injected with pure sugar rather than the state Scott left them.  It was nuts.  I’ve seen several very good school visits, but Scott Savage is without doubt the best I’ve witnessed.  Anyone who has gone to Brandon Mull’s release parties (roughly 5 million kids packed into a darkened auditorium waving glowsticks and screaming), picture that only with 400 students.  If he gets that reaction at every visit he does, soon Scott Savage will be a real person to reckon with, seeing as he’ll be at the head of an army of 4-6th graders who do anything and everything he tells them—except be quiet.  They tried, they really did, but it was too much for them.

Thanks as well to Jennifer, who is the force behind the Savage School Machine.  I learned a ton about how to do school visits effectively and hope I’m ready to start scheduling them next month.  Also met YA author Janette Rallison, who is a very nice lady.  (A school that will remain nameless treated her not so nicely when they cancelled her visit because her book had three kisses in it.  Apparently this qualified as “content problems.”  No, it makes perfect sense; vampires hungering for seventeen-year-old girls who are actually succubi and having undead children together is so much more appropriate.)  Together Scott and Janette, along with Jessica Day George, did a signing/reading in the evening, which confirmed my decision never to do a reading for kids.  They were all good readers with good stories, but it’s just asking too much of 8-11-year-old kids to sit through those things (unless you’re a truly great reader of your own work, like Neil Gaiman or David Sedaris, which I most certainly am not.) 

So, the short and long: learned how to do school visits, was reminded how silly censorship can really be, ate some good Mexican food, vowed never to do a reading for kids, and am now anticipating J. Scott Savage taking over at least one of the smaller states with his army of giant-chocolate-pudding-incensed children.  Oh, and here’s my two cents on Jessica’s and Janette’s conversation on the relative discomfort of bearing children or eggs: I’m heartily glad I’ll never do either (that I can foresee), for I’m far too big a wuss to be a mother. 

Next time: Just got info on my schedule at CONduit, which I’ll share with all of you baited-breath waiters.

I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of every freaking moment of my life, I had a dream!

I apologize to those of you who caught the Dr. King plagiarization, and promise not to be quite so profane throughout the remainder of this post. Really. Pinky swear.

But I did have a dream, I really did! Now, I perfectly comprehend how hyperbolic an exclamation point must seem attached to that statement. For you, dreaming is probably like falling off a log, only less demanding in coordination (and if you actually hit the ground you supposedly die). But you must understand, for a chronic insomniac–at least, for this chronic insomniac–dreaming is an impossibility. Well, if you’re going to be particular, I suppose that awareness of dreaming is an impossibility, seeing as not dreaming at all disables memory, the underpinning of learning and all social interaction, and eventually leads to madness. This does not describe me–I think.

Anyway, in the past decade or a little more I can remember not a single element of a single dream. Not one. When you understand that, you can possibly imagine how excited I was to wake up this morning with these odd concepts bouncing about in my head, insisting that they had been integrated previously into some greater whole than I then could comprehend.

Yes, I’ll tell what my dream was, but first I’ll tell you what it wasn’t. It wasn’t anything any of you would find particularly exciting, or relevant, or perhaps sane, in either a good or bad way. I didn’t have some prophetic vision about how I’ll hit the NYT Best-seller list, but nor did I have a dream where I’m stuck in the 311th level of hell (that’s where you spend all eternity at your book signing, and every person in line burst into tears when they discover you aren’t Brandon Mull). No, my recollection of my dream is as follows:

I was wearing a pair of high socks and, apparently while in said high socks, someone complimented me on my chest hair.

That is the extent of my dream. Like all dreams (so I understand) it is not all to be understood, which leaves me guessing at what this first dream in a decade may mean. (I try not to think about what a dream about socks and chest hair, and this being my only dream in years, may say about the significance or lack of such in my life.) For example, I don’t know why I was wearing high socks, how high they were, or even whether I was aware of the socks’ excessive height or learned of this from someone else. Likewise, I have no idea who complimented me on my chest hair, or why I was particularly deserving of the praise. I like to think I wasn’t complimenting myself, for if I had, I certainly would have found a more suitable topic for my self-congratulations. I don’t even know in which context to situate these high socks and chest hair compliments, and I’d really, really like to know that.

Oh well, I had a dream. A real dream.

I am most excited. Truly effervescent. And no amount of disparagement–warranted or not–will make me feel otherwise. I just hope that the next isn’t another decade in the making.

What? Yikes, you’re right, I promised something on my idea. That’ll have to wait for next time. But here’s your hint: it involves people who visit this blog, me, anything you want to talk about after the workshop on the 21st, and the word rendezvous (only without the amorous connotation). Let that get your juices churning.

So, where was I?  Of yes, balling my eyes out.  Naturally.

So, once I had the contract for GDC something hit me: I now had to write the book.  A kids book.  I wasn’t certain I could do that.  I’d never done it before, and as I’d written quite a bit in the previous few years, I assumed there was a reason I’d never written one before–I just hoped that reason wasn’t an utter lack of capability. 

It was a difficult process for many reasons.  First and foremost, trying writing a book 1/3rd the length of the shortest novel you’ve written previously, for an audience you’ve never tried to address, using shared-world restrictions, tropes, and compositional limitations (a two POV limit, for example, both pretty much prescribed).  All of this was new and, I confess, I didn’t much like any of it.  (The moral of our story is don’t sign a contract to write a children’s book when you don’t write children’s books, and haven’t read children’s books since you were, yourself, a children.  Unless you have to, of course.  Then by all means.) 

The length aspect had me petrified from the beginning, but it turned out to be the least disconcerting challenge.  I found that trying to fit my story into the larger narrative arc of the line (and the world) changed my conceptual approach to the story (as did the fact that I’d already condensed a trilogy to a single book with much diminished scope).  I suppose I took an episodic view of my narrative; I started to conceptualize it as an entry in a larger entity, and thus was more easily able to accept a relatively modest scope.  That didn’t make me happy, certainly, as my storytelling instinct is to go Dostoyevsky or Dante or Robert Jordan (that is to say, epic and massive).  But it didn’t move my nose too out of joint, as it were.

Writing for a middle grade audience and dealing with composition restrictions, however, had my nose upside down and bleeding.  GDC (like most fantasies, regardless of audience age) is about good and evil, but I wanted to make recognizing each difficult without calling into question the clear, distinct, and oppositional existence of both.  This involved every character in the book operating, quite frequently, with less knowledge of what is going on than the reader.  While some of the story is of the “What is going to happen?” structure, some employed the mystery paradigm of “How and why is this so?” and “When will the characters realize what I, the reader, know?”  To built this type of narrative where the reader witnesses a story that is substantially more complete than any individual character’s perspective allows requires seeing plot events from multiple points of view.  Only having two points of view to work with, and having them prescribed, made this much more difficult.  Also, because the book was to be part of a larger line (all written from the same ethos of R.D. Henham), I was constrained stylistically, which no author enjoys.  At least, so I assume from my frothing rages whenever I felt I had to discipline myself from doing anything too unorthodox.

As for writing for ten year olds, I wasn’t sure how to do it and am not sure I can do it now.  I hope that when I have a story that ten year olds will like, I naturally write it in such a way to make it appealing to them.  But my stories dictate the manner in which they are written.  I could no more take a story conceptualized for adults and “write it differently” for kids than I could the reverse; the “same story” for a different audience is a different story.  GDC is a children’s story, so I hope and believe I constructed it in terms of content, context and subtext, diction, and syntax fitting for that audience.  I suppose I’ll only know after the release, and I get to hear from the readers what they think and feel about the story.  In short, I’m not certain it’s possible to know the audience for any book, really.  I just did my best and followed C.S. Lewis’s advice (which is rarely a bad idea): write a story you would have liked to read as a child.

That being said, I tried to at least catch up on the basics of what was going on in children’s fantasy fiction.  The last middle grade book I’d read was probably The Cay by Theodore Taylor back in fifth grade.  I wasn’t in touch with anything in YA or children’s literature beyond the first three Harry Potter books, which I’d read to see if they justified the hype (they don’t, but no popular revolution is entirely justified by the catalyst, and I think Rowling’s work is as deserving of unreal providence as nearly any other writer’s might have been, so good on her).  My understanding of children’s literature was decidedly classical (meaning ancient and surprisingly British in flavor), as it consisted of vintage Lloyd Alexander, Madeline L’Engle, Roald Dahl, Peter S. Beagle, Lewis and Tolkien, Robert Louis Stevensen and the like.  So I started sampling the best and most successful (and yes, they are sometimes the same) of more recent children’s fantasy.  Neil Gaiman’s Coraline (my favorite children’s book of all time), Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series (masterful story and writing, though not a children’s series), Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl books, Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Brandon Mull’s Fablehaven series, etc. 

It was very much like studying for a test while taking it–in a class you’ve never before attended.  Yet somehow, that initial draft turned out quite well.  Mirrorstone gave me nearly a year before the rough draft was due.  I had it to Stacy in three months.  (See March 3rd’s post for hint about patience if you want to know the content of the following nine months.)

Next time: A Tale of Two Editors, or Vivisection Isn’t That Bad (Even for Whiners)