Uncreated Conscience

I got a Nikon D60 for Christmas (I have named him Argos) and I’ve been so enamored of him, I practically sleep with him in the bed. White-Harp is not pleased.

What I look like these days.

As promised, here is a silly post of the photographic variety. Later today I hope to get around to reviewing RAMPANT by Diana Peterfreund (and get around to HUMMINGBIRDS by Joshua Gaylord and EXTRAS by Scott Westerfeld before I leave LA). Until then, I will spam you with pictures from my new camera.

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Last night I went to the 10 year reunion of my High Point Academy classmates and had an amazing time (but then again, we always did). I went to a small private school–36 of us in our graduating class–so in effect, these were kids with whom I grew up. For nostalgia’s sake, Mandi brought our 8th grade yearbook and I immediately turned to our “Remember When” page.

Remember when…Sarah didn’t use big words.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Although I went by Sarah in those days; it could because I was the only Sarah in that class and was thus able to avoid sharing the name with another girl.

Looking at my Remember When, I suppose it came as no surprise to anyone that I now work in publishing. :) Speaking of which, I finally got around to reading FIRE by Kristin Cashore, the review for which follows beneath the cut.

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As an administrative note: St. Martin’s Press will be closed for business from Thursday, December 24th through Sunday, January 3rd. I, on the other hand, will continue to blog and read my face off. Over the break, expect less posts of the publishing variety and more posts of the photographic/silly/life variety.

Tomorrow I will be leaving this (park by my apartment) for...

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Even if walking about in the city after it’s snowed is a dirty, slushy, wet, and disgusting slog, there’s something magical about the first real snowfall of the season.

A snowy day in New Jersey.

There’s something lovely about a world blanketed in white, hushed and quiet. I always think of snowfall as silent even when it’s not, even when little tinkling bits of ice gather musically on the windowpanes. I watched the sun rise over the city as I left a warm, sleepy Bear behind in New Jersey, the sky a brilliant rosy-orange fading into a muted lavender-pink. It’s the shortest day of the year and soon I can celebrate the return of the sun, but reflected in my mind’s eye are scenes of play: me dressed as Lyra Belacqua with a faux fur-lined hood, me with a daemon White-Harp tucked in my coat, stealing piggy back rides from a Bear in the snow–my Iorek Byrnison, my Will Parry.

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Every year I look forward to Christmas for several reasons, not the least of which is going back home to California to get warm see my family. One of the nice things about working in publishing is that the industry takes a break between Christmas and New Year, freeing up time to read without having to worry about writing scary editorial letters (scary for me, not the author), scheduling meetings with agents, or socializing myself to death.

Husbands rest here. Photo by ColorMeKatie.

Note: I celebrate Christmas (the secular bits, anyway), hence why I name that holiday. Seasons greetings, happy Yule, happy Chanukah, happy Kwanzaa, and happy holidays to everyone who doesn’t!

One thing I don’t like about Christmas is shopping for gifts. I’m notoriously terrible at thinking of what to give people and even worse at receiving presents. My relatives asked what I wanted for Christmas this year. I was about to put down my usual answer (books or a gift certificate for books), when I realised my new job makes asking for books sort of moot. I actually couldn’t think of anything else.

However, this year, I have decided to foist my favourite books I’ve read in 2009 upon the people I love. As far as presents go, books are relatively inexpensive (compared to, say, a Nikon D60, which is what I actually want but don’t dare ask for). What follows is a JJ’s List of Awesome Books To Give People.

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Before we get to business, how about a little rampant narcissism? When I was younger, my mother used to accuse me of dressing like a cartoon character. Well, she’s sort of right–on most days I like to fictionalize myself, and this includes wearing a costume. Some days I like to dress like a flapper, on other days a 30s moll (or Mrs. Coulter). Today, I am feeling a retro/60ish vibe, complete with fishnets and heels.

I'm feeling Mad Men-ish today.

And now business. Question and answer time! Well, sort of. Just one question already asked, to which I have something of a long-ish answer.

If I have a New Adult manuscript, whom do I query for representation?

Boss and I have been actively courting different agencies and agents with our “mission”, as it were, so we’re not operating entirely in the dark. We are trying to get the word out (both online and in person) about us and about a publisher who is actively seeking stories that fall into this “in-between” area of adult fiction.

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A few days ago, I saw a link posted by Debbi Ridpath Oh on some notes she took at SCBWI 2009 on 7 Reasons Why Your Manuscript Got Rejected. (By the way, if you don’t have Inky Girl: Daily Diversions for Writers on your RSS readers, you are missing out on helpful advice, commiseration, and adorable cartoons.)

Wendy Loggia at Delacorte gave a list of reasons she passes on manuscripts she receives, ranging from unpolished submissions to crowded lists/shelf-space/marketplace. I agree with everything she says, but I would like to highlight one reason in particular.

4. The writer seems like a difficult person to work with. Wendy always Googles an author’s name before offering a contract. She says she may be prompted to change her mind about signing up an author if they share too much information in their blog, if they tend to blog a lot about how hard writing is, if they blog about being rejected many times, if they publicly bash a book she’s worked on, or if they bash a colleague in the business who is her friend.

Ah, the internet. Emily Post needs to get hip with the times and write an etiquette book on web presence. Alas, as she is dead, I will try to address some of these issues myself, including cultivating a web presence.

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Finally, a review! I’ve got several more in the works, but I need to start with GOING BOVINE, which I read ages ‘n’ ages ago. I love Libba Bray. No really. I love this woman. Biggest crush ever. Not only is she a phenomenal writer, she’s also ridiculously charming and funny and adorable in person. And she has an incredible singing voice with excellent taste in music. AND SHE HAS A GLASS EYE. THIS MEANS SHE IS MADE OF AWESOME.

GOING BOVINE by Libba Bray

Cameron’s just an ordinary 16-year-old boy looking to survive high school. Unfortunately, after being diagnosed with Creutzfeldt–Jakob’s disease (the human form of mad cow disease), it looks as though he may not survive at all. The disease has no cure and is invariably fatal, but that doesn’t mean he’s giving up. One day, while hospitalized for treatment, a punk-rock angel with a bad sugar habit named Dulcie walks into his room and tells him there is a cure–if he’s willing to go on a quest.

What follows is a surreal road trip across the country with a hypochondriac midget named Gonzo and the Norse god Balder enchanted into the form of a lawn gnome as Cameron and his companions try to find Dr. X, a missing international rock phenomenon, and save the world along the way.

Libba Bray has called it, “The feel-good mad cow disease road trip book of the year”. She’s right. Never mind the fact that’s probably the only mad cow disease road trip book ever written. That doesn’t diminish my love one whit.

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First, I want to say I received submissions from everyone (except Nicole Beattie for POE–please send when ready!) who won the St. Martin’s “New Adult” contest. Thank you for responding and I will try and get a head start on them over the holidays.

Second, I want to thank agent Kristin Nelson for her really kind comments about Boss and me. We try our best to impress, you know. :)

Third, I want to address an issue that seems to crop up a lot in discussions about New Adult: that it’s just chick lit and isn’t chick lit dead? Why try and revive a dead genre with a sexy new name?

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

I won’t deny that New Adult will absolutely encompass what is known as “chick lit”, but to say that will only encompass chick lit is too narrow. That’s like saying YA is only about high school. It is not. YA is about a certain time of life, when you are no longer a child but not quite an adult and one can write about this period of time through less literal genres like historical fiction or science-fiction and fantasy. Similarly, New Adult is about young adulthood, when you are an adult but have not established your life as one (career, family, what-have-you).

Boss’s favourite example of something not contemporary we consider New Adult is GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING by Tracy Chevalier. Griet is a young woman who must serve as a maid in a rich household in order to support her parents. She finds a situation in the household of the artist Johannes Vermeer, cleaning his house by day, serving as his assistant by night. Griet finds herself in a relationship with her enigmatic master that is less than proper but no more than chaste, and must learn to navigate the complicated relationships with her master, his patrons, her mistress, her parents, and the handsome butcher’s son in the market.

Although Griet is young (she is 16), this is the story of a young woman in her first job away from home. She falls in love with her boss, must learn how to appease and fawn before her superiors–despite her greater intelligence–and stave off inappropriate advances from people in positions of power. Remove the historical element, and you’ll find a similar story in the works of many “chick lit” novels. And yet it is so much more than that.

I’m not much of a reader of “chick lit” myself–to date, I have only ever loved BRIDGET JONES’ DIARY by Helen Fielding. I find a lot of chick lit follows many romance novel conventions and while some people find the familiarity of the tropes comforting, I do not. But to each his/her own. Just as YA doesn’t necessarily have to reflect contemporary teenaged life, New Adult doesn’t necessarily have to be “chick lit”.

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a long time, but I haven’t been able to get my head around it. (Not to mention I have been so swamped with work that I don’t have time to sleep, let alone blog.) I acknowledge that I am longwinded and prosaic on a good day and this post promised to be a monster. I apologise for the impending tl;dr, but I want to discuss something that is near and dear to my heart as a reader, writer, and now fledgling editor.

Middle Earth

If you can’t tell by the map of Middle Earth, I want to talk about worldbuilding because I have a theory about the “best” books having the best “worlds” built into them. Of course, I am coming at this with a decided fantasy bias, but bear with me here. I think a lot of readers want to get lost in a “world” as much as the story or a character’s inner thoughts and that setting as its own force in a work is sometimes overlooked or downplayed.

One of the agents at Ye Olde Literary Agency (I suppose, by now I can “out” El Jefe as Al Zuckerman and the agency as Writers House) put it best on his Publishers Marketplace page:

I love stories that introduce me to new worlds — or even better, recreate the ones I may already know.

- Dan Lazar

I think “recreate the ones I may already know” is the best way of putting it I’ve read in a long time. Worldbuilding isn’t just for science fiction and fantasy novels, but for all the other genres in between.

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