My career and my life.
September 4, 2012
Children’s: Young Adult
Adi Rule’s debut, SING, about a young soprano who enrolls in a remote music academy where nothing and no one, not even her mysterious young vocal coach, are as they seem; and a second novel, REDWING, a dark modern fairy tale, to Sarah Jae-Jones at St. Martin’s, in a two-book deal, by Ammi-Joan Paquette at Erin Murphy Literary Agency (world).
So…yeah. I bought my first two books. :) I AM SO EXCITE, PEOPLE.
Ever wondered about my editorial process? What exactly goes through my mind when I look at a manuscript and edit? Today I’m talking at Publishing Crawl about how I edit, which involves woo-woo, mystical-sounding things like “three-dimensional mindscape”, as well as mixed metaphors about building houses and drawing.
I’ve now joined the ladies of Pub(lishing) Crawl as a contributor, so expect to see posts about the industry from me once a month there. Today I blogged about the acquisitions process (complete with all the GIFs I stole from Tumblr), so head on over there to check it out!
Exciting news! In-house Cap’n Sweet Valley has been working on an initiative to start publishing a series of e-originals that we are calling e-serials. What are e-serials?
An e-serial is a series of digital-only discrete dramatic novella-length “episodes” that advance an overall “season” narrative arc through 4-6 installments, published in at regular intervals at a low price.
We are conceptualizing e-serials as a loose bridge between a full length novel and a TV show. An e-serial episode is analogous to a one hour drama, one installment of a season of dramas. We’ve already started this experiment with The Sweet Life, which will be an e-serial featuring the continuing lives of the Wakefield twins–now 30 years old and living in California–and look forward to finding more stories to develop!
This is obviously a new and experimental format, but all the criteria for what makes a good novel still hold: high-concept hook, great writing, great characters. We’re excited to have Allison Rushby onboard with us for this!
In Nora Zelevansky’s hilarious debut, Semi-Charmed Life, an Upper West Side naïf, Beatrice Bernstein, gets swept up in the seeming magical life of socialite Veruca Pfeffernoose, while ghost-writing her blog. Veruca’s glitteringly opulent world soon seduces Beatrice away from her own insular, arty family with a promise of fancy parties, travel outside Manhattan (gasp!), and one desperately cute guy. But when her new glitzy lifestyle starts to take on dark undertones, Beatrice has to decide who she is–once and for all. With her own magical touch, Zelevansky deftly explores the world of rarified Manhattan in this sparkling modern fairy tale of first love, finding one’s voice, and growing up.
Lately I’ve been mulling over a question that seems to crop up in a lot of what I read for both work and pleasure, namely whether or not a definition of YA exists. Of course YA exists, but what it is seems to be a fluid idea, shaped by many different considerations: age of protagonist, marketing concerns, and the most controversial of all–reading level.
I'm changing my title to Executive Rejector.Executive Editor at St. Martin's Press
Well. Hello! Oh excuse me while I dust off the layers of dust that have settled over this blog. Dear me, how long has it been since I’ve written anything substantive? Wait, don’t answer that; it’s really embarrassing. Anyway, I promise I haven’t dropped off the face of the planet, although I’ve been submerged in [...]
There persists a myth in our collective social conscience: that to name something or to know someone’s true name was to have power over him or her. I thought that if I could just find my sexuality’s true name, I could finally stop refining and defining that part of myself. I really need to stop [...]
S. Jae-Jones, but JJ, if you please. Editrix at St. Martin's Press. Writer. Artist. Avid skydiver. And she abandons her mind to obscure arts.