What’s up in publishing

Taking a look at Blue Rose Girls, a recent post caught my eye about an event held at the Boston Public Library. It was a festival celebrating children’s authors, featuring such greats at Neil Gaiman and Jerry Spinelli. The officious tea party was apparently a pretty big to-do, with kids dressed for Sunday and four student representatives giving awards to the honored authors. The thing that caught my eye was that it was a awards ceremony FOR KIDS. According to the blog entry, there were more kids at the library than there were adults, and judging by the speech delivered by Grace Lin, it was pretty uplifting and encouraging to literary children. She said the same sort of things that one hears all the time – wrote something, got rejected, wrote something else, and persevered – but I can imagine that, coming from a published author, this meant a lot to the young listeners.

In another post, Libby told some anecdotal stories about child-like logic, wherein children think very hard about something and come to an oftentimes incorrect or perhaps unrelated conclusion. She also mused about how wonderful such logic is to adults (or alternatively boring) and wondered why it is that such logic is not written about more often. I concur and admit that I love such stories. Kids say the craziest things and think nothing of it, and that I think is one of the glories of children’s writing, that stories can be told from a child’s perspective. I do believe that Peter Pan was a classic that very reason.

Cynsations offered an interview with new author Matthew J. Kirby who recently published The Clockwork Three. Being a sucker for good cover art, I stopped by thanks to the image of a clockwork golem in a style somewhat like a cross between the covers of the Spiderwick Chronicles and A Series of Unfortunate Events. Below the teaser outline was a short interview that concluded with a note on getting an agent. The first great leap of new authors, no? I’m still there, myself. But it was interesting to see that a new face was being asked about his style, what he did to nab his agent. In a nutshell, the two of you need to click, and it never hurts to network. Network, network, network.

And speaking of agents, Janet Reid (an agent) had a post up about interns. One can imagine what the stereotype must be for interns, and there must be some Twitter discussion going down about a tactless intern ragging on the manuscripts with which he/she gets saddled. I like to expect the best in people, but it does not take me much imagination to fear the Intern. How can one expect them to really give one’s precious work due credit? If interns are the filter through which manuscripts are passed, then how can we authors expect to ever get anything past the confused freshman and through to the agent? Fortunately, Agent Reid comes to the rescue of her own interns and interns generally: apparently their inexperience makes them great filters. After all, they don’t know when to put something down, they strive to work hard, and they come pre-equipped with enthusiasm enough to match Chihuahuas with ADHD. Good news for the rest of us, anyway.

Over at The Beacon Blog, Julie Ferguson has a few things to say about mugshots and bio material for authors. Basically, she encourages us to use common sense and do these things “right,” but the fact that she brought it up at all was telling. This digital world with which we interact demands that we “sell” ourselves effectively. Case-in-point: I love that little bathrobe kitty up in the corner of this page, but I highly suspect his days are numbered. Though I’m still in the “avoid stalkers” mindset when it comes to pasting my name, face, and address all over the net, some minor changes may have to take place once I’m published and the riotous fans and competing publishers wish to contact me. that said, I’ll probably be waiting a little while before coffee cat goes…

Lovely segue, this: Urban Muse has written on how Facebook can give a leg up to one’s freelance work. Cue the big “duh” moment; it’s a networking site. Sure we all knew that, but sometimes it takes a blog post to alert the unsubtle masses (and here I’m preaching to choir* of me) to the fact that what they are already doing will almost certainly help them along the elusive road to success. Facebook uses include general networking (duh), idea generation, and advertising – after all, what is the book of faces but one big advertisement, be it advertising you, your friends, or a dating service?

But wait, what’s this I see in the guest blog list? “How to Write a Memorable Bio”? Why yes, please! Kenji Crosland says here that one must answer the following: “What’s your mission,” “where did you come from,” “what have you done,” “what are you doing now,” and fill in with a personal quirk. Most excellent, Crosland-san, I’ll get right on it!

In other news, a Columbia professor has taken creative writing to a new level by generating a prodigious fib regarding the achievements and glory of said school. Freelance journalist Seth Abramson has more on the story.

-----
*Word of the day: I miss-spelled “choir” as “quire” on the first go and discovered that it is really a word: a set of 24-25 sheets of paper of the same size and quality. Neat, huh?