The Readers

On Sunday at the Anderson's YA Conference, a young woman bounced up to me and said, "Does your publisher give free ARCs to bloggers?"

This is why I wish the internet had existed when I was in high school. I totally would have copied her gig. Free books, in exchange for writing about them? Yes, please. (Note to colleagues: I will totally blog about your books if send me them. The catch is that I'm almost criminally honest, so don't send me dreck.)

Anyhow, I told the young woman that if she came back at the end of the day, I'd give her an ARC of The War That Saved My Life. She did and I did.

I took several ARCs with me to Chicago. I gave a few to Becky Anderson for raffle prizes. I gave one to a second child blogger. I gave one to a lovely young woman named Margeaux, who sat at my table and who reminded me both of myself at that age and of my daughter, in different ways. Margeaux was one of the few readers at the conference who claimed to love historical fiction even more than dystopian. How could I not be charmed?

I gave another arc to a set of five friends who also sat at my table Saturday morning. I told them to pass it amongst themselves and then give it to their school librarian. Two of the five were sisters, and Goth. I'm pretty much over stoner Goths, but these were artistic literary Goths, and somehow I always find that type vulnerable and charming. Like the black eyeliner is a sort of armor. One of the Goths spent the keynote sessions doodling amazing art onto a sketchpad. (Teachers, please note: it is perfectly okay with me if your students doodle while I'm speaking. To me that's like knitting, something that makes it easier to listen.)

All five of the group that included the Goths had taken black marker and drawn runes on themselves. This has something to do with the series City of Bones. I haven't read those books so I don't understand the runes, but I LOVE THEM. I love them so much. I love that someone, in this case an enormous woman with hot pink hair, wrote down stories she made up in her head, and teens read those stories and identified with them. The Goths are less alone in the world because of those books.

One girl in the group looked almost anti-Goth, with perfect Irish red hair, milk-white skin, freckles, and an amazing smile. It was only when you looked close and saw that her hair had brown roots that you realized she did have something in common with the Goths (hair dye) besides a whole-hearted love of dystopian fiction. That girl's name was Bella; on Sunday, she was on my quiz bowl team, where she absolutely blew me away with how much she knew about current teen fiction and those who write it. Then, just to make me love her more, she leaned toward me and said, "I started the book you gave us last night. I really like it so far."

Forget Hanging With the Cool Kids, I'm Going to Hang With the Writers

I spent the weekend in the company of over 40 of my fellow writers; not just writers, in fact, but writers of literature for teens. It was a near holy experience. I spend most of my time--aside from with my family--with my Bristol People, whom I love. I spend some time each month or so with my Eventing People, and I even occasionally hang out with my Yarn People, but, living in East Tennessee and rarely travelling to events like this weekend's conference, I don't get to be with Writer People very often. And while I love my family, love Bristol, love eventing, and love yarn, I am a writer to the core of my soul. My Olympic rider friend once told me that whenever she meets a fellow Olympian of whatever sport they have a common framework of understanding, and it's the same with writers. We instantly get certain things that are hard for non-writers to understand.

Here's an example. We were on the hotel shuttle bus Friday night, heading to a pizza party that was the unofficial start of the weekend. We were discussing writer's colonies, which are sort of like summer camps for writers, only if you earn a place in one you get to stay for free. I said that my life was like a writer's colony already except that no one cooked my meals. Another writer, whom I'd just met, said that he'd always been put off by the time lapse between applying for a colony and actually staying in one. "What if when I get there I'm in a period of self-loathing?"

We all nodded sympathetically. "Good point," another woman (a best-selling writer, in fact) said. "That would really suck."

Adele Griffin was on my small panel for the breakout sessions. She described her new book The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone and the rest of us shook our heads. "We are not that smart," said T. M. Goeglein; the rest of us agreed. T stands for Ted--he's my age and from my hometown, which we discovered at the pizza party when I could correctly pronounce his last name, an odd one but common where we grew up. Adele's book is this amazing blend of art and story and photographs--it sounded so stunning that I immediately bought it at the conference bookstore. I showed it to my next-door author when we were lined up for booksigning. (Alphabetically by first name; I was in between Les Vlahos and Kevin Emerson.) Les thumbed through it, then looked up, amazed. "This is effing genius," he said.

It is. We all know that because we know the work and the creativity that went into it. In a time of self-loathing any one of us might envy the genius of any of the others, but in our best times, like this weekend, we just get it, and celebrate.

 

Hanging With the Cool Kids

One aspect of living in a small Appalachian town that I don't like is that there aren't very many writers here. Northampton, Massachusetts, the small town where I went to college, was just chock-a-block with writers. Jane Yolen. Patricia MacLachlan. Barry Moser, the acclaimed illustrator who redid the Wizard of Oz and made the Wicked Witch look just like Nancy Reagan. Julius Lester. You'd run into these people at the local bookstore all the time

We do have Barbara Kingsolver up the road in Glade Springs, and Charles Vess, who illustrated several Neil Gaiman books, in Abingdon. Barbara Kingsolver is a big deal but she doesn't do children's books; otherwise, I'd ask her over for coffee.

Anyway, I miss being among my fellow writers sometimes, so I do enjoy the sort of conference I'm heading to today. Once, way back, I was in Indianapolis with Gail Carson Levine, who wrote Ella Enchanted, and she was a ton of fun. Then at ALA years ago, all the publishing houses had cocktail parties where their authors were expected to show up, drink wine, and be terribly amusing. I had a great time there. Linda Sue Park had just won the Newbery, and her daughter, who was 13, spent a long time telling me all the revisions to A Single Shard that she, the daughter, was personally responsible for. When my agent introduced me to the new president of Random House (or possibly HarperCollins?) whose name was Trip Something, I said, "Wow, Trip, there's an Ivy-League nickname. Where'd you go to school?" My agent nearly killed me, but Trip laughed and said, pointedly, "Brown. AND YOU?" And when I confessed to Smith he told me all about his grandmother who had gone to Smith, and how he hoped his daughter would go there, and we parted good friends although I haven't seen him since and can't remember his last name.

I went to the Dial party at my editor Lauri's request, even though I didn't yet have a book out from Dial. (Favorite Things was underway.) Lauri tempted me, not that I really needed tempting, by promising to introduce me to Katherine Paterson, and she did, and then Dial had a private dinner for all the authors. Gary Blackwood, who like me was at the very beginning of his career then, sat across from me at this big round table otherwise filled with Katherine Paterson, Jane Yolen, Laurence Yep--Gary and I kept wiggling our eyebrows at each other and giggling. I wonder if he remembers that.

Anyway, tonight I'll be having dinner with 46 YA authors, including Carl Hiassen, Holly Black, Joan Bauer, Meg Wolitzer--those are the headliners. I'm not a headliner. I am, my daugher said, in the same room with all the cool kids, but probably standing near the edge. That's fine with me. From what I know there will be several of us over at the edge, and authors always have good stories. It should be fun.

If you're in Chicago--ha! that's likely--actually Naperville, Illinois, which is practically Chicago--you can still get tickets to Sunday's event, Anderson's Fan Frenzy day. See their website for details. (Saturday is sold out.)

This is Not New York.

I'm headed to Anderson Bookstore's Young Adult Literature conference outside Chicago tomorrow. I got my itinerary yesterday at 7:40 pm, which seemed a little late to me, and my publicist* asked, could I get myself to the airport tomorrow, or did they need to send a car for me?

I understand that these questions make sense in Manhattan, where plenty of people don't bother owning their own vehicles, and where getting to the airport by public transportation is a big pain in the neck. But this is Bristol, honey. I'm not sure exactly how one "sends a car." Do we have taxis? Anywhere? We have some buses that run downtown, and out to the hospital and the Bass Pro Shop on one edge and the Wal-Mart on the other. I don't think the buses go to the airport; I know they don't go to my farm.

I'd already had to explain to the folks in New York that my local airport was Tri-Cities, which meant it sat equidistant between Bristol, Johnson City, and Kingsport, which gave us enough population to support a regional airport. Then my publicist's assistant expressed surprise that I couldn't get direct flights to Chicago from Bristol. Well, no, I told her. You can fly direct to Charlotte or Atlanta, your choice. Even when I'm flying from Bristol to Nashville I go though Atlanta. Were I to fly from Bristol to Knoxville (not that anyone ever would) I would o it through Atlanta. Or Charlotte. My choice.

The plus side is that the far-away airport parking costs $8 per day and is only 10 feet farther from the terminal than the close airport parking ($12 per day). Also it takes 5 minutes to go through security, or 7 if the person in front of you has never flown before and doesn't know they have to take off their shoes and get rid of the extra-large tube of toothpaste they put in their carry-on. It's a friendly sort of airport. Once when we ended up driving back from the Atlanta airport in a rental car (long story), I went to take the rental back to the Bristol airport and forgot to fill it up with gas. The clerk handed the keys back to me. "Honey," he said, "Drive down to the Citgo, fill it up, and bring it back. Otherwise it's going to cost you an extra eighty bucks."

If I really needed a way to get to the airport tomorrow, I'd just call a friend. Someone would take me no problem, in the same way that I've taken people or picked them up when needed. But I'll be taking the surviving dog to the kennel anyhow, and stopping at the bank for some traveling money, and then maybe swinging through the Pal's drive-thru for a big iced tea. I wish the folks in Manhattan would visit sometimes. I'd love for them to understand how we live around here.

*For those of you wondering how I got a publicist, the answer is that when you are published by mainstream publishers they have them in-house, and assign each author one. They're really ramping up the publicity for The War That Saved My Life, which is exciting and terrifying all at the same time.

Duck Feet For Dinner

Yesterday afternoon, through a confluence of coincidences, I found myself in the Asian grocery in Kingsport looking for tamarind paste.

Kingsport is a neighboring city. I had an errand there, which is rare, and it happened to take me very near an Asian grocery store, which is something we don't have in Bristol. And that morning via email I'd gotten a recipe for homemade pad thai that promised me I really did need a bunch of odd ingredients. "Fish sauce" is pretty clear. What's a tamarind?

The Asian grocery smacked me upside the head with how many things humans can eat that I'd never heard of or considered eating before. They had packets of what looked like minnows, eyes and all, freeze-dried. I still can't imagine what you do with those. Toss 'em on a salad? Fish croutons?

I consider myself an adventurous eater. More than once I've had the checkout clerk at Food City hold up something from the produce section and ask, "Ma'am? What is this?" (Of course, one of those times it was parsley, but still.) I've been to some odd places--I recall a shabeen in South Africa where our guide, walking us through the buffet, tried hard to explain the concept of mealie pap, the basis of many South Africa meals. "That's grits," I said, looking at it. "Don't worry. We get it."

"Ah," the guide said, "Okay, to go on the mealie pap this is lamb curry, and this is vegetables, and this is--ah, this is a local delicacy. I don't think you'd like it." He does not say you white people but he thinks it pretty loud.

"What is it?" I asked, peering down at little white rings in a soupy gravy. Calamari?

"Goat intestine," the guide said.

He was right. Us white people skipped that one.

Anyway, back at the Asian market, I discovered that some people apparently eat duck feet. My Polish grandma used to make duck blood soup, pouring a quart of sickly sweet coagulating duck blood into the broth--it was the only delicacy of hers I couldn't eat, and that includes blood sausage--but I'd always assumed that, when cooking a duck, you ignored the feet. I was wrong. I looked up "cooking duck feet" on Google when I got home, and the instructions read, "boil until you can easily pull off a toe."

Ducks have toes?

Is any of this worse than Easy Cheez? Or non-dairy creamer? When my daughter and I were at the World Equestrian Games, we ran into a bunch of Australians who couldn't get over creamer. "Creamer," they kept saying, holding their sides with mirth. "Cream-er."

(At the Olympics in the Olympic park the Brits completely ignored a lovely multiethnic food court in favor of queueing for an hour at the World's Largest McDonald's, but I digress. Oh, except to say that this week I learned that McRib sandwiches are made from a ground combination of pork tripe, heart, and stomach. Yummy!)

Meanwhile, back at the grocery, I'd found fish sauce, rice noodles, mung bean spouts and palm sugar, but was drawing a blank at tamarind paste. One aisle of the Asian market had a list of canned sauces: red curry paste, green curry paste, yellow curry paste, thai noodle paste--no tamarind. I was forced to squint at all the cans, looking for the tiny English letters translating the label.

Finally I gave up. I found the sole employee, a man at the back whacking the feet off dead ducks, and asked him for tamarind paste. He obligingly walked down a different aisle and slapped a slightly squishy red-brown packet into my hand. Animal, vegetable, mineral? I've no idea. I hoped this stuff had no relationship with Tamarin monkeys. I bought it, and at home I looked it up. The tamarind is a tropical, mostly African, tree. It grows nuts. Tamarind nuts. Now you know, and so do I.

Banned Books Week: Harry Potter, Jesus, and Why You Can't Tell My Kid What to Read

A few days ago, my daughter and I both stumbled upon one of the most hilariously awful pieces of fan-fiction ever written. Fan-fiction is when someone, usually a teen fan, takes characters or situations that an author invented and either continues their story or writes an alternate version. Examples of this abound on the internet: the most prevalent, so far as I can tell, are Harry Potter versions in which Harry turns out to love a completely new character who very much resembles the author of the fan-fiction piece.

Fan-fiction is usually not copyright infringement because it's not being sold. It's usually awful, because we can't all be J.K. Rowling. It usually has an agenda, even if the agenda is merely, "But I wish Harry Potter would snog me!"

So the piece I stumbled upon--well, I'll just link to it, here--is a version of Harry Potter written for the sort of evangelical Christian who feels that exposure to the real Harry Potter will turn her darlings into actual witches, or, at the very least, away from God. This is my favorite part of chapter one:

Hagrid laughed wisely. "Evolution is a fairytale. You don't really believe that, do you?"

"Yes, I do!" Aunt Petunia screeched.

"Well then prove it!"

Aunt Petunia could only stare at him; and her big mouth hung open dumbly. Here she thought she was so educated; and always demanded that Christians prove what they believed in; but she couldn't even prove her own religion. It was then that Harry knew who the smart one here was!

"Tell me how to get to this heaven place!" Harry cried wistfully, clasping his hands together. Sometimes, the wisdom of little ones is really amazing. We think we grownups know it all; but then God speaks through the mouths of little ones; and shows us how we are all mortals struggling along the path of life. Humility.

"All you have to do is be saved. Do you want to be saved?"

"I do, I do!" Harry squealed, jumping up and down.

"Then pray the sinner's prayer!"

Aunt Petunia tried to stop him; but she was powerless against Harry's pure, innocent, holy energy. Soon, Harry had said the prayer. Hagrid beamed happily.

"You're a Christian now, Harry!" Hagrid cried proudly.

Harry smiled but then interrogated, "But how do I be a Christian? I don't know how!"

Hagrid grinned widely. "There is only one place to learn that-Hogwarts School of Prayer and Miracles!"

It's my favorite because it takes talent, really it does, to write this badly. "The wisdom of little ones is really amazing."  Bwwwahahahaha

Now, I would do whatever I could to keep my children, were they at young, impressionable ages, from reading this claptrap. One, because I want them to love reading, and no one can love this dreck. Two, because I want them to believe in evolution AND God. That's just how I roll. Three,  because I don't fear that their faith is so tenuous that the Harry Potter series will cause them to question it or that they would need it constantly reinforced by every piece of fiction they read.

In our house we love Harry Potter. In odd moments this summer my son reread most of the series.

I would guess, however, that viewpoints like the one which caused the woman to write the stuff above (Snopes.com says that it isn't clear whether she's serious or satirical, but I'm pretty sure, given that she's still posting new chapters, that she's serious) are also the ones that drive campaigns for books to be banned. And that's dangerous stuff.

When someone bans a book, they're not saying that they don't want their children reading it. All parents have that right. I myself prevented my kids from reading some of my own books, ones I myself wrote, until I thought they were old enough to handle them. If you think one of my books isn't appropriate for your kid--have at it. Tell them no. But don't lead a campaign to get it banned. When you ban a book, you're saying that you get to decide what is right for all kids--yours, and everyone else's. 

You have the right to believe whatever you like. You have the right to censor your child's reading material. You even have the right to write truly horrific fan-fiction.

You don't have the right to tell my kids what to read.

Anticipating Fred

It's 7:14 am Bristol time as I type this, which means that it's 6:14 am in Wisconsin, where my sister lives. I'm thinking about her pretty much to the exclusion of everything else, wondering what she's doing right this very moment, because, this morning, her son Fred will be born.

Like his older brother Louie (these are my blog names for my nephews: Huey, Dewey, Louie, and Fred. No, those are not their real names. Sheesh.), Fred's coming into the world via c-section, so we've known his birthday for weeks now. I don't actually know what time my sister is going into the hospital, so I don't know what time to expect the phone call, or text, or whatever, that I pray will tell me that Fred is safely into our world.

Some things you can't understand until you've done them. Having a baby is certainly not rare--look around, so many humans--but it's inexplicable. It changes you forever. The morning I went into labor with our firstborn, my husband drove me through these ink-black frosted streets, and every time I saw another car I looked for a glimpse of the person inside. For all of those people, I thought, this was just an ordinary day, but for me and my husband, it was extraordinary. It seemed poignant somehow--everyone else driving off to work, ho hum, when this enormous miracle was just about to occur.

We close our eyes to miracles. We forget how astonishing the world can be. I saw a cookie cake on cakewrecks.com recently (if you're bored of LOLcats but want a laugh, try cakewrecks) that read, "Look! We made a human with our genitals!" and I laughed and laughed, not so much because it was funny, but because the truth of it was so absurd. How can this all work? How can we not be amazed, every day, that it does?

I'll see a photo of Fred today, and in less than two weeks I'll be able to hold him. The other day I tried to tell my son how much I looked forward to holding a tiny baby again, to counting all Fred's fingers and toes, to smell that wonderful sweet spot at the back of his neck. My son, a bit alarmed, thought I was wanting another baby myself. No, that's not it, I told him. I had my babies; I loved my babies. Further babies at this point would be along the lines of a miracle. But so were the first two, and so is Fred, and I can't wait to meet him and revel in his improbably perfect self.