Category: community

Tidbits–Tu Publishing, book club, critiques update

- Stacy 4 Comments
  • We’re up to almost $1000 on the Kickstarter project for Tu Publishing. Thanks so much to everyone for pledging, and please feel free to share the link with anyone who you think might be interested, even if they can only spare $5. We’re starting this through Kickstarter because it’s secure, run by a third party, and it’s a great way for me to be able to give back to the people who pledge — if you donate $10, you get a coupon for $5 off a book, and so forth. The idea is that if a lot of people pool together, artistic projects can get off the ground more easily. Tu Publishing will be a for-profit company, but we are committed to literacy for all children and young adults and will be getting involved in local and national endeavors as we grow, such as YALSA’s Teen Read Week. (If you have literacy projects to suggest involvement in, especially ones that I can volunteer for here in Utah, please feel free to let me know. I’m on the lookout, and will be getting more involved in the community once I finish up the critiques I’ve got in the queue.) If we reach our Kickstarter goal, and add to it the money from a private investor and some savings of my own, it will be enough to cover the costs of our first season’s books (author advances, small stipends for freelance, printing and shipping costs, and marketing), and it will also show a bank that we are a good investment for a small business loan going forward.
  • Our first two books will be fantasy or science fiction, and I’ll specifically be looking for books that feature characters of color, characters from minority or non-Western cultures, and/or non-Western/minority cultures. That’s pretty broad–it could be Japanese or Jamaican, Alaskan Inuit or African American settings and/or characters, and I’m not looking for books where race is necessarily the issue–just really great stories that will entertain readers from 7 to 18 (and up, if you count me and all you folks like me!). So if you’ve got a children’s or YA novel that you think will fit this criteria, if we make our Kickstarter goal I’ll be acquiring manuscripts beginning January 1. That means you’ve got just over three months to whip that manuscript in shape! I’ll be posting more specifics for our submission guidelines as that time comes closer, so keep an eye on the Tu Publishing Submission Guidelines page. As you can imagine, just as with the critiques, during this transitional period to my day job, these website changes will be coming along sporadically. I’ll post about them here as well to alert you.
  • In addition, several people have asked that instead of giving them the incentive, that I give it to their local libraries, which is completely doable. If we reach the goal, I will be contacting everyone to get their mailing information to send them their rewards. At that time, if you want me to send it to your local library instead of you, all you’d need to do is let me know their address. Full books will be sent later, of course, when the first season’s books are printed.
  • I’m hosting a book club tomorrow, where we’re going to discuss Justine Larbalestier‘s How to Ditch Your Fairy. The book is a fun read so far, but I need to finish it tonight! If you’re local and can’t make it tomorrow, feel free to go ahead and send your suggestions for what to read next month, so that we can have plenty of time to decide and prepare. If you can come tomorrow and need to know where to go (7 pm, my house), please drop me an email and I’ll give you the scoop.
  • The new job is becoming quite fun. In my off time, I’ve slowly been getting back to authors on their critiques, so thanks again to everyone for all your patience as I transition and finish up those critiques while starting a new full-time job. Now, if I can just get health insurance going, life would be just about perfect (it’s a small non-profit based in California that uses Kaiser Permanente, which means that here in Utah I’d have no coverage with that, which means that I have to get an individual policy, which is really, really complicated when you have chronic conditions like asthma). If you’ve been wondering why I twitter so much about health care, it’s because I have a personal interest in the health care crisis, seeing as how I’m having my own personal health care crisis. Hopefully, by my talking about it openly, it will put at least one face on the discussions out there–the face of a self-employed (and now employed by a small nonprofit) worker for whom taking care of something as simple as an asthma condition becomes out of the question due to the cost of health care and insurance.


Updated video–please respond to that for the video challenge

- Stacy

On Tuesday, I challenged everyone (teens, especially) to respond to my video with videos of their own talking about their experiences with reading and multicultural literature. Since then, I’ve figured out how to not squish my lovely friend Christine, who answered several questions for me, and was able to add music as well. (I really like the music, actually–it reminds me of a silent film now because of the slides between interviews.)

Here’s the updated video (I had to upload a new one, rather than just doing a straight replacement, so any links you might have posted to the YouTube video are out of date, though the Kickstarter link is the same).

Also, thanks so much to everyone who has retweeted, blogged, Facebooked, and otherwise shared this project with others. We’re off to a great start, and I appreciate everyone who has been so kind as to share the news and to pledge to the project. A special shoutout to Kimberly Pauley of YA (and Kids) Books Central, who has issued a challenge: she will send out a signed copy of her book to the first 10 people to donate $50. Also, thanks to Mitali Perkins, Cheryl Klein,Varian Johnson, KaedtiannHP, Jana Stocks, Kim Baccellia, Cassandra Yorgey, and all the other people who have been passing the word along!

I’ll work on getting a thank-you page going on the Tu Publishing site as soon as I round up a few other things I need to finish first–namely, critiques that people have been waiting on–and I also plan to add a few more things to the site as time goes on. Thanks again, everyone!

Announcing Tu Publishing, and a video challenge

- Stacy 7 Comments

I’m cross-posting this from the Tu Publishing website, the website of my small press. I promised you the announcement of a project, and I’ve finally finished it at 3:15 a.m. I’m going to go ahead and share it everyone despite the video needing a little fine-tuning still. (I seem to have a different resolution camera than Christine Taylor-Butler, who helped me out by providing an educator’s and parent’s perspective on multicultural fantasy and science fiction.) The Tu Publishing site is a work in progress–I didn’t have time last night to completely update it when I posted the video, but it will be changing and getting more informative soon.

Just a reminder (though I iterate it below, too) that those who have used the “donate” button here on this blog are on the list to receive the same incentives put in place in the Kickstarter project. You’ve been very helpful as we’ve gotten through the red tape to start a company, and I want to reciprocate, even if it’s a pretty small gesture comparitively.

Tu Publishing is a woman-owned small press startup that believes in the power of books to change lives. Children’s books, especially, have the ability to inform, inspire, and entertain in a way that few mediums can.

The word “tu” means “you” in many languages, and in Ainu (the language of Japan’s native people), it means “many.” Tu Publishing is dedicated to publishing fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and historical fiction for children and young adults inspired by many cultures from around the world, to reach the “you” in each reader.

Kids who love to read do better in school. One way to encourage that love of reading is to provide stories that readers can identify with. By increasing the number of books that feature multicultural character and settings, we can influence the multicultural world of tomorrow.

Fantasy and science fiction, mystery and historical fiction–these genres draw in readers like no other. Yet it is in these genres that readers of color might feel most like an outsider, given that such a large percentage features white characters (when they feature human characters). It is the goal of Tu Publishing to publish genre books for children and young adults that fills this gap in the market–and more importantly, this gap in serving our readers.

As author Mitali Perkins and many others have pointed out, books can be both a mirror and a window to other worlds for readers. Tu Publishing hopes that by publishing books that feature multicultural characters and settings and books with worlds inspired by all the many non-Western cultures in the world, we might shine a mirror on you and open a window to many.

To be able to achieve that goal, we need to raise enough money to fund the acquisition, production, marketing, and distribution of our first two books, for which we hope–with your help–to begin acquiring in January 2010. With your help, we can make this happen.

We have officially started our fund-raising project at Kickstarter.com and invite anyone interested in being a part of making Tu Publishing a reality to check out the project.

What is Kickstarter.com? If you know Cheryl Klein, you might have seen her project to publish a book of her essays on writing there. This project is similar, except that it’s a bit more than Cheryl needed because we also need to pay a modest advance to the authors and publicize and market the books we acquire. It takes a lot of money to get a publishing company started, and we thought that this would be a nice, secure way for anyone interested to get involved, and to get something back for it. Kickstarter runs their payments through Amazon payments, and the project is only funded if the full goal amount is reached by the deadline. If it isn’t reached, no harm, no foul, and no payments go through, with the idea being that it would be worse to have a project be underfunded than not funded at all.

For those who have already donated before we started the Kickstarter project, you are on our list already of people to receive the same incentives here. Thank you for your support.

ETA: Yay! I’ve figured out how to fix the video. I had to completely upload a new one to replace the one that squished Christine, so I ended up adding music and making it shorter, too. If you’ve been sharing it, please note the new location.

The challenge portion of this

Whether or not you can donate, I’d love to see people, especially teen readers/nonreaders, share their own video or blog responses to this video, discussing whether you identify with the characters in the books you read and whether it matters to you. Mitali Perkins got this ball rolling separately as a part of the larger conversation about race in children’s and YA in her blog post asking “are books windows or mirrors?” I found her use of the mirror/window analogy very important–books can be a window to other worlds, but they also need to be mirrors in some ways, especially for young readers. The more “mirror” books we have for every child, the more “windows” there are for everyone. What do you think?

Videos

- Stacy 3 Comments

Twitter seems to be down, which is a disappointment for the random thoughts I generally send into the ether that way instead of blogging them. I Twitter because I care about you, my blog readers, didn’t you know?

(Though if you’re getting this on Facebook, I suppose that means that you’d see it either way. But anyway…)

I’m working on making a video. I’d say that it’s the first video I’ve ever made, but I actually did help direct the Hallowmere book trailer, so I suppose this would be the second video I’ve ever made that doesn’t involve filming my cats (often the only interesting subject around my house!). But for the Hallowmere trailer, I had the help of several great people at Wizards of the Coast–the books marketing person, Shelly, and the AdCom guy, Adam, and his whole team. We didn’t spend any money on the video, but we had the time and resources of some very talented people.

This time, it’s just me and my little Sony digital camera, so it’ll be an adventure. The raw footage I can get, no problem. It’s the editing that I’m not sure about. I’d like to interview a couple of different people for it, as well as adding text to the video with the people’s names. I have a PC, which came with Windows Movie Maker. Yes, I know, it’s not Final Cut or anything, but here’s a question for those of you who might know: will it be enough to do the simple things I want to do with my video?

I don’t think I’ll even put music on it, because I don’t want to get into trying to figure out royalty-free music. I just want to be able to edit out parts (like the beginning and ends of when I’m recording myself!), splice together a few different pieces of video, and add text. Is that possible with what I have? Or is there a freeware/shareware program out there that might be able to do this?

Writing Excuses hilarity, conferences and conventions for children’s/YA

- Stacy

Today’s Writing Excuses covers conventions you (writers) should be attending, but they didn’t really have time to cover conventions and conferences specifically geared for children’s books (and I actually am not sure if any of them have been to anything except the occasional BYU Writing for Young Readers). I’ve been meaning to post something about this for a while, so this sparked me to remember to do this post!

(And remember to go back to Writing Excuses next week, when they talk about what you should be doing at a writing conference/convention.)

Before we get into that, though, I had to share a hypothetical scenario that Brandon and Peter, long-time friends of yore, came up with after I twittered about Dan‘s US cover. My tweets get imported into Facebook, and in answer to this tweet:

I am Not a Serial Killer (and you can too)–friend Dan Wells’s book’s US cover is revealed: http://tinyurl.com/kkfrjx (he’s @johncleaver)

Peter posted this in reply on Facebook:

Well, according to Brandon:

Q: If the gang from Writing Excuses were put in a horror film, obviously Dan would be the killer. But what order do you think everyone would die in? And how would they die? (The victim list includes: you, Howard, Jordan, Pemberly, Stacy, and Peter)

A: Ha! Well, let’s see. If Dan were the killer, I think he’d try to take out Howard first, since Howard is obviously the most dangerous of us all. Though he sees me more often, so he might try to get to me first. I’d put it in this order:… Read More

Howard
Me
Jordo
Peter
Pemberly (he’d leave the women for last because he’s a very gentlemanly killer.)

And then Stacy would take Dan down in a surprise ending. She’d edit him out of the script or something.

So if you know the Writing Excuses guys, watch out for Howard, but perhaps even more, watch out for me!

On to conferences. In the podcast, the guys cover several different types of gatherings that writers might attend: literary conventions, anime conventions, media conventions, conferences and trade-shows. In children’s books, we don’t really have conventions for fans in the same way that fantasy/scifi has conventions (Comic-Con, DragonCon, anime conventions–these are big gatherings where vendors set up booths to sell (or give away) things directly to fans). Though we might consider a parallel to that to be school visits, which aren’t exactly a big thing in adult books.

Trade shows, of course, are the same for both adult and children’s–BEA (Book Expo America, a show for booksellers), ALA (the American Library Association’s annual and midwinter conferences, a trade show for librarians, obviously), IRA (the International Reading Association, a show for teachers, especially elementary teachers), NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English, kind of more of a conference than a trade show compared to the others above, high school English teachers). Obviously, IRA and NCTE tend to attract more children’s and YA books, and of course educational publishing, but there’s some crossover.

In the children’s book community, though, the biggest conferences to be aware of fall under either literary conventions (according to their definitions, though we might call them conferences interchangeably) or conferences (again, according to their defs). Which ones should you be aware of?

Literary conventions

  • SCBWI New York
  • SCBWI Los Angeles
  • Local SCBWI conferences like those hosted by the Seattle, Chicago, Houston, and New England SCBWIs

All of the above are great — and inexpensive — places to attend classes on craft, getting published, and marketing your book, meet guest editors and writers, network with other writers, and all sorts of other beneficial activities. You might meet people who you’ll end up forming a critique group through, or you might discover that a guest editor is looking for something that you write; often editors who work at houses that are closed to unsolicited/unagented submissions are open to submissions for a limited time from conference attendees.

Connected with these things, if you aren’t familiar with the activities hosted by your local Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), you should investigate. Most chapters host a lot more than their yearly conferences–they often have monthly meetings, offer a listserv, have members looking for critique groups online and in person, and man other local resources. You’ll be able to find out information on both the national and local organizations at the link above.

Conferences (aka workshops or seminars)

  • BYU Writing for Young Readers
  • Clarion
  • Chatauqua
  • …I know I’m missing several — what am I forgetting?

It’s getting late, which is why I’m forgetting a lot. I’ll save this post and add to it tomorrow, but in the mean time, feel free to post conferences I’m forgetting in the comments.

For scholars and published children’s writers: ICFA

- Stacy

One of my authors (Amie Rose Rotruck, who wrote Bronze Dragon Codex) is also the head of the ICFA children’s literature division. She’s looking for published YA and middle grade authors of speculative fiction who are interested in attending the conference next March. (whoops, originally that said June–not sure what I was thinking. It’s every March!)

Bronze Dragon Codex
Bronze Dragon Codex

More information about ICFA, from Amie’s blog:

In one sentence: IAFA is a scholarly organization dedicated to the study of the fantastic in the arts. Let’s break down those terms:

“Scholarly” refers to academic papers, most grad school level or above, although every once in a while there’s some good undergrad papers.

“Fantastic” refers to anything outside the realm of reality. This includes high fantasy, urban fantasy, horror, science fiction, science fantasy, and basically anything that doesn’t fall under realistic.

“Arts” refers to literature, film, graphic novels, picture books, fanfic, visual art.

Now for some some FAQs:

What do you do?
Currently I am head of the Children’s and Young Adult division. This means I receive and evaluate scholarly papers and determine which belong in the conference (and some other boring behind the scenes stuff). Deadline for papers is October 31; official CFP will be posted here later. I am NOT in charge of deciding which writers get compensation for attending and how much; I’m just looking for names to pass along at this point.

I don’t write papers, I write fiction. What can I contribute?
There are also author readings at the conference (usually one block of readings per session; there’s about 4-6 sessions per day). I’d love to get some new children’s and YA writer blood into those readings. In addition to readings, you can also do signings and book sales. A great chance to interact with people who have an academic interest in your genre (who knows, you may even get to meet someone who wrote a paper about your work; there’s a lot on recent books!).

What do I get for attending?
Compensation varies and is, I must warn you, competitive. Later this summer the person in charge of arranging visiting writers will be emailing out conference info and what you need to send to get compensation. If you’re interested, give me your name and contact info so I can pass it on to her.

Who else will be there?
This year the Guest of Honors are Lawrence Yep and Nalo Hopkinson. For an idea of other writers who’ve attended in the past, this past year’s program is available at www.iafa.org (to find names quickly, just to a search on “Reading”)

Why should I come?

  • Hear papers on current issues in children’s literature such as “Twilight” or ancient issues relating to fairy tales, or anything in-between.
  • Talk with some amazing writers and scholars in a very friendly environment (I call this a “conference with training wheels” when encouraging grad students to attend).
  • It’s in Orlando in March, so if you live in a cold climate it’s a chance to warm up and maybe swing by Disneyworld.
  • It’s a networking opportunity; I met [info]slwhitman there and she ended up being the editor for my first book.
  • Because this is one of the most amazing, fun conferences in existence.

If you’re interested, contact her directly with the information she’s asking for.

Have you taken the dare?

- Stacy

Author Cynthea Liu is doing something unique for the launch of her new book: daring others to bid in her online auction, a fundraiser to provide classroom book sets to an elementary school that desperately needs it. Many, many authors, editors, and agents have donated their books and services so far, and the auction will last until July 5.

If you’re an author, I’m sure she’d love to have you donate a signed copy of your book or something to that effect. If you’re an editor or agent, consider donating a critique. If you’re a writer who’s still learning, check out how many different people you can get to take a look at a sample of your manuscript and give you their opinion! If you’ve been thinking about engaging my services for a submission packet, for example, look no further–right now the bidding on a critique from me, a $50 value, has a high bid of $35. So go check it out, bid on the services and prize packages, and help a school in need get the classroom sets of books Cynthea is working to provide for them.

I dare you!

More seminars in the works

- Stacy 2 Comments

I’ve been brainstorming topics for seminars that would be useful to you, giving an editor’s perspective on topics specific to writing for children and young adults and to writing SF/F for that audience. I’ve got several topics in mind–and plan on repeating the worldbuilding and beginnings seminars, as well–and I’m working on ways to host an internet-based seminar on these topics so that attendees aren’t restricted to locals.

I’d also like to take the in-person seminars on the road, however. I was thinking that hosting one in Idaho Falls, for example, might be able to reach the many writers in Idaho who can’t always make it down to Salt Lake or Provo for Utah-Idaho SCBWI events. It’s also conceivable that I could do a seminar in Tooele, Salt Lake, Vernal, or St. George, Utah, or possibly even Vegas, if there were enough interest to fill a session. If you live in any of these places and would like for me to come do a seminar in your area (or even further out in the Intermountain West, Pacific Northwest, or Southwest), I’d be glad to talk about how to make that happen.

Here are some of the ideas I’ve got bubbling in my brain. Please comment and suggest other things you’d like to learn directly from an editor. All seminars will include writing/brainstorming exercises to address the specific topics, as well as workshopping time on your own work, allowing everyone in the class to get each others’ suggestions as well as my opinion on ways the piece can be improved.

Seminar topics

(First of all, the obvious ones–a split of the one I did back in March into two more specific topics, and the worldbuilding seminar that we’ll be doing a week from Saturday. Then other new ideas, which look generic but will always be discussed in the context specifically of SF/F for young readers.)

  • The basics of writing SF/F for children and young adults (and how to convince editors and agents that you’re good at it)
    • Hitting the right voice
    • Point of view: first person, third person, or omniscient?
    • Building sympathy for your characters
    • Crafting a story your audience won’t be able to put down
    • Current trends in SFF for children and young adults
  • Hook your reader: How to hook an editor and, later, a young reader within your first three chapters
  • Worldbuilding in MG and YA SF/F
  • Writing a killer plot: the structure of your story (lots to explore there — making promises, raising the stakes, internal and external arcs, etc.)
  • Knowing your market (audience and the business of writing)
    • Being a partner in the publicity of your book
    • School visits
    • Social networking
  • Line editing yourself: How to get down to the nitty-gritty and make your sentences sparkle
  • Characterization

What else? Please feel free to re-suggest things that we might have discussed in earlier posts–I need to do a search for what people have suggested in the past and I’d rather have them all right here in one place to reference. Also, feel free to suggest ways that an online seminar might be accomplished. I’ve had several suggestions, from a private page here on the website that only attendees have the password to (which are more text seminars than live), to Skype, to Go to Meeting (which is something like $50 a month, which seems a bit expensive, but I haven’t looked deeper to see if there are different levels of service that might suit a more sporadic seminar schedule–though perhaps we might be able to do one once a month and then it wouldn’t be an issue!), to the examples set by a couple of online writing workshop sites, and I’m open to more possibilities so that I can choose the best option for what I want to accomplish.