If you’re not familiar with Readergirlz yet, go check them out. They’re a literacy project started by four YA authors who talk about YA books and feature YA authors on their site. This month they’ve been featuring Holly Black.

Come October, the month of Teen Read Week, the Divas will be hosting a different author every day, including Tiffany Trent (

  ). They’ve got a poster and bookmarks for you to download and share, and the lineup is a good one. 

 

Isn’t that a great poster?

Here’s all the info from Little Willow (

  ). The list includes authors like:

Week One
1. Meg Cabot
2. Tiffany Trent
3. Brent Hartinger
4. Lorie Ann Grover
5. K.L. Going
6. Nikki Grimes

Week Two
7. Ellen Hopkins
8. Justina Chen Headley
9. Chris Crutcher
10. Ann Brashares
11. Sarah Mlynowski
12. Cecil Castellucci
13. Kirby Larson

Week Three
14. Tanya Lee Stone
15. John Green
16. Sara Zarr
17. Deb Caletti
18
. Rachel Cohn
19. Kirsten Miller
20. Mitali Perkins

Week Four
21. Sonya Sones
22. Lisa Yee
23. Carolyn Mackler
24. E. Lockhart
25. Janet Lee Carey
26. Gaby Triana
27. Lauren Myracle

Week Five
28. Holly Black
29. Cynthia Leitich Smith
30. Dia Calhoun
31. Stephenie Meyer

She also includes a plug for the latest issue of Readergirlz, which I’ll pass along:

Have you read the latest issue of readergirlz? The August edition spotlights IRONSIDE by Holly Black. Read the exclusive interview, take part in the book discussions, pick up other highly recommended books, and more! Read the issue.

Readergirlz is a literacy project founded by four female authors – Justina Chen Headley, Lorie Ann Grover, Dia Calhoun and Janet Lee Carey – in an effort to encourage teenagers to read and discuss quality books featuring gusty girls, and to get active in their communities. For more information, please visit http:
//www.readergirlz.com

Go check it out!

In the Serpent’s Coils by Tiffany Trent (

)  is currently featured as one of the fall 2007 Booksense Picks. (You’ll have to scroll down to the section “For Teen Readers.”) The listing reads:

IN THE SERPENT’S COILS, by Tiffany Trent (Mirrorstone, $8.95 paper, 9780786942299 / 0786942290) “Who do you trust? That’s what 15-year-old Corinne asked when she started having the dreams, and thought her world was ending. The Fey gave her everything she wished for. But when she is sent to boarding school, she is confused by her surroundings and th
e people she interacts with. Did they follow her there? Why are the teachers so harsh on the students? A gripping, magical book — you’ll be dying to read the next book in the series (but not if the Fey have their way).” —Cassandra Helms, Constellation Books, Reisterstown, MD

Awesome! Thanks to Cassandra of Constellation books for liking Serpent’s Coils!

Of course you get all the news you need right here, but if you specifically want to keep up to date on info from Mirrorstone, be sure to friend or subscribe to our blog at http://www.myspace.com/mirrorstonebooks. I’m actually going to keep it up to date, with a little help from my friends. I’m also going to try to work on a nice-looking template sometime in the near future, which goes for pretty much every MySpace I’ve mentioned to you here that I have anything to do with. Corrine and her friends from Hallowmere need some nice pages, too! 

Hopefully this will eventually find a home at our homepage, www.mirrorstonebooks.com, but even after that we’ll continue to mirror it at MySpace.

Back at ALA, I got a chance to meet one of the guys involved with Unshelved, a webcomic about librarians. They had some fun t-shirts at their booth, and he ended up giving me a “Guess what I’m reading?” tee, which has become my new favorite, and tends to start conversations. But it’s a men’s tee, and you know how shapeless those can be. Well, come to find out, they have women’s sizes too! And they’re having a summer sale! I couldn’t resist. I had to get one in a more fitted style. And my next new favorite t-shirt will be:

Too bad this other one only comes in men’s sizes. I’m tempted to get it anyway–it’s a good price for a well made tee–and then alter it myself:

But then, I’d have to admit that I should alter my current t-shirt rather than get a second of the same tee. And the truth is, my sewing machine was broken by the movers two years ago, when I moved here. All sorts of complications would arise, I tell you! Perhaps they’ll do a women’s version sometime.

We talked earlier in my series of posts relaying my talk from the Life, the Universe, and Everything conference about the relationship between an editor and a writer and the general process of how a book goes from manuscript to published book. I’m not going to rehash that–that’s covered in that talk.

But I wanted to address the misconception that a book isn’t “well-edited” if a reader has found a typo. I’ve heard that a lot in my time as an editor, and used to say it a lot when I didn’t understand the editing process either, and I just want to lay the idea that “editing a book” means that all an editor does is look at a finished, beautiful manuscript from a writer, change a few typos, and call it good.

Catching typos and grammatical errors is the job of an editor, sure. We certainly don’t want typos in the finished manuscript! But it’s not their only job. As you can tell from those posts about the process, it’s the polishing end of a long process of sculpting with an ever-finer tool. First the writer starts with this large hunk of stone, and tips and taps and sculpts. It’s a beautiful piece of art. It could be a statue of a Grecian god. But wait! there’s a rough hunk at the back here that could be sculpted–did you do that on purpose? His nose is missing–shouldn’t he have a nose? Etc. And then the line editing might be thought of as chipping off the little bits that have been clinging that we couldn’t get to until we had the overall shape down. 

Copyediting and proofreading, the processes that most lay people think is all an editor like me does, is like taking a fine piece of sandpaper (or whatever a sculptor uses–I admit ignorance on this, but let’s just go with the imagery) to really smo
oth off the finish of the piece, and give it that beautiful sheen that proclaims, “this is a finished piece of art, ready to be seen by the world.” (Keeping in mind that we’re talking the Classical idea of beauty, not something intentionally left rough. Go with me here.)

So when a typo shows up in a published book, am I mortified? Indeed. It appalls me that I could have looked at that problem again and again and not seen it, and not just me, but that two other editors–the copyeditor and the proofreader, usually freelancers–and then myself again, looking at the final galley, could have missed something that is so obvious to me when I can’t do anything about it.

But I also have to have a little mercy on myself, because when you think about it, the tiniest flaw in a great sculpture doesn’t negate the sculpture’s greatness. How long have I looked at that manuscript? How many times? Was a flaw introduced because I sanded too hard? I just did that in a recent proofread–in trying to fix something, introducing more problems that thankfully the proofreader caught and I’m entering the changes this very day.

Which is what made me think of this post. Hopefully, not one single error will remain in this book when I’m done going through the proofreader’s changes to the manuscript. But if there are one or two tiny little errors, have mercy on the editor.
It was just a tiny piece of a large masterpiece, and perfectionists that we are, we’re probably already mortified that the error made it through on our watch.

With thanks to A Chair, a Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy.

Especially resonant because the same week that I went to see Ocean’s 13, my roommate and I were starting (again) on Angel season 1. As my roommate said as we were giggling over it, “yet again, there’s a perfect example of people who have too much time on their hands.” And we thank them. 😀

And now a public service announcement from the adult side of the books department. If you’ve seen the latest PW, you should look for the WotC Discoveries ad about halfway through–it’s very nice. Note that they’ll be open for unagented submissions next month, though agented submissions can be sent year-round.
Wizards of the Coast Discoveries™ is a fantasy-tinged speculative fiction imprint that discovers new worlds, new talent, and new voices for adult fiction readers.

Wizards of the Coast Discoveries, a brand new imprint debuting in January 2008, is looking for well-written speculative fiction. We will open for submissions September 1 and close for submissions January 15. Further guidelines can be found at http://www.wotcdiscoveries.com.
Agented submissions are welcome year round.
In January 2008, Discoveries will launch this exciting new imprint with Firefly Rain, a southern gothic ghost story by Richard Dansky. Further launch titles include Last Dragon by J.M. McDermott and Devil’s Cape by Rob Rogers, both
first-time novelists who were selected from previous open calls.
Good Luck!

So if you’ve got a manuscript you think would fit Discoveries–I hear from my compatriots that they’re looking for speculative fiction like magical realism, high fantasy that breaks boundaries (i.e., this is not your father’s high fantasy), horror–they’re pretty open right now, but it needs to be of a literary bent for adults. Follow the submission guidelines and don’t submit until Sept. 1.
And feel free to pass this along to writers you know, writing groups, etc.

There are a few other books besides Hallowmere coming out in the next few months you should be aware of. (Hallowmere has gotten talked about a lot lately because we’ve been doing a lot of promotion for it this summer.) (ETA: Not least because it’s ‘s birthday today. :D)

Also releasing at the same time as In the Serpent’s Coils is another book I edited, A Practical Guide to Monsters. If I haven’t posted the final cover here (and I don’t think I have), here you go!

Then coming up after that we’ve got the final installations in several Dragonlance: The New Adventures trilogies, starting with ‘s Stolen Sun in September, Stephen D. Sullivan’s Warrior’s Bones in December, and ‘s Tempest’s Vow in April 2008. If you haven’t read the first two books in those trilogies, now’s the time to pick them up to be ready for books 3!

Then, the exciting news for Jan. 2008, the first of a series of novels featuring the dragons from A Practical Guide to Dragons! Be sure to look for Red Dragon Codex in January.

One book that I was able to acquire but due to scheduling changes, another editor has been working on, is a new anthology edited by

called Magic in the Mirrorstone. A number of amazing writers have contributed stories, which I’ve mentioned here before–like Holly Black, Cecil Castellucci, Cassie Clare, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, as well as our own Tiffany Trent–but I don’t think I’ve showed you the cover before.

Those are just the books I have edited–check out the rest of Mirrorstone’s books on our site.

 

Thanks for all your birthday wishes. I had a great day. Had a couple meetings at work–one in which things happened that hopefully will result in some sort of good news sometime in the future, but which I obviously can’t spill the beans about yet–and after work went to see the Bourne Ultimatum with my roommates (not Supremacy like I posted–have to admit, I get the different names confused).

It’s Employee Appreciation Week here at work, which means free pizza for lunch today, various contests, and also today, Game Day! I went to a discussion group on girls in gaming earlier this morning, and this afternoon we’ll be talking to

 for a book discussion group. There are groups learning to play D&D (both basic and advanced; believe it or not there are some people at this company who learn the game after getting hired), Magic, the new Star Wars RPG, etc. It’s a good day to work at Wizards.

For those of you wondering about the chocolate chip cake recipe, here it is:

1/4 cup oil
1 yellow cake mix
1 large box vanilla pudding mix
2 eggs (don’t forget the eggs!)
1 1/4 cup water
roughly 6 to 12 oz of chocolate chips (my grandma says 6, I say the more chocolate the better)

Pour the oil into a cake pan and coat. Then dump in all the other ingredients except the chocolate chips–right into the pan. It might help to beat the eggs into the water first, but I don’t notice a significant difference. Beat with a fork until moistened and relatively smooth (but don’t overbeat, just like any cake).  Smooth out, then sprinkle chocolate chips evenly over the cake.

Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes or until cake is golden brown.

It’s SO easy, and the cleanup is obviously a cinch due to mixing it right in the cake pan. It’s a dense cake, quite rich, and even better on day 2 than right out of the oven. HIGHLY recommend it for chocolate lovers to do a chocolate cake instead of yellow, but be warned: it’s
REALLY rich, and you might want to try the yellow first for comparison.