Oliver, McGinnis, & Warga

About five years ago, I was living in downtown Cincinnati and often walked across the river (via bridge, of course) to the Barnes & Noble at Newport on the Levee. I love that bookstore, mostly because it has two levels full of books and a café that overlooks the river and downtown. I often bought a book just to have an excuse to sit in that café and read. Back then, I was reading mostly literary fiction. But the YA section of books was close to the café and one day, a beautiful book cover caught my eye.

I put back the literary fiction I’d found downstairs and bought Lauren Oliver’s BEFORE I FALL instead. I fell into a YA world…and my reading and writing haven’t been the same since. Even five years and hundreds of books later, BEFORE I FALL is still at the top of my favorite list of books, YA or otherwise. It’s the book that made me realize I’m a YA writer, that I want to write and publish a book that gives others all the feels I had for BEFORE I FALL.

So when I heard that Joseph-Beth was hosting a discussion and signing event with Lauren Oliver on March 16, I told my best book friend that we had to go. As a big bonus, the event included authors Mindy McGinnis (who’d signed my copies of NOT A DROP TO DRINK and IN A HANDFUL OF DUST at Books by the Banks last October) and Jasmine Warga (who I’d just heard about through a Book Riot post about YA and physics).

In an uncomfortable wooden chair, my tote of to-be-signed books resting on the floor between my legs, I sat at Joseph-Beth last night and listened to Oliver, McGinnis, and Warga discuss their books, their writing, their author lives. And I couldn’t help but be a little jealous. Because I’m not just an average reader. The ways they interacted with each other, laughing and talking about other writers, their own themes, their ideas—all of those are things I either understand (what with my own writing life, working a full-time job, querying, getting 1K words written each and every day) or want to understand (going on tour, using social media to connect with fans, fans).

Not that I’m writing here to dwell on all that. The more important part came after, when I briefly chatted with each of the authors.

JASMINE WARGA

As she signed my copy of MY HEART AND OTHER BLACK HOLES, I asked Warga not about the darker elements of her story (which I guess draws the majority of reader questions), but about the physics. Was she, like me, a science nerd? The answer was no, with a laugh. Just out of college, she worked for a teaching program where she had to relearn everything she knew about basic math and science to teach her students. The physics elements of MY HEART AND OTHER BLACK HOLES came from that experience.

MINDY McGINNIS

Because McGinnis had signed my copies of her books months ago and because I’d talked to her about them then, we discussed her newer projects instead. Her next book, A MADNESS SO DISCREET, a gothic thriller in an insane asylum, comes out in October. In 2016 she’ll have a dark contemporary thriller (the name of which she didn’t share, though I was too focused on what she said of the story itself to care). I asked how her agent and editor felt about works so different from her other two books. She said they loved them, that they give her free reign when writing…and tell her to scale it back if necessary. I can’t wait to read both.

LAUREN OLIVER

I had three books for Oliver to sign: PANIC, VANISHING GIRLS, and BEFORE I FALL. I started with how much I love BEFORE I FALL. (If you haven’t read it, then you definitely need to give it a go!) Then, I moved on to the fact that I’d finished VANISHING GIRLS the day before. We couldn’t really talk about that one much, not without possibly giving away the huge twist of a climax to nearby readers who weren’t to that part yet. So I asked instead if that nameless climax had been her plan all along or if she’d realized it somewhere along the way. She said she’d been trying to write this book for years, ever since BEFORE I FALL was published, but hadn’t come up with this climax until the most recent draft attempts. I wanted to say that I have one of those books, lurking and churning in the back of my brain, but there wasn’t time and so many other fans awaited their turn with her.

As my best book friend and I left Joseph-Beth last night, I kept thinking about BEFORE I FALL, about the things Oliver, McGinnis, and Warga said. That book I have lurking and churning? It kept coming back to me on my drive home, urging me to find the missing key to writing it, maybe a huge twist of a climax. Because if the current book I’m querying doesn’t find me an agent, maybe that’ll be the book that will. And then maybe someday I’ll have the opportunity to sit on a panel of authors, telling readers and hopeful writers about my stories, just like Oliver, McGinnis, and Warga.

Book Riot Love

I tend to hunker down with my books and writing like it’s winter and everyone else is hibernating. If I have a few extra minutes somewhere, somehow, instead of playing on the internet, I sneak out my latest hardcover book and read a chapter or two. Even when it comes to Twitter, where I love the writing community and author tweets, sometimes I’d rather work on my latest manuscript.

So months ago when my best book friend began talking about this thing called Book Riot, I kind of ignored her. Or, I listened, but not with the intention of checking it out for myself. Finally, in late January, she convinced me to give the thing I try.

Now, I’m addicted. Obsessed. Giddy.

If you don’t know what Book Riot is but if you love books, go here now. Seriously, now. This blog post will still be here in an hour or two when you’ve finally pulled yourself away from Book Riot’s awesomeness. (I even got distracted just opening the site to hyperlink it to this post.)

What’s so great about Book Riot? In general, they talk about books, nerdy book stuff, publishing and writing. In other words, it’s the perfect website for me. But more specifically, what is it about Book Riot that sucked me in like a beautiful black hole? These things:

What Rioters Are Reading posts get me more than almost anything else. The site’s contributors tell you not only what they’re reading, but why they picked it and what they think of it. It’s a dream (nightmare?) for a girl (or boy) with a perpetually growing reading wish list.

Book Fetish posts show pictures of all kinds of book related t-shirts, mugs, posters, jewelry, etc. Not that I’m running out to buy all of it, but I still love looking at it longingly. Or giggling about it. Or scoffing. (Because no way would I ever buy that, otherwise I’d be proclaiming to the world that I’m a book nerd.)

Random posts that catch your attention and lead to random articles you love. Like the one called Give Me Some Money So I Can Open My Dream Bookstore, which is totally a dream for me and my best book friend. Or the one called Read This, Then That: MY HEART AND OTHER BLACK HOLES and Other YA Books That Love Physics, which led me to not only the book in the title (a great book, one whose author, Jasmine Warga, will be at Joseph-Beth here in Cincinnati on Monday evening for a signing), but to several other books. Or this one called Genre Kryptonite: Unreliable Narrators, which is about one of my genre kryptonites and is full of books I haven’t read. (Let’s not get me started on all the YA novels with unreliable narrators that I love.)

The Book Riot Podcast may be the best thing to happen to my ninety minute per day commute for work. Rebecca Schinsky and Jeff O’Neal are like my new book best friends…whom I’ve never met. (Plus, you know, they have no idea who I am.) I’ve learned so much about new books, book tech, and the publishing industry. And that’s not to mention all the books I’ve added to my to-read list. Some of them I’ve already devoured – Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, Dare Me by Megan Abbott, The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri—and there’s a whole lot more I have to stop myself from buying when I walk into a bookstore.

The Quarterly Box speaks for itself. Or, if you’re not familiar with Book Riot, maybe not. BUT, I just got my first box yesterday and it’s awesome, perfect in all its book nerdiness. Click here if you want to know more details. But for now, here’s a picture of my first box. (You know you want one, too.)

Last Minute Contest

I’ve said I’m done with contests, that I’m going to stick to just querying (where I tend to have more success). But I’ve also read so many success stories about writers who found their agents through contests. So many of these writers say that they weren’t sure their manuscript was ready, or that they weren’t really in a contest mode, but they entered at the last minute and—VIOLA!—they get into the contest and sign with an agent. It’s like winning the lottery, maybe a bit more likely, but it has to happen to someone, right?

So last weekend I entered Brenda Drake’s Pitch Madness contest at the (sort of) last minute. I plucked a pitch from earlier contests, modified it a bit, and submitted it with my manuscript’s first 250 words. I was so distracted at the time that I don’t even remember a confirmation page for my entry.

With so much going on in my non-writing life, I didn’t have time to follow the contest feed on Twitter. That was probably a good thing, as I’ve found that all these feeds do is make me nervous and tense. Those reading contest entries do their best to give advice, but also to make teases as vague as possible so as to give the most writers hope that their entries will be picked. Because I wasn’t watching the feed, the week or so before the announcement of the contest winners passed quickly.

Rumor has it that there were 900+ entrants into the contest (or some such incredibly high number). With only 60 spots available, that meant not a whole lot of writers got in. My hopes weren’t high (because, as previously stated, I do better querying than contesting), but I still had to check the winners when they were posted.

I didn’t get in.

I’m not surprised for several reasons. First, my manuscript is much easier to pitch in three or so paragraphs than in 35 words. Also, my first 250 words don’t have a hook at the end; my hook comes at the end of the first chapter, with stuff building up to it that starts in the first 250 words. And like I said, I wasn’t part of the party on Twitter. As much as they say you don’t have to be super active on the internet to get into these contests, I’ve learned that it helps your chances if you are.

But no worries about this loss. I’m doing what I always do when I don’t get into contests like this: I’m taking down the list of agents and sending them queries. Like I said, I have more success when I do that than when I enter contests. So we’ll see what happens.