The Travelers’ Market will be available in early July.
Book Signing The Bookworm
Richland Parkway Sat. July 26th 1-2 pm
Fantasy Map Workshop and Book Signing
at Barnes and Noble, Columbia Center Mall
Aug 16th, 2 pm
Reserve your copies now!
School’s out and you finally have time to polish off that short story or poem. No excuses! And this contest is free for students 10-18. Click here for more information. Deadline August 15, 2008. Winners: no money, but you’ll be published!
Summer is conference season, and I’m getting ready for presentations at PNWA in Seattle and at Willamette Writers in Portland. One of the topics I’ll be presenting with my good friend Renee Riva is Scene By Scene–Writing the YA Novel. All writers have to be ruthless in evaluting whether or not their scenes move the story forward. Here’s a quick way to evaluate a scene.
Every scene must have a reason.
q Identify the main event : ____________________________
q How does the event move the scene forward?__________________________________________
q What do the characters want in the scene? (drive)
q What new info. do readers learn about the characters or events in this scene?
q How do the characters respond to the main event? Show rather than tell.
q Does this scene set up your next scene by creating a new situation?
digression: a message that departs from the main subject
Our lives are full of them. At least my life is. So today, an aside, a story about my son, some spiders and Rita.
To start you must know Rita. She is an old grand dame of a car, a VW Quantum circa 1986. Her owner is my son, who dislikes arachnids.She lives in Seattle outdoors; she is a street car. She weathers the rain, the fog, a little snow and the occasional bursts of Seattle sunshine. She longs to be a garage car. And to make it worse, she must now compete with public transportation for his attention. This is the story of Rita’s revenge.
On the day in question, my son and his friend were driving through one of those occasional bursts of seattle sun. Nothing beats Seattle sunshine–all was right with the world, until the spider. A large spider crawled out of one of the defroster vents. It was a pale white, almost transulcent spider, very fleshy. The friend, D, used a piece of the random detritus on the floor to squish it. A minute later, another large pale spider began rapelling down from the rear-view mirror. And that’s when they noticed a few more spiders crawling out of the vents. My son felt something moving up his leg.
They pulled the car to the curb, leapt out and dove onto a nearby patch of grass. They slapped at their clothes and rolled back and forth on some poor guy’s front lawn, in an effort to squash or at least dislodge the dozens of spiders which they were sure had to be crawling around inside their clothing. Rita’s engine purred. The frightened homeowner peered furtively through the blinds. My son wanted him to know that they were friendly, harmless, spider-infested people. He waved as he rolled and slapped.
As soon as they got the car home, they tossed in a bug-bomb (yeah — the kind that says it’s made for a 3,000 square foot house) and locked Rita up and left her for a few days. My husband pointed out that bug bombs are pretty toxic stuff, and he should probably drive Rita with the windows open for a few days. Ever since then, any time I call Brennan on the phone and he’s driving somewhere, I can hear the roar of the wind. I suspect Rita is smiling.
Read an excerpt from The Travelers’ Market. Available July 2008 from your local independent bookstore, the fine folks at Idylls Press or through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
The Travelers’ Market
paperback: 978-1-59597-012-1
hardcover: 978-1-59597-013-8
…or one story about finding an agent at the grocery store.
The search for an agent is daunting. There are websites, articles, and books that tell authors how to find just the right person to represent his/work. I was ready. I did my research, wrote queries and rewrote them, sent out letters, and then sent out more. I used site like www.agentquery.com and hunted down agent interviews. I checked my email obsessively. It was so much easier, in the first round, to query agents who accept e-mail queries. E-mail friendly agents, we authors love you.
And I had my list ready. You know that list of questions you keep just in case an agent makes the call and is interested in your work. I kept mine right by phone on my writing desk–just in case. And there were agents who requested partials and fulls, but nothing definite until I went to the grocery store. Okay, I’m sure it doesn’t happen this way for everyone, but here’s how it happened for me.
My most promising lead had evaporated. I was down. I sat at my computer and moped. My nice little list of agent questions was all printed out and set by the phone. I turned it over so I wouldn’t have to look at it.
In Safeway, around 4 pm, somewhere between the coffee and deli aisle my cell phone rings. I fumble it out of my purse and can hardly hear the voice over the piped in music and intercom announcements about specials on roast beef.
“This is Sandra Bishop.”
I drop my bread.
“Do you have time to talk?”
“Ah, I’m in the middle of the grocery store, can I call you back?”
“I only have twenty minutes and then I have another appt. I’m leaving the country tomorrow.”
I realize that it would take to much time to get home. I desperately look for a quiet spot, hunker down between the teas and wine. Not much action in the booze section. Musak keeps blaring. Luckily, she didn’t hang up!
I was able to hear just enough of that conversation to realize that an agent really was interested and wanting me to consider her. It wasn’t the way I pictured it would be, sitting at my desk with my neat list of questions. It was a good reminder that life surprises us, sometimes in the most unlikely places.
This week I had the privilege of talking to students at Quincy High School about poetry. We even did some writing! I’m hoping to see a few completed poems show up on my website. I’ve already read a great one about barrell racing that has all kinds of potential for getting published. After spending the morning discussing poetry, I had the best Mexican food at Jalisco’s!Thanks to teachers Kim Allard, Kimberley Fowler and Matt Kimmel for making this possible. What a great way to end National Poetry Month!
I was walking my dog at dusk along our familiar path by the river when a porcupine waddled into view, a great gleaming surprise of flesh and quills. He filled the path, blocking our way, and forced us to turn across the rough, to scrape through unfamiliar territory of Russian olive and willow herb. When I write, something just as unexpected often rises on the page, demanding notice. It may be an unexpected character, slouching in the plot line. It may be that a character acts in an unexpected way. In either case, I am forced to explore unfamiliar territory, and in those moments, writers are open to wonder.
The act of writing is transformational. Putting words on paper, building that story, essay or poem changes the writer. As our thoughts take shape on the page, we begin to see our lives, and others lives, in a fresh way. Just as our characters sometimes surprise us as we invent them on the page, our reflections lead us in unexpected directions. Poet and essayist Thomas Lynch describes the process this way, “Every poem is an adventure. Every essay is an adventure in the same way. There is a sense that you’re launching yourself on the language and seeing how long it will keep you afloat.”
Sometimes it’s called magical realism, sometimes literature of the fantastic and there’s even a new label, “literature of the new weird.” Call it whatever you like, this is lit and poetry with a touch of whimsey, with just a sprinkling of magic dust. Check out The Big Blog of Marvel for bloggers on magical realism.
So where to submit those quirky pieces filling your files?
Here are a few magazines from the not-well-known Shimmer to the hard-to-get-into Virginia Quartely Review that take ficiton and poetry with a fantastical edge–
Shimmer
http://www.shimmerzine.com/submission-guidelines/what-we-want
One Story
http://www.one-story.com/
A Public Space
http://www.apublicspace.org/submit/
Strange Horizons
http://www.strangehorizons.com/
Virginai Quarterly Review
http://www.vqronline.org/
I’ve never met him in person. I know him only by his work, some interviews and a few kind words I’ve received from him about my writing. Bret Lott is stepping down from his position as editor of The Southern Review, one of the finest literary journals anywhere, to return to teaching. That he wants to return to teaching is no surprise. Mr. Lott says, “nothing compares with working with a student toward that instant of discovery.” One of the joys of teaching is making a difference in other people’s lives. Writers do this at a remove, teachers, first hand. Teachers are part of a living work in progress. And if C.S. Lewis is right, teachers never work with mere mortals.
Writers often lead cobbled together lives, and that may be a good thing. Writing full time or perching full time in the literary world can be restrictive. At least for me, it can lead to an excess of naval gazing. And really, my naval just isn’t that interesting.The intrusion of daily life that forces us from our keyboards, is the very stuff that gives writers something interesting to say.
The literary world certainly is richer because of Brett Lot; I suspect many students are as well. Read the excerpt from his new novel, Ancient Highway, in the spring issue of The Southern Review, you’ll see what I mean.
THE YOUNKIN-RIVERA PRIZES FOR YOUNG WRITERS AT SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY
CARBONDALE
http://www.dce.siu.edu/youth/080205writersworkshop.htm
A nationwide competition for creative writers aged 15-18. Entries accepted
during the month of April in the genres of poetry and prose.
I’m getting excited about Arcs, (advanced review copies), of The Travelers’ Market. They’ll be out soon and I’ll be able to see all of the new illustrations. John Murphy’s illustration style has changed a bit since Wolfproof came out in 2006 and I like what I’ve seen so far. I haven’t had a peek at the cover yet, but thought I’d give readers something to look forward to by showing off one illustration.
Expect a chapter “sneak peak” soon.
Hope you’re enjoying Wolfproof on Cover to Cover!
Fantasy fans arise. Terry Pratchett one of the funniest writers of the fantastic,(ever read the Discworld series? Ever been to the chalk?), has been diagnosed with Alzheimers disease. And he’s not alone–1 in 8 baby boomers will also be diagnosed with Alzheimers. The research budget is low, the devastation high.
Help match Terry Pratchett’s $1 million ( £500,000 ) donation to Alzheimer’s Research.
Donate to Alzheimer’s Research Trust or Alzheimer’s Association. Tell them it’s for Terry Pratchett, so it will count as part of the Match It For Pratchett campaign.
Let it be official: e.e. cummings is the poet laureate of spring. When the daffodils bloom and the cottonwoods bless the earth with their caterpillar pods nobody says it better and in so many different ways. We all know In Just- but take a minute to discover one you may not know. Also check out this lovely spring poem The Blessing by James Wright.
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about Cover to Cover’s presentation of Wolfproof. Sylvia Dorham is the reader and she makes the book come alive! What a cool job, to be a book reader and create a world with your voice.
Did you know that there are discussion guide questions for Wolfproof? Carmichael Middle School is planning to read Wolfproof in their book group. Discussion guides help you get started, and any I’m always happy to answer author questions sent through this address info@maureenmcquerry.com
Welcome to the homepage of author & educator Maureen McQuerry.
