Mrs. Buffy

totally reinvigorated

Yes, four days without having to go to work will do that for you, but man, four days at the ALA Annual Conference will also do that to you.  With some tears shed along the way.

The past four days have been, much to my surprise, incredible.  I always have high expectations for things I spend a lot of time looking forward to, but with the craziness of summer reading and the library construction project, I just didn’t have much time to go nuts getting ready for ALA.  Sure, it helped that it was in Chicago, but I’m not even sure if that was it.  Maybe I was just ready to be wowed.

So, my wow moments of ALA 2009 (and there are a lot, I actually, writing this slightly buzzed from my (free!) Printz reception alcoholic beverage, have no idea how many).

1.  James Kennedy @ YALSA Genre Preconference.  Wow.  I couldn’t tell for awhile (okay, I could tell) if the man was deranged or a gifted actor, if he was actually missing a tooth or if he had blackened it out.  One thing was for sure, I will now buy his book for the library and hopefully turn teens onto this crazed, passionate, funny writer/human being.

2.  The beauty of timing.  I scored, among many, many other ARCs, the much-desired CATCHING FIRE by Suzanne Collins and FIRE by Kristin Cashore.  I failed to acquire GOING BOVINE by Libba Bray, but, oh well, it’s just a book about a mad cow disease-infused road trip (that’s what I tell myself).

3.  Laurie Halse Anderson’s Margaret A. Edwards award speech.  I feel like Laurie Halse Anderson and Christopher Paul Curtis are both these amazing individuals, so insanely gifted as both writers and storytellers, and I am so, so glad that they found their way into writing for children.  As a reader of Laurie’s blog, I feel like I have come to sort of know her over the past couple years, and I absolutely feel for her loss of her mother and definitely had some intensely teary moments as she made her speech.  She is totally one of my YA author idols and will be for a long time.

4.  Meeting E. Lockhart, Garret Freyman-Weyr (I am probably not spelling this right at all), and several of the other authors that came to our table for YA coffee klatch.  What an eclectic bunch.  It is a good thing I’m going to have a week off in August because I basically plan to read all day at the beach and in the airconditioned living room.

5.  SARAH DESSEN!  I met her and she signed my book and I did not spontaneously combust even though at the exact moment I had to talk to her, I felt I would.

6.  Kirby Larson ended up, by some crazy chance or other unknown happenstance, sitting with me and Sarah for the Newbery/Caldecott/Wilder dinner.  How cool is that?!  HATTIE BIG SKY is one of my favorite books to recommend and one of my favorites of the past ten years/my life.

7.  The awards speeches at the aforementioned dinner totally reinvigorated my desire to write and to polish and try to write better, to reach, and to keep working at things and refining and reaching.

8.  Number eight and we’re only at today, which was pretty fan-fucking-tastic, as Aurora Greenaway might put it.  I MET SHERMAN ALEXIE. I didn’t even think it would happen, but he signed his chapbook and I almost peed my pants.  Definitely one of my favorite authors ever, so that was quite special.

9.  Saw Carlotta Walls give an absolutely tremendous talk at this memoir session I went to on a whim this morning.  Carlotta Walls was one of the Little Rock 9, the 9 high school students who integrated into the Central High School in Little Rock Arkansas,  in 1957.  It was completely moving and I was not the only one choked up and blotting my eyes, and I also am right now.

10.  Since ten is a great number, I think I will end here, also because I need to clean up a bit before heading to bed.  The Printz Awards!  Again, M.T. Anderson blew me away with his speech.  All of the speeches, though prepared independently, all seemed to touch on the importance of writing complex, intelligent books for teenagers, and now I feel so inspired to work on my next book.  There is so much research that I will have to do for it, but goddammit, I’m a librarian, so how hard can that really be.  How many hours are going to be in that one week off in August.  Please, can it be 92874657569 because that is how I feel right now, that I want to do everything, and I want to start right now.

But… I have to deal with copper pipes in the way, a relocated desk, a book discussion, a Harry Potter exhibit field trip!  Oh, woe is me.  Haha!

Getting organized (and posting for the first time in many months)

I am now realizing that it would have been much smarter to use an Excel sheet to keep track of my queries (instead of the dread Microsoft Word table).  Anyway….

Instead of sitting on my butt and reading all day yesterday (my plan for day 1 of my four day weekend), I instead ended up sitting on my butt and sending out queries.  I feel like I’ve sent out a bazillion.  Or, at least 50, so it was a little disappointing to see that I’m not there yet.  Although, maybe this is a good thing, that I’m not scraping the bottom of the barrel yet.  Who knows.

So it turns out that these are my stats, as of today

38 queries in total:

17 rejections sans requests

13 that i’m waiting to hear from (including agents i queried today, and agents i queried 4 months ago)

9 requests for more material (7 of those ended up rejecting me, and two are still out in la-la land: a partial and a full)

So i was 9 for 26, or about 1/3 in terms of getting requests… and it turns out, still nowhere near the 75 or 100 mark that some very successful writers reached in queryland before landing an agent.  It still feels like I’ve spent way too many hours getting all sweaty from having my laptop on my lap, and too many days pushing back lunch till 2:30 because I wanted to send out one. more. query. 

Alas, I feel like I have learned a lot.  With one notable exception (J.M.), I think everyone that said they were looking for YA coming of age has requested more material.  So, the query letter is working.  Several top agents have considered my work, and one suggested sending him future work.  I am also no longer crying when I get partial and full rejections.  This is a good thing!  It may mean that I am becoming more, as I like to put it, hopefully or optimistically jaded.  Or maybe I am just resigned to my latent fear that this is that book authors talk about, that one that was never meant to be published but really meant as more of a stepping stone to their future publishable work.

But, I also feel like I am approaching the end.  I have one more set of ten agents to query after hearing back from more of this group, and then I think I’m done… unless I hear about some fabulous agent that I somehow overlooked, or someone new appears on the scene.  At that point, I will really shift my focus to YA book #2.

In the meantime, I get to enjoy this long weekend pretty sure that no one will be email-rejecting me.  Which is good.  Because after a Rejection Monday and a Rejection Thursday in one week, I really don’t need a Rejection Fourth of July.

My Summer Reading List

I was inspired by this article in the Chicago Tribune and have now created my own reading list.  In a similar manner, I first thought about some of the books I own that I’ve always wanted to read but haven’t.  Unlike whoever wrote that article, I could not look at them because they are all in boxes.  Still, I’ve got a good memory, so that still served as a foundation for the list.  I wanted to make sure I read children’s, YA, and adult fiction, and some non-fiction too.  It turns out there are a lot of books I’ve wanted to read over the years, or at least last couple of years, and haven’t.  I hope to get caught up on recent non-sequel Printz winners, ditto for the Newbery, and finally get around to some adult fiction and non-fiction I’ve passed over.  The dude from the article made a list of 35, but I think I can out-read him.  Also, some of my books are definitely children’s books and will take less time to read.

So, with no further ado, my summer reading list!

1.  Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead

2.  Nation by Terry Pratchett

3.  Any Given Day by Dennis Lehane

4.  Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen

5.  Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

6.  Little Bee by Chris Cleave

7.  The Great Perhaps by Joe Meno

8.  Fair Maiden by Joyce Carol Oates

9.  Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan

10. The Secret History by Donna Tartt

11.  any Anne Tyler

12.  Repossessed by A.M. Jenkins

13.  Black Rabbit Summer by Kevin Brooks

14.  I Am The Messenger by Markus Zusak

15.  After Tupac and D Foster by Jacqueline Woodson

16.  Bog Child by Siobhan Dowd

17.  Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis

18.  Scat by Carl Hiassen

19.  Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse

20.  The Treasure Map of Boys by E. Lockhart

21.  Intensely Alice by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

22.  Diamonds in the Shadow by Caroline B. Cooney

23.  Queen of Everything by Deb Caletti

24.  The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had by Kristin Levine

25.  The Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman

26.  The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams

27.  The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

28.  The Girls From Ames by Jeffrey Zaslow

29.  Moneyball by Michael Lewis

30.  Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azir Nafisi

31.  Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson

32.  The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls

33.  The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen

34.  Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

35.  How Fiction Works by James Woods

36.  Coraline by Neil Gaiman

37.  Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger

38.  The Watchmen by Allan Moore & Dave Gibbons

39.  The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

40.  My Antonia by Willa Cather

We’ll see how it goes.  I am pretty sure I can make a serious dent in here!  Now: breakfast!

Grumble grumble

I’m sick of reading health statuses on Facebook.  I did not sign up for this!  Alas, I still feel that I need a place to vent on health-related issues, so, to the blog we go!  Erm, I go.  I now have my THIRD sore throat of the last month and a half.  WTF, folks.  The first one was definitely a part of a full-blown cold.  The last one lasted four days, and never resulted in any other cold symptoms.  This one came out of nowhere.  In fact, I’m still not sure it is a real sore throat — whatever that is — or just irritation.  I woke up with a dry throat and then proceeded to sneeze eight times in a row.  I forget how many sneezes are supposed to equal an orgasm, but let me tell you, eight sneezes is more like knives cutting into your throat.  So, not orgasmic, for those still wondering.  Harumph!  And because I am me and on day one of my four day weekend, I am sitting here doing NOTHING and licking the back of my throat.  Hot.

So, I really don’t know what is up with my throat but I have my suspicions.  Either it’s some kind of allergy thing (minus the veritable cold) OR it’s from my work conditions.  Essentially, I have been working in a construction site with the windows closed, for the past month and a half.  We have no ventilation (no heat, no air) and since they’ve been tarring the roof for the past two weeks, we also can’t open the windows.  Yes, I get high off tar every non-rainy day.  Lovely!  So, there’s definitely a downside to the construction experience, the smells, the air quality, etc.  But there’s also an upside, like my enforced 4 day weekend.  Today was a planned off day, and the library has to close for construction tomorrow and part of Saturday so…. FOUR DAY VACATION!  Now, if only my throat would feel better and I could start to enjoy it.

In the meantime, I’ve been puttering around the apartment, vacuuming the stairs hopefully for the last time, cleaning up my desk, making a delicious grilled cheese, and oh yes, spending like 3 hours trying to find a decently priced, non-sucky running watch.  My Adidas watch quit on me earlier this week, and since the battery was just replaced, I think it is safe to assume that my cute salmon-ish plastic watch purchased out of necessity in DC has passed away.  Colin and I signed up, pretty last minute, for the Soldier Field 10 Miler at the end of May and that means a new watch is needed.  Personally, I was hoping a birthday/Christmas fairy might get me a Garmin watch, but that didn’t happen.  I wish I had held onto my much beloved Nike watch from high school.  It was so cool and new, kind of ahead of its time, but also a lite green and plastic, meaning that after 3 years of running, it was yellowy-green-brown.  Still functional, but attractive it was not.  But man, it turns out that in spite of being a bit of an expert shopper, I have no idea where to shop for watches online.  All the discount sites that Google bring up look sketchy and a half, but the Nike site has basically no selection.  Finally, the decision was made, and despite saying I wouldn’t buy an Adidas watch again, I did.  It’s plastic and black and pretty basic looking and based on previous experiences with Road Runner Sports, it will somehow magically arrive tomorrow, or Saturday at the latest.  (Man, I typed Monday there before realizing that today is not Friday.)

Okay, time to do the other things on my fun and easy to-do list: thank you’s to grandparents, finding a frame for that enormous pic of Kai, picking up my dry-cleaning, and reading.  And not licking the back of my throat.

And then there was one

I haven’t updated here in a bit, so I guess I should.  On the book front, responses are sloooowly trickling in.  I’m still awaiting responses from four agents who only have a query to a query + what they ask for on the website, and one agent who has my full.  About a week ago, I heard back from one place that had asked for the exclusive on the first 3 chapters.  I barely batted an eyelash when she rejected me.  I also received one of the kindest rejections ever from Ad*ms Literary, which was encouraging.  It’s rare that you get a whole paragraph of non-scripted response.  And then today, a full on crappy day in my mind, beginning with me waking up with a sore throat, then continuing onto work where the smell of the roof getting tarred gave me a very not-fun headache, then to me getting a rejection from an agency that had my full.  I at first had little to no reaction, probably because I was getting high off tar, or whatever tar is made of, but then as I took books off the new shelf and added them into the regular collection, I started becoming all negative about things and starting to tear up.  In the bathroom, I teared up a little more, then joked about it with Gabby because crying in the bathroom isn’t cliche at all, then ate lunch and joked about how I would cry at home later.

And then I found out this.  If there’s anything worth tearing up about today, it’s absolutely not me getting a measly rejection, but the tragic end to a very promising life.

I don’t have much to say about it besides that.  It’s just terrible and sad and shocking, for his team, his family, his friends, his everything.  It seems like there have been a handful of professional athlete deaths in the last couple years, but none as affecting as this.  He was just going out after the game.  He wasn’t partying or drunk or bringing a gun to a club, he was a passenger in a car, en route somewhere after pitching well in his first start of the season.  What a loss.

On “Knowing”

Okay, so the movie looks scary in the trailer and I’m pretty sure it is a dumb blockbuster but let me tell you, I am going CRAZY from the not knowing.  That’s right.  The update is that my book is out on two fulls and one partial submission and I have heard nothing.  Granted, it’s been less than a week since one full went out, and not a full two weeks since the other full went out, and exactly a week since the partial went out, but HI, I am curious about what is going on.  I wish somewhere I could find an explanation of exactly what happens when an agent gets your manuscript.  I guess it all comes back to knowing.   Right now, I know nada.  I am completely in the dark as to if (in all three situations) my manuscript is sitting in a pile, if it hasn’t even been printed out, if it has been printed out and is being read, if the agent liked it and is maybe talking it over with other people in the agency as to a marketing strategy.  My manuscript, let’s give it the shorthand TWWW - wow, that looks kind of dumb - could be in any of these situations and I just don’t get to KNOW IT!  Which makes me the epitome of a pot-watcher.  I have my cell phone by my side waiting for THE CALL that I pray for every night (literally) and I check my email constantly when home but only once every hour at work, waiting to hear back from the agents that haven’t responded to my query yet, and who are probably in Bologna still at the Children’s Book Fair, and dreading emails back from the agents who have my book giving their polite reasons why it’s not going to happen.  You can see how this can drive someone craaaazy, right?  (And this someone is me, and someone who some people might already call craaaazay.)

And so, I wait, and try to pass my time by reading, running, watching “Big Love,” and finding more agents to query (I think I just found a few now that I’ve joined Publisher’s Marketplace, although overall that $20 probably only served to augment my anxiety because I learned that the agent who now has my book and who I am now obsessing over a la the way I obsessed over MB, who I can now only refer to with fake sobbing and his name slowly enunciated for dramatic effect, well, she is the top dealmaker of all agents handling YA.)  !!!!  

At least I am sleeping soundly.  A couple nights I had a nightmare - I feel I can only term it such because it was a bad dream, though there was no waking up sweaty or anything - in which this dream agent, let’s call her SC, responds to my manuscript.  I read her email on my phone and it is written in texting speak.  I am sad but then I go to her blog and find that she has painfully ripped my book to shreds for all to see.  Then I woke up and looked at the clock and breathed a huge sigh of relief because the dream was not real.

Alas, I wish I could maybe dream a little more about Tim Riggins and less about rejections.  Anyway, should probably shower and call in a pizza from the Med.  Life is good, if full of not knowing.

Where we stand

Round one of querying (last spring-summer):

2 swift rejections

2 requests for the full manuscript, which eventually led to rejection

We’ll say 2 for 4

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Spent about 9 months editing based on feedback

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Round two of querying (started about two weeks ago):

2 swift rejections

1 request for the full manuscript

1 request for the partial manuscript

6 awaiting a response

so far: 2 for 4

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In total, I am 4 for 8.  In my head, I thought I was 4 for 10, which goes to show you that Colin is the math-science person, not me!

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Tomorrow:

Will send out at least a couple of the submissions that need to be mailed.  Will try to stalk email account less.  Will screen calls for 212 (New York) area codes.  Will chill out!