Alexandra Duncan Takes the Truth

I have a lot of guilt. It comes with being raised Protestant. So when I tell you about my guilty pleasures, you should know that I actually feel guilty about these things. Sometimes. (Okay, most of the time). It isn't just a turn of phrase.

Guilty pleasure #1: chocolate fruit

I will eat all kinds of chocolate fruit, but this is the kind I snack on most often.  ------------->

I tried to swear it off this summer, because chocolate is not good for you when consumed in great quantities, but I can usually talk myself into getting some anyway. Well, you need to buy some so you can take a picture of it for this blog post, I told myself earlier today before tearing into the package. You can't just go take a picture of it on the grocery store shelf. You don't want to be the weirdo in the deli taking pictures of sweets, do you? Point taken, brain. No, I do not.

Guilty pleasure #2: reality television

I'm in love with Project Runway and Face Off, which involves makeup artists constructing fantastical creatures. My husband will actually watch the second show with me, because it sometimes involves monsters.

The one show I've been really obsessed with lately, though, is Fatal Attractions on Animal Planet. It's all about people who are killed or mauled by their exotic pets. I'm not talking about hedgehogs or iguanas, although both of those can give you a nasty case of salmonella. Most of the people on the show seem to think they have a special relationship with their Bengal tiger or cobra that will prevent the animal from striking when they aren't looking.

Obviously, this is not how things play out. Given the number of times my housecat has attacked my feet in the middle of the night, I don't know how anyone could think things would go differently with a tiger.

Why do I like this show so much? Probably because when I was a kid, one of the stories I would always beg my mom to tell was the one about the teenager who broke into the Washington Zoo, stole a Gaboon viper, took it on a city bus, and then (after it bit him, naturally) had to be treated with all of the rattlesnake antivenin on the entire Eastern seaboard before stumbling back from the brink of death. She is a nurse, and was on duty when the paramedics brought him into the hospital. Her account was even more entertainingly weird than this New York Times article.

This is the show I watch to unwind in the evening. Sometimes I even fall asleep to stories about people being trampled by buffalo, partly because being raised by a nurse warps your brain a little bit and partly because I'm so tired in the evening. Which leads me to my third guilty pleasure. . .

Guilty pleasure #3: falling asleep on the couch

I have a lovely, comfortable bed. I sleep much better in it than I do on the couch. I'm much less likely to be sat up on by cats or wake up with a crick in my neck. And yet, there's something inexplicably wonderful about a couch nap.

Do you have a guilty pleasure? Tell us about it and you'll be entered to win an ARC of my book Salvage, coming April 1st! (No kidding.)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

ETA: Our contest winner is Xander! Xander, we've sent you an e-mail about how to claim your ARC.
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Alexandra Duncan is a writer and librarian. Her first novel, Salvage, is due to be released by Greenwillow Books on April 1, 2014. Her short stories have been featured in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy. She loves anything that gets her hands dirty – pie-baking, leatherworking, gardening, drawing, and rolling sushi, to name a few. You can find her online at Twitter, Goodreads, Facebook, and her web site.

Mindy McGinnis Gets Polar Vortexed

Mindy was trapped in her home for six days recently, and decided to do a little Truthing via her Ask box on Tumblr.

Fandom Confessional With Natalie Whipple

I'm back! With my usual antics in hand—no crying like last time, I promise, even if this is another truth.

Alexandra Duncan Takes the Truth!

Today is the day when I offend everyone. I’m answering the following Truth, Be honest: have you read Fifty Shades of Grey? (and thoughts on New Adult/sexy YA/or whatever)

Short answer: yes, I have read Fifty Shades of Grey. Sort of. I mean, I read the first three chapters and skimmed the rest. That counts as reading, right?

Let's rewind about thirteen months. Late last summer, the director of the public library where I work asked my boss to read Fifty Shades to help decide whether we should carry it in the library. There weren't a lot of critical reviews available at that point, which is one of the main ways we decide which books to carry, but we were getting flooded with requests for "that sex book. You know the one." *significant look*

After about ten minutes of skimming, I found my boss sitting in the workroom with this look on her face. . . .

She looked up at me. “I can’t do this. Will you read it?”

How could I resist? Clearly, from her expression, there was something magnificently horrifying happening between the pages. I had to know what had brought that look to her face. I took the book home and managed to stop giggling like a 12-year-old long enough to crack open the cover.

In the end, I couldn't do it either. I stopped reading and started skimming around the time Bella and Edw. . . I mean, Anastasia and Christian have an extraordinarily awkward conversation (that was maybe supposed to be sexy?) at a hardware store. To me, the steamy scenes were just. . . kind of squicky.* It was not my cup of tea.

This Truth has me thinking about how we write about sex in Young Adult literature versus how it’s portrayed in New Adult like Fifty Shades. Granted, not all New Adult is straight-up erotica. Take the insanely talented Gayle Forman's novels, for example, or Fangirl, by Rainbow Rowell, which I am dying to read. But Fifty Shades has brought erotica to the forefront of New Adult, and because of that, people are starting to think of N.A. as fundamentally characterized by cover-to-cover graphic sex.

In Y.A., however, sex is an incredibly touchy subject. If you don’t believe me, read this wonderful blog post by Beth Revis on a librarian’s response to learning one of her books contained sex, or take a look at the ALA’s yearly list of banned books. "Sexually explicit material" is the number one reason why books are banned or libraries are challenged for stocking them.

Source: American Library Association

On one hand, I get it. Adults want to protect children from situations and ideas they’re not ready to handle. I struggled with how to portray sex in Salvage, which deals in part with sexual relationships and pregnancy. As a librarian, would I feel comfortable recommending my own book to teen readers and their parents? Would I be okay with my fifteen year-old sister reading this? On the other hand, teenagers are surrounded by sexual content in daily life. It’s on TV and in movies. It’s in advertisements. It’s in music. It’s a topic of discussion on the school bus. It’s everywhere.

Sometimes we adults also forget that our teenage years were the time when we first fell in love, started dating, and became curious about sex and sexuality. Some of us even began having sex when we were in high school. If we’re writing honestly about teenage life and the process of becoming an adult, sex is a legitimate subject. For those teens who are sexually active, portraying sex in Y.A. accurately reflects their experience and gives adults a way to talk with teens about how to protect their hearts and their bodies. For those who aren’t, books are a safe place where teens can explore the idea of sex without becoming sexually active. It’s an opportunity to start a conversation about what is and what isn’t healthy in a relationship.

My personal philosophy about writing sex in Y.A. is that above all, it should be realistic. By that, I don’t mean I think everyone should be writing really extensive, detailed sex scenes. I mean that when it comes to talking about sex for a teenage audience, I don’t want to write the kind of unrealistic fantasy sex I’ve seen in Fifty Shades and other New Adult erotica. If I’m going to write about sex, I want to convey the combination of love, lust, confusion, anxiety, pleasure, and discomfort that go along with a real person’s first sexual experiences. I want to look at the dangers and the joys. I want to give teens the information they need to take care of themselves.

I think we owe teens honesty about this experience that’s looming large in their futures and imaginations. We owe it to them not to add to the misinformation they’re likely getting from locker room gossip and rumors on the bus. (Just to refute a few things I heard when I was fifteen - Yes, you can get pregnant the first time! No, taking monthly oral contraceptives is not the same as getting an abortion. Yes, sex can be great, but it doesn’t guarantee true love.) Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying every Y.A. book should deal with sex. Sometimes I just want to read about slaying dragons and things blowing up without the complication of a romantic relationship. But when we Y.A. writers do tackle this difficult subject, we need to do it with maturity, care, and awareness of our audience.

*One word: tampons
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Alexandra Duncan is a writer and librarian (plus amateur photographer, crochet enthusiast, cinemaphile, and, or course, book fiend). She holds a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and has been a frequent contributor to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. She loves anything that gets her hands dirty – pie-baking, leatherworking, gardening, drawing, and rolling sushi, to name a few.Her first novel, Salvage, is due to be released by Greenwillow Books/Harper Collins April 1, 2014. You can find her online at Twitter, Goodreads, and her web site.

Natalie Whipple & The Big Fat Ninja Secret

I've been keeping a big secret for awhile now, but today I'm gonna tell you. You know, if you can get through my blubbering in the video. Even when I'm doing a truth I can't help but embarrass myself, it seems.

Brandy Colbert Takes the Truth

Digging through our options for Truth, I came across this question:

How did you reveal to your friends/family that you were an aspiring author?

I like this question because it’s strange to think how much has changed and how much has stayed exactly the same since I started writing for publication six (!) years ago.

I’ve always been a writer, but for most of my adulthood (I use this term very loosely) I’ve only been comfortable talking about the writing I did at a desk, Monday through Friday. I’ve worked as an editor at a few magazines and I never hesitated to tell people what I was editing or ideas of my own that I’d pitched at editorial meetings. It didn’t seem like a big deal; I was putting my writing out there, but it was journalism. I’d gone to school for it and I was getting paid for it.

Creative writing is different. Everyone knew I’d always written for fun, on the side, but to me, telling people I was pursuing publication was a Big Deal. I was very hesitant to show anyone my writing—even the people I’d asked to critique my work!—because I kept worrying someone would call me out. Tell me to give up because I wasn’t talented or because it’s incredibly difficult to get published or that agents don’t actually obtain clients from slush pile submissions, etc., etc., etc.

When I started querying my first novel, I told my family and a few friends who I knew would wonder why I was obsessively checking my email and receiving mysterious SASEs in the mail. But I never talked about it much because what if it never happened? I didn’t want to explain to everyone how I’d failed. It was easier to keep the disappointment to myself.

The more I improved as a writer, the more personal the rejections became and I could tell I was getting close. I still wasn’t quite there, but the more positive notes I received from agents, the more comfortable I was talking to my close, non-writer friends about the process and you know what? They were really supportive. Most of them had lots of questions, but it was generally about the inner workings of the publishing industry and they were amazed that I’d figured out everything from agent and author blogs and writer-centric message boards.

Several years later, it’s still not easy for me to talk about my writing. Even now, with an agent and a book under contract, I feel like a hack when people ask what I do and I say I write books. I’m so awkwardly bad at describing my book that I had to look up the (very succinct) blurb on Goodreads to describe it to someone the other day. The novel I wrote. True story. Maybe it’s because I know how incredibly lucky I am to do this or maybe it’s because it still doesn’t feel real. I don’t embarrass easily but a good way to get me stumbling over my words and answering questions with vague, stilted responses is to ask me about my book in a crowd of people.

Despite my utter lack of poise when it comes to discussing my writing with others, there were a few people I was especially ecstatic to tell that my book was going to be published—my childhood friends. They’d read some of my earliest writing (we’re talking elementary school here, guys), when I wasn’t so private about my unpublished work, when I was just writing for fun and wanted to share those stories with the people close to me. Their [happy] responses varied, but for the most part, the sentiment was, “Dude! Your dream totally came true.”

Dude. It totally did.

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-->Brandy Colbert lives in Los Angeles. Her debut novel, A Point So Delicate, is forthcoming from G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers/Penguin. She’d love to connect with you on Twitter, her blog, or Goodreads.

                                          

  

J.R. Johansson Takes the Truth!

Since you just saw me act out a scene using the contents of my pantry as the characters in a vlog from last week. I have officially reached my monthly vlog embarrassment ratio and thus... *drumroll please*

I am taking a truth!

The truth I chose was given by the awesome Robin Weeks. She asked me, "What was the most embarrassing newbie mistake you made (we all make them) back when you were first starting out and didn't know anything?"

Sadly, this was a hard question for me because the possible answers are many. After much debate, I settled on my very first query.

And when I say query, I use the term VERY loosely. I'll just post it here and you can see for yourself the numerous mistakes I made. I'll post my color commentary in red so you can see just how mortified I am about this now.

Dear Kristin Nelson, (<--undoubtedly the best part of the email, unless your name is Kristin Nelson)

Hello! (*sigh* at least I was enthusiastic) My name is Jenn and I'm considering writing a book. (Yep. You read that right -- considering) I've never done much writing, but I'm a fast learner and I have faith that I can figure it out. (OH! I have faith! Well, I should've led with that. It's a game changer) I'm sure you hear this kind of thing all the time because from your website, I see that you're a literary agent. (...apparently I just read her title and quickly closed the browser. Otherwise I would've learned that SENDING THIS WAS A BAD IDEA) You seem like you might be the perfect person to help me with this! (Please, kill me now)

Is there any particular place you'd recommend starting when learning to write? (*head desk*) How does the publishing industry work exactly? Do I hire an agent and then start writing? Or is that backward? (There's really nothing to do but shake my head and laugh at this point)

Anyway, as you can see, I have many questions! Let me know if you'd prefer talking on the phone and we can schedule a call. (Yes! And then we shall have tea with the Mad Hatter, but bring a jacket because HELL has frozen over!)

Thanks so much!

Jenn (<--second best part, unless your name is Jenn, in which case you may weep a little)

Seriously. Reading this now, I want to grab newbie-writer-me and shake some sense into her. Good thing more-experienced-writer-me has a sense of humor or there would be some kind of time-travel violence going on. 

Now that we've all had a good laugh at my expense, here is my point. Did I make mistakes here? I think we can all agree - YES! Did it ruin my chances in the future? No. In fact, I think writing queries and pitches has become a strength of mine. 

I think there's really only one thing left to say:

I'm so sorry, Kristin Nelson. :)

Edit per requests in comments: Kristin did actually respond. Recommended a few writing technique books and gave me the links on how (and when) to query from her blog. Seriously...the woman is a saint. 

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J.R. Johansson loves reading, playing board games and sitting in her hot tub. Her dream is that someday she can do all three at the same time. She is a YA thriller author represented by Kathleen Rushall of Marsal Lyon Literary Agency. Her debut novel, INSOMNIA, is due to be released in Spring 2013 with Flux. You can find her on twitter, goodreads, her website, or her personal blog.  

Alexandra Duncan Takes the Truth

"How do you do it?"

Every writer gets this question at some point, and every writer's answer is going to be different. I thought this week might be a good time to take this truth, since my life is particularly hectic right now. Between relatives visiting, the height of the summer reading season at the library where I work, and car trouble, it hasn't been easy to squeeze in enough writing time lately. Want to know my deep, dark, dysfunctional secrets about time management, pets, and laundry? Watch on. . .






Check in again this coming Tuesday for guest post by Crissa-Jean Chappell. If you want to leave a truth or dare for her, click here.

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Alexandra Duncan is a Young Adult writer and librarian. Her first novel, Salvage, is due to be released by Greenwillow Books/Harper Collins in Fall 2013. You can find her online at Twitter, Goodreads, and her personal blog.

Shannon Messenger Takes the Truth

Okay, I know I usually vlog--and I know there's some lovely humiliating Shannon-vlog dares that you guys have submitted for me--but with moving and deadlines I just did not have time this week. So NEXT TIME!

And for now, I'm answering this truth that came in:

What were some working titles for your book that didn't make the final cut?

I picked that one because titling LET THE SKY FALL was ... basically torture. 

I'm glad we went through it because I love love LOVE my title and am soooooo glad my editor and I kept pushing until we got there. But getting there SUCKED.

My original title was WINDWALKER, which is another name for the sylphs in the book and sort of the impetus behind the whole idea for me. (part of me is secretly hoping I can sneak it into the series title somehow, mostly because I STILL slip and call it Windwalker sometimes, and then I wouldn't look like an idiot) (but I'm not holding my breath for that).  I knew early on that it would change, because my publisher wanted something more romantic to match the story better--and I was totally fine with that. But finding something that had a romantic feel without reading like a book that needed shirtless Fabio on the cover was NOT easy. 

I sent my poor editor list upon list upon list of suggestions--all of which were rejected. (to be fair--I am TERRIBLE at titles, so they were all pretty much crap). I emailed friends who'd read, begging for ideas. When those didn't help I sent a short synopsis to friends who hadn't read. Still nothing. My publisher and I seriously went through HUNDREDS of options. And as tends to happen, I liked some ideas that they didn't, they liked some ideas that I didn't, and since we were all committed to finding THE ONE, we kept going. For MONTHS. 

So during that stressful process I couldn't help throwing a few fake ones in the mix sometimes, just for giggles (or temporary-thesaurus-induced-insanity). Here's a few of my favorites:

The Fast and the Flurrious

Blown Away

Cold Front

First Drafts

Squall Is Lost

Though my FAVORITE was one I even made a mock cover for (and yes, I sent this to my agent and editor at one point--like I said, temporary-thesaurus-induced-insanity)

(photo credit: layoutsparks)

Right????

I mean, it's a fart joke, a wind pun, and a TWILIGHT reference in one!!!!!!

So yeah... this is why I'm not allowed to name my books. (or design my own covers, for that matter)

My middle grade (KEEPER OF THE LOST CITIES) was actually titled by my agent's daughter (my editor made a couple of tweaks to her suggestion and viola! After months of me making terrible suggestions) and LET THE SKY FALL was a suggestion from Karsten Knight. I am 0 for 2!!! 

And seeing as how book two of my middle grade series is still labeled "UNTITLED KEEPER 2" I'm guessing I am not going to be much help with that one either. Let the title torture begin!

Thanks so much for reading, guys. And if any of you would like to submit a truth or dare for us to tackle, you can do that HERE. (And please do--we LOVE the awesome things you guys come up with)

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Shannon Messenger graduated from the USC School of Cinematic Arts, where she learned--among other things--that she liked watching movies much better than making them. So she left LA and moved to suburbia where she would have time to eat too many cupcakes, own too many cats, and write lots and lots of books. LET THE SKY FALL is her first young adult novel, coming in Spring 2013 from Simon Pulse. She is also the author of KEEPER OF THE LOST CITIES, book one in a middle grade series launching Fall 2012 (S&S Aladdin). Find her online at shannonmessenger.com.