Roy Miller's Blog, page 273

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Published on February 14, 2017 16:47

Licensing Hotline: January 2017

Candlewick Trots into Teen Market with ‘Ride’

Candlewick Entertainment, an imprint of Candlewick Press, has acquired world rights to three novels tied to Ride, a daily live-action TV series that debuted on Nickelodeon in the U.S. on January 30. Candlewick acquired the license from Breakthrough Entertainment, the production company behind the show.

The series is about an American teen, Kit Bridges, who moves to England after her father takes a job teaching at an exclusive British equestrian school, the Covington Academy. “This is a departure for us, since it’s our first foray into teenage material,” says Joan Powers, group editorial director for Candlewick Entertainment and Walker Entertainment.

Candlewick’s editorial team was drawn to the exotic location and multicultural cast, as well as fun and funny stories that are infused with real-life issues. “It has all the classic elements—mean girls, cute boys, relationship drama—but it also deals with serious themes like the recent death of Kit’s mother and moving to a foreign country,” Powers says.

The first novel, Ride: Kit Meets Covington, will launch in September 2017, with two more titles set for March and May 2018. Three are planned annually going forward under the multi-year agreement. All of the books, authored by tie-in veteran Bobbi JG Weiss, will be derived from the television scripts; the inaugural book covers the first five episodes. Kit Meets Covington will also include a bonus eight-page full-color insert featuring stills from the series.

Ride has been a hit in Canada, where it premiered on YTV on September 5 of last year, and the U.K., where it launched on November 7 on Nickelodeon.

Random House Expands Trolls for 2017

Last season Random House launched 13 titles tied to DreamWorks Animation’s movie Trolls, which premiered in November. “That’s a good size for a movie program,” says Chris Angelilli, v-p and editor-in-chief, executive director, licensed publishing, Random House/Golden Books Young Readers Group. The launch list included a prequel middle-grade chapter book starring Harper, a character that appears briefly in the movie, as well as formats tying into the colorful look and feel of the film. The latter include an activity journal with bright-hued hair sprouting out of the cover and an activity book packaged with a rainbow pencil.

Among the additional tie-ins planned for 2017 is an original early chapter book series, with each novel featuring a different main or secondary character.

Angelilli says that Trolls appealed to Random House as a familiar classic property with a modern spin. “They created a whole new mythology around it,” he says. “As DreamWorks’ publishing partner, we’re delighted to help expand that mythology.” DreamWorks’ plan for turning Trolls into an ongoing franchise was also attractive, as was a good experience working with DreamWorks in the past on Mr. Peabody & Sherman. “And Trolls are cute, and they have great hair,” Angelilli adds.

More American Girl Nonfiction from DK

In September, DK launched the first two titles under its new North American license with Mattel and the toy maker’s American Girl division for a series of nonfiction books. The American Girl Ultimate Visual Guide and The American Girl Ultimate Sticker Collection marry two of DK’s core formats with the characters and historical content of American Girl.

Julie Ferris, publisher of DK Licensing, says the company had been thinking about the brand for some time. When her team approached American Girl via Mattel, the timing was good because American Girl was newly open to working with other publishers through licensing deals, rather than maintaining its publishing program in-house. (In July 2016, American Girl licensed Scholastic for a full program of print and digital fiction formats—which debuted this month—marking the first time it licensed rights to an outside company for books based on its brand.)

Three more DK titles are planned for 2017, including a dress-up sticker book and The Story of America. The latter “uses the historic dolls to provide a glimpse into key moments of American history and what it would have been like to grow up in each period,” Ferris explains. An American Girl Character Encyclopedia will follow in July, offering facts about every doll along with pets, pastimes, hobbies, vehicles, and more. Future publishing will focus both on more books in DK’s classic formats, as well as new nonfiction formats.

Joe Books Signs with Hachette Book Group for Trade Distribution

Joe Books launched into kids’ publishing in 2014 with a Disney-licensed Frozen Cinestory Comic Book and has never looked back. In July, Hachette will take over trade distribution for the company, with Diamond continuing as its distributor into the comic book direct market.

Joe Books was founded by executives from the film and music industries and had published some entertainment-related e-books before the opportunity arose to publish Disney comics in North America. “That dramatically changed things,” says Steve Osgoode, president of Joe Books. “It catapulted Joe Books to a very different place.”

Cinestory Comic Books, which are comic book-style stories built around high-definition movie stills, remain the company’s best-known format. Joe Books publishes comic books and graphic novel bind-ups, as well as Cinestory books, for a variety of Disney properties (including The Descendants, its bestseller), and produces tie-ins for Marvel and DreamWorks Animation. A new series of books with Lucasfilm, based on the Disney XD series Star Wars Rebels, launches this quarter.

Fuller Brush Adds Licensee Publications International

Publications International has signed a deal with the Fuller Brush Co. for three books that feature household tips for housekeeping, kitchen and bath, and laundry, respectively. The books will release on June 1 and will be sold through Fuller Brush’s direct sales and e-commerce channels, as well as through traditional trade book channels.

Fuller’s licensing agent Alex Meisel, president of Alex Meisel & Co., notes that the books will help support the company’s branding and licensing efforts, as well as assisting it in expanding its customer base. “Fuller Brush has 85% brand recognition among boomers and up, and we’re reaching out to that demographic,” he says. “But the books will help us reach out to younger consumers as well.”

Fuller Brush launched in 1906 and became a leader in door-to-door sales of household products. New ownership came on board in 2013 and has been rejuvenating the brand. A licensing program launched three years ago, with a focus on categories that complement the company’s marketing tagline, “Live Fuller.” In addition to Publications International, licensees have been signed for vacuums, floor sweepers, bath and kitchen accessories, step stools, greenhouses, and debit cards, with future plans ranging from air and water filtration systems and dietary supplements to cooking products and personal care items.

In Brief

Publishers included on Warner Bros. Consumer Products’ list of licensees for The Lego Batman Movie include DK, Scholastic, Ameet, and Blue Ocean. Together they will release 21 titles.... Phoenix International launched its first books under the Encyclopaedia Britannica Kids brand, focused on preschoolers. The first seven titles include a listen-and-learn board book, a look-and-find title, and a boxed book-and-plush set, among others.... Insight Editions published Adventure Time: The Official Cookbook, which features in-world elements; the title is distributed by Simon & Schuster and produced under license from Cartoon Network.... Skyhorse Publishing debuted two trade paperback tie-in novels to History’s military drama Six, licensed by A+E Networks.... JLK Brand is the new licensing agent for author-illustrator Sandra Magsamen’s lifestyle brand. Her publishers include Scholastic for novelty books and Sourcebooks for picture and personalized books.... Valiant Entertainment licensed Big Viking Games to create mobile games based on its 2,000 characters, in a five-year deal.... Dark Horse is publishing a digital comic book tied to Conan Exiles, a digital game, under license from Funcom, and a digital comic tied to another game, Galaxy on Fire 3 – Manticore, under license from Deep Silver Fishlabs.

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Published on February 14, 2017 03:26

‘A World in Disarray’ Is a Calm Look at a Chaotic Global Order

Haass writes with brisk authority here, moving fluently between discussions of larger dynamics (like the role that astute statesmen with an understanding of the nuances of diplomacy can play in forging peace, or preventing disaster) and the specifics of tangled relationships in hot spots like Syria and Afghanistan.

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Richard Haass

Credit

Melanie Einzig

While readers may not agree with all its assessments, “A World in Disarray” provides a useful look at the current state of world affairs — put in perspective with a brief and compelling history of international relations from the Peace of Westphalia (treaties signed in 1648, ending the Thirty Years’ War) through the end of the Cold War; and an equally succinct analysis of the forces and events that have shaped today’s global landscape.

This volume covers some of the same ground that Henry A. Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski did in recent books. Like Kissinger in “World Order” (2014), Haass often focuses on the historical developments that have made the world both more interconnected and more subject to the forces of fragmentation. And he, too, is fascinated by how changes within a country — in this case, Brexit in Britain and the recent American election — can disrupt an international equilibrium.

Like Brzezinski in “Strategic Vision” (2012), Haass sees the United States playing a necessary, if not indispensable, role in carrying “a large portion of the burden of creating and maintaining order at the regional or global level” — a role that Trump, with his “America First” campaign, has often vociferously questioned. Haass writes that “the United States is and will likely remain the most powerful country in the world for decades to come,” and “no other country or group of countries has either the capacity or the mind-set to build a global order.”

In what may sound to readers like a warning to the Trump administration and its erratic approach to foreign and national security policy, Haass adds: “The United States has to be wary of sudden or sharp departures in what it does in the world. Consistency and reliability are essential attributes for a great power. Friends and allies who depend on the United States for their security need to know that this dependence is well placed. If America comes to be doubted, it will inevitably give rise to a very different and much less orderly world. One would see two reactions: either a world of increased ‘self-help,’ in which countries take matters into their own hands in ways that could work against U.S. objectives, or a world in which countries fall under the sway of more powerful local states, in the process undermining the balance of power.”

Disarray at home, he goes on, “is thus inextricably linked to disarray in the world.” He adds, “The two together are nothing short of toxic.”

In addition to providing an understanding of the continuing consequences of pivotal events (like the invasion of Iraq and the Arab Spring), Haass also offers quick assessments of some of the challenges on the world stage, from the danger posed by North Korea (a case in which he underscores the importance of consulting with allies Japan and South Korea, and with China) to the threat Russia poses to some of its small neighbors.

Of Vladimir V. Putin, Haass writes: “It is no exaggeration to say that he is less constrained by bureaucracy and colleagues than were his predecessors who oversaw the Soviet Union. Putin has ‘deinstitutionalized’ Russia and introduced a worrisome degree of personal rule.”

The last portion of this book, in which Haass lays out recommendations for dealing with “a world in disarray,” can feel cursory and rushed. But overall, this volume is a valuable primer on foreign policy: a primer that concerned citizens of all political persuasions — not to mention the president and his advisers — could benefit from reading.

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Published on February 14, 2017 02:25

Protecting Your Inner Life in Times of Political Turmoil

I recently read a powerful piece by Edwidge Danticat in the New Yorker reflecting on the recurrence of political trauma and the power of poetry—and recalling the familiar words of the great black poets who wrote into the political furor of the 60s, 70s, and 80s: Gwendolyn Brooks, June Jordan and Audre Lorde, incantations called out through time, streaming through space in emails, on scraps of paper taped to refrigerator doors, and carried within the people who have learned them by heart. Reading these brave clear words of Edwidge Danticat, I’m reminded of the importance of the inner life, the place from where such poetry comes. The inner life, and the necessity of enlarging and deepening that life, especially in a time as unsettled as ours when so many voices call for quick and necessary action.

We used to call the entity that resided there the inner self, or the soul. We used to call it character. We were to build our character as we lived our lives. How were we to build our character? We were to acknowledge a space within us where we could withdraw to consider, to recollect, to turn over ideas, to brood, to come to an understanding. It was where our conscience lived. And our task as humans was to feed the conscience—or the character, or the inner self—with discussion, reading, contemplation, art, stories, and in some cases, prayer.

Much has already been written about the externalizing of the private individual—performing a life in public through media, the delights and dangers of that externalization. But perhaps the greatest danger is the withering of the inner space—a space that if not acknowledged and nurtured closes up until we can no longer enter, and then we have nowhere to go within ourselves to rest or reflect.

We live in an economic system where everything, almost everything is commodified—everything can be sold for a price. And almost anything can be threatened. But there is a place within us no one can ever know. Within that place we hold all the books we’ve ever read, the music we’ve listened to, the paintings we’ve gazed at, the plays we’ve watched, the poems we’ve read. All the important conversations. We have within each of us a great library, a concert hall, a cathedral, a temple, a mediation space, and a field.

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This is a time when political action is necessary. Our nation is in chaos—our president appears to be so without an inner life that he acts cruelly, recklessly, and carelessly, without common civility.

But before and after political action, I want to remember to protect and preserve that space where moral action (and poetry) begins. To dwell within the space nourished by reading, by listening, by inner discourse, by music, by silence. To remember to sit still within that richness, and receptivity, and for a few minutes or more. To say and do nothing.

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Published on February 14, 2017 01:23

BookExpo Names Children’s Breakfast Authors

ReedPOP has announced the lineup for the 2017 Children's Book & Author Breakfast, which will take place on Friday, June 2, at this year’s BookExpo in New York City.

Today show co-anchor and NBC News chief legal correspondent Savannah Guthrie will host the breakfast and discuss her picture book, Princesses Wear Pants, co-written with Allison Oppenheim and illustrated by Eva Byrne. Guthrie will be joined onstage by authors Jason Reynolds, who will discuss his three forthcoming works (the YA Spider-Man novel Miles Morales and the novels Patina and Long Way Down); Jennifer Weiner to discuss her middle grade novel Little Bigfoot, Big City; and We Need Diverse Books founding member Marieke Nijkamp to talk about her upcoming YA novel Before I Let Go. An additional author announcement is forthcoming, ReedPOP said.

"Our Children’s Book & Author Breakfast is one of the most anticipated events of the show each year, attracting a large audience looking to discover breakout talent in the world of children’s and young adult literature," BookExpo event director Brien McDonald said in a statement. "We have an amazing lineup of established stars and emerging authors who are sure to offer an unforgettable morning of conversation."

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Published on February 14, 2017 00:22

February 13, 2017

Lt. Gen. Harold Moore, Whose Vietnam Heroism Was Depicted in Film, Dies at 94

“He was a phenomenal man of great strength and character, courageous and like a father to his troops who got most of his boys out of there after he landed in a hornet’s nest,” Mr. Gibson, who visited the general a few months ago, said on Monday in a phone interview.

General Moore later fended off an antiwar protest by Jane Fonda at a California base and oversaw the sweeping transition to an all-volunteer Army after the war. But no moment in his 32-year military career was as transformational as the brief American victory at I Drang, in shaping both his heroic reputation (he was George Armstrong Custer’s heir as commander of the Seventh Cavalry Regiment) and his view that America’s combat role in Vietnam was futile.

“It wasn’t our place to question,” General Moore wrote with Mr. Galloway in a follow-up book, “We Are Soldiers Still: A Journey Back to the Battlefields of Vietnam” (2008). “We were soldiers and we followed their orders. In times and places like this, where the reasons for war are lacking, soldiers fight and die for each other.”

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Seventh Cavalry after combat in 1965 at I Drang in South Vietnam." data-mediaviewer-credit="Neil Sheehan/The New York Times" itemprop="url" itemid="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/...
A wounded soldier from the First Battalion of the Seventh Cavalry after combat in 1965 at I Drang in South Vietnam.

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Neil Sheehan/The New York Times

The North Vietnamese retreated after the battle, but they went on, with the Vietcong, to wage a successful guerrilla war that ended in 1975 with the fall of Saigon, the South Vietnamese capital.

Years after General Moore retired from active duty in 1977, he visited I Drang with his North Vietnamese battlefield counterpart for an ABC documentary, publicly supported a global ban on the production and use of anti-personnel land mines, and likened the American invasion of Iraq to the protracted war in Vietnam, which, he wrote, ended after 10 years “with a hasty withdrawal just ahead of defeat.”

“His mantra,” his son David said, was “Hate war, love the American soldier.”

General Moore did both. Nicholas Proffitt, a former war correspondent, wrote of “We Were Soldiers Once” in The New York Times Book Review, “General Moore’s respect and affection for his troops is evident on every page, and one can understand why he became one of the legendary commanders in Vietnam.”

And why he hated war.

“As a glimpse into the abyss, into the bilious reality of war, it is a revelation,” Mr. Proffitt wrote. “As a reading experience, it’s a car crash of a book; you are horrified by what you’re seeing, but you can’t take your eyes off it.”

On Nov. 14, 1965, Hal Moore, at the time a lieutenant colonel and battalion commander, and about 450 troops from his First Battalion were ferried by helicopters to Landing Zone X-Ray, a field near the Drang River in South Vietnam, six miles from the Cambodian border. They stumbled on more than they had bargained for: three North Vietnamese regular army regiments that at times outmanned them 12 to 1.

“By midafternoon in 100-degree heat we were strongly outnumbered, taking heavy casualties in a cliffhanger fight to the finish,” the general wrote in a West Point yearbook.

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Mel Gibson, who played General Moore in the movie version of his book “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young,” described him as “like a father to his troops.”

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Paramount Pictures

Bloody hand-to-hand combat ensued on a battlefield punctuated by termite mounds the size of pickup trucks and bodies strewn amid the elephant grass. Never leaving the combat zone and remaining in the thick of the fight, General Moore delivered on a vow that endeared him to his troops: “I’ll always be the first person on the battlefield, my boots will be the first boots on it, and I’ll be the last person off. I’ll never leave a body.”

Finally, reinforcements and the firepower of helicopter gunships, fighter-bombers and American 105 mm howitzers positioned several miles away turned the tide.

“Unlike Custer,” General Moore said later, referring to Custer’s Last Stand in 1876 at the Little Bighorn, “we had major fire support.”

The American death toll at X-Ray was 79. As the reinforcements marched to a second landing zone named Albany, they suffered heavy casualties in an ambush that was largely covered up at the time. When the combat in both places ended, as many as 3,000 North Vietnamese and 234 Americans were dead.

By the end of November, the American toll in the I Drang Valley had risen to 305, branding it as the Valley of Death.

“Every one of us thought at least once we were going to die there,” Mr. Galloway said in an interview on Monday. “There was only one man who thought for certain we were going to prevail, and that was Hal Moore.”

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General Moore speaking at West Point in 2000, 23 years after his retirement from active duty.

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Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Harold Gregory Moore Jr. was born on Feb. 13, 1922, in Bardstown, Ky., then a city of about 2,000, where his father was an insurance agent. His mother was the former Mary Crume.

He was 15 when his father first suggested he consider West Point, provided he got a required recommendation from a United States senator. As a high school senior, though, all Hal was able to extract from Senator A. B. (Happy) Chandler was a patronage job in the Senate warehouse in Washington.

By the time he graduated from George Washington University in 1942, though, World War II had begun, and more appointments to military academies were available. This time he was successful, making it to West Point and graduating in 1945.

His wife, the former Julie Compton, died in 2004. In addition to his sons David and Stephen, he is survived by another son, Harold Gregory Moore III, known as Greg; two daughters, Julie Moore Orlowski and Cecile Moore Rainey; a sister, Betty Karp; a brother, Ballard; 12 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

After West Point, General Moore served in the Korean War and in Europe. He was deployed to Vietnam in 1965 and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for valor at I Drang.

Returning to the United States, he was assigned to plan for the withdrawal of troops from Vietnam; commanded Fort Ord in California, where he dealt with antiwar demonstrators, including Ms. Fonda; and was named the Army’s deputy chief of staff for personnel in Washington.

General Moore likened I Drang to the Spanish Civil War before World War II: a dress rehearsal for the tactics that both sides would employ for the rest of the war and a harbinger of a prolonged stalemate in seesaw battles over territory.

“He never claimed that was an American victory, but he prevailed,” Mr. Galloway said. “At the end of the day they left and we still occupied the ground, although after we left they came back.”

Correction: February 13, 2017

An earlier version of this article misspelled the location of one of Vietnam’s bloodiest wars in one reference. It was in the I Drang Valley in 1965.

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Published on February 13, 2017 23:20

A Generation After Roe v. Wade, the Fight Comes Back to Texas

On January 21st of this year I went with my sister and husband to the small, north Texas town of Denton, about 40 miles north of Dallas where I live, to walk in solidarity with the women’s marches that were being held all over the U.S. and, as it turned out, the world. Dallas is a small blue dot in a larger red sea, and I had some trepidation about going. Texans are, after all, wildly enthusiastic about their guns, and lately, increasingly confrontational toward their fellow citizens who differ, even slightly, from party and ideological lines, reserving their greatest ire for uppity, loudmouthed women. But I chose Denton, in part, because I thought Dallas would have a larger turnout of marchers, and Denton might need all the support it could get.

My dissenting views about certain issues have lately caused some seemingly irreparable damage with friends and some family members who have drawn an either/or line in the sand. Apparently, despite the fact that I grew up in Texas, believe in responsible gun ownership, support the police and the military, pay my taxes, salute the flag, etc., I am disqualified from being a patriotic, moral, and ethical human being because of my belief that women should have the right to make their own choices about their reproductive health. If I were Queen of the World I would make birth control methods free to disadvantaged women, and leave the decision to have an abortion, or not, to the women making those decisions.

People have often challenged me with, “But, what about adoption?” As the mother of an adopted child—a parent who waited for years before a child became available for placement—I would say, sure, great idea! But, only if the pregnant woman makes the choice for adoption, and volitionally carries the pregnancy to term.

I’ve held these beliefs for 40 years, but it seems that not only are these choices on the brink of disappearing, the responses toward those who believe in choice are more hostile, and punitive, than ever.

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I know that we, as a society, have had some difficult times coming to terms with our differing opinions in this regard. But it’s 2017 and, though Roe v. Wade remains the law of the land, it feels as though this issue is more divisive than ever.

In 1972 I was a student at the University of Texas, and the greater campus was still known collectively by the local inhabitants as Hippie Hollow. Even though Austin was the state capital, the most exciting thing to have happened to its citizens in a good while, at least off-campus and away from its earnestly partying fraternities and sororities, was the dedication of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum the year before.

But there was a mounting sense of activism that year. Neighborhood groups had started mobilizing to protect their residential areas from rapidly growing commercial office buildings, and preserving waterways and the surrounding wooded hills from developmental destruction. Local politicians suddenly found themselves pitted against the townspeople, business owners, and environmentalists.

The students at the University were escalating their own activism by continuing their marches against the Vietnam war, and in support of civil rights and women’s rights. Through a theater class, I heard about a group called TACT (Teen Aged Communication Theater), organized by Planned Parenthood to educate teens about pregnancy prevention and sexually transmitted diseases. Many of the students, both male and female, were dismally unprepared for the possibility (or the inevitability) of having sex immediately upon being handed a pitcher of free beer during Rush Week.

After volunteering for a few TACT performances, I became more interested in the work that Planned Parenthood had been doing, even beyond reproductive health. The clinic offered counseling for rape victims. At that time most of the incidents went unreported as the victim was often blamed, or blamed herself, for the attack. The clinic workers bandaged the cuts and bruises of gay students who’d been accosted or beaten, and provided psychiatric referrals to students who had mental health issues.

The following year, the Supreme Court handed down the landmark decision Roe v. Wade, which recognized the constitutional right to privacy, and a woman’s right to choose abortion. The legal fight had been led by an Austin attorney, Sarah Weddington, and she remains to this day the youngest person to have argued a successful Supreme Court case.

In 1973, I volunteered to help with the opening of the Downtown Austin Health Center on 7th Street, where it’s still open today. A lot of the student activists were jubilant about what they perceived as the forward movement of women’s rights. But other Austin residents were not so pleased. Their displeasure, though, was of the mild, scolding-parents kind, the “shame on you” kind, with a wagging finger thrown in for emphasis. The female volunteers who had helped to open the clinic were called “hussies,” and “disgraceful”; names that today would be considered quaint. I was never threatened with bodily harm, or stalked, or viciously attacked in a public forum. I never felt unsafe for voicing my opinions or beliefs.

Forty years later, and I can’t say I feel the same way. For decades I worked in both commercial enterprises and at the behest of the US Department of Defense, in the States and overseas. I’ve traveled to and worked in areas that have been considered unsafe for Americans in general, and for women in particular. But I never expected to feel unsafe in my own country for speaking out for basic human rights, which, for me, has always included a woman’s right to have control over her own body.

It’s heartbreaking, but it’s also motivating. And that’s why I keep walking.

The march in Denton was well attended and, ultimately, peaceful. A few opposing townspeople showed up, but it’s hard to be antagonistic when you’re greeted with a handshake, a smile and a fuzzy pink hat.

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Published on February 13, 2017 22:18

Love story: When journalism and online dating combine

A few weeks ago, my phone lit up with the familiar flash of an incoming text.

“OK. I have a date,” came the message from a friend who was just in the beginning stages of getting over a bad breakup. Attached was a screenshot of a cute, 30-something woman’s Bumble profile: A few smiling photos, both solo and with pals, and those key, short but cryptic lines of self-description.

My phone pinged again: “So can you do your recon thing?”

Dating in the modern era is terrible: An endless string of high hopes and dashed expectations, countless hours spent browsing profiles on various sites, and recurring nightmares of winding up alone while all your friends, it seems, have paired off and are creating families of their own. So what is a modern person to do? Well, while I can’t speak to the situation of all modern people, I can speak to the situation of modern writers, whose job it is to literally find out everything they can about a person, place, or thing, and then create a story, hopefully a compelling one, out of what they uncover.

And so I texted my friend, a non-writer, back three short words: “I’m on it.”

I didn’t start to date in earnest until after I’d finished my first-ever job in journalism. For two years I’d worked as a cub reporter at a very small-town weekly newspaper, covering everything from farming and agriculture to selectmen’s meetings (picture any scene from Parks & Rec) and high school musicals. Writing up to eight stories per week, work left little time for love, and in such a small town, the pickings were slim to begin with. When I moved to Boston to start a gig at a big city daily, leaving behind both a simpler way of life and an unrequited crush on a tall and bumbling British colleague, I found myself in a new place, with more free time but no network of friends. And so I started to date. At first I went out with men I met “in real life,” as I now call it. There was the bartender who asked for my number when I came in on a below-zero night in search of a stiff drink before a party where my college ex-boyfriend – the first to break my heart – would be in attendance. There was the restaurant owner who I met one night over a plate of perfect French fries. There was that other bartender – the one who worked at the same place as my best friend – who took me out for drinks at a dive bar, then to a five-star restaurant just before midnight to split a full tasting menu. My foray into online dating started soon afterward, first with a brief dabble on JDate, where I managed to find perhaps the site’s only red-headed Irish man, and later on OkCupid, where I met the man I thought I was going to marry. It was only after that breakup that apps like Tinder and Bumble and Hinge entered the picture.

Whether I met these men online or “in real life,” I realized right away that even awful dates with seemingly ill-fated matches (don’t get me started on the archeology professor who was arrested on a field trip for making a bomb threat in a cave), there was always the challenge of figuring out the facts about a person – and uncovering a good story in the process. It was this challenge, this discovery, that first drew me to writing, too. Only later on in my career did I come to appreciate the construction of a strong sentence, the beauty in a perfectly placed word, the beat of cadence; at first, I just fell in love with narrative.

And so, what I unintentionally found myself doing again and again was recreating my work life in my romantic one (to both good and bad effects), and utilizing the skills I had picked up interviewing sources, getting scoops, and finding material in the uncanniest of places.

Do your research – but know when to stop.

While it is possible for good interviews to happen on the fly, going into one prepared is usually a key step to success. In journalism, that often means reading up on a source and researching small biographical details like where they went to school or grew up. While it can feel pretty creepy, doing a little bit of digging before a date can be helpful, too, especially in an era with overflowing options to swipe left or right. Knowing a few details about a person before meeting them can better prepare you to really listen to the good stuff, to ask the right questions, or to feel comfortable sharing your own story. At the same time, there’s definitely a risk of doing too much research, both in writing and in dating – so if you find yourself at 2 a.m. going down an Instagram rabbit hole of a potential date, power down and walk away.

Ask questions.

While writers aren’t the only ones who can ask questions, I’ve found that my writer friends are particularly adept at it in social settings. And when they do it, I see people – shop clerks, strangers at cocktail parties, Uber drivers – relax around them and open up. Writers know that asking questions and creating an atmosphere of interest and trust is crucial to getting a source to talk. But this also requires balance – part of earning that trust with someone you’re interviewing or writing about involves not just listening but also offering tidbits about yourself; asking questions, yes, but also knowing when to share. It’s in that sweet spot that connection begins. The same is true on a date – be interested, ask; be vulnerable, share.

Stay until the end – you never know when your story might present itself.

In my first newspaper job, my editor used to make me stay till the very end of any meeting I covered. Ideally, she would say, be the last one to walk out. “You never know when your story might present itself,” was her motto. This came true one night when I was thinking about skipping out early on a meeting that included things like shellfish licenses and stone wall regulations on the agenda. I decided to stay, and just as the meeting was about to wrap up, one of those “mundane” issues sparked outrage in an attendee, who began to toss chairs around the small room. There was my lede. On dates, I usually apply this rule. People are rarely at their best or most authentic in a first meeting or in the first hour of a meeting. You never know when or where your lede might come from, so stay for that second drink, walk that extra block, or go for that next date. If there’s no story after that, move on. At least you tried.

Find an editor you trust (or just a friend with good judgment).

My first stab at online dating was a three-month stint on JDate. I hated it. After an unsuccessful date with that Irish man (in which he pulled nail clippers out of his pocket after coming up to my apartment for the first time), I went out with only one other man – a sweet guy, but there was no spark. I took a break from online dating for a while, which translated into a full-on dating rut. Enter my friend and “dating editor,” Molly. One night, she’d had enough of my rut, just as any good editor will have enough of their reporter’s writing block. “Come over,” she said one day. “I’m going to cook, we’re going to get drunk, and I’m going to write your OkCupid profile.” Over the past several years, Molly, a fellow writer and editor, has continued to be my sounding board, listening to the stories I’ve told about dating and giving her thoughts on which material has legs. When she met the man she would ultimately marry, they became something of an editing team for me, with her now-husband offering his male take on my profile, dates, or current partners. Like any good writer, I don’t let my editor make my decisions or change my piece so that it no longer sounds like me. But it helps to have someone who can look at a bunch of details and see a picture emerge, a narrative that just might be worth telling.

A few minutes after receiving that text from my friend, I responded with my editor’s opinion: The gal from Bumble was definitely cute and smart – information deduced from a LinkedIn page I tracked down and a few articles – and she seemed to care about some of the same issues that my friend did.

“Wow,” came the return text. “You should be in the CIA.”

Julia Rappaport is the managing editor of a Northeast food and cooking magazine. You can follow her at @Julia_Rappaport.

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The post Love story: When journalism and online dating combine appeared first on Art of Conversation.

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Published on February 13, 2017 21:15

AWP 2017: All Our Coverage

Here are all our daily stories of the AWP 2017 Conference, which took place in Washington D.C. between February 8-11.

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Published on February 13, 2017 20:15

When Do I Spell Out Numbers?

Q: Sometimes I see numbers spelled out (nine) and at other times I see them in numeric form (9). Which is correct? When do I spell out numbers and when do I write them out? —Kevin T.

A: Most writers—including me—took on this artistic profession for three reasons: We’re creative, we love to read and, most important, we want to avoid numbers at all costs. Yet somehow, even in writing, numbers have found a way to sneak back into our lives.

There are several rules of thought on how to handle writing numbers, but the most common is pretty simple. Spell out numbers under 10 (zero through nine), and use the numeric symbols for numbers 10 and up. I bought eight candy bars from the vending machine. I average eating 29 candy bars per month.

There are some exceptions to the rule. For example, spell out all numbers that begin a sentence. Forty-seven-thousand contestants were turned down for “American Idol.” Eleven were selected. Of course, there’s an exception to the exception: Don’t spell out calendar years, even at the front end of a sentence. 1997 was the year I met my wife. And, if you don’t feel like writing those long, awkward-looking numbers, just recast the sentence. American Idol turned down 47,000 contestants. I met my wife in the magical year of 1997.

Also, there are other instances where the under-10/over-10 rule doesn’t apply. Always use figures for ages of people (“He’s 9 years old”), dates (February 14), monetary amounts ($8), percentages (14 percent) and ratios (2-to-1).

Again, this is a style issue and other sources may suggest different ways of handling numbers. So please, no hate mail. And let’s agree not to talk about numbers for the rest of the day—they make my head hurt.

Check out these Grammar Rules to help you write better:
Sneaked vs. Snuck
Who vs. Whom
Lay vs. Lie vs. Laid
Which vs. That
Since vs. Because
Ensure vs. Insure
Home in vs. Hone in
Leaped vs. Leapt

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Brian A. Klems is the editor of this blog, online editor of Writer’s Digest and author of the popular gift book Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl: A Dad’s Survival Guide to Raising Daughters.

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