Beth Kephart's Blog, page 152

The Age of Miracles/Karen Thompson Walker: Reflections

A few months ago, at the Push to Publish conference, Kerri and Marc Schuster were emphatic:  Read The Age of Miracles.  I bought the book at once, but it has taken me this long (oh, life) and another completely sleepless night to finally give my full attention to a story that is, in fact, important, wise, and profoundly well told. 



We talk a lot (I talk a lot) about crossover young adult books—those books that star a young hero or heroine but appeal to adults who remember, adults with capacious hearts.  The Age of Miracles is an adult book, a coming-of-age story, that crosses right back over toward teens—that will be found in high school classrooms, that should be read by those who still have a chance to change this world. The Age of Miracles is a warning.  It is a call (never pedantic, never shrill, never arrogant) to environmental arms.



Walker's heroine is in middle school in California when the rotation of the earth begins to slow.  Days grow longer and so do nights.  Real timers and clock timers emerge.  Grass singes.  Birds die.  The sun cruelly burns.  Whales die.  Tides shift.  Shelters are built.  Peanut butter is stockpiled.  There is a syndrome.



And we readers believe all of this, we hardly question the premise, because the repercussions of Walker's slowing earth are so aligned with, are but merely a slight exaggeration of, the consequences of our own failed living, and because Walker writes with such calm authority.  Her heroine tells her story from the remove of but a few years.  We know she has somehow survived these catastrophic conditions, and we sense that time is running out, but nowhere does Walker play her scenario for its sensationalism.  Walker creates this fictional world with deep tenderness and a clear love for all that we ourselves are systematically destroying.



Walker also cares clearly for her characters, for her young Julia, whose father is distant and whose mother is self-involved, whose best friend abandons her, whose new best friend is also a first love.  Julia is lonely.  Julia is unsure.  Nothing in Julia's life is certain.  The Age of Miracles renders old-world pangs within a new-world crisis with very simplest of language.



The effect is stunning.

The Florence novel reaches its halfway mark

When you write as I do—in between things and only after everything else is done—you begin to wonder if this percolating creature is any good, if you will want it (someday) to belong to you.  I have been working at the oddest hours of night on Florence, then putting the novel aside, then returning. I have not been able to hold the whole in my hands.  I have been frustrated by fragments.



Last night, in the sweetest chocolate fold of 4 AM, I returned to Florence, read these first 120 pages through.  It coheres, I think, and it interests me deeply.  It is the book that I want to keep writing.



And so I send the first 25,000 words to Tamra Tuller, now at Chronicle Books.  I want the conversation we will have as this story and its people take me deeper into their strange and (to me) beautiful and abiding mystery.

this is what it is to love

and thank you to Kathye Fetsko Petrie for sending it my way.

from the return to the Florence novel, this small moment

There
were olive trees now on both sides of the road.  The air was the color of pearls and sea moss and the
sometimes sudden wild purple of flowers that erupted from vines tangled in
among the branches or caught in the thatched places of the wall.  Some of the stray cats that had made
their way here were curled about the tree trunks, waiting for the fog to burn off, and we walked alone together, Jack and me, until a girl with a bike appeared at the top of the road
and sped toward us, whooshing at accelerating speed, a skateboard tied to her
back. Jack turned and watched her fly. 
He stood there facing east and down, while I climbed west and high.

In the midst of the Florence novel, stuck, I chose

to move my story (for the moment) into a new tense.  It was the only way for me to see the story new, to get the characters moving more quickly, to take a landscape and give it shape and meaning, to accelerate the plot.



Here, then, is where I have been since 5 AM, along the great wall of Fort Belvedere.  Four new paragraphs for the Florence novel, a book that I had left untouched for weeks.


We move ahead, in stolen time.

Dangerous Neighbors, the paperback with the discussion guide, arrives

Before Small Damages and You Are My Only, there was Dangerous Neighbors (Egmont), my Centennial Philadelphia story featuring twin sisters, a boy named William, and the fair that ushered in the idea of the modern.


Yesterday, the paperback edition of Dangerous Neighbors arrived, complete with its fancy discussion/teaching guide.  The book will go on sale in a month or so, just ahead of the release of Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent, the prequel that features 1871 Philadelphia and that animal-rescuing boy named William. 



My thanks to Elizabeth Law and the Egmont team.

Small Damages: a book, and a cover, blessed

And so, in this week of breathtaking kindness, I want to thank some special people for throwing light my way.



Ed Nawotka, for inviting me to give the keynote address at the Publishing Perspectives conference and for subsequently running the talk today on the Publishing Perspectives site.  To all of you have retweeted the talk, thank you.



Jen Doll, for including Small Damages as one of the top 25 book covers here, on the Atlantic Wire, and for making this the year to remember with her New York Times Book Review thoughts about the book last July.



The YALSA folks for naming Small Damages to the BFYA list.



CMRLS Teen Scene for putting Small Damages on the Printz watch.



A.A. Omer, for giving Small Damages this glorious five-star review.



My friends, old and new, for being there.  My agent, Amy Rennert, for her enthusiasm.  And while this has absolutely nothing to do with Small Damages, a huge thanks to the Gotham team for being so wholly supportive of Handling the Truth , a book due out next August.  I will do everything in my power to earn your faith in me.



My father, for buying a copy of Small Damages, and making a go of reading it, even though it's not exactly this history lover's kind of book.



I have been in the book business a very long time.  I will hold onto these gifts, in memory, for the rest of my life.

Lamp Lighters and Seed Sowers: Tomorrow's YA: the keynote address, in full

I was so grateful for the opportunity to give the keynote address at the Publishing Perspectives Conference, YA: What's Next, held at the hospitable Scholastic auditorium in New York City this past Wednesday.



Today the fine folks at Publishing Perspectives share the text in full, along with the illustrations by William R. Sulit.  These illustrations were modeled with 3D software, all with the exception of the beautiful face and hands, which belong to my niece


In her keynote address from the YA: What’s Next? publishing conference,
author Beth Kephart makes an impassioned case for YA books that are
heartfelt, authentic and empowering.......



(Just added:  gratitude for a week of kindness toward Small Damages.)

What is the what in publishing? How funny is Anne Lamott? And Alyson Hagy: thank you.

New York City was at its hospitable best yesterday.  Through the windows of a train I watched the sun both rise and set on Manhattan.  In between I opined on the future of YA at the Publishing Perspectives Conference, saw old friends (Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, Jennifer Brown, Laura Geringer, Melissa Sarno, Dennis Abrams, Ed Nawotka), made new ones, did a little Amen shout as Doris Janhsen, David Levithan, Francine Lucidon, Eliot Schrefer, and Dennis Abrams (pictured above), reminded people what publishing is really about, or should be about:  good books.  By mid-afternoon, I was sitting with the remarkable team at Gotham, discussing the future of Handling the Truth.  I was thinking—truth—how lucky I am.  (Then got even luckier sneaking in a little stolen time with Jessica Shoffel of Philomel and my own son, at 30th Street Station.)



It took every bit of driving craftswomanship I have (and there isn't much) to get to Anne Lamott's talk (and promotion of her new book on prayer, Help Thanks Wow) at Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church by the 7:30 start.  My father had saved a seat for me in the balcony, and a lucky thing that was, for there were at least 1,000 people gathered in this church where I grew up, wed, and baptized my son.  Anne does what I cannot do.  Talks without a plan ("I have prepared nothing," she began), works her way toward a theme, gets grace right out there, where it belongs, and triggers a bout of group hysteria with a single word (Okay) and a prop (my father's pen).



And so we laughed.  And so it was ten before I finally got home, after a day that had begun at 3 AM.  The mail had been brought in.  There was a card, the smart, precise handwriting of an amazing writer whom I love.  Alyson Hagy, you of the million things to do, you of the bad bronchitis, Good Lord, girl, you didn't have to.  But I love this from you.  I will treasure it, always.

Tomorrow: A Day so Full, so Rich

5:26 AM Train to Philadelphia



6:30 AM Train to NYC



8:30 AM Pre-conference conversations with my dear friends Jennifer Brown (our nation's ambassador for children's books), Laura Geringer (editor of five of my YA books), Rahna Reiko Rizzuto (a very dear friend with whom I have strolled so much of New York (and Central Park)), and Melissa Sarno (the fab blogger at This, Too, and the brain child behind the title of Handling the Truth ). I'll also have the great pleasure of seeing, again, Ed Nawotka and Dennis Abrams of Publishing Perspectives and, later, Eliot Schrefer. 



9:30 AM Lamp Lighters and Seed Sowers:  Tomorrow's YA/

Publishing Perspectives Conference, Keynote Address, Scholastic Building, New York City



10:30 AM: Drawing the Line: What's the Difference Between a YA and an Adult Book?/

Publishing Perspectives Conference Panel, with Andrew Losowsky, Books Editor, Huffington Post, Aimee Friedman, Senior Editor, Scholastic Trade, Elizabeth Perle, Editor, Huffington Post Youth Network, and Dan Weiss, Editor-at-large, St. Martin's Press



2:00 PM  Marketing meeting with the very good people of Gotham/Penguin (launching Handling the Truth next August)



3:15ish PM  Grabbing a hug from the one and only Jessica Shoffel of Philomel/Penguin (who took such good care of Small Damages)



4:40 PM Train from NYC to Philly, second train from Philly to Bryn Mawr in time to see...



7:30 PM  Anne Lamott, speaking at Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, where I will be joined by Deacon Supreme, my own father, Horace Kephart



I will do nothing on Thursday, or almost nothing.  But tomorrow, I will leap, headlong.