Beth Kephart's Blog, page 213

Dangerous Neighbors: Yes, But what does it mean? AND a Savvy Interview

One of the most frequently asked questions about my Centennial novel, Dangerous Neighbors, has nothing to do with plot or character and everything to do with the title.



What, I am asked, does it mean?



Today a kind student from St. Joseph's University wrote in search of an answer.  I said that I would share my thinking here.  This second post for my day also gives me a chance to give another shout out to dear Serena, who has posted a You Are My Only interview on her blog today, and packaged it with a darned generous contest.  Please go visit Savvy Verse & Wit to find out what I think about the Emmy vs. Sophie debate, what kept me awake at night, and the things I do or do not do to maintain some kind of balance.  Follow the rules, and you'll be entered into the contest.



Thank you so much, Serena.



And now — back to that Dangerous Neighbors question, that confounding title.  There are several pairs of dangerous neighbors in the book.  Primarily the title refers to the neighborhood in which the action takes place—there, on one side of the avenue, is Shantytown and there, on the other, are the fairgrounds.  The past and the future, vice and invention, showcase and (on one day) fire.  Dangerous neighbors.



But we also class divisions in the novel—William and Katherine, Bennett and Anna.  The twins have been warned, but they find themselves leaning toward away from their "own proper" social realm.  What happens?



And finally, some 10 million people visited the Centennial fairgrounds over the course of six months, many of them hailing from all around the world.  They brought change to Philadelphia—new languages, new cultures, new ways of seeing.  Some Philadelphians viewed those folks as dangerous.  They were suspicious of their temporary new neighbors.

My house is lit by trees, my heart quickens with gratitude

I am having a small dinner party this evening—an early Thanksgiving Day meal with friends.  That means that I spent much of yesterday polishing things, trying to see my house the way others might see it.  I realized, as I worked, that my little house is lit by trees.  (Later in the afternoon the house was lit by Kelly Simmons, who stopped by with a manuscript in progress I have been begging to read and a bunch of autumnal calla lilies.)



This morning I did not turn the computer on at once—wanted a few spare moments of quiet to reflect and think before I got into the business of the day.  When I did dial into the world, I discovered a most outrageously compassionate, well-written, and deep-thinking review of You Are My Only, penned by Serena Agusto-Cox, a reader, writer, poet, and mom who advocated so fiercely on behalf of this book, even long before she had read it.  True faith—oh so rare, and so appreciated.  Serena was one of the YAMO Treasure Hunt winners, and so I have had the pleasure now of reviewing her own work.  She has Facebooked and believed and conducted giveaways—even invited me to participate in a YAMO interview—the only YAMO interview on record (please check back later today for that).



I don't have the capacity to fully state how much this kind of support has meant to me—how much it means to any author.  But I will share just a few words of Serena's review here, with the hope that you will visit her blog and find out more about what she reads and how she sees:

You Are My Only is an emotional powerhouse drawing redemption out of the shattered pieces of lives rendered asunder by a single event.  Through faith and love these characters can begin the heal, rebuild, and flourish.  What more could readers ask for?  Stunning, precious, and captivating from beginning to end.

Thank you so much, Serena.

"Success is when the world returns your faith": my conversation with editor Lauren Wein

When I started this blog more than four years ago, I could not imagine what it might become or where it would take me.  I vaguely remember the early blogging months, those fragile missives I put out into the world.  Was anybody listening?



But we do, eventually, find each other out here, and one of the very special people blogging has brought into my life is Lauren Wein, an editor of impeccable taste, huge heart, and graceful fortitude in an era in which so much about publishing is being recalibrated.  It was my blog review of Book of Clouds that began our conversation, but I have had the privilege since then of reading and loving the enormously interesting and original Lauren list; just yesterday, I ordered her newest book, Shards. Lauren is smart and thoughtful; I trust her sensibilities.  When she agreed to a conversation with me about her new role as senior editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and her continuing interest in global stories, I counted myself lucky.



Here, then, featured on the front page of the fabulous on-line magazine, Publishing Perspectives, is Lauren Wein.  For those who are interested in learning even more about Lauren, I highly recommend this powerful essay about the making of Francisco Goldman's novel, Say Her Name.



My first story for Publishing Perspectives, on the making of the international bestseller Between Shades of Gray (Tamra Tuller, Philomel), can be found here.

Last evening, at the Chester County Book & Music Company,

I read a little from You Are My Only and talked about where my books come from.  But far more important to me was this:  I stood in one of the great independent bookstores (think of this:  the children/YA section of the store is far bigger than my entire house) among kindhearted booksellers, emerging writers (look for K.M Walton's Cracked in mid-December and send good thoughts to Ilene Wong), my tremendous publicist Ellen Trachtenberg, my good friend and Shire colleague, Charlene McGrady, two friends from twenty years ago, and these five West Chester University students, all taking a course in childhood literacy. 



(The lovely young lady in pink also brought her boyfriend along, a history major looking forward, he says, to an upcoming trip to Prague and Berlin, two of my favorite places in the world.)



We talked for a long time and closed the store.  I drove home over leaf-scattered roads, grateful for booksellers and friends and grateful, too, for teachers who send their students out into the world in search of brand new stories.

You know those glasses I lost, that camera? ...

They have been returned!  Yes.  Here was the very last photograph that had I taken before I whimsically (obviously) decided to leave the camera at the Rutgers-Camden podium and head off for a slice of cheese.  Never to return to the podium and leaving the mess of finding the camera/glasses and returning them to me to the very dear and always precise Lisa Zeidner (she's in this photograph, hiding) and her contingent of Rutgers/Camden security folk.



I am happy, in my reunited condition. And grateful.

Revisiting (and novelizing) Tango Fire

In late January of this year, my husband and I escaped to the city, an adventure I wrote about here.  We were there to see an extraordinary troupe of tango dancers who were taking their show, Tango Fire, around the world and had stopped for the afternoon in Philly.  Later that evening, at Amada, I turned and saw the dancers behind me—these marvelous, acrobatic creatures out of costume and laughing and willing, as it turned out, to let me sit briefly among them.



Such odd and beautiful conjunctions are not easily forgotten, and lately I've been writing the scene into this adult novel of mine—changing winter to summer and evening to morning and rearranging the dancers' heights, but not their spirits.   



There is no need to inflate their generosity.

Small Damages, and stretching the sentence

I have been focused this week on sentences—on what happens when we go beyond mere reporting and plot advancement, and listen for song.  My books are written over the course of many years.  Often, I'm frustrated with a single passage—can't get past its boxy, angular, or explanatory language.  For a long time, sadly, I stay stuck.



Sometimes it's not the sentences themselves that are broken, but my ability to imagine deeper. That was the case with this small sequence of sentences, from my forthcoming Seville novel, Small Damages (Philomel).  The passage cited directly below is the way this small moment from the book appeared for years in my drafts.  Note the hard and unhelpful (unlyrical) stop.

I nod. My breasts are swollen sore above the lump of you.  I don't get sick anymore.  I don't sit on the bathroom floor fisting the toilet, or lie there afterward, sobbing.  I don't.  But everywhere I'm sore.

This next and final version is, in my opinion, what the passage needed to be.  The useless repetition of "sore" has been replaced with a more realized vision, and a small story.

I nod. My breasts are swollen sore above the lump of you. I don't get sick anymore. I don't sit on the bathroom floor fisting the toilet, or lie there afterward, sobbing. I don't. But everywhere is the flail of you, your necklace of bones, your hardly skin, your fingernails; you already have them. In health class, eighth grade, we watched the movie, we saw how it is. The pearl squiggled out with a tail. The curl like a fish protecting. The webbing in between, just temporary.

My sentence obsession was inspired by NaNoWriMo, and is part of this contest.  A signed copy of Small Damages or You Are My Only will be sent to the winner, as well as a celebratory moment on this blog. 



By the way, isn't that baby beautiful?  She belongs to Miss Cristina, Mr. Jeremy, and Little Eva.[image error]

Still thinking about sentences (and Pablo Neruda)

Last night, my enormously gracious hostesses at St. Joseph's University—Ann Green and April Lindner—shared their students with me.  Some had read Dangerous Neighbors.  Some had read You Are My Only.  All of them, many in the graduate program, spend their days thinking about words and writing.



I talked about the future of young adult literature.  I also continued to talk about sentences.  Why they matter.  How they are crafted.  What we put at risk if we, as a nation, a culture, foist only plots upon one another, and not song.



Yesterday on this blog I shared some of my own sentences in the making—a beginning place, a mid place—as well as a reminder of a NaNo contest I am conducting.  Last night, at St. Joe's, I read from that same James Wood essay in The New Yorker that I celebrated here not long ago—that lesson in beautiful writing. 



Today I mean only to share these few words from a Pablo Neruda poem.  These are simple lines, simple words.  No pyrotechnics, no self-conscious gloss, no unnecessary intricacies.  Good sentences, I am saying, don't have to be complex.  But they must always be true.



From Neruda:

Only the shadows

know

the secrets

of closed houses,

only the forbidden wind

and the moon that shines

on the roof

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Editing the sentence: This is what I am talking about

I wrote the other day of a post-NaMoWri contest.  An editing exercise focused quite simply on the sentence.  The details and prize are described here.  I hope you'll enter in.



I am interested in the sentence—its arc, its clarity, its shape, its purpose.  I happen to think that it matters.  And so today I thought I would share a little of my own editing process.  These sentences below are from a novel-in-progress.  The first series is from the raw first draft.  With them, I am very baldly, without artistry, writing down what happens.  Making a record.

She hid the photographs beside the Leica beneath the bed.  She told Vin that she had been out in the garden and had turned to see a family of deer at the forest's edge.  She gave great detail to a lie too easily spun:  She had seen a buck and two does, and she had chased them.

Here, then, are those sentences two drafts later (with many more drafts, no doubt, still to come).  I have concerned myself not only with the what here, but with the rhythm and the movement of the words.  It's still not perfect, but it has been improved:

She hid the photographs beneath the bed, made up some story.  There had been deer, she said, at the forest's edge—a buck and two does by the stream.  They had stood there not moving, or perhaps one cusped ear of the buck had shivered—a sign, Becca told Vin, a beckoning. 

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A few upcoming events

Just a few things, should they be of interest:



Tomorrow evening, November 7, beginning at 6:30 PM, I'll be at the Haub Executive Center of St. Joseph's University talking about the future of young adult literature, reading from You Are My Only, and convening (and cavorting) with some early readers of the book.  A huge thank you to April Lindner and Ann Green, as well as to Jane Satterfield, who introduced me to April more than a year ago.



On Wednesday, November 9, starting at 7:00 PM, I'll be in West Chester, at the fabulous Chester County Book & Music Company (West Goshen Center) for a You Are My Only reading.  Last week I read from Emmy's chapters.  That night I plan to read from Sophie's.  Whatever happens, I'll be grateful to be inside this fantastaic independent bookstores.  A big thank you to Thea Kotroba.



Finally—and this won't happen for a few months yet, but I'm so excited about it that I want to share early word—some of the very best in the business will be gathering at The Spiral Bookcase, another indie!, in Manayunk, PA, next March 24 for an afternoon extravaganza of teen literature.  We're still working out the details, but know this:  Susan Campbell Bartoletti, A.S. King, April Lindner, Keri Mikulski, Elizabeth Mosier, and I will join together for an afternoon that promises to be all kinds of wonderful.