Elizabeth Fama's Blog, page 8

MY FINISHED BOOK!

My editor sent me a finished copy of Monstrous Beauty today. What a glorious surprise. I burst into tears of joy when I opened the package (I was expecting an ARC of one of my tour mates). It's stunning in person. I'm not exaggerating when I say that the book glows. And there was a total surprise on the back cover!

These are all taken in natural light. Look at her luminescent back! I love the spine. I would choose that book off a shelf. Inside left flap. Eerie water! Popping letters! Inside right flap. And on the back...what have we here?!

HOLY SMOKES! The kiss up close! You know you want to study it.The paper is beautiful and thick, the font is old-fashioned and perfect, and the hardcover case itself (under the dust jacket) is ivory, with the texture of old paper, or perhaps leather. The whole result is so pleasing. I can't wait until everyone has a chance to hold one in their hands.

Thank you, thank you to my wonderful publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Massachusetts Book Signing!

Do you live near Boston or Cape Cod? If so, I'd love to meet you at my Plimoth Plantation book signing on Friday, September 7.

I'm so excited to go there, because the entire book takes place in Plymouth, and the main character is an interpreter at Plimoth Plantation.

Here's a virtual postcard that I'm mailing to you across the ether! And here's the registration link. There will be food and drink (plus a cash bar). The event is free! Please join me!

Have You Read the Monstrous Beauty ARC?

Monstrous Beauty will be released in 29 days. This is the month when a lot of bloggers and reviewers pick up their ARCs for the first time (which is pretty exciting for me). If you're one of those people, or if you've already read the ARC, thank you so much, and this note is for you.
There are three missing lines of dialogue at the very bottom of page 32. (I assume NetGalley versions show page numbers, too? If not, the location is a few paragraphs into Chapter 5.) 
Without those lines, a tiny thread is left dangling. And since I was obsessive about those darned threads, I want you to know what the finished copy will look like on the bottom of page 32 and the top of page 33: 
"Peter?" Hester asked, getting out of the car, her heart already on its way.
"I can't stay long, I have to go to a reception for an exhibit of old toys at Pilgrim Hall. My dad is letting them use my great-great-great-great--" He counted on his fingers. "--Aunt Adeline's doll."
"A half hour," Hester promised. "And you're already dressed for the reception."
"All right," Peter agreed. "There won't be much beach right now, but I'm with you."
A seemingly ho-hum conversation, but trust me, it's important. (Unfortunately, discussing its importance would be spoilerific.)

Special thanks to my eagle-eyed writing partner, Carol Saller, for noticing the omission.  

Kids Nowadays...

I've been researching period clothing, and came across this passage in a 1427 sermon by Saint Bernardino of Siena. He's chastising young men for dressing inappropriately. Note that the hose men and boys wore at the time were two separate stockings, held up by laces tied to eyelets in the doublet (a snug, buttoned jacket).

You, young man, I want to start with you. When you go about wearing tight hose on your legs, with laces all around it, with your leg exposed, and your hose undone and broken, and your little doublet riding up to your belly, with this behavior you clearly show what you are. In the same way when you return home, you take your doublet off in front of sisters and sisters-in-law and your female relatives, and they see all sorts of crudeness, and with this sometimes one goes on to other things...You, young man, don't you care about anything? Know that God does not like it when you wear hose, or the way you wear it, with the leg open or cut up, and with your little doublet so short...

He goes on to criticize the giornea, an overgarment that's open at the sides and held in place by a belt, creating tight folds:

Have you considered how the giornea is made? It's made like a small blanket for horses, with fringes at its sides and at its feet, and so you wear clothes just like an animal. This means that on the outside you are a dressed-up animal. Judging from the fact that you dress like an animal on the outside, one can assume that you must be an animal on the inside as well.

In 1497, Friar Domenico da Pescia, who was Savanarola's appointee to oversee the reformation of Florentine youths, admonished them to "keep your hair a proper length," because many young men were growing it past the appropriate mid-ear length.

It's also fun to see paintings where fifteen-century teenagers are behaving like, well, teenagers. See the cluster of frisky young adults in the bottom right corner of this painting, The Allegory of April, by Francesco del Cossa in the Palazzo Schifanoia:


The more things change, the more they stay the same.

From: Clothes and Teenagers: What Young Men Wore in Fifteen-Century Florence, by Ludovca Sebregondi (in The Premodern Teenager, edited by Konrad Eisenbichler)

Fierce Reads Tour Dates and Locations

In September I'm going on tour with Ann Aguirre (Outpost), Lish McBride (Necromancing the Stone), and Marissa Meyer (Cinder; Scarlet)!
This is a big deal, since I try to never go anywhere.
If you live in one of these cities, please come see us!
Tempe, ArizonaTues., September 18, 7 PM (mountain)
Changing Hands Bookstore

Denver, ColoradoWed., September 19Tattered Cover Book Store
Saint Louis, Missouri (Jessica Brody [52 Reasons to Hate My Father] will also be on this stop)Thurs., September 20Left Bank Books
Cincinnati, OhioFri., September 21, 7 PM (eastern)Joseph-Beth Booksellers
Mequon, WisconsinSat., September 22, 2 PMNext Chapter Bookshop
Asheville, North Carolina (Marissa Meyer will not be on this stop)Sun., September 23, 3 PMMalaprop's Bookstore/Cafe
I'll also give a talk and a book signing at Plimoth Plantation, in Plymouth, MA, on Friday, September 7, at 5:30 PM.

High School Math, Applied to Literature!

Judging from the general paucity of comments, you guys are missing two fun posts that I co-wrote with my husband (using the generous data collection services of Jen Baker). They're languishing over at the marvelous blog Someday My Printz Will Come .

You should be reading them! They're posts about the Printz award! They have numbers in them! And graphs!

The first post says, among other fascinating things, that Printz Winners and Honors are just as likely to receive fewer than three stars as more than three stars from the six major review journals.* The post also shows that realistic fiction wins the Printz most often, with fantasy a distant second. All other genres (historical fiction, poetry, non-fiction, biography, and memoir) seem to be given honor awards rather than the gold.

The second post, which is equally sexy, shows the probability of winning a Printz or an honor given that you've earned as star from one of the six major journals. Interestingly, Horn Book gives out the fewest young-adult stars, but is the best at "predicting" Printz awards.

Both posts reflect my interest in bringing quantitative analysis to children's literature. Show me the numbers!

*The six review journals are Booklist, The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, Horn Book, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and School Library Journal

My Interview at A Backwards Story

Bonnie over at A Backwards Story has interviewed me for her "Splash into Summer" feature (which is co-hosted by Literally Jen). I guarantee it's the only interview you'll ever read that references Ondine, Hellboy, Howl's Moving Castle, and Fullmetal Alchemist in one breath.

Dear Vince

I forgot to tell you 
Before you died That I've been using slice dropshots On my brother ChrisLearned from you this last year.

Cross-court dribbles
Out of place
In The Clash of the Titans,
Devastating
When sprinkled sparingly.

I remembered to say I treasured spending time with youEven when we had to rest
Between every point.

But what I should have said
What would have conveyed 
I love youWas that I came out aheadIn tennis skills.

This post has been removed.

Thank you for taking the time to visit this link. I've removed the original post because it stirred up so much controversy, and upset some readers, which was not my intent. Thanks to everyone who offered their thoughts about what should be done with ARCs after the publication date of the book. I read every comment with interest.

SHINY! NEW! The Dilemma for Hyped Debut Authors

Debut authors are all the rage right now: being a debutante is a marketing and sales point; a thing to build Goodreads lists around. There's even a blogger reading/reviewing challenge devoted to debut works.* Lately the word "debut" is akin to a shiny "New!" banner on a cereal box. And while many authors have stunning debuts (A Step From Heaven, How I Live Now, Looking for Alaska, and Where Things Come Back are all Printz winners that were debuts), there is a disturbing trend in the last couple of years for publishing houses to bid in a frenzy for first-time authors, not only pushing up the price (and therefore the subsequent marketing budget) of the manuscript, but also typically forcing the deal into a series or multi-book contract. Recently, off the top of my head, Marie Lu's Legend sold at auction with six interested publishers, and Gennifer Albin's Crewel had seven agents and then five publishers bidding for it. Both will be first books in a series.

I haven't yet read either of these books, and I'm inclined to believe that the excitement is warranted from a marketing perspective (Legend's movie rights sold to CBS Films a mere two months after it debuted, and it will be developed and produced by Temple Hill of The Twilight Saga), but what I'm talking about today is the authors' careers and what's best for their writing. To me, learning to write is a lifelong craft, and you need breathing room to cultivate it when you're young, not pressure to produce Part Two in less than a year. Heavy hype and whirlwind tours for your first book may sound glamorous, but they keep you from working well and quietly on your next piece. Insta-success sets up internal expectations that are hard to put out of your mind while you're writing. Working on a massive series rather than crafting standalones at the beginning of your career means that you also don't have time to delve into your potential interest in other genres and styles of writing (not everyone experiments, but some writers grow a lot when they do). Finally, the rush to produce a-book-a-year for a series means that the editing process gets cranked up to a pace that prevents the sort of tightness and polish that make good works great.

Can you name M.T. Anderson's first book? I'll bet you're tempted to say Feed. But it's actually Thirsty, a horror novel about a boy whose adolescence brings on his latent vampirism. Tobin explored his voice and played with the teenage themes that interested him in Thirsty, and then he practiced again on Burger Wuss, and then he wrote Feed.

If I were a debut author, I'd be nervous about hype. Authors I adore like Megan Whalen Turner, Melina Marchetta, Tobin Anderson, and Philip Pullman all had that growing room—the peace to produce without fanfare. They've been uncovering their voices organically over many years, and telling the stories that keep them awake and refuse to not be told. They each had a chance to write for themselves before writing for others.

*To be fair, there's also a Sophomore Reading Challenge, but there are no junior or senior challenges!