Mike Jung's Blog, page 21
July 21, 2014
Jump in, or Die
By Amber Lough
Why is this white, straight, CIS-gendered girl writing for Diversity in YA? Well, besides the obvious being that I bribed Cindy Pon with copious amounts of azuki-bean dumplings, it’s probably because I wrote The Fire Wish, a distinctly Middle East-focused Fantasy.
I’d say it…
Sometimes people disagree with me
I don’t constantly post stuff that’s political in nature, but I’m not terribly shy about it. People respond, of course, and it’s been interesting to discover who among my FB friends disagrees with the things I post, and in what way. That should be expected, I suppose - my FB friends collectively skew in the politically progressive direction, but it’s a big old world. People have lots of different opinions. So I’ll discover that specific people I already lik...
July 19, 2014
Toughness
I’m not naturally tough in the way our society tends to define it, which has been a complicated thing throughout my life. I’ve experienced plenty of moments in which an ability to step up and be confrontational, respond forcefully to aggression, and not turn the other cheek would probably have been a good thing. These days I worry about it most in relation to my son - he’s a sweet, gentle, affectionate boy, and we live in a society that does not value those qualities in boys...
July 15, 2014
Jay
The very first time I met Jay Asher was at the SCBWI Summer Conference in 2010. We were in a big crush of people in the banquet hall, it was chaos, I introduced myself on the spur of the moment, and I’d be shocked if Jay remembers. I remember thinking he seemed a bit withdrawn, and wondering if it was because he faced a constant stream of random people like me saying “OMG YOU’RE JAY ASHER” and whatnot.
We met in a more substantial way two years later at my first-ever fa...
July 11, 2014
Ballpoint-pen-and-back-of-a-summer-camp-flyer Friday night...
Ballpoint-pen-and-back-of-a-summer-camp-flyer Friday night monster for July 11, 2014.
Ellen Oh: Diverse Books are Not ‘Special Interest’
Ellen Oh, YA author of the Prophecy series,recently weighed in on the inappropriate and unfair treatment of diverse books; specifically the way that they are handled like ‘special interest’ books instead of being promoted as much as other titles.
“Diverse books shouldn’t be considered “special interest” and shelved in a separate area. If books containing minority characters are special interest, then any book with a talking anim...
July 9, 2014
weneeddiversebooks:
#WeNeedDiverseBooks summer reading series!...
#WeNeedDiverseBooks summer reading series! If you liked NERDS by Michael Buckley, try Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities by Mike Jung because both feature fast-paced action, super-villains, goofy humor, and kids who discover they’re more powerful than they knew.
Moment of Gratitude: Reflecting on the Agent Hunt
Moment of gratitude: I accepted an offer of representation from the fabulous Ammi-Joan Paquette back in 2010, and I’ve yet to feel anything other than slobberingly good about that decision. However, signing with Joan was the culminating moment of an agent search process that showed me what a kind, generous, and encouraging community of professionals I was about to join, because I received so many offers of help in my agent search.
I didn’t ask anyone for a referral because I felt r...
July 5, 2014
The Fear of Not Measuring Up
I have had and continue to have a complicated relationship with my brothers - we’re very different, and during our childhoods and adolescence I was often envious of them for their seemingly effortless success in the social and athletic realms, which have always been painful and baffling for me to navigate. I was the more successful in the academic realm, but when I moved up from sixth to seventh grade that also went by the wayside, and during those years academic success lacked social c...
June 20, 2014
Monster of the day for June 20, 2014.
Monster of the day for June 20, 2014.
