Deborah Halverson's Blog, page 11

It’s a book!

I came home from the SCBWI summer conference to find advance copies of my new book, Writing New Adult Fiction. It’s a book! Huzzah!

It’s a couple of weeks yet till the official pub date of August 21, but some people have already contacted me to say they’ve pre-ordered it. Exciting! Now that the conference is over, I’m finalizing the online celebration events and will post more on those shortly. Peek: A Launch Week celebration on DearEditor.com with daily free partial edit giveaways and a grand finale full edit giveaway!

Busy Summer

The next few months offer several opportunities to hone your writing with me, should you be so inclined. There are a couple still in the works; I’ll post those details when they’re finalized. Hope to see you!

Aug 1-4, Los Angeles – SCBWI 43rd Annual Summer Conference

“Market Report” Keynote

1-hr breakout “New Adult Fiction for the Young Adult Writer”

3-hr intensive “Crafting a Youthful Narrative Voice and Sensibility in MG/YA Fiction”

One-on-one critiques

Location: For conference details, click here.

Aug 15-17, Los Angeles – Writer’s Digest Novel Writing Conference

3-hour Boot Camp “Writing Riveting New Adult Fiction”

1-hour breakout “How to Hide the Seams for Smooth, Flowing Fiction”

Location: Hyatt Regency Century Plaza – Los Angeles. For conference details, click here.

Sept 5-7, St. Charles, Missouri – SCBWI-Missouri Fall 2014 Conference

“State of the Market” keynote

2.5-hr intensive “How to Build Your Own Teenager”

Faculty panel

Location: On the campus of Lindenwood University in St. Charles, MO (a suburb of St. Louis). Email me for details.

Little Girls Dreaming Big

Anyone who knows me will tell you I’m a nice person, always have been. But as a girl growing up in the 1970s, the insides of this nice girl churned with anger. I was very conscious of the limitations society put on me as a girl, as I was also conscious of the struggle for gender equality raging around me.

Tonight, after my boys read Kathleen Krull’s inspiring picture book biography HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: DREAMS TAKING FLIGHT, they engaged me in a conversation about gender equality. I told them how hurt and angry I was about the way I perceived girls being treated then. I told them about the way my dad—a father to four daughters—always told me I could do anything I wanted to do no matter what. I told them about how my mom showed me what a strong woman looked like by paving her way in the intensely patriarchal financial sector, eventually reaching vice president level. And I told them about Steve.

“Steve” was the persona I had to take on in order to play adventure games with the neighborhood boys. As “Deborah” my role in those games would have been to sit in the tree awaiting rescue. Unacceptable to me. Thus, Steve was born.

Sometimes I wonder why I didn’t have the bravery to stand up to those boys, feet firmly planted on the ground, and declare that “Deborah” would be an adventurer, too. Other times, I’m quite proud of my little elementary-school self for finding a way around their prejudice instead of simply not playing and thus being left out. Either way, it’s something I think about often. That experience influences me as I raise my sons, in my conscious commitment to growing men who are enlightened and blind to gender when it comes to accomplishments and opportunities.

Talks like tonight’s, coupled with what I see in my nine-year-olds’ actions and hear in their talk every day and see in their choice of friends, tell me I’m on the right track in that endeavor. That makes me feel happy. The anger is still there, as Steve resides inside my memory and plays his role in my current actions. I felt that tonight as I talked about Steve with tears in my eyes. They were angry tears, yes, but they were also triumphant tears, because when all is said and done, all personal critiquing of my decision to create Steve aside, I do know this:

I never once sat in that damn tree.

The Power of Audio

I forgot to put my three nine-year-olds to bed tonight. They were listening quietly to the audiobook version of Rick Riordan’s The Son of Neptune after dinner, and I’d seized the break in household chaos to do some work. I knew they’d continue being very quiet while listening, as they are easily mesmerized by audiobooks, and Riordan’s various mythology-based series have been like candy to them. When I finally looked up at the clock, I started, remembered that I was a mother who had sons to put to bed quickly on pain of an agonizingly cranky day tomorrow, then dashed upstairs to get the job done. What did I find? Three boys who’d gotten into jammies, brushed teeth, and put themselves to bed. There they were, laying quietly in the dark listening to The Son of Neptune, hoping I’d forget them for another few hours. What did I do? A totally bonehead thing: I told them how proud I was then kissed each on the head, turned off the audiobook, and left, closely the door gently behind me.

Only at the bottom of the stairs did I realize what I SHOULD I have done: Tiptoed backward and pulled the door shut again, audiobook still on.

Phooey.

Review Week 2014 – Great stories, great advice

Every spring on my writer’s advice website DearEditor.com, I host prolific authors for a week of revision tips, insights, and stories from the trenches. I call it Revision Week, and it’s truly a labor of love. Last week was the third annual installment. You can read those interviews (as well as past years’) here. There are so many great insights, and such well articulated advice. And the anecdotes they share about overcoming story challenges are just riveting. Below are direct links to this year’s interviews. I you’ll read and enjoy them all!

Marla Frazee, two-time Caldecott Honor-winning picture book author/illustrator: “I don’t think of revising as revising. It’s more a question of, Are we getting somewhere?”

 

Jean Ferris, award-winning author of nineteen young adult novels: “I tend to write what amounts to an expanded outline for the first draft, and each draft gets longer as I understand more and more what the book and its characters are about.” 

 

Joni Rodgers, best-selling novelist and ghostwriter: “[Ghostwriting] is the ultimate test of ‘Seek first to understand, then to be understood.’ I listen, ask questions, and revamp until we find what feels right.” 

 

Warren Fahy, best-selling author of science-based thrillers: “Wherever [my advance readers] stop reading a manuscript, I fix it so that nobody wants to stop there again. I pay attention to what they don’t say as much as to what they do say.”

 

Denise Grover Swank,best-selling author of YA, NA, and novels for adults. “It’s not unusual for me to write a first draft and then cut one-third to half the book out and start over again.”

A New Interview!

“Saying NA fiction is just YA with sex is akin to saying YA fiction is just stories of high school romance.” I get talk New Adult fiction as well as Young Adult and Middle Grade fiction this week in an interview with Lee Wind. As SCBWI’s blogger extraordinaire, Lee is posting a series of interviews with faculty members of the upcoming SCBWI 2014 Summer Conference. I’m honored to be a keynote speaker at the conference, as well presenting the breakout session “New Adult Fiction for the Young Adult Writer” and a 3-hr intensive about crafting voice and sensibility for young readers. I really enjoyed doing this interview, with Lee asking thoughtful questions. You can check it out here.

A Good Kind of Busy

Launching a book can take as much time and effort as writing it. This can easily frustrate or overwhelm a writer. I understand that reaction, but because of my long time in this business, I’ve come to view that work as a gift.

You see, when I got my first job in children’s book publishing in 1995, the internet was just a budding beast. Social media was still a twinkle in its eye, although not for long. (Seriously: We were all so tickled to get this cool new in-house email thing in our worktop computers. Woo-hoo, technology!) The best a writer could do to launch her books then was buy mailing lists to use for mass postcard mailings and try to set up signings, speaking events, and similar engagements. If you’d been in the biz a while, you had a network and setting up events was easier, but even so those efforts required a lot of traveling and time—and the expenses that went with that. Now, twenty years later, with social media and excellent bloggers doing amazing work for their readers, opportunities to launch a new book have exploded. So while ushering the book into the world is still a lot of work, a writer has many more choices at her fingertips. I am deeply grateful for that. I know a gift when I see one.

So, as I prepare to launch Writing New Adult Fiction this summer, I’ve been doing a lot of work … but it’s work I’m grateful to be able to do. I’ll be sharing it on this blog with you, along with details of the book, hoping you’ll enjoy the journey with me.

Growing Up: Hard on the Teeth But Good for the Heart

Growing up isn’t always what we expect it’ll be. One of my dear nine-year-olds got his first dental appliance (a retainer) yesterday and came fully undone. The poor thing is going to starve to death because he can’t eat, he’ll have to talk in sign language because he can’t speak…. I get it. There’s this THING in his mouth, mucking everything up. It wasn’t what he expected when he skipped into the dentist’s office, kind of proud to partake in this right of passage. So many of his friends have retainers, and now he got to have one!

I’d warned that it might be uncomfortable at first, but didn’t go into detail because I’ve never had any dental appliances so didn’t know the details. We ALL know them now.

This morning he is better. But I guess that’s what would happen after a night buried under stuffed animals loaned by one’s doting brothers. And then, on our morning walk, two of my triplets ushered the third to school with supreme tenderness. My mama’s heart melts.

Picture Books to the Rescue

[image error]My nine-year-old son feels he can't draw well enough for book reports, so he's been using PowerPoint to create the visuals for them. He's so proud, sitting there with that final report in his hand and big grin on his face. His teacher has been wonderfully supportive about his seeking an avenue of artistic expression that empowers him rather than shuts him down. Last night, I told my sweet fella that he could get mighty creative with digital art.  I showed him the picture book Cook-a-Doodle-Doo, for which illustrator Janet Stevens scanned things like cheese graters to make background textures. Then I showed another picture book, The Great Fuzz Frenzy, for which Janet scanned a tennis ball. [image error]My son and his brothers kept trying to feel the fuzz in the book, the technique was that alluring.

And that inspiring.

My son is so excited now to start scanning things into the computer. And I am excited for him. So today, I send out a cosmic "Thank you!" once again to picture books and the people who create them. Yet another fabulous "A-ha!" moment for a young mind seeking a path to personal expression.

Raising a Loving Heart

The day I found out that I was going to have three sons, my friend found out she was going to have a son, too. She looked at me with such an awed expression, pointing out that we were getting our chance to raise men who could be amazing husbands and fathers. I’ve carried that sentiment around with me consciously in the nine years I’ve been raising these little men. So it was with double pleasure that I opened my laptop this morning to find this note from one of my sweet boys. This makes me feel good as the mommy who is receiving this praise from her son, and as the mommy who is raising her son to be loving to his spouse and children one day. What a fabulous surprise.