Beth Kephart: Living it Over Again

Maybe I can't stop writing because I have never figured out a way to be the real-live person I always wish that I could be. I make mistakes—put things off until it's truly too late, react impulsively when a counting to ten would be in order, allow myself to say out loud what might better be kept locked up in some private chamber. Not all the time, of course, but enough of the time to wish I could press the rewind button.

In writing my second novel for young adults, HOUSE OF DANCE, I was trying to make right on the page something that I'd failed to make right in actuality. A friend with whom I'd sat every week in church went missing one Sunday, and I didn't call to find out why. I didn't call the next Sunday either, when she again went missing; something inside told me I should, but I was tired and busy and packed myself out with excuses. Next week, I told myself, I'll call, but there would be no chance for that. My friend had of a sudden grown gravely ill, and before I could tell her goodbye, before I could even leave a phone message so that she'd know she'd been on my mind, she passed away. You don't get second chances in a circumstance like that.

In my grief I began to imagine a young girl who might be asked to care for a dying relative—a girl who has to decide, on her own, what love looks like at the end, what gifts might be given to someone who learns that he is living his last days. I named the girl Rosie, a name my grandmother once had for me, and I gave her backbone and sass and the sort of goodness I can only rarely claim for me. I conjured a voice for her, a situation, a town, a fragile family life, and then I listened to see what might happen. I followed her through a long, hot summer.

Many things happened in my own life as I was writing HOUSE OF DANCE, but the writing of this book kept me somehow grounded as I worked to see things through Rosie's eyes, to brand a story with her hard-edged goodness. I wonder if it works like this for all of us writers—if in some small way we are always working our own selves through on the page, even as our fiction takes us further and further from the "truth" of our daily living.

I'd love to know your thoughts on this, and I look forward to your thoughts on HOUSE, when it debuts on May 27th.

Beth Kephart
Author of Undercover & House of Dance

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www.beth-kephart.blogspot.com

5 TIPS FOR SURVIVING IN THE SUBSAHARAN AFRICAN BUSH

Hi!

To write Chanda's Wars, I went to bush camps in Malawi and Zambia to learn wilderness survival tips from local trackers. It let me experience some of skills that Chanda uses as she journeys through a vast SubSaharan national park to rescue her young brother and sister, who've been kidnapped by the brutal warlord General Mandiki.

1) Air Bubbles Mean Trouble

Check for air bubbles any time you're near unknown water -- it's a sign of crocodiles lying just beneath the muddy surface. Pay special attention to the tips of reeds near the banks: some of them may be croc snouts.

2) How To Avoid Getting Trampled By Elephants

Most lion and elephant charges are bluffs. Stand still -- usually they'll back off. If not, make a lot of noise. Whatever you do, don't run. Elephants will trample you, and if really angry will take the time to knock over any small tree you've climbed. BTW, Lions kill by strangulation, not by biting or ripping. By contrast, crocs bite and spiral to tear off a limb, which is how they take down large prey -- one limb at a time. Your only way to survive a croc attack without a rifle -- and it's a longshot -- is to stab it in the eye with a knife.

3) For Sweet Dreams At Night

To sleep safely at night, make a boma (enclosure) of acacia boughs. The thorns will keep nighttime predators away -- lions, leopards usually go for antelope anyway. (Despite their fierce reputation, leopards will usually only attack something small, like a child, never two or more adults. They carry their prey into trees, to feast undisturbed by other predators. Discovering a carcass on a tree bough can be disconcerting.)

4) Stay Awake Around Hyenas

Unless sick, hyenas won't attack when you're awake, but may rip off a chunk of your face, or another hunk of your body, if you sleep unprotected. (See need for acacia boma above.)

5) Waste Not, Want Not

In a pinch, you can survive on bush rats and monitor lizards. They taste like chicken. You just have to catch them. The rats live in nests in the ground. You can smoke them out. Bush rats are generally eaten off a stick -- skin, tail, bones and all. I passed on the rats, but ate mopani worms; these are thick grubs that live under the bark of the mopani tree. They can be eaten dried or fried and have an unmistakable aftertaste. And I mean unmistakable.

If you found this blog interesting, please let me know and I'll write one about what I learned about tracking people or animals!

All the best,

Allan

Allan Stratton
Author of Chanda's Wars, Chanda's Secrets, and Leslie's Journal

www.allanstratton.com
www.myspace.com/allanstratton

THE SHARING KNIFE: Passage

Passage is an adventure story, a love story, and a fantasy novel, but above all, it is a river journey. In it, newly-married farmer girl Fawn Bluefield and her Lakewalker sorcerer-soldier husband Dag take passage on a flatboat to the sea, seeking solutions to the dangerous split between their peoples. (Though finding, among other things, river pirates.)

My love of lakes grew from my own childhood, but my father's happiest youthful memories were from the 1920's at summer cottages -- I think we'd call them "shanties" today -- on a river island just upstream from Pittsburgh. His own father, for vacations, would take him and a canoe by train some two hundred miles up the Allegheny River, and spend a week or more paddling back down. I recently had a chance to read some of his journals he kept in his youth; as a late teenager, he wrote that he couldn't decide if his life's ambition was to become an engineer, or to loaf on a houseboat. He eventually did both, although by his sixties when he finally acquired his houseboat on the Ohio River, he had rather lost the knack of loafing. So when I sent Dag and Fawn on their own journey of discovery down my book's equivalent of the Ohio, I had plenty of material, having both experienced the river first-hand, and inherited my Dad's library of river lore.

American landscapes are often neglected as sources for fantasy settings. Can you imagine, fifty years in the future, what tales of your parents' time you would tell to your grandchildren? What parts do you think they would find utterly alien or fantastical?

Lois McMaster Bujold

Michele Jaffe: Kitty Kitty

Hi gorgeous Harperteenlettes!

So I’ve been informed that in this space I’m not supposed to just talk about This and That and Candy, but rather my book, KITTY KITTY. So: KITTY KITTY is the sequel to BAD KITTY and it’s set in Venice, Italy. The first question everyone asks me—I mean apart from How do I stop acting like the Queen of the Giggling Loons when talking to my crush (see www.michelejaffe.com/blogspot) or Do your really wear sparkly shoes all the time? (A: Yes! Except in the shower)—is Why did you set your book in Venice?

KITTY KITTY takes place in Venice because it is a city crammed with Mystery and its best friend Wonder and I wanted a place that would be a real challenge for my heroine Jas’s hair due to the humidity making it massivo and also, I just love it there because it is the bOnKeRsEsT place on the planet.

For one thing: there are no cars.

For another: they serve ice cream with lit sparklers in it.

Yes.

Also there is a restaurant with 142 kinds of pizza.

But the best thing about Venice, and Italy in general, is that every month there’s a special national holiday. And every holiday has a special cookie or fried treat. Honestly, if that is not the most brilliant idea in the world, I do not understand the definitions of ’most’ and ’world.’

Take San Martino day. For some reason this day involves all children under seven putting on clown make up and wandering through the streets banging on pots and pans with wooden spoons which, if you are trying to write a book and were up all night and they are ranging around beneath your window, is, um, special (to pick a random example). But it also involves these cookies about the size of my face, in the shape of a knight on horseback onto which magic elves then glue CHOCOLATE CANDIES. Still wrapped up! So first you get to eat the candies, and then you get to eat the cookie! And then you get to fall into a sugar coma! Until the next morning when you get to do it again!

(Yes, they are really magic elves. No, I cannot tell you how I know. They swore me to secrecy when I visited them in their...oh no I already said too much!!!)

But my all time 100% favorite thing is during Carnivale, which takes place in the month before Easter (i.e. now), when the frittelle arrive. There’s no real way to describe frittelle except to say that "fritto" means fried so the literal translation of their name is "tiny fried object filled with unspeakable deliciousness." They are sweet and can come studded with raisins or filled with cream or drizzled with chocolate or dusted with cinnamon or just dipped in sugar. You can get them pretty much anywhere this time of year and somehow they are always hot out of the frying pan and they kind of melt in your mouth and...

What? This was supposed, finally, to be about my book? Oh. Well, there are no frittelle in my book because I decided that would be cruel. But I will talk about my book next time I blog, I swear. In the meantime, I’m looking for a place to set Bad Kitty 3 so leave me a comment about what the MOST delicious thing you’ve ever eaten is and where it was.

Be supergelatotastic!

Airkisses,
Michele

Michele Jaffe
Author of Bad Kitty, and the forthcoming Kitty Kitty

www.michelejaffe.com
www.myspace.com/michele_jaffe<

Susan Juby: Traps for Writers

Being a writer is a wonderful thing. However, the path of the writer is strewn with distractions and dangers of all sorts. Here are two you should watch out for.

1. The Internet.
Here's how it starts. You're writing away after school in the time you've set aside. You're going strong. Onto something good. Then it occurs to you that you haven't checked your email in a while. So you stop mid-sentence and check your email. There's a message from your friend, who just posted a video of herself impersonating Céline Dion on Youtube. So you click through and watch. Then you discover that hundreds of other people have put up their Céline Dion impressions and you watch them all and you post links on your blog and Myspace page. Then your parents call you down for dinner and that's it. Céline Dion and the Internet have ruined your writing session.

2. The phone.
You're writing away one night. Burning the midnight oil, writing something quite powerful, and the phone rings. Ring! Ring! It's your friend, the Céline Dion impersonator. She's calling about the backless dress she just sewed for her next Youtube appearance. She's already called you six times to update you on her progress. "I cut out the pattern!" "I sewed a side seam!" "Did you know my dress is a size 0? JUST LIKE CÉLINE DION!" You pick up because you want to be sure that she hasn't had a serious sewing accident. It turns out she's calling to report that her boyfriend is getting weirded out by the Céline Dion thing. He doesn't find Ms. Dion that attractive and wishes your friend would imitate Gwen Stefani. Obviously he doesn't understand that Céline is an artist. A chanteuse! You talk her through it and when you finally get off the phone you realize it's midnight and your writing session is over.

I shut off my modum and turn off the phone when I write. What methods do you use to deal with distractions?

Susan Juby
Author of Another Kind of Cowboy, Alice, I Think, and Alice MacLeod, Realist at Last

www.susanjuby.com

Susan Juby: Traps for Writers

Being a writer is a wonderful thing. However, the path of the writer is strewn with distractions and dangers of all sorts. Here are two you should watch out for.

1. The Internet.
Here's how it starts. You're writing away after school in the time you've set aside. You're going strong. Onto something good. Then it occurs to you that you haven't checked your email in a while. So you stop mid-sentence and check your email. There's a message from your friend, who just posted a video of herself impersonating Céline Dion on Youtube. So you click through and watch. Then you discover that hundreds of other people have put up their Céline Dion impressions and you watch them all and you post links on your blog and Myspace page. Then your parents call you down for dinner and that's it. Céline Dion and the Internet have ruined your writing session.

2. The phone.
You're writing away one night. Burning the midnight oil, writing something quite powerful, and the phone rings. Ring! Ring! It's your friend, the Céline Dion impersonator. She's calling about the backless dress she just sewed for her next Youtube appearance. She's already called you six times to update you on her progress. "I cut out the pattern!" "I sewed a side seam!" "Did you know my dress is a size 0? JUST LIKE CÉLINE DION!" You pick up because you want to be sure that she hasn't had a serious sewing accident. It turns out she's calling to report that her boyfriend is getting weirded out by the Céline Dion thing. He doesn't find Ms. Dion that attractive and wishes your friend would imitate Gwen Stefani. Obviously he doesn't understand that Céline is an artist. A chanteuse! You talk her through it and when you finally get off the phone you realize it's midnight and your writing session is over.

I shut off my modum and turn off the phone when I write. What methods do you use to deal with distractions?

Susan Juby
Author of Another Kind of Cowboy, Alice, I Think, and Alice MacLeod, Realist at Last

www.susanjuby.com

Kim Harrison: Becoming a Writer

"I love reading. Do you have any advice on how to become a writer?"

I can't tell you the number of times I've been asked this question, and though every author's path to publication is different, I do have a few tips for the young (or new) writer that can help.

Writing is just about the only job I can think of that is still pretty much self-taught. To help, there are lots of classes available both at the high school level and higher, and I always suggest taking as many creative writing classes you can. I didn't, and when I sat down to write, I had a lot of catch-up to do. Which goes to prove that even if you miss those early opportunities, you can make up the difference. When it comes right down to it, it's you and the keyboard and lots of practice.

Write every day. You don't have to write for a long time--just twenty minutes or so--but make them good twenty minutes. You might ask, why write every day and not for an hour once a week? Writing every day teaches you how to flick on your creative process fast and make it work for you. If you want to write for a job, treat it like one and write whether you're in the mood or not. This is hard work, or everyone would be doing it. Or should I say, everyone would be finishing their manuscript.

Which brings me to the next suggestion. Finish what you start even if you've lost interest in it. Find a way to rekindle the spark, and then do it. A lot of people confuse true writer's block with a lack of planning. There are many people who write by the seat of their pants. (Called pantsers) That's what works for them and it is a perfectly acceptable way to write--if you finish your manuscript. If you have six stories started and haven't finished one, then you're not a pantser, you're a plotter who hasn't plotted enough. I'm a plotter with a pantser's need to follow my instincts. I have to have an outline when I work, but I'm always changing it. If you have a hard time finishing a story, you might want to consider spending some time outlining to the end--and then finish writing it, even if it is painful. The confidence you will get from that will astound you. If you can finish one, you can finish them all.

Another piece of advice I love to give out is to do lots of research, but by that I mean reading your favorite books, not once or twice, but several times over the course of a couple of years. Pick your favorite author's work apart to see how he or she handles character growth or plot development. See how she hid clues in the prose so that you missed its significance until the end when you hit your head and say, "Oh! That makes perfect sense now!" Watch how she built the world and drew you into it. Was it the love the main character had for her pet that first drew you to understand her? Or her friends? Or maybe the trouble or success she had at school?

Okay, so what if you have the pattern of writing every day and you've finished something? Now you're ready to start sharing your work. Sharing your writing with others is one of the best ways to get over your love affair with your own words. Loving your work is a positive thing, but it can stand in the way if you love it so much that you think it can't be improved upon. Try to join a writer's group that meets face to face. Not only will you make great strides in polishing your voice and developing that thick skin needed, but there's usually a published author in the group who can open doors and make introductions to help get that first publishing credit.

One of the best things about wanting to be a writer is that if you write, you are one. It's that simple. The only sure way to fail to find publication, is to stop trying. Success is simply a matter of time, effort, and maybe a good whack of luck to get it all going.

--Kim Harrison

Browse Inside:The Outlaw Demon Wails

www.myspace.com/kimharrisonbooks