Stacy Whitman is a freelance editor who specializes in fantasy and science fiction for children and young adults, as well as related genres. She spent three years as an editor for Mirrorstone, the children’s and young adult imprint of Wizards of the Coast in Seattle. She holds a master’s degree in children’s literature from Simmons College.

See her website for information on critique services and local seminars, submission guidelines, and recommendations from authors she's worked with.

Given the demands on my time from a number of directions, I am now closing for new critiques indefinitely. I still have several critiques I'm working on that I need to get back to the authors on; if you're one of those people, I apologize for the wait. You will be hearing from me soon. For anyone with whom I haven't made a payment arrangement or agreed to do a critique, I apologize that I won't be able to assist you.

To be able to have the time I need outside of my day job to start Tu Publishing, I need to reserve my evenings after the day job for that, once I finish the critiques that are in the current queue.

If you are local to me in Utah, I plan to recontinue the seminars on writing and publishing that I have done in the past. I've meant to schedule another one soon, but I've been swamped, and haven't been able to do so. Seminars use much less of my time than one-on-one critiques, and so I'll be able to schedule those much more freely in the future.

If you aren't in Utah and would like me to come to your area for a seminar on writing and publishing, please contact me at stacylwhitman AT gmail.com, and we can discuss the particulars. Generally, you'll need at least 20-30 people for a general seminar, and 10-15 people for an in-depth seminar.

My sincere thanks to all those authors with whom I've had the chance to work one-on-one this last year. I enjoyed reading your work, and I hope that my feedback was useful as you work toward publication.

Originally published at Stacy Whitman\\\\\\\'s Grimoire.

Sometimes I get emails from people who are just starting out in the publishing process. I understand the frustration that comes when from seeing that practically every publisher requires agented submissions. If you aren't sure where to start, it can be daunting to try to find information on publishing through Google (Writer Beware covered this a while back, and they've got some good points---there are a lot of self-publishing and disreputable agents that show up at the top of such searches).

But the solution is not to approach a publishing house or a specific editor to ask (or even sometimes demand), "If you won't read my manuscript, then recommend me to an agent so I can get you to read my manuscript!" I can't even do this for relatives/friends/relatives of friends without knowing their writing really well (and even if I know their writing well and think it's good enough to be published---a rarity---I would generally be more likely to recommend someone's writing to a fellow editor, rather than an agent).

I don't feel qualified in helping writers find agents, and in fact feel that it's a conflict of interest to make such recommendations. Agents recommend writers to editors. An agent is a writer's advocate in contractual negotiations. The publisher shouldn't interfere with that relationship. (For a different kind of hypothetical example, even if I were to feel that a writer's agent might not be doing a very good job, it's not my place to suggest that the writer find a new agent; the very nature of my position as a representative of a publisher makes my opinion biased, even if writers would say the same thing about the agent.)

Also, it's important to remember that most editors/companies who have limited their submissions to agented-only have a good reason for the requirement: usually they need a way to limit the quantity of their submissions while ensuring the quality. This means that they're pretty busy people, and it's kind of absurd to expect them to give personal attention to every single request for information. It just can't be done, and allow them to do the work that makes the company money as well. While it may only take "a few minutes" of their time, multiply that by a thousand or ten thousand, and the noise crowds out the work getting done.

We understand, though, that getting published is a frustrating, sometimes opaque process for those who haven't discovered the rich resources of the internet---or who have googled "publishing" and been hit by completely unreputable results. Finding information on getting published on the internet can be really hard if you don't have a single place to start. This is why editors and agents who blog do what we do---to provide a source of general information and conversation about the industry that can usually answer most questions, especially the basics of the submission process.

If you do find a single place to start---for example, if someone you know says, "Check out the website of this editor I know!"---it can be tempting to hope that this connection will subvert the frustrating hunt for information. However, if you hunt a little deeper (well, really, if you made it to my website, you should have come to my blog first, rather than to the page that shows my email), you'll find that the blog---and even more, the whole blogosphere/Twitterverse---provides a wealth of information that can set you on your path without having to rely on an email from an overworked editor for a reference she feels that ethically, she can't give.

So let's discuss some of the first places you should be looking, if you've gotten this far, for information on how to get published in the children's and young adult market, which should spiderweb out to a number of different resources through links and references in blog posts and Twitter feeds.

First place to start for children's and YA writers: the SCBWI main page. That page should lead you to links for your local SCBWI, which should lead you to information on local meetings, writing groups, conferences, and other events--including conferences at which agents and editors are in attendance. Join a writing group, join the local listserv, and start absorbing all the riches of reliable information your fellow writers have to share.

The next place to go is just as important as the first: Harold Underdown's The Purple Crayon. This is such a complete resource that I often just recommend these two sites (SCBWI and this one) for people just starting out looking for information on getting published in children's and YA books. Harold wrote The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Children's Books, has been an editor for years (several years at Macmillan, Orchard, and Charlesbridge, and now a freelancer), and has been maintaining the Purple Crayon for many years, at which you can find information on topics from the basics through the entire publishing process and on to figuring out agents.

A new essential resource I've started adding to the list is Agent Query. The site seems to be down at the moment, but I got through at a back door---but the database, which is its most useful feature, doesn't seem to be working. Keep checking back on it, because it is a great resource for writers starting out on the agent-querying process, with information on writing a query, how to avoid scammers, and a full search of agent listings by genre and several other considerations.

Also note that plenty of blogging authors discuss how to find an agent (and when the appropriate time is in your writing life to find an agent). Google the authors who your work would fit in with most, and start listening to what they say about their writing process, about how they got started in their career, about how they found an agent---you'll find a lot of good information there, and links to resources that will be much more useful than a quick Google search. Mentors are definitely out there.

Keep an eye out on Preditors and Editors, as well.

If you're looking for an agent, you should be reading the blogs and Twitter feeds of at least a few of the many agents out there offering advice. Here is a list, in no particular order:

• Miss Snark's archives (she isn't blogging anymore, but the archives are well worth a look)


• Nathan Bransford's blog


• Colleen Lindsay's The Swivet


• Upstart Crow Literary's blog


• Kristin Nelson's blog


• Janet Reid's blog


• Jennifer Laughran's blog


• Elana Roth's twitter feed


• Rachelle Gardner's blog


• Deidre Knight's twitter feed

There are SO many more that I'm definitely forgetting, but it's getting late (I started to write this last night and fell asleep in the next paragraph, actually), and you should be able to follow the conversations on these blogs and feeds to get a sense of who else is out there to follow. Between all of them, writers new to the publishing end of things can get a great education, and all for free.

Who am I missing on the agent list? Please include links to Twitter feeds for agents who don't have blogs. (I'm linking blogs for people who have them, Twitter feeds for those that don't have blogs. Those who have blogs might also have a Twitter feed, but truth is, it's 1 am and I'm hieing myself to bed, and I'll worry about that tomorrow.) I'll add the links to the list tomorrow as time permits (which I have, but it's still incomplete). Also remember that Twitter has become a really great source of information on publishing from a number of publishing folks who don't have as much time to blog, but who can participate in more scattered conversations throughout the day. For a full list of all the publishing people on Twitter, check out ... I can't find the link of the page that has them all listed. Hopefully someone will know what I'm talking about and give me the link, because I have to run out the door right now and run some errands.

Originally published at Stacy Whitman\\\\\\\'s Grimoire.

I haven't been keeping up well with my LiveJournal friends list. Every time I think I might, I get daunted by how long it's been since I've caught up, and of course the cycle continues. And Facebook and Twitter are much less of a time-suck because they're more easily skimmable while juggling other day-to-day responsibilities. But I love the conversations that happen in the children's lit blogosphere, so I've been trying to dive back in and catch bits and pieces, the way I do on Twitter. I've heard the flow of information on Twitter described as "trying to drink out of a firehose," and the way many handle it (including me) is looking at it as a river flowing by: you can dip in and drink from the river, but you can't drink the whole river. You can't fit it all in, but you can grab a little bit as it floats past.

That gave me what I have to share with you today:

Via Janni Lee Simner, we have Jo Walton's giggle-inducing elf policy, which then leads us to elf insurance ("when the seven-year itch meets the seven-year tithe...").

Also, we've got a new post up over at Tu Publishing, interviewing author and blogger Cynthia Leitich Smith on writing cross-culturally, living in a multicultural world, her influences, and new multicultural voices to watch out for.

Originally published at Stacy Whitman\\\\\\\'s Grimoire.

I forgot to take many pictures at World Fantasy. (I know! Me! Calling myself a "photographer"!) Plus, my laptop's hard drive is literally so full that it won't let me upload what pictures I did take. So you won't get to see all the attending Utahns with author L.E. Modesitt and agent Joshua Bilmes (taken specifically to make Brandon Sanderson jealous, because he couldn't make it this year--blame Dan, or if you're a Writing Excuses fan, blame Jordo, who wasn't even there and it was his fault), and you won't be able to see me in my I Am Not a Serial Killer t-shirt, so you won't be able to be reassured that I'm not a serial killer until next week.

In the meantime, head on over to Tu Publishing, where today is an open thread--tell us what you'd like to see on the Tu Publishing website. What would draw you to return to a publisher's website?

Also, continued gratitude to all the people who are pledging to give Tu a kickstart! We're up past 25%! Let's keep the momentum going!

Originally published at Stacy Whitman\\\\\\\'s Grimoire.

I'm heading out in the morning (at an hour I don't normally see while conscious unless I've stayed up all night) for San Jose to meet up with friends at World Fantasy this weekend. Those of you who are going as well, I look forward to seeing you there! I'll have tons of Tu Publishing bookmarks with me (about 300, I think!) so if you want one, or several to hand out to friends -- or even if you don't want one---you'll probably get one.

I'm not sure what kind of internet connection I'll have over the weekend, so I'll probably be going relatively dark on Twitter and here (not that I post overmuch here, but you get the idea). I have internet access on my phone, but I'm hoping to be busy connecting with people in person, as you can imagine! It's my first World Fantasy, and I'm looking forward to meeting new people and reconnecting with old friends.

I'm finishing up short critiques this week and next--if you don't hear from me by next Friday, please drop me an email and be sure that it wasn't overlooked. From now on, I'll be even more choosy when it comes to taking on critiques---not because I don't want to work with you guys, but because I've been so swamped for the past two months and I don't want to make anyone wait too long. Between the day job and starting a small press, that's been quite a load on my plate, and I'm grateful to all of you who have waited so patiently for me to get to your piece.

Originally published at Stacy Whitman\\\\\\\'s Grimoire.

In continued celebration of the theme of Teen Read Week, even if the week itself is over, I interviewed author Cindy Pon about her new book, Silver Phoenix, and about reading beyond reality. Okay, sure, it was because our schedules didn't meet up for getting the interview up during Teen Read Week, but I think it's an important enough idea that we should continue to discuss reading beyond our reality long after the week officially celebrating it ends.

I especially like what she had to say about universal ideas in literature -- even if you're not Asian, or English, or a ballet dancer, "This is why stories are so wonderful to me. If the author did her job, you can love and relate, even to something that isnt exactly like you."

I plan to continue to interview authors, teen readers, and other bloggers over the next several months, probably one a week, so stay tuned. If you're interested in this issue and have something you'd like to submit as a guest post for Tu's blog, please also let me know at stacylwhitman AT gmail.com.

Also, if you didn't see it last week, I guest-posted over at Myth, the Universe, and Everything, talking about folklore, fantasy, and the kinds of stories I'd like to see for Tu Publishing.

Originally published at Stacy Whitman\\\\\\\'s Grimoire.

Today for Teen Read Week, I interviewed Susan from Color Online about teen reading over at the Tu Publishing website. Check it out!

Originally published at Stacy Whitman\\\\\\\'s Grimoire.

And also, a big thanks to those who have pledged to Tu Publishing this week. We're getting closer to our goal. Once I catch up on critiques, my next project will be to add more content to the Tu site and make it more than a relatively static website.

We're planning an anthology contest, rules for which will be announced when I've had time to put them in writing, so start polishing those short stories featuring multicultural characters or settings for young readers. I'm posting about it here but not at the Tu site yet because I want to post about it officially there when I've hammered out the rules, when I'm ready to take submissions. But in the mean time, be thinking about those stories. There will be a young writers category for teen writers, as well, so tell the teens in your life who love to write.

Originally published at Stacy Whitman\\\\\\\'s Grimoire.

All I want to do right now is just play World of Warcraft and watch movies and pig out on food that's really bad for me, but I'm actually going to go home and get critiques done. This week at work has been pretty scatterbrained. Weird problems kept coming up. Several things keep getting delayed because of weird errors that aren't the norm. I kept thinking there had to be some easy explanation, some stupid mistake I was making--because it had already happened a couple times, when I would put http:// on an address that didn't need it and didn't work because I was doing a secure FTP instead, that kind of thing. Not realizing that I had the disc for the Norton problem I was having, and the associate editor having to ask me where the disc was when he was trying to troubleshoot the problem. Um, whoops. You know how a new job can be a little overwhelming at times!

But it turned out that the other problems that I was running into were actually real problems that the associate editor (who is our really smart all-things-computer guy to ask when it's not a *huge* computer problem, for which we ask the actual computer guy) couldn't solve either. I don't know whether I feel bad about needing his time or justified that the problem was real.

At any rate, it's been the kind of week that I just want to heave a big sigh that it's done. Now, on to catching up on critiques for my "other life." I really need to finish these up--some people have been waiting on me for months, which I feel awful about. Again, thanks for your patience, and I'm going home now, so at least 2 more people should hear from me tonight or tomorrow!

Originally published at Stacy Whitman\\\\\\\'s Grimoire.

• We're up to almost $1000 on the Kickstarter project for Tu Publishing. Thanks so much to everyone for pledging, and please feel free to share the link with anyone who you think might be interested, even if they can only spare $5. We're starting this through Kickstarter because it's secure, run by a third party, and it's a great way for me to be able to give back to the people who pledge -- if you donate $10, you get a coupon for $5 off a book, and so forth. The idea is that if a lot of people pool together, artistic projects can get off the ground more easily. Tu Publishing will be a for-profit company, but we are committed to literacy for all children and young adults and will be getting involved in local and national endeavors as we grow, such as YALSA's Teen Read Week. (If you have literacy projects to suggest involvement in, especially ones that I can volunteer for here in Utah, please feel free to let me know. I'm on the lookout, and will be getting more involved in the community once I finish up the critiques I've got in the queue.) If we reach our Kickstarter goal, and add to it the money from a private investor and some savings of my own, it will be enough to cover the costs of our first season's books (author advances, small stipends for freelance, printing and shipping costs, and marketing), and it will also show a bank that we are a good investment for a small business loan going forward.

• Our first two books will be fantasy or science fiction, and I'll specifically be looking for books that feature characters of color, characters from minority or non-Western cultures, and/or non-Western/minority cultures. That's pretty broad--it could be Japanese or Jamaican, Alaskan Inuit or African American settings and/or characters, and I'm not looking for books where race is necessarily the issue--just really great stories that will entertain readers from 7 to 18 (and up, if you count me and all you folks like me!). So if you've got a children's or YA novel that you think will fit this criteria, if we make our Kickstarter goal I'll be acquiring manuscripts beginning January 1. That means you've got just over three months to whip that manuscript in shape! I'll be posting more specifics for our submission guidelines as that time comes closer, so keep an eye on the Tu Publishing Submission Guidelines page. As you can imagine, just as with the critiques, during this transitional period to my day job, these website changes will be coming along sporadically. I'll post about them here as well to alert you.

• Here's a place to learn more about Kickstarter, if you're interested. I think it's providing a great service to the arts community.

• In addition, several people have asked that instead of giving them the incentive, that I give it to their local libraries, which is completely doable. If we reach the goal, I will be contacting everyone to get their mailing information to send them their rewards. At that time, if you want me to send it to your local library instead of you, all you'd need to do is let me know their address. Full books will be sent later, of course, when the first season's books are printed.

• I'm hosting a book club tomorrow, where we're going to discuss Justine Larbalestier's How to Ditch Your Fairy. The book is a fun read so far, but I need to finish it tonight! If you're local and can't make it tomorrow, feel free to go ahead and send your suggestions for what to read next month, so that we can have plenty of time to decide and prepare. If you can come tomorrow and need to know where to go (7 pm, my house), please drop me an email and I'll give you the scoop.

• The new job is becoming quite fun. In my off time, I've slowly been getting back to authors on their critiques, so thanks again to everyone for all your patience as I transition and finish up those critiques while starting a new full-time job. Now, if I can just get health insurance going, life would be just about perfect (it's a small non-profit based in California that uses Kaiser Permanente, which means that here in Utah I'd have no coverage with that, which means that I have to get an individual policy, which is really, really complicated when you have chronic conditions like asthma). If you've been wondering why I twitter so much about health care, it's because I have a personal interest in the health care crisis, seeing as how I'm having my own personal health care crisis. Hopefully, by my talking about it openly, it will put at least one face on the discussions out there--the face of a self-employed (and now employed by a small nonprofit) worker for whom taking care of something as simple as an asthma condition becomes out of the question due to the cost of health care and insurance.

<input ... >



<input ... > <input ... >


<input ... > <input ... > <input ... >

<input ... ></input><input ... >

Originally published at Stacy Whitman\\\\\\\'s Grimoire.

I have a standing anime/movie night with several friends (if you're local, remember: it's Friday nights, and we don't always do anime, so you're welcome to join in and we'll decide the week before what we'll watch the next week; email me for details).

We've watched a lot of great stuff in the last year or so--the stuff coming out in the last few years is just plain brilliant:

• Vampire Knight (if you liked Twilight, you'll LOVE VK--6 or 7 volumes of the manga is out here in the States, and the anime just got licensed)


• Fullmetal Alchemist


• Saiunkoku (OH so good--I would really love to be the one to bring over the light novels through Tu Publishing, but if someone got there first, I'd be all over getting them; I wish I could find the full second season on DVD)


• Gundam 00


• Ouran High School Host Club (very fun, and a great look at gender roles)


• Fruits Basket


• Code Geass


• Witch Hunter Robin (this stands out among a bunch of standouts--so good)


• Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex


• Emma: A Victorian Romance


• The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumya


• Kuroshitsuji (we have to finish this one sometime) (also: this one is very hard to pronounce!)


• Wolf's Rain (good, but very sad ending)


• Twelve Kingdoms (80s cheese, including a very whiny main character at first, but if you stick with it, it's pretty fun)


• Cele-something (dang, forgot the name; helpful, aren't I?)


• Moribito: Guardian of the Sacred Spirit (wow, what a show. And there's a great book it's based on, edited by Cheryl Klein)

... and many others that I'm forgetting. I should make a complete list to help me remember & help lead me to ones I like.

This has led me to many a good anime on my own (including older ones that I never saw when they were new), often because the friend who hosted anime night--who sadly just moved away--is so in touch with it and makes great recommendations:

• Tsubasa


• Samurai 7


• xxxHolic


• Last Exile


• The Third: The Girl with the Blue Eye (so good I want to add this one to my collection)


• Ghost Hunt


• Trigun


• .hack//SIGN (and just as I got into it somehow all the discs became unavailable)


• Death Note


• Scrapped Princess


• Noein


• R.O.D the TV


• Fushigi Yugi: The Mysterious Play (90s cheese, but fun)


• Read or Die

...and so on.

Anyway, I make this list right now because I want to eventually break it down and review some of them, and also because I'd like to hear if any of you have suggestions--given that I've liked pretty much all of this list, and given that if you're a reader of this blog you probably know the kind of fantasy and science fiction I'm into (there are some great YA-oriented school stories on there, too, that aren't speculative at all, but absolutely entertaining, like Ouran), perhaps you'll be able to recommend some I haven't heard of. What am I missing? You can probably tell that my tastes tend to run shojo--I love the bishis, when it's not too overdone!--but I'm also open to brilliant stories that aren't terribly violent.

What would you guys recommend? What new anime coming out is a must-see?

**Oh, and a few I want to see but haven't gotten to yet:

• Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok


• Shonen Onmyoji


• Darker than Black

Originally published at Stacy Whitman\\\\\\\'s Grimoire.

On Tuesday, I challenged everyone (teens, especially) to respond to my video with videos of their own talking about their experiences with reading and multicultural literature. Since then, I've figured out how to not squish my lovely friend Christine, who answered several questions for me, and was able to add music as well. (I really like the music, actually--it reminds me of a silent film now because of the slides between interviews.)

Here's the updated video (I had to upload a new one, rather than just doing a straight replacement, so any links you might have posted to the YouTube video are out of date, though the Kickstarter link is the same).



Also, thanks so much to everyone who has retweeted, blogged, Facebooked, and otherwise shared this project with others. We're off to a great start, and I appreciate everyone who has been so kind as to share the news and to pledge to the project. A special shoutout to Kimberly Pauley of YA (and Kids) Books Central, who has issued a challenge: she will send out a signed copy of her book to the first 10 people to donate $50. Also, thanks to Mitali Perkins, Cheryl Klein,Varian Johnson, KaedtiannHP, Jana Stocks, Kim Baccellia, Cassandra Yorgey, and all the other people who have been passing the word along!

I'll work on getting a thank-you page going on the Tu Publishing site as soon as I round up a few other things I need to finish first--namely, critiques that people have been waiting on--and I also plan to add a few more things to the site as time goes on. Thanks again, everyone!

Originally published at Stacy Whitman\\\\\\\'s Grimoire.

I'm cross-posting this from the Tu Publishing website, the website of my small press. I promised you the announcement of a project, and I've finally finished it at 3:15 a.m. I'm going to go ahead and share it everyone despite the video needing a little fine-tuning still. (I seem to have a different resolution camera than Christine Taylor-Butler, who helped me out by providing an educator's and parent's perspective on multicultural fantasy and science fiction.) The Tu Publishing site is a work in progress--I didn't have time last night to completely update it when I posted the video, but it will be changing and getting more informative soon.

Just a reminder (though I iterate it below, too) that those who have used the "donate" button here on this blog are on the list to receive the same incentives put in place in the Kickstarter project. You've been very helpful as we've gotten through the red tape to start a company, and I want to reciprocate, even if it's a pretty small gesture comparitively.

Tu Publishing is a woman-owned small press startup that believes in the power of books to change lives. Childrens books, especially, have the ability to inform, inspire, and entertain in a way that few mediums can.

The word tu means you in many languages, and in Ainu (the language of Japans native people), it means many. Tu Publishing is dedicated to publishing fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and historical fiction for children and young adults inspired by many cultures from around the world, to reach the "you" in each reader.

Kids who love to read do better in school. One way to encourage that love of reading is to provide stories that readers can identify with. By increasing the number of books that feature multicultural character and settings, we can influence the multicultural world of tomorrow.

Fantasy and science fiction, mystery and historical fiction--these genres draw in readers like no other. Yet it is in these genres that readers of color might feel most like an outsider, given that such a large percentage features white characters (when they feature human characters). It is the goal of Tu Publishing to publish genre books for children and young adults that fills this gap in the market--and more importantly, this gap in serving our readers.

As author Mitali Perkins and many others have pointed out, books can be both a mirror and a window to other worlds for readers. Tu Publishing hopes that by publishing books that feature multicultural characters and settings and books with worlds inspired by all the many non-Western cultures in the world, we might shine a mirror on you and open a window to many.

To be able to achieve that goal, we need to raise enough money to fund the acquisition, production, marketing, and distribution of our first two books, for which we hope--with your help--to begin acquiring in January 2010. With your help, we can make this happen.

We have officially started our fund-raising project at Kickstarter.com and invite anyone interested in being a part of making Tu Publishing a reality to check out the project.

What is Kickstarter.com? If you know Cheryl Klein, you might have seen her project to publish a book of her essays on writing there. This project is similar, except that it's a bit more than Cheryl needed because we also need to pay a modest advance to the authors and publicize and market the books we acquire. It takes a lot of money to get a publishing company started, and we thought that this would be a nice, secure way for anyone interested to get involved, and to get something back for it. Kickstarter runs their payments through Amazon payments, and the project is only funded if the full goal amount is reached by the deadline. If it isn't reached, no harm, no foul, and no payments go through, with the idea being that it would be worse to have a project be underfunded than not funded at all.

For those who have already donated before we started the Kickstarter project, you are on our list already of people to receive the same incentives here. Thank you for your support.

ETA: Yay! I've figured out how to fix the video. I had to completely upload a new one to replace the one that squished Christine, so I ended up adding music and making it shorter, too. If you've been sharing it, please note the new location.



The challenge portion of this

Whether or not you can donate, I'd love to see people, especially teen readers/nonreaders, share their own video or blog responses to this video, discussing whether you identify with the characters in the books you read and whether it matters to you. Mitali Perkins got this ball rolling separately as a part of the larger conversation about race in children's and YA in her blog post asking "are books windows or mirrors?" I found her use of the mirror/window analogy very important--books can be a window to other worlds, but they also need to be mirrors in some ways, especially for young readers. The more "mirror" books we have for every child, the more "windows" there are for everyone. What do you think?

Originally published at Stacy Whitman\\\\\\\'s Grimoire.

Just to let you all know: I have found a day job. Yay for paying the bills! Freelancing is great for many things, especially the flexible schedule, but regular work is hard to come by these days.

It's not a job with a trade publisher (I'm not going to announce here what it is, to keep those things separate), so it won't conflict with what I'm doing in my freelance life, but what it does mean for you, however, is that I'll be much, much slower on critiques. I'm suspending any new critiques for now so that I can catch up on the critiques I already have in the queue. I don't think I'll be able to take any new critiques until at least October.

I will also want to keep room open in my schedule for working on the small press (another reason this day job is a godsend--once I start taking submissions for the small press, I will be ethically obligated to discontinue paid critiques, and honestly, I'd rather move forward on having the ability to publish people, rather than just give them advice on how to get other people to publish them! :) ). It's moving forward--I'm still very much in the pre-startup phase, but I should have something to announce next week, so stay tuned.

For those of you waiting on critiques, as always, thanks for your patience. I'm getting them back to people one by one, and if you haven't yet heard from me you should soon.

Originally published at Stacy Whitman\\\\\\\'s Grimoire.

I've been rather absentee from the blog lately. I've been working on a number of things--catching up on critiques (for those waiting, thanks for your patience), finding a day job (paying the bills is a good thing!), apartment hunting and then rearranging my apartment to allow for a roommate, and a few other things. I don't like to talk much about any of those things in detail on the blog--I have tweeted some about some of them, but not much--so I've been quiet here and bordering on inane on Twitter/Facebook.

None of those things have been resolved quite yet, either, so I'm probably going to continue to be quiet here for a while. It's all I can do to just try to get everything done in a day, and then in the evenings I tend to be watching TV or doing similar things to decompress, which is what I've been tweeting about recently.

I did read Catching Fire as one of those decompression activities, though, and perhaps later this week I'll post a review of it, if I get the time. Hopefully by mid-September things will have settled down a bit and I'll have some news for you.

Originally published at Stacy Whitman\\\\\\\'s Grimoire.

Twitter seems to be down, which is a disappointment for the random thoughts I generally send into the ether that way instead of blogging them. I Twitter because I care about you, my blog readers, didn't you know?

(Though if you're getting this on Facebook, I suppose that means that you'd see it either way. But anyway...)

I'm working on making a video. I'd say that it's the first video I've ever made, but I actually did help direct the Hallowmere book trailer, so I suppose this would be the second video I've ever made that doesn't involve filming my cats (often the only interesting subject around my house!). But for the Hallowmere trailer, I had the help of several great people at Wizards of the Coast--the books marketing person, Shelly, and the AdCom guy, Adam, and his whole team. We didn't spend any money on the video, but we had the time and resources of some very talented people.

This time, it's just me and my little Sony digital camera, so it'll be an adventure. The raw footage I can get, no problem. It's the editing that I'm not sure about. I'd like to interview a couple of different people for it, as well as adding text to the video with the people's names. I have a PC, which came with Windows Movie Maker. Yes, I know, it's not Final Cut or anything, but here's a question for those of you who might know: will it be enough to do the simple things I want to do with my video?

I don't think I'll even put music on it, because I don't want to get into trying to figure out royalty-free music. I just want to be able to edit out parts (like the beginning and ends of when I'm recording myself!), splice together a few different pieces of video, and add text. Is that possible with what I have? Or is there a freeware/shareware program out there that might be able to do this?

Originally published at Stacy Whitman\\\\\\\'s Grimoire.

I have finally just discovered Diary of a Wimpy Kid (I know! I had heard of it, but hadn't read it) and I'm looking for read-alikes. I'm at the local B&N (yay for free wifi!) and their website suggested Dan Gutman's The Homework Machine, which looks like a lot of fun. I'm looking for books that are popular and well-known among kids (and hopefully their gatekeepers)--the kinds of books that get passed from kid to kid the way Wimpy Kid and Harry Potter and Levin Thumps were. Is Homework Machine one of those (despite the fact that it has many fewer illustrations)? It seems to have had a long shelf-life at B&N at least--it came out in 2007, and here two years later it's still getting stocked/warehoused in B&Ns in the thousands, which is pretty good for a backlist titles. I'm not talking about something as big as Wimpy Kid, necessarily--just books in the same general fun, illustrated, adventurous genre (realism or fantasy) that have staying power. So with this in mind, what other books am I missing that are the kind of read for kids ages 7-10, with a concentration on the 8 and 9 year olds that Wimpy Kid really hits on target? It's an interesting niche, because it hits slightly younger than the all-prose books in the same middle grade section of the bookstore, yet slightly older than the kids reading chapter books like Magic Treehouse. I doubt we'll find quite as many books in that range that are as highly illustrated as Wimpy Kid, but I am looking for books with illustrations. I'm going to start compiling a list of all the suggestions from people in various places (Facebook, Twitter, this blog and its LJ mirror):

• Supernatural Rubber Chicken by D.L. Garfinkle (except that it's a chapter book for a slightly younger age, so perhaps it *doesn't* meet the narrow criteria?)
• The Homework Machine by Dan Gutman (except that it doesn't have *as many* illustrations... you get the idea. Let's be broad for the original list so I can go check the books out and narrow things down)
• The Dork Diaries
• Dear Dumb Diary
• Flat Stanley
• Ellie McDoodle

Originally published at Stacy Whitman\\\\\\\'s Grimoire.

This just in (and you probably didn't hear it here first): Bloomsbury is listening to the protests, and changing the book jacket for Justine Larbalestier's Liar. Read all about it in today's PW Children's Bookshelf.

Originally published at Stacy Whitman\\\\\\\'s Grimoire.

A conversation came up on Twitter today that moved over to Facebook that covered a lot of ground and I think it would be great to open up the discussion here. It all started because my friend Brandon and I got into yet another discussion about the difference between YA and middle grade, a subject that seems to confuse a lot of people. A lot of misinformation gets spread, especially in the con circuit and SFF community, because it's this relatively new, hot thing and all the cons feel they need to have something about it, but then we end up with local cons that have four or five panels covering the same old boring topics: four about what the difference between YA and MG is, and one on Harry Potter. They might have thrown up a Twilight panel or two in the last few years.

Years ago I was attending Cascadiacon in Seattle when I had an experience that would illustrate this. The panel had a great NYC editor on it--a NYC editor who worked on adult fantasy books--and several local authors, all of whom wrote for adults, except for one self-published author. The first question the panel had was, "Uh, so, first we should probably define YA, huh?" and they all looked at each other blankly.

I was in the audience--I was there strictly as an attendee, and had only been at Wizards for a few months at that point--and when a few minutes of fumbling comments had passed, I raised my hand. "I'm a children's book and YA editor. Here's what YA is for me: books for teens. Readers 12 and up."

They said they had a new panelist and had me come up to the front.

I tell this story usually because I find it funny that I became an impromptu panelist, but also because it's frustrating to me how little information there is beyond the children's book world--or, that is, how little those beyond the children's book world pay attention to the children's book industry, and are downright scared of it at times. (All my friends and present company excepted, of course, because they all know better, right? :) ) (When I worked at a B&N in grad school as a bookseller, I got assigned the children's section by default because everyone else in the store was literally "afraid of it." I don't know why; it didn't bite!)

When "YA" SF award nominees come up, the books could be either middle grade or young adult--Garth Nix's Keys to the Kingdom series, solidly middle grade, was nominated for the 2007 Locus Award, for example. Very seldom do these awards have a "children's" category, so the YA term becomes the catch-all.

So there's the backstory to this post, which I've edited together from my answers on Facebook to replies to my frustrated tweet earlier today:

Argh. It really bugs me when middle grade books are referred to as "YA." They're not! We're already stretching "young adult" to mean a teen!

People replied asking just what was the delineation, so I replied:
( Read the whole discussion below the cut! )
So, oh People of this Industry, where do you stand on this utterly fascinating, earth-shatteringly interesting, way overtalked issue? Do editors have it all wrong because we're thinking about marketing categories (which, by the way, are mirrored in a majority of children's and teen libraries)? Should we change our terminology because the audience is using it, or should we just keep correcting them? :D

I still say it's the Pirate Code, though.

Originally published at Stacy Whitman's Grimoire.

Today's Writing Excuses covers conventions you (writers) should be attending, but they didn't really have time to cover conventions and conferences specifically geared for children's books (and I actually am not sure if any of them have been to anything except the occasional BYU Writing for Young Readers). I've been meaning to post something about this for a while, so this sparked me to remember to do this post!

(And remember to go back to Writing Excuses next week, when they talk about what you should be doing at a writing conference/convention.)

Before we get into that, though, I had to share a hypothetical scenario that Brandon and Peter, long-time friends of yore, came up with after I twittered about Dan's US cover. My tweets get imported into Facebook, and in answer to this tweet:

I am Not a Serial Killer (and you can too)--friend Dan Wells's book's US cover is revealed: http://tinyurl.com/kkfrjx (he's @johncleaver)

Peter posted this in reply on Facebook:

Well, according to Brandon:

Q: If the gang from Writing Excuses were put in a horror film, obviously Dan would be the killer. But what order do you think everyone would die in? And how would they die? (The victim list includes: you, Howard, Jordan, Pemberly, Stacy, and Peter)

A: Ha! Well, let's see. If Dan were the killer, I think he'd try to take out Howard first, since Howard is obviously the most dangerous of us all. Though he sees me more often, so he might try to get to me first. I'd put it in this order:... Read More

Howard
Me
Jordo
Peter
Pemberly (he'd leave the women for last because he's a very gentlemanly killer.)

And then Stacy would take Dan down in a surprise ending. She'd edit him out of the script or something.

So if you know the Writing Excuses guys, watch out for Howard, but perhaps even more, watch out for me!

On to conferences. In the podcast, the guys cover several different types of gatherings that writers might attend: literary conventions, anime conventions, media conventions, conferences and trade-shows. In children's books, we don't really have conventions for fans in the same way that fantasy/scifi has conventions (Comic-Con, DragonCon, anime conventions--these are big gatherings where vendors set up booths to sell (or give away) things directly to fans). Though we might consider a parallel to that to be school visits, which aren't exactly a big thing in adult books.

Trade shows, of course, are the same for both adult and children's--BEA (Book Expo America, a show for booksellers), ALA (the American Library Association's annual and midwinter conferences, a trade show for librarians, obviously), IRA (the International Reading Association, a show for teachers, especially elementary teachers), NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English, kind of more of a conference than a trade show compared to the others above, high school English teachers). Obviously, IRA and NCTE tend to attract more children's and YA books, and of course educational publishing, but there's some crossover.

In the children's book community, though, the biggest conferences to be aware of fall under either literary conventions (according to their definitions, though we might call them conferences interchangeably) or conferences (again, according to their defs). Which ones should you be aware of?

Literary conventions

• SCBWI New York


• SCBWI Los Angeles


• Local SCBWI conferences like those hosted by the Seattle, Chicago, Houston, and New England SCBWIs

All of the above are great -- and inexpensive -- places to attend classes on craft, getting published, and marketing your book, meet guest editors and writers, network with other writers, and all sorts of other beneficial activities. You might meet people who you'll end up forming a critique group through, or you might discover that a guest editor is looking for something that you write; often editors who work at houses that are closed to unsolicited/unagented submissions are open to submissions for a limited time from conference attendees.

Connected with these things, if you aren't familiar with the activities hosted by your local Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), you should investigate. Most chapters host a lot more than their yearly conferences--they often have monthly meetings, offer a listserv, have members looking for critique groups online and in person, and man other local resources. You'll be able to find out information on both the national and local organizations at the link above.

Conferences (aka workshops or seminars)

• BYU Writing for Young Readers


• Clarion


• Chatauqua


• ...I know I'm missing several -- what am I forgetting?

It's getting late, which is why I'm forgetting a lot. I'll save this post and add to it tomorrow, but in the mean time, feel free to post conferences I'm forgetting in the comments.

Originally published at Stacy Whitman\\\\\\\'s Grimoire.