YA highway

So if you've been following this drama of epic proportions over at Harlequin, you may be a tad confused over what it all means. Self-publishing? Good? Bad? Should traditional publishers get involved?

I'll admit, when I first read about it on Kristin Nelson's blog, I wasn't quite sure what it meant. I went on to read what Nathan Bransford had to say, and Jennifer Jackson, and Rachelle Gardner, and of course, The Shark Herself. All interesting stuff.

But I was still confused. (Call me stoopid.) Then I stumbled onto author Jackie Kessler's post, and behold, the light shineth from the heavens. Seriously, if you're wondering just what has unfolded over at Harlequin over the past few days, Ms. Kessler has summed it up in a very helpful (and hilarious) way.

My opinion, at the moment? Vanity publisher. Traditional publisher. No in-betweens, combos, mixes, or anything of the sort, please. I understand that traditional publishers are having a really tough time in our current economic situation. But guess what? So are writers. Being a writer is tough, making real money as a writer is next to impossible. Why should we take on more of the financial load? No one at Harlequin is forcing writers to do this, of course. But encouraging aspiring novelists to take this "opportunity" (via rejection letter) is, in my humble opinion, slightly evil.

What are your thoughts?

ETA: Newest development –SFWA has also announced that Harlequin sales will not qualify for membership with their organization. To quote their post:

Until such time as Harlequin changes course, and returns to a model of legitimately working with authors instead of charging authors for publishing services, SFWA has no choice but to be absolutely clear that NO titles from ANY Harlequin imprint will be counted as qualifying for membership in SFWA. Further, Harlequin should be on notice that while the rules of our annual Nebula Award do not expressly prohibit self-published titles from winning, it is highly unlikely that our membership would ever nominate or vote for a work that was published in this manner.

ETAA (Um, the extra A is for again): After spending a few joyous hours learning more about this, I wrote a rather epic treatise with the facts I discovered (including how much getting my first novel published via Harlequin Horizons would cost me) on my blog. Check it out if you're interested. There's a cookie in it for you.

Finnikin was only a child during the five days of the unspeakable, when the royal family of Lumatere were brutally murdered, and an imposter seized the throne. Now a curse binds all who remain inside Lumatere’s walls, and those who escaped roam the surrounding lands as exiles, persecuted and despairing, dying by the thousands in fever camps.

In a narrative crackling with the tension of an imminent storm, Finnikin, now on the cusp of manhood, is compelled to join forces with an arrogant and enigmatic young novice named Evanjalin, who claims that her dark dreams will lead the exiles to a surviving royal child and a way to pierce the cursed barrier and regain the land of Lumatere.

But Evanjalin’s unpredictable behavior suggests that she is not what she seems — and the startling truth will test Finnikin’s faith not only in her, but in all he knows to be true about himself and his destiny.

As you probably know by now, Melina Marchetta's 2009 Printz Award winner Jellicoe Road is one of my favorite books. So I was understandably thrilled to be sent an ARC of her newest book, Finnikin of the Rock, several months before its February 2010 US release date. While all Melina's other young adult books are contemporary, FOTR is fantasy. High fantasy. Epic fantasy.

While I am in awe of all great books, well-written fantasy tomes leave my brain gasping. So many characters! So many places! New cities, countries, histories! No googling the Wyoming Surnames Database for names like I did for my novel. It's a lot to wrap your head around as a reader, let alone as an author.

I didn’t doubt Melina Marchetta had the skill to write such a complex story. And yet, Finnikin of the Rock completely blew me away.

At its core, Finnikin of the Rock is the story of a people displaced. In fact, the novel starts with a poem by Primo Levi, the famous writer, chemist and Holocaust survivor. It's allegorical to all the real-world exoduses and genocides—not the Jews, but the Armenians, the Cambodians, the Darfuris, and the people of Serbia and Bosnia and Croatia, countries I backpacked through just two weeks ago with FOTR's Lumateran massacre still on my mind.

So yeah, there's heavy stuff there. But with the exception of certain parts, the book is hardly dreary. It's packed with adventure and magic and battles and dreamwalking and humor and peripheral characters that shine. There are Surprises! too—the kind we'd expect from the author of Jellicoe Road. Even if you guess a couple ahead of time, it only enriches the revelations, because you so want to be right. In other instances, Melina pulls off near-impossible feats of character development: specifically, the redemption of a character I absolutely despised (you'll know who I'm talking about).

But my favorite parts of FOTR are smaller moments. The parts that reflect Melina's gift for human connection. An arm slung playfully around a son's neck. Words spoken close at a cliff's edge. In the book's most heart-singing part, a Mont cousin approaching with alarming speed.

And of course, the romance. Sigh, swoon, sob. Melina's romances tend to creep up on you, just as they do her protagonists… right before they slap you in the heart.

While a measure of magic can be attributed to her careful pacing, the swoon factor is mostly because of her characters. They're rich, they're real, they're infinitely dimensional. Although Finnikin leads the story, fierce, compassionate Evanjalin is the true star—one of my all-time favorite characters, badass and broken and entirely unwavering in her quest to unite the severed kingdom of Lumatere. You'll adore her.

Finnikin of the Rock is marketed as young adult, but it's a great example of crossover, with appeal for adults as well as teens. It'll be available in the US on February 9, 2010. Copies are already available for pre-ordering.

Visit Melina Marchetta's website at melinamarchetta.com.au

-Kirsten Hubbard

ARC provided by Candlewick

Welcome to our seventh Road Trip Wednesday!

Road Trip Wednesday is a "Blog Carnival", where YA Highway's contributors post a weekly writing or reading-related question and answer it in on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic.

You're more than welcome to participate! Just answer the question/topic on your own blog, and leave a link to it in the comments.

Kristin Miller: More often it’s not the whole story, but the individual scenes that work with particular songs . . .

Amanda Hannah: It can bring on the right mood, whether it be somber, cheerful, exciting, or reflective . . .

Kristin Otts: I honestly don't believe I'd be a writer if I wasn't a music-lover first . . .

Kaitlin Ward: I also find that if I try to associate things in my WIPs with music while I'm writing . . .

Kirsten Hubbard: Others painstakingly choose soundtracks for every WIP, song by song, shifting and manipulating. . .

In the midst of the story, the main character could suddenly discover something that changes the whole game. A good guy could turn out bad. Goals could be changed to a more imminent danger that arises. A character's internal conflict could lead to a shocking action. There are many ways to add in twists and turns to build suspense and keep a reader turning pages. Most novels will have at least one, if not a few, surprise moments. Whether it's a huge AHA! or more of a simple revelation, surprises are something readers enjoy and writers struggle to pull off.

Most surprises need to have some roots grounded early in the book--little whispers that could hint at something to come. Things that the reader might not consciously pick up on at first, but once the surprise is discovered, they can connect all the dots together.

Rachelle Gardner has a blog post that distinguishes the difference between foreshadowing and telegraphing, which is very important for working the element of surprise. Telegraphing (giving away too much, too soon) can kill the suspense and ultimately ruin the surprise moment, while some well thought out foreshadowing can heighten tension and keep a reader enthralled.

The biggest problem writers suffer when working in a surprise, is that you as the writer already know what will happen. And if you're revising/editing, you've been working on these elements for a while and might not be able to recognize if it's working. So how do you know if you've been successful?

Make a list of any and all foreshadowing or clues you've laid out. Go through each one and ask yourself, would any of these be too obvious? As a reader, would you have been able to figure it out before it actually happened based on these clues? And as always, your best bet--good beta readers to give you solid opinions.

If you're revising, how do you determine if you've done a good job of keeping the reader on their toes and making sure your surprise work? Leave any comments/suggestions below on how you work in your surprises!

I must begin this post with a caveat: there are, indeed, some ideas/stories/manuscripts that have made semi-headlines with accusations of plagerism/theft/crappiness. But can you name the last serious manuscript theft story you read? I can't. But I can recall the handful of dingbats who've claimed Harry Potter/Twilight/Whatever Dan Brown's Books are Called were their ideas first and Rowling/Meyer/Brown stole the ideas from them and check, please!

But who actually takes those claims seriously?

I don't. Not at that superstar level and not at the plebian level of hard-working but as yet unpublished and unappreciated writers.

Are there unscrupulous folks who will attempt to filch your TOTALLY UNIQUE NEVER BEFORE SEEN IDEA EVER? Maybe, but not likely. Are there folks who, after reading your awesome take on angels feel inspired to write about angels, too? OMG, ANGELS! Maybe. But, so? Your idea isn't as unique as you think it is. Not only that, but ideas are in the public domain. Nobody owns them. Your manuscript? A different story. That you own, but serious (ahem. Important Word There) writers are NOT interested in stealing it! Or your ideas. Here are a few reasons why:

1) Writers are creative people with more ideas than they can shake a stick at. Today, I got excited by three potential novel ideas. THREE! In one day! It would take a year to write and revise three novels to my liking. In fact, here, have one of my ideas: I was reading Robert Schumann's biography today and was struck by his love affair with Clara. Go on, look it up. Tell me it wouldn't make an awesome novel. I mean, her dad took Schumann to court so Schumann couldn't marry his daughter!

2) Writing is HARD WORK. Ideas are easy peasy. Truly. So easy my dog comes up with them on a regular basis and paws them in in the mud when we go to the off-leash park just to amuse the other dogs who don't have writers for owners. I have had conversations with fellow writers who've written brilliant stories that I can't wait to read, only to discover that the same idea had been used ten years ago - by a well-known writer, even - and OH MY GOSH! HOW CAN THAT BE?!?! (I'm not making fun of you - you know who you are - promise!). So, yeah, ideas are a dime a dozen. But actually writing the novel? Hard freaking work. Harder than anyone who thinks they'll just sit down a throw something out there one day realize. And when you're putting that much work into something, you want it to be original, you want it to be YOU.

3) A trail. E-mail trails and blog post trails and old-fashioned paper trails, all proving how much of your story is yours and not that other guy's/gal's/dog's. Publishing houses, who vet their authors. And editors, who are extremely well-read and suspicious and looking for different, not more of the same. And no one wants a lawsuit, so plagerism is taken seriously.

4) A community of respect. Are there idea theives out there? Sure. A few. Should you worry? Not if you've built and fostered a writing community that respects its colleagues. It's hard to share work. I have a hard time with pressing the send button that first time. But not because I think my trusted beta readers or agent (LOL) or anyone is going to steal my manuscript. Take some time to get to know the writing community, whether online or in person, and you will find lots of people who want to write their own, original work and help you improve your work.

Every once in a while, a newbie on Absolute Write will start a post about whether or not it's safe to share work. Surely, someone out there wants to steal it! Stop. It's not likely to happen. The internet and our computers' advanced memory banks make it more difficult than ever to steal work. And if you don't share, you miss out on the invaluable insight of beta readers. Your work will never improve without betas as well as it could with betas.

So, stop being so afraid. They're not coming to get you. The aliens, or the manuscript theives.

/rant/hopefully useful, informative post

This has been floating around in my mind for a few weeks now, but I haven't blogged about it because I couldn't quite grasp the connection my brain was trying to make. I think, maybe, I've got it now.

I'm a musician. (That's me on the left.) For me, the best way to express myself musically is through improvisation – aka, not pre-composed notes on a page, but whatever comes out in the moment of performance. Improvisation is most commonly associated with jazz.

It wasn't always something I enjoyed – in fact, I used to dread it, because the pressure of coming up with a cohesive musical thought on the spot in front of others scared the hell out of me. A performance in that kind of setting was a very new and different experience compared to my years of playing what was written on the page, or what I had memorized. But improvisation is more than just "making it up", of course – there's all that mathematical theory stuff that is both everything and nothing about the craft of music.

I studied. Chords. Inversions. Leading tones. Modes. Blues scales. Transcriptions of solos by legends like Monk and Parker. And when it all comes down to it, when I'm playing, am I thinking "what's next an A minor 7 chord with a flat 5 should I do a run down starting on Eb or play a lick in thirds oh crap what would Louis Armstrong do –"

Call me crazy, but I don't think any musician actually thinks about all that music theory while in the actual moment of making music. You study and absorb it, and it becomes instinctual. And of course, you break all those rules every now and then because well, rules are made to be broken.

Wait, this is a blog about writing, right?

So I'm working on a first draft that's very new and different for me. Different voice, different tense, different target audience, different POV, different pretty much everything. And for the past few years I've read everything I could find on how to write. The rules, all the technical stuff that is both everything and nothing about the craft of writing.

I studied. Watch the adverbs. No info-dumping. Show don't tell. Use all five senses. And when it all comes down to it, when I'm writing, am I thinking "wait don't use 'softly' change the tag to whispered or should I stick with said and I haven't mentioned what it smells like and this character is angry so should I show it by having him throw that puppy and oh crap what would John Green do –"

Actually, I used to. When I was editing my last book, I overthought the snot out of every single thing I typed. Which, by the way, is no way to enjoy writing. But I'd studied so much and learned so much and I just wanted to put it into practice so badly, because that's improvement, right?

I've realized, while working on this latest first draft, that it's already better than my second draft (and third draft) of my last book. I've found that musical improvisation zone, where the things I've studied and the rules I've committed to heart are there, in the back of my mind, but now I can trust my instinct and let myself create what's natural for me.

I know that's nothing groundbreaking, and for writers this could all be summed up by saying first master the rules, then break them. And I'm by no means suggesting that I've mastered anything – far from it! But this journey towards finding that place where the knowledge I've soaked in is something organic in my writing, and not something I've forced upon my writing, has been a really great experience.