Our First Interview!

Hey, everyone! Suzy and I were interviewed by Publishers Weekly about how our growing friendship resulted in our first novel, I'LL BE SEEING YOU. Check it out here.

Amo l'Italia!!!!

 

Suzy and I are happy to announce...

 

Italian rights to Suzanne Hayes and Loretta Nyhan's I'LL BE SEEING YOU, to Garzanti, by Luigi Bernabo Associates, in association with Kathleen Ortiz at New Leaf Literary & Media, on behalf of Anne Bohner at Pen and Ink Literary and Joanna Volpe at New Leaf Literary & Media.

 

AND...my agent, Joanna Volpe, recently announced the opening of her new literary agency, New Leaf Literary & Media. Congrats, Jo! So much excitement!

Printers Row Lit Fest 2012

(We're going to pretend that it hasn't been a whole eight months since I posted, okay? I've been writing like crazy, and I hope someday soon you'll think it was time well spent...thanks for sticking with me.)

Yesterday I attended Chicago's Printers Row Literary Festival. Half outdoor flea market/half literary conference, the festival draws some pretty big name writers AND a ton of people who simply love to read. It's eccentric and informative and completely fabulous. I was lucky enough to attend a few panel discussions, and I'd like to share my impressions here. I love listening to writers talk about writing, but to be honest I was also hoping to learn something about how to be effective on a panel. In June `13 Suzy and I will be promoting our book, and I wanted to see how it's done. The ladies I saw yesterday really knew what they were doing--the audiences were seriously engaged.

Women's Fiction:

Panel 1: Starting Fresh with Stacey Ballis, Sarah Pekkanen, Lauren Fox, and Ann Bauer.

Stacey writes "Foodie Lit" which sounds completely awesome. She was funny and practical and could be heard in the back of the room. This is important. Sarah Pekkanen looks like a super model and has a smooth, rich TV voice, kind of like Jane Pauley when she was young. She talked about overarching themes, balancing motherhood and writing, and working well with editors. Her topics were so relatable and presented with humor and grace. I think everyone was charmed.

Lauren Fox was the only author who read from her book. She did this, in part, because she is naturally shy. I think she actually said many writers are "socially inept." (Um...yeah. I think a lot of us are better with the written word.) The excerpt she chose was funny and briskly paced. She read slowly enough so we understood but not so slow as to make us feel uncomfortable. Even though I got the feeling public speaking isn't on her list of favorite things to do, Lauren's quick wit and self-deprecating manner made her nervousness endearing. 

Ann Bauer told the story of how she came up with the idea for her book, The Forever Marriage. It felt prepared, but not scripted. We were riveted. I think every member of that audience thought, if she writes that story as well as she tells it, I am buying that book TODAY.

What I took away from this panel: Work to your strengths. If you know you aren't a good off-the-cuff speaker, let the writing speak. Pick topics your audience can relate to. Every audience loves a story, well-told.

Young Adult Fiction

Panel 2: Dark Days with Veronica Roth, Elizabeth Norris, Bethany Griffin, and Aprilynne Pike.

The room was packed with fans of these ladies--an interesting mix of teens and adults. The moderator asked lots of questions about the process of writing and pumped the writers for "behind the scenes" stories. These writers had four very different personalities, but I could clearly see one commonality--they all had the utmost respect for their readers. Aprilynne discussed fighting to include an epilogue at the end of her Wings series, because she felt readers needed closure. Veronica Roth discussed plotting a trilogy, and Liz Norris talked about the all-important first line (She writes it last, because if it wasn't perfect, she'd have never been able to write on.).

Bethany Griffin has the amazing ability to pause and think after being asked a question. This is not part of my skill set. If there is any amount of silence in a conversation, I fill it. With anything. Bethany took a minute to think about her answers, and when she spoke, her comments were thoughtful and offered a good deal of insight.

What I took away from this panel: Be genuine and honest without being gossipy. It's okay to discuss the writing process--no need to shroud it in mystery. And...uh...don't be a nervous talker. A few seconds of radio silence is okay.

So...check out these writers' books! Happy summer reading season!

Big News

From today's Publishers Marketplace:

Suzanne Hayes and Loretta Nyhan's I'LL BE SEEING YOU, a story of unexpected friendship told through letters shared between two American women on the home front during World War II, to Erika Imranyi at Mira, in a two-book deal, by Anne Bohner at Pen & Ink Literary and Joanna Volpe at Nancy Coffey Literary & Media Representation.

So...how did this happen?

Magic? Happenstance? Accidentally?

I fell in love with Suzy's words on her lovely blog. She read mine, too. We connected. We emailed. We discovered.

Both of us had projects on sub and waiting is hard and lonely. We became friends.

One day Suzy said, in her charming and enthusiastic way, "Let's write a book together while we wait." I said, in my best Spicoli voice, "Uh...okay."

We're both history geeks, the World War II era in particular. When Suzy suggested we write letters to each other as women waiting for their men to come home from the war, I was all over it.

When I got that first letter, my character came to me, fully formed, and started talking. It sounds crazy, but Rita became real, as did Suzy's character, Glory. I found myself refreshing my inbox, hoping a new letter would pop up. I had no idea when this would happen---sometimes days would go by.

When a letter did come, I'd take one look at the Dear Rita subject line and my heart would shake. The computer couldn't bring it up fast enough. My fingers couldn't type a reply fast enough.

We ached for these characters, laughed with them, cried for them. And when the last letter was written, we cried for ourselves. Because it was over.

But then, it wasn't. Our agents, Joanna Volpe and Anne Bohner, loved the book. Later, a wonderful editor, Erika Imranyi at MIRA, loved it as well.

We couldn't be happier. And we couldn't be luckier. How can we adequately thank the people who are making our dreams possible?

And, Suzy, how can I thank you enough? My crazy East Coast twin? Someday we will meet face to face, and you'll take one look at me and know what this has all meant. Love you.

L

Sunset for Woody

A few weeks ago, I walked out of Midnight in Paris and said something I never thought I'd say after watching a Woody Allen film: "Well, that was cute."

And it was, in a literary geek/celeb spotting kind of way. Oh, there's Hemingway. And Gertrude Stein. And Omigod, Adrien Brody makes the best Salvador Dali!

Yeah.

In Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen revisits the magical elements that made The Purple Rose of Cairo such an interesting, compelling film. But in Cairo he seemed to know this: the realism is just as important as the magic. Midnight in Paris is visually stunning and fairly whimsical, but it presents a world populated with caricatures. At some point during this film, Allen decided to sacrifice believability for jokes.

The thing is, he used to do both so well.

I get that he's 75, long past the age when most directors have retired or simply faded away. I also understand that artists evolve and later work may reflect a shift in perspective or a refusal to follow trends. I also suspect some find great comfort in repetition, in watered down versions of older, more successful works. I don't want Woody Allen to be guilty of the latter. It's just too disappointing.

I think he's still got it in him to create movies like the following, movies that made me laugh and think in equal measure, movies that made me want to be a better writer:

Annie Hall

Manhattan

Hannah and Her Sisters

Zelig

The Purple Rose of Cairo

Radio Days

Crimes and Misdemeanors

Husbands and Wives

Manhattan Murder Mystery

Want to add any to the list?

Happy 20th Birthday, Kody Keplinger!

(Kody Keplinger, the author of THE DUFF and the upcoming SHUT OUT, is an agent sister, friend, and occasional writing challenge buddy. This is for her.)


I know, I know...in some ways it does suck to say adios to your teens. You're stressing. I could feel your anxiety over the Internet.

At first, I couldn't understand it. You published a novel at 18. You have another coming out in a couple of weeks. You've accomplished more than people twice your age. You're independent and lovely and focused.

But then...I realized that I'd forgotten.

I'd forgotten that jumping into your third--and first wholly adult--decade is a throat tightening plunge into an ocean of wide open nothingness. The water appears vast and overwhelming, and it seems the waves pull your raft--the safe, secure anchor of teen life--farther and farther out to sea.

My 19 year old self, full of nerves about the future, wrote a timeline for my 20s in my journal: By 19-- I would publish my novel (Um...not that I'd actually written one at that point!) In 19-- I would travel through Europe with only a back on my back. Then I would meet a wonderful man and get married. We'd live on a commune in California and an artists' colony in Provence and a rustic cabin in Maine. Etcetera, etcetera--the list was waaaay long.

Some of those things happened. Some of those things didn't. Your twenties is when you realize planning with pretend knowledge of the future is useless. And this is a freaking exciting revelation. Because anything can happen.

It is also universally acknowledged that at some point between twenty and thirty you will be the best looking version of you. (This is not a superficial statement because this beauty comes more from internal than external factors.) Acne will disappear, baby fat will melt away, and you will be years away from wrinkles and age spots. Your skin will glow. You might not have much money, but you will be secure in your taste and confident in your style. Your hair will shine. And one day you'll be sitting with some friends, holding a glass of wine or a root beer or a San Pellegrino, in a romantic cafe in a city you've come to know as your own, in a city that you've come to own. The sun will make the glass in your hand sparkle and you'll think of all the things you know and all the things there's left to learn and the road is so deliciously long. "This," you'll say, "is life."

And it is good.

Happy Birthday, Kody. The best is yet to come...



For more birthday wishes, check out blog posts by Amy Lukavics, Lisa and Laura Roecker, Erica O'Rourke, and Kaitlin Ward later today!

Back to the Past

The book I'm working on now is set in WWII-era Iowa City. Yep, Iowa.

I have a good grasp of 20th C. history, but I nearly googled myself to death trying to get the setting right. There's not a lot out there, but, I thought, what I found was enough. Through the University of Iowa photo archives I saw where my character might live, where she'd do her grocery shopping, and where she'd stop for a cup of tea or a beer, depending on her preference. Their collection is wonderful.

Still, I had to make some assumptions based on more general historical facts. For example, small-town USO functions were typically held in YMCAs or YWCAs, so when my gal went to roll bandages for the guys overseas, she skipped on down to the Y.

Those assumptions started to bother me. What if I was wrong? You might think, who the heck is going to know the difference? Well, I would. Someone who was around back then might.

So I called the Johnson County Historical Society. The woman who picked up, Sue Foster, patiently listened to my questions. "You need to talk to Bob Hibbs," she said when I finished. "He's our local historian and he knows everything. Let me see if I can find his number..."

She did find it, and next thing I knew I was asking Mr. Bob Hibbs where I might go if I attended a USO function in 1943 if I lived in Iowa City.

"All the USO activities were held in the American Legion Building," he said without even pausing to think. "The old YMCA building burned down."

Okay, then. I would have been wrong.

This might not seem like a big deal to you. But the more I learn about the brave, industrious souls who inhabited Iowa during the war, the more I want to do right by them. It seems an insult to assume now. I want to know.

The closest you can get to that knowledge is through real, live human beings. Thanks, Sue. Thanks, Bob. My book is better thanks to both of you.