Anderson's YA -- Part 3 : Multiple Author Tidbits

That's Charles Benoit after a "Contemporary Edge" breakout session talking to an audience member. His featured speech, by the way, was fantastic. He told the story of his mom always having a book when he was a child and encouraging him to come sit with her and read. At some point he realized she wasn't actually reading and questioned her. She replied that she needed glasses and couldn't afford glasses for both herself and her kids. When questioned why she always had a book: because she wanted to be a good influence. He also told other very funny "mom" stories. This was his first YA conference and he spoke of his book YOU which is in second person! Writing in second person would scare the crap out of me.

Simone Elkeles told another story about cover demands--she had to write a scene into RULES OF ATTRACTION for the scene of the guy and girl leaning out of car windows kissing (my last blog talked of Stephanie Hemphill's change for matching cover art). I have another note of Simone talking of cover art for another book showing a flat model representing a well endowed main character, but my notes are a bit vague. One of Simone's fears: Being seen in public (and recognized) when she's in the midst of an intense writing period and hasn't showered or washed her hair in days. One of my fears: That Simone will kill me for blogging that she said this.

Stacy Kade compares the banter between her two main characters to that on the old TV show "Moonlighting". I might add I read the first couple chapters of THE GHOST AND THE GOTH and loved the voice.

I still need to talk about friends I saw and which author graced my table. Oh, and John Green, David Levithan and Kenneth Oppel. But that will be another day or three.

Anderson's YA -- Part 2 : Stephanie Hemphill

One of the authors I was most looking forward to meeting at Anderson's YA Conference this year was Stephanie Hemphill. I have fallen in love with writing novels in verse and Stephanie writes in verse. I confess I haven't finished reading WICKED GIRLS, but only because I haven't had the time. I promise a review when I do finish reading it.

WICKED GIRLS is a historical fiction account of the Salem witch trial from the points of view of the young girl accusers.

A couple notes from her speaking at the "In My 'hood" breakout (local authors):

• She describes her book as mean "mean girls crossed with 1692".
• She removed a descriptive line about a character's blond ringlet curls because of the cover picture (straight hair which would not be common in 1692).
• She grew up in the Naperville area and now splits time between Illinois and LA.

Two other note: I loved how she signed my copy (and not just because she called me a poet). Also, she will be doing a reading at Anderson's store in October.

Anderson's YA -- Part 1 : Andrea Cremer

Because there was just TOO much that happened at Anderson's YA Conference to include in a single blog... I decided to break it into smaller pieces over a number of days. The started with free ARCs at check-in. One was by Andrea Cremer who was one of the authors on the "New Voices" panel.
Now if you think I was excited about getting a free ARC of her book, check out how excited she was to have everyone get them!


A few brief notes from Andrea's comments in the breakout session:

• She dreamt of writing novels and riding horses. She decided to spend a summer riding--until the first day a spooked horse crushed her foot. Since she spent the next weeks unable to apply weight to the foot, she wrote a novel. (For those who know how I spent last summer, yell at me for not working as hard as Andrea!)
• She had two "practice novels before NIGHTSHADE.
• NIGHTSHADE is not just another werewolf book -- The characters revel in the beauty wolves and the magic which surrounds their lives. (Andrea: I hope I expressed that correctly from my notes.)
• Andrea writes a novel's first draft in about four weeks.
• Andrea is a punctuation freak in the sense she loves to use commas, semi-colons, ellipses -- she's also a copy editor's nightmare. In spite of the fact that she is a full time college professor.

Next post: Stephanie Hemphill