Shaken & Stirred

Anne-nouncement

If you happen to be radio-friendly, I'll be on NPR's Weekend Edition tomorrow morning (about 40 minutes into the first hour of the broadcast) discussing the new Modern Library edition of Anne of Green Gables.

Wednesday SBBT Stops

Delia Sherman at Chasing Ray
Ingrid Law at Fuse Number 8
Polly Dunbar at 7 Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Tera Lynn Childs at Bildungsroman
Siena Cherson Siegel at Miss Erin
Barry Lyga at A Chair, A Fireplace, & A Tea Cozy

Tuesday SBBT Stops

Ben Towle at Chasing Ray
Sean Qualls at Fuse Number 8
Susane Colasanti at Bildungsroman
Robin Brande at Hip Writer Mama
Susan Beth Pfeffer at The YA YA YAs
Debby Garfinkle at a Chair, a Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy
Jennifer Lynn Barnes at Writing and Ruminating

For yesterday's, see my interview with Dave Schwartz, which has the full list at the bottom. Ciao!

SBBT Stop: David J. Schwartz

David J. Schwartz -- henceforth known as "Dave" -- is a most excellent human being. Trust me. In addition to that, Dave's great at karaoke. I know, what more can someone be good at? That's all you need, right? You want to befriend this man and fix him up with Neko Case, stat. Who doesn't? AND he's an amazing writer. For years, he's been publishing short stories that can't all be described with the same words, but you'd like them. And now, his first novel, Superpowers, is on the brink of publication. It's good--really good. About a handful of tenants in the same building who drink some strong home brew one night and wake up with, well, super powers. The sale note billed it as "Kavalier and Clay meets The Incredibles." But I'll let him tell you about it before it's all over the airwaves. Suffice to say: Plan on reading this one.

GB: You know the process porn drill. Tell me about the actual writing of the book -- how long it took, what you learned writing it, all that good stuff.

DS: Most of the book -- the first three-quarters or so -- was written in early 2002. I was bartending at the time (some people prefer to call it "tending bar"), and I'd get home at 2 in the morning, grab something to eat, and write until 5 or 6. I was probably the most disciplined I've ever been about my writing. (It helps not to have a social life!) But when it came to writing the last part, which deals with 9/11, I wasn't ready to face that yet. It was a little too fresh. I'd had this idea for a novel about superheroes a long time before this, and I was getting ready to start it on my birthday that year, September 22nd. Once the attacks happened, though, it seemed dishonest to write about heroism and power and not engage with what had just happened. But I was too sad and too angry to tackle it right away.

It wasn't until a couple of years later, after I had signed with my agent, that I finished the book, polished it off, and sent it out. It's funny, though, that I didn't remember it had happened that way until I started getting asked questions like this. Perhaps because I always knew how the ending had to happen, I always forget about the gap. The ending was already written in my head, it was just a matter of putting down the words.

What I learned is a tricky question. This was the third novel I've written (the first to sell), so it wasn't that first-novel sort of experience, where the biggest thing you're learning is that you can actually do it. I'm a very instinctive writer. I rarely use outlines, and most of the time I don't know what the ending is going to be. Once I do know the ending, I rapidly lose interest, and I have trouble finishing things! This is even more true with novels, because I find it impossible to hold a story that big in my head all at once. What I usually end up doing is taking a couple of steps, writing a couple of scenes, and then figuring out where I've taken myself and what has to happen next. I only plan a chapter or two ahead. With Superpowers that more or less worked; the revisions and the editing were relatively painless. With the book I'm revising right now, it didn't work quite as well, and the work I'm having to do is more of breaking and re-setting bones than it is cosmetic surgery.

Part of what I did learn was what I could get away with. There was a narrative experiment that I tried in the book, but the editors didn't feel it was working and my first readers agreed. Luckily it pulled right out without changing much of the main story. There was a ghost in the book (I'll let folks guess where) that was a point of contention because the editors felt it was one step too far into weirdness. The one thing that hasn't come up, at least so far, was the humor. I was really worried about having a book that shifts in tone the way this one does, starting out light and sarcastic and then taking some really dark turns later. I ended up thinking of it like certain Hong Kong kung fu flicks, like "Fong Sai-Yuk" or "Swordsman II," where it starts out very funny and you're just enjoying getting to see what everyone can do, and then, BAM, someone dies and all of a sudden it's a tragedy. But at this point I've wandered far afield of your question, so on to the next.

GB: So your superheroes discover quickly that real life superhero-dom has some issues. But if you had to slot your superheroes into a universe full of supervillains and easy justice, would it be DC or Marvel and why?

DS: It has to be Marvel, just because that's where I came from as far as formative materials. Not to bust on DC or anything, because they've published some great stuff, and the differences between the two are less pronounced than they once were. But I do think there is, even today, a bit more cynicism about the whole hero thing on the Marvel side. The fact that Batman -- who on a bad day is as scary as the Joker -- has the police and the populace more or less on his side, whereas the NYPD is always trying to arrest wisecracking, colorful Spider-Man, is just one example of the difference in worldview. The X-Men books took that sort of "fear-what-you-don't-understand" idea to such extremes that they've almost become parodies of themselves, but it's not an untrue observation on human nature. I'm not going to claim that Marvel's books are more realistic than DC's, because that would make me ridiculous. But the problems of balancing life as a human being with life as a superhero seem more present in those stories, and that's what interests me.  eter Parker has trouble holding a job or making his relationships work, and it's all Spider-Man's fault. And for me, I don't care about Spider-Man unless I care about Peter Parker. I enjoy Batman stories, and sometimes (well, rarely) Superman stories, but I don't give a crap about Bruce Wayne or Clark Kent. They don't have problems I can relate to. Stan Lee couldn't write dialog to save his life, but he was a genius at bringing superheroes down to earth and keeping them human.

Just to step back to the realism thing for a second, the thing that -- I would argue -- puts superhero stories, whether in comics, film, or fiction, into their own genre is that it's nearly impossible to argue plausibility in the way that you could science fiction, because when there is science it's most often pseudoscience; and yet they're not quite fantasy, because the magic, when it's there, exists in the same world as that aforementioned pseudoscience. Individual stories or characters might slot into one genre or another, like Iron Man (science fiction) or Doctor Strange (fantasy), but they live in the same world and interact on a regular basis, so where does that leave you? (Lucius Shepard would probably say it's all just adolescent power fantasy, but that's not exactly a basis for classification! I would argue that there's a certain type of story that works best when, to paraphrase Holly Black, you give your characters everything your readers wish they had and then make it suck.) In general I'm not a big fan of putting stories into boxes, but I think this is an interesting thought experiment. Superpowers is being marketed as mainstream, but it could have gone a couple of different ways, I think.

GB: You're clearly commenting on the superhero tradition here. Did that come from things that bugged you about it? I ask because there's also clearly a great deal of affection for that in the book.

DS: There are so many things that bug me about the superhero tradition, and yet I'm still a devoted fan. I have no explanation for this. To begin with, there's the rampant sexism that still prevails in comics. Yesterday I was looking at some concept art for a minor superhero team that someone had posted online, and two of the three female characters were described as "air-headed" and "giggly but annoyingly cute." None of the male characters were described in similarly demeaning terms. Superheroine costumes are generally far more revealing and, apparently, easily torn than those worn by their male counterparts, not to mention that the women are apparently subject to different standards of gravity. The argument is always that most comics readers are adolescent males, so while it may be fan service, it sells books. And yet no one has made a serious attempt to tap a similar female readership, and as long as crap like this is going on most women aren't going to feel welcome. There are some bright spots, Gail Simone being the biggest; her run on Birds of Prey was revolutionary not because it was stridently feminist but because it presented a team of women who were badass and competent instead of sidekicks or victims. It was everything that makes superhero fiction work, just minus the casual misogyny.

Another pet peeve of mine is the "billionaire fights crime" thing. Seriously, how impressed are we supposed to be that people with unlimited resources are able to do good? Maybe if, say, Tony Stark was to put his money into job training and education for juvenile offenders he'd actually have less crime to fight in his shiny suit. It goes back to me not being able to relate. Maybe the money is part of the power fantasy, and that's why people want to be Bruce Wayne despite the murdered parents and the all-consuming obsession with punishing the criminally insane. WHO ARE YOU REALLY PUNISHING, BRUCE?!?

I was definitely reacting against these things in the book. It was a conscious choice to make Mary Beth not just the strong one but also the smart one, but it was also a conscious choice not to be saying "Hey, look what I did there? Isn't that awesome?" throughout the book. And I didn't want to hand the characters a secret lair and a bunch of high-tech gear, like it was part of some kind of superhero package. They're just ordinary kids with ordinary resources, given extraordinary abilities.

GB: Kelly Link says this is a book for "anyone who's ever wondered what superpower would be most fun or whether Batman or Superman would win in a fight." What superpower would be most fun and who'd win in a fight between Batman and Superman?

DS: The superpower that would be the most fun? Jamie Madrox's power. He's the Multiple Man; every time someone hits him (or he falls, or punches a wall) he produces an exact duplicate, which he can later absorb. In the hands of a writer like Peter David, this means being able to send out doubles to learn skills, go undercover, etc. So years later his twin walks into his office, he absorbs him, and he's a kung fu master or what have you. Plus, you know, the potential to mess with people's heads are limitless. (Of course, in keeping with the "make it suck" rule, Madrox's duplicates also cause him no end of trouble, like getting him tangled up with gangsters and working with the government to arrest him. But none of that would happen to me, I'm sure!)

As to who would win in a Batman V. Superman fight, I believe we have documentary evidence of that already. (Stand back for geekiness.) In Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller took both characters to their logical extremes; Batman the ruthless obsessive, Superman the naive government stooge. Batman, of course, kicks the crap out of the Man of Steel because he prepares, and that's probably why Bats would always win. It would never occur to Superman to prepare until after he'd has his ass handed to him, because, well, he's Superman. No one can stand against him toe-to-toe, so he rushes in fully expecting to prevail because he's stronger and faster and smarter and invulnerable . . . er. But Bats is sneaky and he always has a plan, so I'd bet on him 9 times out of 10.

GB: What's next for you? What's in the hopper?

DS: Next -- or actually right now -- is a chapbook put out by the Ratbastards of my novella "The Sun Inside." It's a mix of classic pulp aesthetic and modern concerns, a story about a wounded Iraq war veteran who finds his way to a hidden world. I'm very excited about it; it's a story that I workshopped at Sycamore Hill last year, and thanks to the critiques I got there and from my writing group, I ended up with something I'm really proud of. Plus, the cover is amazing!

I'm also working on the revision I mentioned, of a novel that's sort of War and Peace-meets-Swordspoint, with the turmoil of the French Revolution thrown into the mix. It's (obviously) a big shift from Superpowers, but it's a lot of fun -- assassinations, cross-dressing, rebellion, oh my! I've got a couple of other novels in the can which I hope will see publication at some point. I've also got stories coming out in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Crawlspace: Selections from the 2007 Farrago's Wainscot Exhibition, and Spicy Slipstream Stories. In the meantime, I'm blogging and posting occasional installments of the "Secret City" serial at my Flickr account.

GB: Anything you've been enjoying recently – books/movies/TV – that you'd recommend?

DS: I just discovered (quite late) the "Last Exile" series of anime, which has a great steampunk/WWII flying aces sort of vibe, so I'm having fun working my way through that. Reading-wise, I've been plowing through stuff like Andrew Hussey's Paris: the Secret History and Herbert Asbury's book about New Orleans, The French Quarter, and some books about my home town of St. Paul. There's a lot of scattered lore about the gangster era and the robber barons and what have you, but no one's really put it together into one book, and that's really been bugging me for some reason. I can't decide whether I want to try my hand at some pop-history doorstopper or just use this history as background for a novel set here, but it's been interesting to "see" the city in terms of how it existed 50 years ago, or even 170 years ago when it was just a half-blind guy named Pig's Eye selling whiskey out of a cave. Mm, whiskey. You can put that I've been enjoying whiskey lately, too.

GB: An excellent ending note for any interview.

Today's other SBBT stops are:

Adam Rex at Fuse Number 8
David Almond at 7 Impossible Things Before Breakfast
R.L. Lafevers at Finding Wonderland
Elizabeth Scott at Bookshelves of Doom
Laurie Halse Anderson at Writing & Ruminating
Susan Beth Pfeffer at Interactive Reader

Blasty

The Summer Blog Blast Tour is coming up next week. Colleen has the schedule--I'll have fabulous interviews with Dave Schwartz on Monday and Jincy Willett on Friday.

Wild Reviews

The New York Times Book Review has a slew of children's book reviews this week, by all sorts of excellent reviewers (Sarah Ellis! Leonard Marcus!). I am beyond happy to see Pat Murphy's The Wild Girls get some much-deserved love.

Packet due on Monday, and so off I am to sit outside with my Neo and write some fiction. At least I have a shiny ARC of Octavian Nothing II to be my reward. w00t as they say!

More YA Chitter Chatter

Here from Scalzi, and here from Dave Moles.

O Canada Day

It's One Shot World Tour: Canada Day, with a whole bunch of bloggers giving shout-outs to literary Canada. Colleen has the full list of links.

I had big plans, but the overwhelmingness of the overwhelming has impacted my capacity. Instead, I'm just going to highlight two incredibly wonderful writers from Canada who should be getting more attention (and who teach at my MFA program). And because time is short, I'm more or less just going to say that I love their books, and you should too, rather than offering compelling arguments. (But, seriously, you should too.)

Tim Wynne-Jones is a rock star. Maybe not quite yet in the U.S., but I'm thinking it's a done deal after his next couple of books come out. Rex Zero and the End of the World was rightly acclaimed and praised by critics, and was named a 2007 Boston Globe-Horn Book honor book. It's a hilarious, smart, wonderful book. The sequel, Rex Zero, King of Nothing, is due out in April, and I can't wait. Candlewick signed him up for a two-book deal back in the summer--the first book is called The Children of the Snye, and what I've heard him read from it was smashing. And, of course, he's published a lot of other books, for a whole host of age groups, any of which I'd wager are worth checking out. And Cynthia Leitich Smith did a great interview with him about A Thief in the House of Memory (the first thing I ever read of his; highly recommended).

I may be a bit biased, but only a bit--Tim was my first semester advisor and is a genius writing teacher. Really. If you ever get the chance to work with him, take it.

Sarah Ellis looks good in a hat, something you can see firsthand if you click that link and visit her site. Like Tim, she's also written for a whole range of age groups. Her picture book The Queen's Feet is absolutely charming, and I adored her slipstreamy, deliciously creepy short story collection Back of Beyond. Her most recent novel, the quirky* coming of age story Odd Man Out, should be a break-out book. It won the prestigious TD Canadian Children's Literature Prize (for which Rex Zero was shortlisted, I might add) and the Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize in 2007. (Side note: Can we all agree that prize sounds more exciting than award?) On her site, she describes the book's genesis:

Once I was visiting a school and a grade seven boy asked me to consider writing a book about espionage. I'm not that interested in espionage (although I like the gadgets and the mysterious secrecy of it all) but I did find myself thinking a lot about a boy who was, himself, interested in espionage and spies. That boy turned into Kip. The other thing that is behind this book is my love for stories that have a group of kids in them, like Cheaper by the Dozen or the Casson family stories by Hilary McKay and I wanted to try such a book myself. A gang of five girl cousins is the result. I also like island stories so I put them all on an island.

I've also heard that she's no slouch in the genius writing teacher department herself.

*Not in the bad way.

Author Blab

During the whirlwinding, I completely forgot to mention the Simon Pulse Blogfest. It's been going on for some time now, so there's massive amounts of backlogged stuff to check out. (The fun started here.) And it lasts through Thursday. Some highlights from my skimming:

The lovely and magnificent Holly Black* on writing books about serious issues and research:

My second teen novel, Valiant, deals with addiction. My younger sister died from a heroin overdose, so I knew a lot about what it was like for her, but I wanted this to be a novel about my character, Val, so I made some deliberate decisions to change the drug Val and her friends were injecting to a faerie substance called Never. Even still, I had to revisit a lot of very personal and painful experiences. It wasn’t an easy book for me to write, but I am proud of it and I was thrilled when it won the first Norton award.

Some of the research I did on the homeless communities living in the tunnels in Manhattan and in the parks in San Francisco for Valiant was fascinating, but I think the creepiest bit of information I stumbled on was that rats given opiates will take their drug, eat, and go to sleep, but rats given cocaine just do cocaine until they die.

Julie Hearn on the same:

... I was truly alarmed, for example, to learn that a “talking horse from Greek mythology” (that’s a centaur to you and me) was a soldier, who’d had both his legs blown off, lashed firmly to the body of a decapitated horse. And then, there was Julia Pastrana, a Mexican Indian woman who spoke three languages and loved to dance, but was displayed by her husband as “the baboon lady” and the ugliest woman in the world” because she had been born excessively hairy and with a deformed jaw. Then, when Julia died, this less-than-perfect husband had her body embalmed and took that around the fairgrounds of Europe, rather than lose his income. Poor Julia’s mummified corpse was still being exhibited as recently as 1973. How surprising, and shocking, is that!?

The alarmingly dashing Scott Westerfeld on inspiration and fear:

About 15 years ago, I went on a guided tour of a game reserve in South Africa. It was just me and the guide, on foot. We were strolling away from the hotel when I noticed we’d gone through a gate into the hippo area.

Now, hippos are deadly and unpredictable, and fast when they want to be. In fact, they kill more humans than any other mammal in Africa. So I said, “Um, are the hippos gone today or something?”

He said, “No, but it’s just us two, and you look pretty fit, so I thought I’d take this shortcut. You don’t mind if we have to do a little running, do you?”

To which I responded, “I don’t mind running, but I do mind running for my life.”

And my favorite response from Kathleen Duey (of the brilliant Skin Hunger), on how other books inspire her:

Richard Peck said it best: “We write by the light of every book we have ever read.”

And I would add this: We can live by that same light. Books can be as almost as important as the people we know. How else do we find out more than our friends and family can (or will) tell us about courage, love, sex, food poisoning, the agony of Sudan, sharks, how the US government works, slave labor, pregnancy, basketball, scuba diving off Tulum, and how to take care of our very first puppies? How else would we find out, risk-free, that our personal weirdnesses really aren’t that weird, that whatever we are facing has been faced before, countless times, that we are all just human and that’s good enough?

When's the last time a publisher put together such a huge online event with this many authors answering really interesting questions? Try never (that I can remember).

*I also really liked Holly's response about how other books influence her work.

Boys Reading

So one of the many excellent things I didn't have a spare second to post about last week is Colleen Mondor's latest amazing project. The thing about Colleen is, if something's bugging her, she pulls people together and does a really cool thing to address it. I'm always honored to participate.

This time out, she's heading up a group effort organized around a dedicated site that will serve as a resource for encouraging boys to read, connecting them with good book recommendations and new authors, etc. The new site will be known as Guys Lit Wire and you can read more about the plans over at her site. In particular, we need more guys, so if you're interested in participating drop her a line.

Cybils-tastic

The 2007 Cybils winners (Children's and YA Bloggers' Literary Awards) have been announced.

I was a judge in the science fiction and fantasy category. There were so many great books recommended that the panel reading all the nominees decided to split it into five finalists for elementary/middle grade and five for YA for us lucky judges to decide on. All ten books were well worth reading, and it was a tough decision. We ultimately settled on Shannon Hale's Book of a Thousand Days for the YA division and Adam Rex's The True Meaning of Smekday for elementary/middle grade. Two very deserving winners, and I'll be talking about all the books as soon as I come up for air.

(And, yep, Justine's right about Skin Hunger. It's amazing.)

Egg-face Itzkoff

At least, if he has even one nonzombie-devoured brain cell left, I'm guessing he's a little embarrassed by the general consensus about that infamous review. Some notable reactions, which give me the joy of seeing people stick up for YA and children's literature in general:

• Margo Lanagan urges book throwing and greater respect for the audience in question.
• The ever-insightful Carrie shares an E.B. White quote about never writing down for kids.
• Stephany Aulenback says it beautifully, the way she always does.
• Matthew Cody weighs in with a short rant.
• Ed Champion takes Itzkoff to task.
• Ron Hogan urges the NYT to employ a more savvy SF critic.
• And Leila has a whole round-up of responses too, in case I missed any.

More Lists

And now the Best Books for Young Adults and Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers lists are out (I include the full names for those of you who aren't rabid children's fiction readers -- you in particular may find some books you'll adore on these). Haven't had a chance to look at them yet, but congratulations to those whose books made the cut, as always.

I haven't been keeping up with everything while I'm away, so haven't actually seen the carping Justine's talking about (not surprised though -- and all women in the Printz category, now there's a change!). But: what she said! I'd also say that these books are NOT particularly obscure. I'd read three out of five of them, which is relatively unusual for any awards list. I was absolutely jumping in my seat when I heard the winners. These are wonderful books, absolutely wonderful. If you hadn't heard about them before, well, be glad it didn't stay that way!

And a big thanks to Colleen for pointing me toward The White Darkness with her piece in the summer Journal of Mythic Arts.

Future Books

Colleen had the idea of putting up our lists of books we're looking forward to today. Because I am away and already in the overdrive exhaustion that a residency induces, this list will be nowhere near complete. I've forgotten things. Even more: I know there are tons of books coming out this year I would be looking forward to if I knew about them. I haven't been through any of the stack of catalogs on the corner of my desk, so... And I'm largely blanking on children's books, mostly because several of the adult authors I obsessively read seem to have books this year. See below:

• Justine Larbalestier's The Ultimate Fairy Book - Okay, so mostly I just want to read it again, because it was so amazing. Also, J has done so much revision, I'm excited to read the final version. This is SUCH a lovely book; you will all love it. (Not on Amazon yet, I don't believe, but here's the blog entry I'm taking the pub date from.)
• Karen Joy Fowler's Wit's End - I don't think I need to explain this one.
• Jeff Ford''s The Shadow Year - Ditto.
• Jincy Willett's The Writing Class - Everything about this looks wonderful, including the fabulous cover. It doesn't get much better than Jincy Willett.
• Samantha Hunt's The Invention of Everything Else - I adored The Seas.
• Ysabeau Wilce's Flora Redux (compleat (sub)title not available) - No Amazon link yet, but I believe it's out in spring? I can't WAIT.
• Jenny Davidson's The Explosionist - Like Colleen, I'm unbelievably excited about this one. Jenny has the best taste in YA since, well, ever, and that can be nothing but a good sign. Plus, with a title like that, you really can't go wrong.

I know I'm going to think of a dozen titles as soon as I post this, but must dash. Anyone know when the second volume of Octavian Nothing's due out? Anyone (I'm looking at you Mr. McLaren) have any others to suggest?

Happily

It seems that the Old Hag (aka Lizzie Skurnick, for you whippersnappers) has kicked off Jezebel's new column Fine Lines on beloved* children's and YA titles with "Are You There, Crazy Psychic Muse? It's Me, Lois Duncan." The result is fabulous, but not for the faint-hearted or overly reverent.

Oh, oh, oh and Literaticat has interviewed Daniel Pinkwater.

Thank you Internets for not disappointing me upon the return to the land of wireless.

*Presumably for a couple different values of beloved, including "it seemed like a good idea at the time."

WBBT Stop: Jane Yolen & Adam Stemple

Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple published their first collaborative novel, Pay the Piper: A Rock 'N' Roll Fairy Tale, a couple of years ago and followed that up with a sequel, Troll Bridge: A Rock 'N' Roll Fairy Tale, which released in paperback over the summer. Jane is known far and wide and probably even in outer space as the "American Hans Christian Anderson," having written nearly 300 books and won pretty much every award you can win. Adam is a well-known musician (aka rock and roll star), poker player, and all around good guy; his debut novel Singer of Souls came out in 2005 and a sequel is in the pipeline from Tor as we speak. Oh, and in case you didn't know already, Jane is Adam's mother. They were nice enough to take the time to answer some questions about their collaborative efforts, so let's get to the good part.

GB: First question is always process porn for the writers out there, so tell me about how you write solo. You can start at whatever part of the process you want--when an idea occurs to you, when you actually start writing, when the deadline's looming, outlining/not outlining, etcetera. Does this change depending on the project or are your work habits fairly consistent?

JY: Every project is different for me. Let me tell you a story.

I once heard Norton Juster tell a group of  third graders--my daughter among them--that he got his ideas from a postbox in Poughkeepsie. Some of the students thought he meant it. One boy even raised his hand and asked how far away Poughkeepsie was.

My daughter knew better. She knew from having lived with me all of her eight years. She knew that I got my ideas from everywhere: newspaper articles, other people's books, magazines, rock lyrics, folk songs, overheard conversations, dreams, her life, her brothers' lives, her father's life, her great grandparents...oh, and gossip. Gossip is often the beginning of stories.

There is nothing a writer will refuse in the making of story. Here are a few of the places I have gotten ideas.

*Reading the local newspaper, I was riveted by a photo of a boy with his prize-winning frog named “Star Warts”. The  boy's smile was enormous, his frog-well--even more enormous. But I knew that it wasn't frogs  that were supposed to give you warts, it was toads. (Well, they don't actually. It's just a superstition.) But suddenly Commander Toad in Space was born, the idea of a ship called the Star Warts carrying a crew of amphibians was too funny to resist. I eventually did seven Commander Toad books and loads of reluctant readers began their reading with the Commander, Mr. Hop, Lieutenant Lily, and the rest.

*An editor friend called me up and said, “My son is three and hates to go to bed and he loves dinosaurs. Can you do anything for him?” Now Adam and his brother Jason had been the same at that age, so much so, that even though I'm a lousy seamstress and can't sew a straight hem,  I actually embroidered dino pillows for each of them. So for my editor's son, instead of an embroidered pillow, I wrote How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? The opening rhymes simply tumbled out and the book practically wrote itself.

*Because my husband took all our children birding, and staying out late at night owling was a particular pleasure they shared, I smooshed together (that's a technical writing term!) all of their night journeys into the woods  and wrote Owl Moon.

*I dreamed the actual first page of Wizard's Hall (some 9 years before Harry Potter was published) and the strange opening of The Wild Hunt some years after that. The house in The Wild Hunt is the house we have in Scotland. And the house in the Tartan Magic books is the Scottish house plus its garden.

So you see, no post box in Poughkeepsie for me. I don't wait for the mail to be delivered. I am always ready to listen at keyholes, sneak up next to people on buses and trains and planes, read and read and read, and shamelessly steal conversations, arguments, and jokes from my children and grandchildren. Because that's where the ideas are.

And also remember that ideas are the LEAST important part of a book. They get you started, sure, but what comes after is much more interesting.

AS: The biggest thing I had to learn about writing, was figuring out early what form the idea I have is going to take. Is it a short story idea? A novel idea? A poem idea? It can be annoying if you start on a short story only to discover it's a novel; it's disastrous to get to the middle of a novel and realize your idea was only strong enough to support something shorter. 

My work habits are not nearly as consistent as I'd like. I have traumatic brain injury, which presents like pretty severe ADD, so it's difficult for me to get started. But if I can force myself to sit at the computer and stare at a page for ten minutes, I usually don't get back up until I've written 1,000-2,000 words. 

Usually, when I write, I have a scene in my head toward the end of the book/story that I aim for.  In Singer of Souls, it was Douglas striding into Faery, in one story, A Piece of Flesh, it was young Victoria cooking soup in a boot, in another, The Three Truths it was Master Shichiro, a troubled samurai, commiting seppuku to protect his lord.  These scenes kept me writing, gave me a direction to travel in whenever I was stuck.  Now, what's funny is that in only one of these tales did I actually get to that scene.  Stories change and grow as you write them--at least they always have for me.  No matter how hard I try to control them, the characters eventually take over, sometimes refusing to go down that dark alley you present them--Master Shichiro does not end up killing himself--sometimes getting so beaten down by events that they fail when presented with heroic opportunities--Douglas doesn't stride manfully into Faery, but rolls in beaten and bloody, and the decisions he makes once there are questionable at best.

GB: Now I'd like to know how you've worked together collaboratively, including all the nitty gritty like how you avoided killing each other in revision. And Jane, I know you have collaborated with lots of people, so was there anything different about working with your son? Adam, likewise for you, you're a musician and very used to collaboration--do you think that made it easier to work with someone else?

JY: Well, this is from a speech we are just working on now:

All stories are collaborations--between author and editor, between author and reader. However we two have collaborated even more, by being mother and son, as well as co-writers. That means we share a history, have attitudes toward each other and toward work that are...complicated and rich, and we know which buttons to push.

And yet, we come to our writing from different places and different spaces. When we work, we may argue about characters, about word choices, about titles. Sometimes Adam gives in and sometimes I do. But it is always done with respect--for one another, and for the work.

Writing with a relative means walking a fine line. In the end, my relationship with Adam is more important to me than the work, and I will back off if we hit some immovable spot. But so far we have agreed more often than disagreed, and I love the way he writes.

AS: Being a working musician for twenty years has made everything about writing easier. A literary agent I knew who was also in a punk band, once said, "Why do authors complain about bad reviews?  When I get a bad review it's in the form of a beer bottle thrown at my head." Writers complain about contracts; the only thing sure in the music business is that if you have a contract you MIGHT get paid. Collaborations among musicians are shaky at best, with egos always at the forefront. Additionally, education and work habits are at a premium in the land of musicians; we didn't join a band to work hard and do a lot of thinking. And if there are musicians reading this who are insulted by this, please remember that I count myself in your number--when I say I don't like working with musicians...

Oh, and congratulations on reading!

All kidding aside, I learned how to write by working with my mother. She is a wonderful writer/teacher/editor/mom. We rarely argue over what we're working on because we largely share the same sensibilities. Makes sense, I am her son after all.

GB: What would your advice be to people working on collaborative projects? There seems to be a lot of this going on in the children's/YA field at the moment.

JY: Talk about stuff before you begin--like whose name goes first, who has the final pass on the book, how to resolve arguments. Know what your strengths are (mine are dialogue, scene, theme. He is Mr. action, Mr. Funny, and Mr. Plot. Also anything really dark in our books and stories--blame Adam!)

AS: Respect your partner and their ideas, and be respectful to them. Make sure you are writing the same book. Talk often and listen more. Meet in person to plot the book, talk about characters, polish a theme. And in person is important. We communicate more than we know with body language, and when discussing--flighty things that can be tough to get hold of--it is important to get as much across as possible.

GB: Switching gears a bit, what artform or genre do each of you find it most enjoyable to work in and why? Or if enjoyable's not of interest, how about what's most challenging?

JY: I love writing picture books, fantasy, historical, poetry, and graphic novels. You won't find me doing hard science, blood and intestine spills, or Gossip Girls.

AS: I do most of my writing in fantasy, so I must like working it. But truth be told, I like writing everything. I read a lot of fantasy, and love it, so I am familiar with the tropes and it is easy for me to move around in that kind of world. But I loved writing my historical samurai mystery stories as well. Research intensive as they were, they presented an opportunity to learn and a set of challenges unique to their genre (are you saying you haven't heard of the thriving Historical/Samurai/Mystery genre?) that made me enjoy writing them as well. I just like writing.

GB: What are each of your next projects (any more collabs on the horizon)?

JY: We have a book called Bug which stands for Big Ugly Guy and is a novel about a Jewish kid who is picked on at school. So he makes a golem for protection that becomes the drummer in his klezmer garage band.

On my own--I have just finished a 92,000 fantasy novel, Dragon's Heart, fourth book in my Pit Dragon trilogy (don't laugh.) Did a nonfiction book called Bad Girls with daughter Heidi and we are in the revision process. And starting a picture book called Shortstop about Honus Wagner.

AS: I'm currently working on what my writer's group calls a "Big Epic Fantasy." My mother and I seem to have an offer upcoming on another rock 'n' roll fairy tale, this one about a Jewish garage band that create a golem mostly to play the drums.

GB: What are some things you've read or listened to or watched recently that you'd recommend to others?

JY: Adam's sequel to his first book is called Steward of Song and will be out in March. Brilliant. Patricia MacLachlan's Edward's Eyes is incredibly moving. I was fascinated by Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret though not entirely in love with it. And then I just read the latest Ian Rankin's Rebus mystery novel because I am a big fan.

AS: Been very delinquent on my reading lately, though I can highly recommend Bobby Clark's The Baffled Parent's Guide to Coaching Youth Soccer, though probably only if you're going to start coaching youth soccer. Saw Michael Clayton last night and recommend it highly.

Visit today's other WBBT stops:

Loree Griffin Burns at Chasing Ray
Lily Archer at The Ya Ya Yas
Rick Riordan at Jen Robinson's Book Page
Gabrielle Zevin at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Dia Calhoun at lectitans
Shannon Hale at Miss Erin
Alan Gratz at Interactive Reader
Lisa Yee at Hip Writer Mama

WBBT Stop: Elizabeth Knox

Elizabeth Knox is one of the best writers working today. She's written several highly acclaimed adult novels, and in the past couple of years published her first work for younger readers with the Dreamhunter Duet, an instant fantasy classic. Her work is strange, exciting, masterful--I could say more, but it would just be pure fangirl squealing, so what say let's get to the good part instead?

GB: At Shaken & Stirred, the first question is always process porn, because my dear readers love it so. Can you talk a bit about your (vomitous arty term alert) creative process? Your books tend to be incredibly rich with ideas--does it take them awhile to accrue or does that happen during the writing itself?

EK: My books usually start this way. I'll notice that I've begun to think about some character's possible predicament, a dramatic event, or a setting--place, period, atmosphere. Once I've noticed I'm musing I find myself coming up with various proposals, like a kid proposing a bit of action in a game. 'Let's say that,' I think, or, '‘What if…'

I usually have a number of ideas for novels circling in a holding pattern. I'm never sure which idea is the first in the queue. And I don't begin writing till I get what I call 'a book-starting idea', the idea that makes it possible for a cluster of notions for a novel to consolidate and start generating their own heat. The book-starting idea is like a starter motor in a car, it makes the big engine of a novel turn over.

Once I start writing the ideas accrue. This is what I think of as 'consequential invention'. For example, in the Dreamhunter Duet, if there is no water in the Place, then it follows that exploration is limited by how much water explorers can carry. Or--another example--if each freshly caught dream fades as it is repeated then a dreamhunter would have stay awake till their audience has gathered, so therefore dreamhunters would probably take stimulants. I work out all my 'if this then that' stuff as I go, and, usually, the logic of the ifs and thens helps whatever odd or contingent idea I've started with begin to seem real and necessary.

GB: Your novels cover such a broad spectrum (and yet have an undeniable unity of voice)--did you  ntentionally set out to avoid repeating yourself? Has this presented any issues of readers getting upset when you don't repeat yourself? It seems to me like readers often don't appreciate the difficulty of trying new things.

EK: I'm easily bored and, as a consumer of fiction, I have broad tastes, so I guess I've just naturally wandered around in various genres. My wanderings aren't a declaration of any kind, and I often try quite staunchly to avoid some of my own low interests. I say sheepishly to my husband--an editor and person of impeccable taste--that I have, for instance, a good idea for a horror novel. I make this admission as though I'm having an unworthy thought. I lament my lack of grown-up-ness, I look valiantly for other more respectable projects, meanwhile the horror novel proliferates, dark and glowing, till finally I give in and start writing.

I should say that while I'm wringing my hands about my planned horror novel or epic fantasy with zombies my tasteful husband is always encouraging me to write whatever I want to write.

I think all changeable and experimenting writers (in my case helplessly experimental) will at some time have problems with the desire of readers for more of what they've previously enjoyed. But there are plenty of readers who are happy to be surprised. I'm always tremendously excited to see what writers like Philip Roth or Hilary Mantel are going to do next. And I don't think I'm unrepresentative as a reader.

GB: Did you know when you began the Dreamhunter books that they would be aimed at younger readers? I love the fact that they are so sophisticated and complex, and yet still entirely "kid-friendly"--did you approach writing them differently at all?

EK: I've been an almost life-long reader of young adult fiction. I had a break between fifteen and twenty-four. After I finished Mary O'Hara's The Green Grass of Wyoming I couldn't find another book grown-up enough for me without totally switching over to adult books--which I'd been reading anyway since I was eleven. I came back to young adult fiction when I picked up Diana Wynne Jones's The Lives of Christopher Chant. Only weeks later I discovered Margaret Mahy--her books were for me like finding something I didn't know I already owned.

I always knew I'd have a go at writing a book for young adults. I was only waiting for the right idea. I probably came up with Dreamhunter when I did because I'd been having intense discussions about young adult books with my then eleven-year-old son. Though, how I came to the idea itself is more biographical and to do with a back injury, pain, sleeplessness and the desire for sleep, and many long walks I took through drenched bush with a wonderfully civilised elderly dog--not my own.

While I set out to write a book for younger readers (and hopefully for the readers I already had), when I finished I wasn't sure that I'd managed to do it. My first editor, Julia Wells at Faber, pointed me in the right direction.

GB: One of the things I admire most about your work is the way you use point of view--especially the omniscient POV in the Dreamhunter Duet. You bold as brass jump between the perspectives of many, many characters, with the effect of creating a larger world that matters, rather than fragmenting the narrative. Please tell me this was as hard to accomplish as it seems like it would be.

EK: I'm glad you like it. It's a kind of limited eye-of-God, I guess. I usually write in the limited third person. Dreamhunter jumps between people only section by section, but never within sections, between one sentence and the next. The tricky thing about this method is that you have to make it clear to the readers whose point of view you are going to continue to visit--who the main protagonists are. That's why, in Dreamhunter, the early departures from the points of view of the principals are into the heads of a group of people--like the people watching Laura saying goodbye to her father on the platform of Sisters Beach station--or into the head of a casualty, the ranger who gets run down by the stagecoach.

SPOILERY BITS OF QUESTION AND RESPONSE ARE GRAYED OUT, SO HIGHLIGHT TO READ IT ALL

GB: Did you know what the end of the Duet would be all along? Did it ever give you a moment's pause, destroying The Place? The series feels self-contained and perfect as is, but is there any possibility of other books set in the same world? Or of more work for younger readers?

When I finished writing Dreamhunter I didn't know how the story would eventually end, or even how many more books there would be. But by the time I had an editor, I'd begun to work out that the story would take only two books. I called it a 'duet' because of the Place's two voices--Lazarus Hame's voice, and the Tenth Nown's, a desperate vengeful voice and a rapt, loving one.

As for how the story ends: when I was editing the first book it began to annoy me that there were two magical things in the story, the Place, and Laura’s sandman Nown. I realised that the story had to answer the basic questions it had raised about how its world worked: "What is the Place?  Where did it come from?  And why?" I decided to answer the questions by being economical with the magic, i.e.: The Place is a Nown. 

The ending I came up with owed a great deal to the fact I was working on a collaboration between writers and physicists--Are Angels OK, edited by Bill Manhire and Paul Callaghan and published by The Royal Society and Victoria University Press. For AAOK I wrote a time travel story called 'Unobtainium'. I did some reading about time travel and causality and so was able to work out that the time travel stories I'd always loved had a 'self-consistent universe' view of time travel, in which what happens is what was always going to happen. The Duet looks like a self-consistent universe time travel story up till the moment that Sandy walks back into Summerfort a few pages from the end of the book. Dreamquake turns out to have the 'many timelines' view of causality--and a happy ending.

GB: The second Dreamhunter book is dedicated to the legendary Margaret Mahy and I hear that you've actually shot a documentary about her. Can you tell us a little about that and how it came to be? (I can dream that it'll someday be available on DVD here, right? Or at least pirated!)

EK: The Documentary is called 'A Tall, Long-Faced Tale' and was made for TVNZ. I was the writer and interviewer. The interviews were filmed in and around Margaret's home in Governor's Bay. The documentary also has interviews with Margaret's current YA editor, and illustrators Jenny Williams, Quentin Blake, and Steven Kellogg, and others. It has dramatisations of scenes from some of the YA books, and picture book characters popping up and asking questions. The documentary was made for a general audience, but we did manage to get a few knotty questions through to the final cut.

Now I'm waiting for Television New Zealand to tell us when they're going to screen it, hopefully in the Christmas season.

GB: Recommendations--anything you've seen/read/listened to lately that you recommend?

EK: Lately I've been reading my way through all Elizabeth Taylor's novels. Elizabeth Taylor is a mid-twentieth century English novelist. She's more like Jane Austen than any other writer; only bleaker.  I recommend Angel and At Mrs Lippencote's.

Right now I'm reading Vassily Grossman's Life and Fate, an 800 page novel set in Russia during WW2. Grossman was a war correspondent. Life and Fate is his great novel. Only one manuscript survived and was smuggled out of Russiain 1980. It is very real, beautiful, wise, and killingly sad.

I recently saw Michael Clayton. I liked the fact the film trusted and revelled in dramatic dialogue. And ah! that George Clooney!

Then there's TV: The Sopranos, Deadwood, Battlestar Galactica, Dexter, Ugly Betty…

Visit today's other WBBT stops:

David Mack at Chasing Ray
Paul Volponi at The Ya Ya Yas
Ellen Emerson White at A Chair, A Fireplace and A Tea Cozy
Jack Gantos at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
David Levithan at Not Your Mother's Book Club
Micol Ostow at Bildungsroman (who was here yesterday)
Laura Amy Schlitz at Miss Erin
Kerry Madden at Hip Writer Mama
Sherman Alexie at Interactive Reader

WBBT Stop: Micol Ostow

Micol Ostow has written a whole bunch of things--short stories, media tie-ins, romantic comedies, and more. Her novel Emily Goldberg Learns to Salsa releases this week in paperback from Razorbill. She left an editing position at a major New York house to write full time and pursue an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults at Vermont College (which is where we met, over many, many glasses of vino, hiding from the cold). She has an adorable dog. More on all that--except Bridget Jones--from the lady's lips. Or, more precisely, fingertips.

GB: Your wonderful book Emily Goldberg Learns to Salsa is being released in paperback, oh, any day now. Tell us about Emily and how you came to write this book. Also, can you clarify that the main character is not you and the book's Noah isn't your Noah?

MO: Of course, when you write something so personal, people want to assume that it's wildly autobiographical. Emily and I share the same cultural background, but actually, we had very opposite experiences with our Puerto Rican families. My mother took us to spend Christmas with her parents every year, so we grew up in much closer contact with our family than Emily ever did.

The one thing that I will say is that when I was 14 and fortunate enough to spend the summer with my uncle and his family in San Juan, I was shocked at how much responsibility fell to my cousin Angela. She and I are the same age, and she oversaw a lot of the housework, in addition to babysitting her three younger sisters. Meanwhile, her older brother Mario was generally free to come and go as he pleased. I don't know that that sort of gender divide is Puerto Rican, per se, or particular to my family, but it was quite an eye-opening experiencing. I never again took my own chores for granted!

And no, Noah in the book is most emphatically not Noah in real life. What people don't realize is that EMILY was written a good year before I even met real-life Noah. It just happens to be one of my favorite names for a boy. So maybe that's part of why I was drawn to the real one. But yeah, it's something that people take note of, and it usually makes them laugh.

GB:  I once heard Sharyn November say that when she was growing up--and still--she found it extremely difficult to find books for kids and teens that had Jewish characters in them, which were not necessarily about being Jewish. I also don't see that many books for teens with Latino characters. You've written about the challenge of capturing true multiculturalism before. I still see a lot of room for more diversity in books for younger readers. (Though, that said, if you take translations out of the mix, the field probably bats higher than books for adult readers.) What do you think about this?

MO: I agree, I think the challenge with any sort of "multi-culti" lit is to figure out a way to integrate the cultural authenticity without necessarily creating a didactic body of work. Of course, when one sets out to write the first of a book about a particular cultural minority, there's a lot of establishing and background that needs to be laid out. So it's hard not to find ourselves reading books like ESTRELLA'S QUINCEANERA (which is a great book, by the way), where the focus of the book is drawing a picture of the cultural rite in a way that the reader can identify with.

One of my favorite books that I've read in the last few months is HATERS by Alicia Valdes-Rodriguez, wherein the characters are all multi-ethnic. And yet, it's all incidental to the storyline, which, in my opinion, is much more honest.

GB: You have also written several romantic comedies for Simon and Schuster and much work-for-hire. Is your process different at all in the different kinds of work? Do you juggle projects at the same time and how, without going completely stark raving mad?

MO: Oh, I'm stark raving mad, all right!

EMILY was a more thoughful book to write than the romantic comedies are, and it took me a lot longer to find her voice. I read a lot of Sweet Valley High growing up, so that very commercial sensibility comes to me pretty naturally.

That being said, the ro coms need to be plotted much more tightly than something that can be more literary and meandering, so it's an entirely different set of skills that you have to bring to the table as a writer for that sort of project. Not to mention the turnaround times are insane!

Work-for-hire can be particularly challenging because the author's voice is actually a liability in that situation. It is much harder than you might think to have to adjust to a "series style" or voice.

But I love being able to balance out all three because they really speak to the different sides of my personality: analytical and introspective, chatty and (I hope) snarky, and obsessively detail-oriented. So I wouldn't ever limit myself by committing to one form of writing over any other.

GB: Tell me about the project you and your brother are working on for Flux--it's pretty exciting. Your brother put together an amazing box set of CDs themed to each character, and I can't wait until you post the playlists online. This seemed like such a great tool--particularly in a collaboration--for knowing who the characters are. After all, what defines teenagers more than the music they like? When will the book be out?

MO: Our book is tentatively titled I'M WITH THE TRIBE: A Guy, A Guitar, and a Date with (Non-Denominational) Destiny, and I'm super-excited for it! We're publishing with the uber-indie imprint Flux, and the book will be out in Spring '09 (actual pub month to be determined).

It's a hybrid graphic novel, meaning that it's a traditional novel with graphic panels and spot art interspersed throughout. My brother David is handling the illustrations (and all of the musical references, since that's much more his thing than mine. If it were up to me, the playlists would be largely composed of Madonna remixes).

TRIBE is the story of a yeshiva (Jewish day school) boy who starts up a garage band in the hopes of raising his "cool quotient." The story follows the band's progress, but the protagonist, Ari, slowly learns that he may in fact have other talents that set him apart from the crowd.

It's a story that's really close to both of our hearts after having attended Jewish day school from kindergarten straight through to senior year. And as much as I don't practice very much in my daily life, I'm constantly amazed to see how pervasive Jewish themes are in my work. I guess you can take the girl out of yeshiva...

GB: So, you and I are in the same MFA program--Vermont College, represent! What made you decide to do a program like this even though you were already publishing? Do you think it's been worth it?

MO: I'd always wanted to go back and get an MFA in creative writing, just for my own personal growth, even though, as you mention, I was already publishing, and it wasn't necessarily something that was going to "further" my career. Vermont College especially intrigued me because of the caliber of its alumni (um, MT Anderson?!). So when I decided to leave my job to work full-time as a writer (last winter), it seemed like the logical time to enter into a writing program. It's been a great mix of discipline and interactivity as I adjust to a life of pj's and my laptop.

Vermont has been great. I love the dialogue I have with my adviser, and I especially love having the opportunity to look critically at the work that's already out there in the world. As an editor, you're usually so buried in manuscripts that reading gets pushed to the back burner. Now I have to read! Life could be a lot worse.

GB: Okay, so the Shaken & Stirred people, we love Buffy, and you've done some work on a couple of Buffy projects in the past, when you were an editor at Simon and Schuster. What's your favorite episode of Buffy and why?

MO: Yeah, I could go on forever about "Buffy." But I'll just give you my greatest hits:

"Becoming, Parts I and II"--so poignant and gorgeous. Just the most bittersweet ending to the most achingly emotional season. And what a cliffhanger! I remember watching part I and literally wanting to stay, rooted to my seat on the couch, until the premiere of season three.

"Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered"--well, I love the Xan-Man, and this episode was hilarious and goofy.

"Tabula Rasa"--Spike in the three piece suit? The hat with the ear flaps? Joan the Vampire Slayer? Hysterically funny, but also devastating. That Willow sure can do a weepy scene. "Stay away from Randy!"

"Once More, With Feeling"--that musical was just perfect in every way. I just watched it the other night with a girlfriend, during some pre-Halloween (my favorite holiday) festivities.

Visit today's other WBBT sites:

Lisa Ann Sandell at Interactive Reader
Christopher Barzak at Chasing Ray (he was here yesterday)
Julie Halpern at The Ya Ya Yas 
Rick Yancey at Hip Writer Mama
Jane Yolen at Fuse Number 8
Shannon Hale at Bookshelves of Doom
Maureen Johnson at Bildungsroman
David Lubar at Writing & Ruminating
Sherman Alexie at Finding Wonderland

WBBT Stop: Christopher Barzak

Christopher Barzak's debut novel One for Sorrow was released in late August to a flurry of praise in the Village Voice, Washington Post, and San Francisco Chronicle, and cries of joy throughout the blogosphere. But, for years now, discerning readers of short fiction have kept a watch for new Barzak stories. His next novel--The Love We Share Without Knowing--recently sold to Bantam, and more on that in a moment. And I'm not even going to get into how he's one of the hands-down best people you'll ever encounter (not to mention a fine master of ceremonies). It's probably best if I let you get charmed by him yourself, so...

GB: I can't ask you the process question because you already answered it for me. So... where do you get your ideas? Kidding, kidding. You and I have talked a lot about how place and where you're from impact your work. Can you speak a bit about that? One of the things I love about One for Sorrow is that it has that element of a kid coming to terms with where he grew up, in all its complexity.

CB: Place has always been one of the elements of fiction that I've enjoyed as a reader, so it's no surprise to me that it's one of the things I tend to gravitate toward as a writer. In the case of One for Sorrow, I set the book in a fictional small town in rural Ohio which bears a lot of similarities to the one in which I grew up. I didn't name it for a couple of reasons. I wanted to be able to use place names and local anecdotes from a variety of neighboring villages and townships as well, so it became its own town in the novel, one part imagined, one part experienced, and one part observed. Growing up in a rural town was really a great experience in a lot of ways, to be honest. Being able to know just about everyone and some part of their story gives the world a sense of coherence and meaningfulness, I suppose. You're able to be more certain of people and things, or at least you're able to hold the illusion of certainty more easily. When I left home to go to college, I quickly discovered that I had been brought up to live a very particular kind of life, though, and that much of what I'd been taught about "how things are in the world" really only held true for where I'd come from. And on top of this, where I went for college was to a university in a dead steel town, Youngstown, Ohio. As I tell friends who sometimes ask why on earth I ever went there, it was where I could afford to go, it was the nearest "city" to where I'd grown up, and frankly it looked like a city to someone who grew up on a farm. It had a downtown with buildings over five stories tall, and a bus system, and a college, and parks. I think for a lot of people "city" conjures up Manhattan and Chicago and LA, but for me a limping along ghost town seemed pretty big. Again, when I left college and traveled a bit outside of Ohio and lived in other places, I got a better sense of how others lived. I mean, I'd of course seen the general standard of suburban America on television, but it never really felt real to me. When I started writing seriously, I decided I wanted to write about the places where I'd grown up and lived long enough to call home, to have lived there long enough to know them well. I wanted the region I came from to have books and stories they could read and say, "Hey! I know where that bridge is!" Or, "That's that old church on Elm that's falling down, isn't it?" I wanted people from where I'm from to be able to pick up a book and find the place where they live in a story, because story is a powerful thing, and if you can't find yourself in them you start to feel like maybe where you come from makes you unimportant. Literature has this validating effect on people. Certain places are often used as settings over and over. So I wanted to bring a voice from this abandoned corner of working class Ohio to the pages of books. In some ways, I think it may feel anachronistic to some readers, and it is anachronistic in a way, because this area is a place that was left behind. We're still trying to catch the boat to the twenty first century. Hopefully someone will wait till we can get on board.

GB: One for Sorrow is being published as an adult book (as it should be), but it's definitely a title with cross-over appeal for YA readers. It's particularly refreshing to see a book that portrays teen sexuality in a realistic way. How did you approach that?

CB: Honestly, my approach to portraying teen sexuality was basically just trying to capture that whole awkwardness and scariness that fumbling toward figuring out this very adult thing that, let's face it, we all know exists from a very early age. I knew that some people would be put off by fifteen-year-olds having sex of any kind in a book, but I think that kind of reader sees the novel as a strictly moral device, and anything in them is somehow condoned by the author. But the novel isn't always about "instructing".  It can be about portraying, and above all else I want my books to be honest in their portrayal of anything, sex included. For teenagers, they've been hearing about and seeing sex in a variety of forms--older siblings, school friends, media, church youth group leaders, etc--for a long time by the time they even get to the point of experimenting, so there's this whole buildup to the thing that makes it extremely fraught. And also a lot of what they've heard or been told is just wrong (because so many parents fail to talk about the reality of sex with their kids at all, and think that is a much better way to prepare their children for the adult world--thanks Mom and Dad!) so there's a bit of a pleasant surprise to finding out what it is, too, I think. Pleasant surprises, anxieties, fear--I wanted to try to gauge all of those things, especially in the one scene I think most readers are referring to when they talk about the portrayal of teen sexuality in One for Sorrow. It's a really innocent scene in a lot of ways, I think, actually. And I don't think it ends with a loss of that innocence, as so many narratives in which teens have sex will have us think happens as a matter of course.

GB: You recently sold your second novel, The Love We Share Without Knowing, and it sounds thoroughly different from One for Sorrow. Can you give us a little preview of what to expect?

CB: The Love We Share Without Knowing is definitely different than One for Sorrow, but I do think at its core it shares something in common. At its heart, it's a ghost story, too. It's told from multiple points of view though: an American teenager whose family has moved to Japan for his father's job, the members of a Japanese suicide club, an American teacher of English who lost her lover in 9/11, a Japanese man who is mysteriously blinded after witnessing a blind man recover his sight on a train, a group of American ex-patriots all clinging to each other for comfort and familiarity in a foreign culture, and a young Japanese woman who may be a ghost or something more than human--she's the crux of the narrative, I think, around which all the others and their lives spin.  It's about love, and loss, and how we're all connected, even if we don't realize it. Because of the multiple narrators, it ranges through a variety of genres of storytelling and voices. In recent years I really enjoyed novels that used this mosaic structure--David Mitchell's Ghostwritten, Kevin Brockmeier's The Truth About Celia, Dan Chaon's You Remind Me of Me, and Michael Cunningham's The Hours and Specimen Days--so when I began work on this second novel while I was living in Japan, I decided to try my hand at using a structure like the ones they created. It was a lot of fun, and delivers a completely different narrative pleasure than the one you get from writing a novel in one point of view for the entire trip, like I did with Adam in One for Sorrow.

GB: What are you working on right now? Any short stories due out soon?

CB: Right now I've just finished a long short story called "The Ghost Hunter's Beautiful Daughter" and I'm working on a third novel, which I'm tentatively calling Yesterday's Child. I have a story due out in the Solaris Book of New Fantasy this December, and another coming up next Fall in Sharyn November's anthology Firebirds Soaring. There are other stories forthcoming, but they're far enough down the road that I'm not even sure when the books in which they'll appear will be released.

GB: And now, the most important question of all. What's your favorite karaoke number Right This Second?

CB: Oh wow, just one?!? I need three and am going to ruthlessly take the space to list them. "Big Girl's Don't Cry" by Fergie. "The Origin of Love" from Hedwig and the Angry Inch. And always, always "Under the Bridge" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers!

Visit today's other WBBT sites:

Lisa Ann Sandell at Chasing Ray
Perry Moore at Interactive Reader
 Autumn Cornwell at The Ya Ya Yas
Jon Scieszka at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Gabrielle Zevin at Jen Robinson's Book Page
Judy Blume at Not Your Mother's Book Club
Erik P. Kraft at Bookshelves of Doom
Clare Dunkle at Miss Erin

WBBT Goodness

And today's schedule of interviews is:

Perry Moore at The Ya Ya Yas
Nick Abadzis at Chasing Ray
Carrie Jones at Hip Writer Mama (Yay!)
Phyllis Root at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Laura Amy Schlitz at Fuse Number 8
Kerry Madden at lectitans
Tom Sniegoski at Bildungsroman
Connie Willis at Finding Wonderland

Winter Blog Blast Tour Schedule (!!!)

The one and only Colleen Mondor -- intent on topping herself -- has arranged a second installment of the stupendously cool multi-blog author interview event from the summer and it's on next week. The master schedule follows, and I'll be posting links to each day's interviews here as well.

MONDAY

Perry Moore at The Ya Ya Yas
Nick Abadzis at Chasing Ray
Carrie Jones at Hip Writer Mama
Phyllis Root at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Laura Amy Schlitz at Fuse Number 8
Kerry Madden at lectitans
Tom Sniegoski at Bildungsroman
Connie Willis at Finding Wonderland

TUESDAY

Lisa Ann Sandell at Chasing Ray
Perry Moore at Interactive Reader
Christopher Barzak at Shaken & Stirred
Autumn Cornwell at The Ya Ya Yas
Jon Scieszka at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Gabrielle Zevin at Jen Robinson's Book Page
Judy Blume at Not Your Mother's Book Club
Erik P. Kraft at Bookshelves of Doom
Clare Dunkle at Miss Erin

WEDNESDAY

Lisa Ann Sandell at Interactive Reader
Christopher Barzak at Chasing Ray
Julie Halpern at The Ya Ya Yas
Micol Ostow at Shaken & Stirred
Rick Yancey at Hip Writer Mama
Jane Yolen at Fuse Number 8
Shannon Hale at Bookshelves of Doom
Maureen Johnson at Bildungsroman
David Lubar at Writing & Ruminating
Sherman Alexie at Finding Wonderland

THURSDAY

David Mack at Chasing Ray
Paul Volponi at The Ya Ya Yas
Elizabeth Knox at Shaken & Stirred
Ellen Emerson White at A Chair, A Fireplace and A Tea Cozy
Jack Gantos at