Tag Archives: Ransom Riggs

A Day At YALLWEST

Hard to tell from my crappy photo but yes, the first annual YALLWEST festival was held this past weekend in Santa Monica!

An offshoot of YALLFEST, this was a gathering of high-profile YA and Middle Grade authors, agents and editors coming together to connect directly with fans and to celebrate writing and reading teen literature.

I checked out the festivities on Saturday, attended a few panel discussions, and thought I’d share what struck me at what I hope will become an annual event:

“The first time I read you is probably in an email.”

“A writer should be able to capture the essence of her book in a single, elegant sentence.”

“The toughest times I’ve ever had is when I went against my gut.”

“You can publish anything regardless of what’s trending if the book is great and you can convince your team to believe in it.”

“Are we done with gay teen witches?”

“Publishers want to buy stories they can build on.”

“Writers these days need to engage directly with their readers because their readers expect it.”

“Don’t go to law school.”

“It was called the ‘Taco Bell of books’ ”

“So much of creative success is luck and timing.”

“Every ‘failed’ manuscript made me a better writer.”

“Can you imagine if everyone gave you instant feedback on everything you did every day? You’d never leave the house.”

“Writing is like a Roomba.”

“Writing is like a glass of wine: it makes sense when you start but then it all goes downhill and you should probably just sleep it off and hope that when you wake up it makes sense again.”

“Sometimes I’ll just find myself sobbing outside on the porch.”

“Science fiction and fantasy stories are a great way to talk about the present but with a protective gauze.”

“I can’t write with too much ‘genre’ in mind.”

“Writing is inefficient.”

“The inner voice is raw and impolite.”

“The YA authors I know whose work is banned are the nicest white women.”

“I choose to be ignorant of the people who might be vastly misinterpreting my work on Goodreads.”

“The YA writing community is amazingly tight. It’s a small world.”

“Kids are afraid to be their authentic selves. They think they have to be something they’re not.”

“An administrator once told me they only have ‘2% reduced lunch’ at their school and I’ve come to realize that ‘reduced lunch’ means ‘black.’ ”

“The number one thing that kids need to know: ‘You are not alone.’ ”

“We cannot underestimate the emotional intelligence of teenagers.”

“What we’re trying to do is find a voice in order to show as realistic a portrait of young people as we can. We need to be patient to find that voice.”

WHO SAID THIS STUFF: Richard Abate, Jennifer Besser, Sarah Burnes, Barry Goldblatt, Emily Meehan, Julie Scheina, Erin Stein, Jo Volpe, a smirking teen in the crowd, Brendan Reichs, Melissa de la Cruz, Lisi Harrison, Tahereh Mafi, Veronica Roth, Coe Booth, Greg Neri, Lauren Oliver, Rachel Cohn, Ally Condie, Susan Ee, Ellen Hopkins, Ransom Riggs, Carrie Ryan, Alex Morel, Madeleine Roux, John Corey Whaley, Aaron Hartzler

LA Times Festival of Books 2014 – What Struck Me

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Photo by Carolyn Kraft

Did you make it out to last weekend’s LA Times Festival of Books? Tell me about your experience. Go on. Which booths did you visit, which food trucks? What panels did you see, and how many books did you buy? Me: Upteen booths, zero food trucks, seven panels ranging from YA novels to Goodreads to literary agents to B.J. Novak talking about his debut story collection.

And only ONE book purchased.

Say wha? Yes, that’s correct, one book, but you pack the wallop of five books don’t you, Tenth of December, by George Saunders.

Anywho, what has become something of a spring tradition here on the blog, I’ve transcribed some of the comments that struck me from this year’s festival author panels, and a few conversational nuggets I picked up while traversing the USC campus. Enjoy:

“Ghost stories often wrestle with very poignant moral questions.”

“I’ve been trying to have a ghost experience for 25 years.”

“What is going on with me at the time I’m writing ends up in the book–as long as it rings true emotionally.”

“Walking plays a key part in my writing process.”

“I read all of my writing to my dog.”

“If you’ve written something that you think is as good as the writers you aspire to be, then it’s probably over for you.”

“As long as we have feelings we have potential for stories.”

“Every book is like starting over every time.”

“If you write every day and read every day, you open yourself up to stories unconsciously and consciously.”

“We can really only read the best stories as a child and adult simultaneously.”

“I don’t want to write stories for children that read like they were written for children.”

“I write books to deal with the problems that I have.”

“I don’t like being labeled ‘YA’. I don’t even know what a ‘Young Adult’ writer is.”

“You told the biggest possible story in the smallest possible way.”

“I write about teenagers; if they choose to read the books that’s great.”

“Getting the reader to love the character is the trick.”

“I didn’t wait until I was an adult to write for teens because I needed the emotional distance; I waited because I needed the skills.”

“Writing is self-seduction and I think it’s important to indulge that.”

“A combination of coffee and shame motivates me.”

“Steven Spielberg said it’s important to make your office the best place in your house so that you’ll always enjoy being there.”

“I’ll just give you my gun and when you find the food trucks fire off a few rounds.”

“Readers are the most sociable folk when they aren’t being antisocial.”

“Genre is the gateway drug to wider literature.”

“Raw denim jeans.”

“There’s a lot more to life than being a writer; being a dedicated reader is a great thing too.”

“A little bit of research goes a long way: an ounce of research can produce half a pound of fiction.”

“I met a writer who wanted to do a book about 1-900 numbers.”

“We want to hold you to your own best standards.”

Who said this stuff: John Boyne; Ransom Riggs; Francesca Lia Block; Jonathan Auxier; E. Lockhart; Rainbow Rowell; John Corey Whaley; Andrew Smith; B.J. Novak; a hungry, frustrated cop; Patrick Brown; David Kipen; Michelle Meyering; Betsy Amster; T. Jefferson Parker

LATFOB – What Stuck With Me Part 1

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Photo by Carolyn Kraft

“Starting a book trying to achieve the big picture will get you into trouble.”

“You can’t be an American novelist and not be haunted by The Great Gatsby.”

“Reinvention. Characters who try always fail…and that’s a novel.”

“Cormac McCarthy has three books where babies are being eaten. How does he get away with that?”

The answer to our nation’s problems is craft brewing. It’s the artisanal movement that’s going to save us.”

“75% of all literary fiction readers are female.”

“I refuse to have a cover with a beheaded woman on it.”

“Can’t think about who’s going to like your book while you’re writing it.”

“Fiction is an act of prolonged empathy.”

“Writing is about trying to be less afraid.”

“The reward of writing is the opportunity of having a genuine experience.”

“Worst thing to do as a writer is to be afraid of writing from the perspective of gender or race other than one’s own.”

“You can’t read a great novel and update your Facebook status at the same time.”

“I want to entertain myself at the same time I’m trying to entertain my audience.”

“You never stop coming of age.”

“When you go into a project nervous–that’s a good sign.”

“If you’re from the South and someone kills a person in front of you, the proper thing to say is ‘Well, that was a very interesting choice.'”

“While you’re writing, always ask yourself ‘Is it true?'”

“The hive mind is in ascendance.”

“YA writers have established a community; they even write together.”

“This is the golden age of storytelling in YA fiction.”

“To be a reader now is really to be in pig heaven.”

“There needs to be more diversity in YA literature. Overall, there’s not a lot of people of color [in executive positions] in the publishing industry.”

“Transvaginal wanding is not just my drag name.”

“Fairytales take away the burden of originality. They are like a river of stories we can dip into and swim around in.”

“Fairytales invite us to change the world as we know it. And because it is a world of change it’s possible to take the marginal characters and make them the center of the story.”

“Fairytales are constantly recast to fit the culture.”

“Ultimately what we take away from fairytales isn’t their morals but their sense of wonderment.”

“It is so pleasurable to read as a child.”

“Finding yourself as a writer is discovering what really moves you as a reader.”

“Writing is intuitive. Like a person stumbling around a dark room, a dark forest. Images become stepping stones to get across the river.”

“Post-modern novels seem to be contemptuous of the reader.”

“The first job of the writer isn’t to cater to the audience.”

“The challenge is clarity.”

“Amazing that out of nothing can come a novel.”

The wit and wisdom above was collected onto a miniature yellow notepad Saturday April 21 at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Said perspicacity was uttered by anonymous festival-goers, as well as the novelists Chad Harbach, Lauren Groff, Jonathan Evison, Anthony Giardina, Libba Bray, Pete Hautman, Aimee Bender, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Trinie Dalton, Jack Gantos, Ransom Riggs, and Thane Rosenbaum.

Shadowing The Shaded

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Photo by Ordale

Now that my novel The Chronicles of What Happened, by Cam Hanson is in the submission stage (10 agent queries have been sent as of this writing, 1 request for the full manuscript thus far) I turn my attention back to the project I started last summer. It’s a new novel called The Shaded, the first volume in a supernatural horror trilogy for the young adult crowd. There’s an excerpt from an early draft on my website, located here.

However, after reaquainting myself with the story I’ve decided to take it into a slightly different direction, although the basic premise remains the same: A teenager discovers he is a demon-human hybrid, and the battle within himself and against a sinister occultist organization over how to use his newfound powers is just the beginning of an adventure where a young man’s ability to inspire a demonic force for good may be humankind’s only hope for survival.

In the early draft, the main character is stricken with a compulsion to draw/paint/create a series of particularly detailed grotesque images. He will not stop to eat or sleep, and his desperate parents ultimately decide to have him institutionalized. In that version the story opened with the main character already having undergone months of treatment, to no avail. I decided that it was better if the reader and the main character experience this compulsion together. So the idea of the compulsive creating still exists and the images themselves play a crucial role in the story, but now the main character is kidnapped by the aforementioned occultist organization before any medical doctors have the opportunity to try and treat what turns out to not be a disease or disorder, but a spiritual awakening of sorts.

The story is still being mapped out, and really my first order of business is to get a better handle on who my main character is. He’s my first-person narrator and I need to know how he thinks, how he talks, his behavior, etc. Once I find his “voice” I can move forward with more confidence.

I’m excited about the possibilities here, and this project hearkens back to some of the books I enjoyed as a younger reader, especially the supernatural tales of John Bellairs, the Three Investigators series, and Sport by Louise Fitzhugh. I’ve been reading some current YA titles, such as Feed by M.T. Anderson, Miss Peregrine’s School for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs, and Dan Wells’ I Am Not A Serial Killer (although this last title is often kept in the adult fiction section).

Do you read YA novels? Let me know what’s on your shelf or stored in your e-reader. And I’m always on the lookout for other YA horror titles so if you’re reading one or can suggest one, I’d love to hear about those too.