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“Dear Lucky Agent” contest ends on Sunday!

Filed under: I write by margocole — Leave a comment
February 17, 2010

Dear writers,

You could be writing your future agent critic this week.
The chance is yours if you enter the “Dear Lucky Agent” contest from the “Guide to Literary Agents” Editors Blog – by the end of Sunday, February 21 (EST).
Get all the details to enter your story!

Entries should include the first 150-200 words of your YA or middle-grade manuscript and its logline (in the message body; no attachments) and emailed to februaryagentcontest@gmail.com. You can enter as many times as you want.

You’ll get a chance at:

  • First place: 1) A critique of 25 pages of your work, by your agent judge, Jennifer Laughran from Andrea Brown Literary Agency. (She’s repped books like I Kissed a Zombie and I Liked It, by Adam Selzer and Flash Burnout, by LK Madigan.) 2) A query critique from Ms. Laughran. 3) Two free books from Writer’s Digest Books.
  • Runner-ups – second and third place: 1) A critique of 10 pages of your work, by Ms. Laughran. 2) One free book from Writer’s Digest Books.

Please note: Additional eligibility requirements involve social-media mentions. [You may have seen my tweet and Facebook link already…]

Get all the details to enter your story! Check the comments section for the contest’s legal info.

Best of luck, all!

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Dystopia hitting libraries too soon

Filed under: I write, Thirty Decibels by margocole — 12 Comments
February 16, 2010

This isn’t supposed to be happening. It’s not 2093, after all.

Thirty Decibels, the teen sci-fi manuscript I’m currently revising, is set three generations into the future – in 2093. Some of its central conflict stems from the impending closure of all libraries. (It may seem odd out of context, but the libraries in Thirty Decibels carry a different meaning.)

So when I heard about the possibility that Evanston’s libraries may close – that is, real libraries closing in present-day – I was floored. It was the dystopia I’d imagined, almost a century too soon.

There’d been a similar scare in Philadelphia last September, where all the city’s libraries were to close mere weeks later. I heard about it through an old friend, and retweeted the link. I couldn’t believe something like this could happen. But The Consumerist, source of the original story, soon ran an update that Philadelphia’s libraries had been saved by an online-sales tax.

Last month, I heard about Illinois’s library trouble. State budget cuts were anticipated to shut them down. Save Illinois Libraries gathered support, and the cuts were smaller than they could’ve been. The libraries have survived, but now they’re down to the quick in funding. Some of our elected officials have pledged support, but SIL could use Illinoisans’ help to drum up more. (You can also become their fan on Facebook.)

Support BranchLove

The latest library crunch looms in Evanston.
On February 2, the city council voted to close their branch libraries, even though visits are up from 2008. While grassroots organization BranchLove scrambled for non-profit status in order to accept donations, citizens pledged dollar-amounts of support via email. At February 4th’s city council meeting, 3rd-Ward Alderman Melissa Wynne and library activists set their sights on a six-month reprieve. This would keep the libraries open while a task force searches out alternate, long-term funding. Nothing is final; Evanston’s budget meeting is February 20, and the city council’s vote is February 22nd.

BranchLove.org co-founder Lori Keenan says it best:

We walk gingerly and think good things and are again, cautiously optimistic until the final vote (the one that counts) to pass the budget, as proposed, Monday night. It would be great once more to have as much support there on Monday night as possible.

And Evanston’s own Audrey Niffenegger, best-selling author of The Time Traveler’s Wife, offers staunch support:

I grew up near the Central Street branch of the Evanston Library and I am not too happy to imagine it closing down. My mom took us there every week, we got to take home a stack of exciting books; it was my introduction to the whole concept of libraries. We could walk there from home. The experience made me a life-long library user. It seems very short-sighted to solve temporary budget problems with drastic solutions that benefit no one.

Show your support and help save Evanston’s branch libraries:

– Come to the budget workshop, Saturday, Feb. 20, 9am, at Evanston’s civic center
– Attend the city council meeting, Monday, Feb. 22nd, at 7pm
– Join BranchLove for a volunteer meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 24th, at 7pm
Please send questions/thoughts/pledges to info@branchlove.org

I still can’t get over it – this is supposed to be fiction.

UPDATE: I attended the February budget meeting. Here’s what happened.

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In Stead’s Head

Filed under: I write, Meeting Authors, SCBWI by margocole — 5 Comments
February 7, 2010

Friday evening is still with me.

That’s when I attended a discussion at 57th Street Books, organized by the Hyde Park network of SCBWI. (It’s an acronym you’ll see here often, and it translates to the Society of Children’s Writers and Illustrators.)

The event featured Rebecca Stead, author of When You Reach Me, and her editor Wendy Lamb (of Wendy Lamb Books, an imprint of Random House). I was nervous. Why was I nervous? I’d read the book, so I was ready for any potential pop-quizzes. Maybe it was the John Newbery Medal that the book just won. It could just be that the book was amazing, and to be in the room was to feel like a “smart 10-year-old” again. (Stead and Lamb joked that this particular “demographic” was the ultimate test of WYRM‘s internal logic. Lamb added that she still doesn’t “get” it!)

The discussion was varied and entertaining in itself. Preteens and adults alike raised their hands, and Ms. Stead answered every question with the same openness and honesty as the one before. This is what’s still with me: Her willingness to let us into her head, to walk around for a little while. She signed the children’s copies of the book first, taking time with each young fan to answer questions and just talk. In my copy, she signed a “note” to my son Archer, because I can’t wait until the book “reaches” him. We also talked very briefly about the business. I shared what little experience I’ve had (which has been interesting), and I completely felt like she understood. She said “Well then, keep going!” and her written note in my new copy of First Light says the same.

There are little quips about being human in When You Reach Me that I never expected to find reflected in a page of print. And in real life, she’s just like that. She admitted, “I never liked book groups,” explaining that the experience of a book is so personal and the emotions were too big to talk about. As she explained this feeling she’d had as a kid, I went right back to my childhood and felt it, too.

A writer has to be brave enough to write honestly, even if it means saying something new. It can be scary to be original. Maybe the nerves mean we’re doing something right.

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My post is up today on the3six5!

Filed under: I work, I write, Thirty Decibels by margocole — Leave a comment
February 3, 2010

I was asked to participate in the3six5.com, a blog-a-day, person-by-person account of the whole year. My post is up today! Mine’s on writing and observation – there’s a snippet below.

If you have the chance, please check out the whole post (link below), and comment/tweet/forward if you like it! (This project is getting a lot of mentions in the social media/creative realms… very exciting!)

With dialogue, the words are only as important as how they’re said. The best conversation I had was this morning, a goodbye to the boys as one took the other to daycare. “Zai jian,” I waved. “Bye chen,” my son answered – but it’s a start. Yes, that’s Mandarin Chinese, and yes, we’re that kind of parents.

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