Fourth Annual Greater Rochester Teen Read! (or GRTR during TRW with ASK!)

Tip of the Day: Need to buy some books this week? Wait til Saturday and order through Barnes & Noble book fairs to benefit the 9th Annual Rochester Teen Book Festival!

Guess what time of year it ALMOST is?

Teen Read Week!

And what does that mean?

It is also almost time for the Fourth Annual Greater Rochester Teen Read! This year our feature author is A. S. King (Amy) and her novel Everybody Sees the Ants!

I am particularly excited about GRTR this year because not only did we book Amy for three Monroe County Library System visits, one Monroe County Children's Detention Center visit, three school visits, AND as a special guest for the Read-A-Thon at B&N, but I ALSO got the YALSA/Dollar General TRW Grant! That means three more MCLS libraries can be a part of TRW activities by showing the documentary Bully, do giveaways of EVERYBODY SEES THE ANTS and the essay book DEAR BULLY edited by Carrie Jones and Megan Kelley Hall, and pay for Amy's flight. Phew! 

If you will be in the Rochester, NY area from Oct. 12-17, please check out this website to find out where you can meet Amy and hear her talk about why bullying sucks and how things will get better!

Have I mentioned lately that I love my job?

I love my job!

Deena, Miss Subbing for Pubbing

Sympositastic! (of YALSA Does It Again)

Tip of the Day: If you are a YA author and have the chance to go to a YALSA Symposium, go! EVERYONE there will LOVE YOU! We'll be in Austin in 2014!

Wow. Thank you SO MUCH to YALSA for putting together the 3rd YALSA Symposium in St. Louis this past weekend. On Friday and Saturday, I attended sessions and activities from 8:30 til 7 PM, and on Sunday from 8:30 til my transport to the airport at 1:30. And it was all amazing!

First, proof that I was actually there:

Due to my issues with being CLOSED INTO TINY RICKETY ELEVATORS, I chose to glimpse it from the park below. More power to those who braved the climb and saw the Mississippi River from the top!

I have tons of notes of cool tips for authors (hence author2author) that I will dole out over the next couple of weeks, but today I want to highlight some cool moments.

1. Having dinner/drinks with authors Selene Castrovilla and Jo Knowles.

Selene and I have met a few times now at YALSA and TBF and she is a spunky woman with great edgy YAs, historical non-fiction for kids, and some adult novels in her too. It's always fun to catch up with her, and I wish her the best as her homestead recovers from Sandy!

Jo I've followed on LiveJournal for years and she is very sweet and very talented and writes the type of novels I loved as a teen and still do now.

I also attended the lunch where these two authors spoke:

Patricia McCormick

David Levithan

They both spoke about the human experience in some way, noting that any book can connect with any person -- even if they are a different color/sex/religion/etc. of the main character -- because we all share the human experience.

The final keynote speaker on Sunday was Scott Westerfeld. The topic of his fun, educational, hilarious, and thoughtful presentation was on the history of the integration of illustrations in books for teens and adults and how he used that in LEVIATHAN.

His speech would appeal to teens as well. If you ever have the chance to see him present, you must go! Seriously, I laughed and listened and was truly entertained.

On the flight home from STL to ORD, I had the pleasure of sharing my row with Helen Frost! I'd seen her session earlier on Sunday, and am a huge fan of HIDDEN, as are the teens in my town.

We chatted about books and authors and politics and writing and the 1-hour flight flew by (pun intended). If you haven't had a chance to read her work, you must; it is brilliant. Poems within poems, meanings within meanings, that all form a cohesive novel. Her Printz Honor novel KEESHA'S HOUSE will release next year in paperback, as well as her new YA SALT; definitely keep your eyes out for them.

Thanks again to all the librarians, authors, publishers, and YA lovers who made this conference possible.

Deena, Miss Subbing for Pubbing

When Disaster Strike! (or Weather Permitting)

Tip of the Day: Give me a shout in the comments if you will be at the YALSA Symposium with me in St. Louis this weekend!

With all of the talk about -- and destruction caused by -- Hurricane Sandy this week, I was thinking about disaster novels, realistic stories based on natural events.

Adding "bad weather" into your novel is a great way to create tension and a non-human foe. It also adds atmosphere and helps to place your story on the map.

If you've had enough of these horrors in real life, I understand. But if you want to read some kidlit with this setting, I recommend the following:

ASHFALL and ASHEN WINTER by Mike Mullin. When the supervalcano errupts, Alex must survive the fallout on his own. Totally gripping and it made me cold just reading about the ashy snow.

TRAPPED by Michael Northrop. During a snow storm, seven teens are stuck in their high school awaiting rescue while the temperature drops and the snow piles up. Creepy and disturbing and a little too close to home for those who live in lake affect snow zones.

HURRICANE by Terry Trueman. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch strikes Honduras and 13-year-old Jose must take care of his house when his father goes missing. This tragic and realistic story reads quickly and shows the vulnerability of island life.

THE WAITING SKY by Lara Zielin. Jane finally leaves her alcoholic mother back home -- but just for the summer because her mom needs her -- and joins her older brother and his team of tornado chasers through tornado alley. While the focus is on the characters rather than the weather, the tornado's power and unpredictability is well drawn.

What are your favorite weather/natural disaster novels?

Deena, Miss Subbing for Pubbing

What's Old is New Again (or Rewritten and Revised and Resubbed?)

Tip of the Day: The YALSA Symposium is three months away! Who's going (besides me)?

I am rewriting the MG novel that got me my first agent in 2008. Two slightly different versions of that novel were subbed to -- and rejected by -- about eight editors over the course of 2008-2009.

This year I went back to that novel. I love that novel (unlike some drawer novels that I have no interest in working on again). I've been rewriting and revising it like crazy, with good feedback from my CPs, and think it is so much tighter and developed and the characters stand on their own.

The main plotline of the novel is the same, as is the setting, but the execution is just so much more on point because I am a much better writer now than I was in '08.

BUT, it is too late for an agent to look at that novel? Has the ship sailed? I know editors move around a lot from house to house, and some who read it are no longer at the same houses or even still in the pub business.

If this novel were polished and ready to go out four years after its first attempt, what do you suggest I do with it if I am unagented?

Deena, Miss Subbing for Pubbing

Conference Specificity (or I'm Gonna Stay at the Y-AL-S-A*)

*with apologies to The Village People

Tip of the Day: It's SUMMER READING time at your local library! See what great games and events they have planned!

I love SCBWI conferences, but my favorite ones have been those with a focus on writing YA, my personal first love, where I get the most bang for my buck.

And I love Book Festivals, but again my favorites are those that focus on teen books -- like the Rochester Teen Book Fest.

Likewise, for my allotment of library related professional development conferences I can attend, there are many choices, but to get the most out of it, I prefer ones that focus on YA lit.

So how lucky was I that the same year I started my job as a YA Librarian (2008), the first YALSA Symposium on Young Adult Literature was held in Nashville, TN.


This symposium is held every two years, and this year's is in St. Louis, MO on Nov. 2-4. The time to apply to hold a session has passed, but it's a great place for YA authors to schmooze with librarians who are obsessed with their works. :)

So if you're a YA author, librarian, teacher, or other fan of the lit, I highly recommend attending this event. You'll often leave with free books, and always leave with energy and inspiration from being around people who love the same literature you do.

Who will I see in St. Louis this November?

Deena, Miss Subbing for Pubbing