From the SCBWI website:

The Crystal Kite Awards are given by the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators each year to recognize great books from 15 regional SCBWI divisions around the world.  Along with the SCBWI Golden Kite Awards, the Crystal Kite Awards are chosen by other children’s book writers and illustrators, making them the only peer-given awards in publishing for young readers. 

The fact that this is an award chosen by other children’s book authors makes it especially meaningful to me.

Congratulations to everyone who won!

Africa: Finding Aunt Joan, Jenny Hatton and Joan Rankin: Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd.

Australia: The Last Viking, Norman Jorgensen: Fremantle Press

California/Hawaii: Won Ton – A Cat Tale Told in Haiku, Lee Wardlaw, Eugene Yelchin:  Henry Holt Books for Young Readers

Florida/GA: Cleopatra’s Moon, Vicky Alvear Shecter: Arthur A. Levine Books (Scholastic Press)

Kansas/LA: Between Shades of Gray, Ruta Sepetys: Philomel Books (Penguin Young Readers Group)

Middle East/Asia: Orchards, Holly Thompson: Delacorte Dell (Random House)

Minnesota/Iowa: Bluefish, Pat Schmatz: Candlewick Press

Nevada: Black & White: The Confrontation between Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth and Eugene “Bull” Connor, Larry Brimner: Boyds Mills Press

New England: Pearl, Jo Knowles: Henry Holt Books for Young Readers

New York: Thelonious Mouse,  Orel Protopopescu: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc.

PA/DE/NJ: The Absolute Value of Mike, Kathryn Erskine: Philomel Books (Penguin Young Readers Group)

Texas/OK: MINE! Patrice Barton: Random House Children’s Books

Americas: Witchlanders, Lena Coakley: Atheneum Books for Young Readers (Simon & Schuster)

UK/Europe: Dark Parties, Sara Grant: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (Hachette Book Group USA)

Washington: The Friendship Doll, Kirby Larson: Delacorte Dell (Random House)

Have a look!

First of all, WITCHLANDERS has been nominated for a Crystal Kite Award!

I can finally spill about this because the voting is over.  It’s a wonderful honour since the Crystal Kite is an award that’s voted on by other authors, and this recognition from my peers is especially meaningful to me.  Winners will be announced on April 30th so keep your fingers crossed!

Also, I’ve made some additions to my upcoming events including the exciting news that I will be speaking at CANSCAIP’s Packaging Your Imagination conference in November.  My topic will be on Writing High Fantasy and Urban Fantasy.

Ad Astra 2012

Toronto, Ontario, April 13-15, 2012.

SCBWI Niagara

Niagara, Ontario, June 8-10, 2012

Muskoka Novel Marathon

Huntsville, Ontario, July 13-16, 2012

World Fantasy Convention

Toronto, Ontario, November 1-4, 2012.

Packaging Your Imagination

Toronto, Ontario, November 10, 2012.

That’s right: I’m on submission! With only 75 pages and an outline, my agent and I have decided to throw my little rough draft to the sharks and see who snaps it up. Crazy?

Yes!  What the heck were we thinking??

Perhaps this is all I need to tell you about not being able to concentrate on my novel.  Any writer would say: Of course you can’t concentrate! It’s a miracle you can put on your pants! You’re on sub!

And any non-writer would say: What the heck does ‘on sub’ mean?  Also, your pants are on backwards.

Basically it means that a number of carefully chosen editors are reading my pages right now and deciding whether or not they want to publish them.  Or rather, the editors are not reading them because they are in lovely Bologna, while I google them and chew pen lids like gum.

But enough about me.  In other news: I got a grant!

No matter what the editors I’m subbing to say, The Canada Council has decided that my work in progress is worth supporting, which, honestly, feels really good.  I didn’t get the Toronto Arts Council or the Ontario Arts Council grants I had applied for, so I wasn’t holding out much hope for this one.  Coincidentally, I met one of the TAC jury members who rejected my manuscript just days before I got the news and she was quite hilarious about how subjective the process is. I think she was just being nice, but still, her imitation of trying to come to an agreement about what makes a good submission with the experimental poet who didn’t believe in plot was like a one-woman show.

In other, other news, I’m author of the month over on Pub(lishing) Crawl! I’m a little late posting about this and unfortunately the give-away is already over, but you can still have a look at the interview, where I spill the news about the book I’m subbing at the moment.

Finally, in honour of my new-found, Canada Council wealth, I signed up for SCBWI Niagara! It sounds like a great conference and (for now) they’re still not sold out, so if you are in the Ontario area, have a look!

Thief!

Yes, I did have some illnesses and some house guests this past month.  (My fifteen-year-old nephew is staying with me this week and he’s eating all my ice cream!) But things have been crazy before and I’ve always managed to get a blog post out there.

Did I run out of things to say?  That can’t be it because I didn’t have much to say when I started this and I still managed to dream up a post every week.

Did I become disillusioned by the publishing business?  Quite honestly: no.  Sure it’s scary and it’s always changing and I’ll never make a living, but, for the most part, I’m very proud of Witchlanders and very happy with my experience at Simon & Schuster.

I think I am just getting burned out on social networking in all its forms.  I was devoted to the Verla Kay message boards when I first started writing, and now I haven’t dropped by in months.  Suddenly Facebook, which I used to love, has become a place where people post pictures of dorky handwritten aphorisms that get re-shared a hundred times and clog up my feed.  As for Twitter, I never could get the hang of it.  When people don’t RT me I feel like I’m back in the high school lunch room with my bra strap showing.

Me & Plantasia having a quiet night in.

The thing is, I am an introvert.  I get almost all the social contact I require from my plant.  And when I need a little more than what an eyelash begonia can offer, I prefer to see my friends in the flesh.  In the past, I have truly enjoyed the contacts, discussions, and energy I’ve found online, but now I’m feeling overwhelmed.

I’m not sure what to do about this.  I know I need to scale back on social media, but writers are told all the time that these forms of networking are an important part of the business of selling books.

I’d love to hear about how other writers are dealing with this.  As for me, these are the steps I am going (or am not going) to take:

•  I will blog next week.  And see how I feel about it.  Perhaps when I get back into the habit I will get back what I loved about it.
•  I will not find out what Pinterest is.  I know it’s a new social media thing that everyone is trying out, but, “la, la, la, la,” *fingers in ears* I will not be looking into it.
•  I will stop by the Verla Kay boards because that was something I really did enjoy.
•  I will think about quitting Facebook and/or Twitter and I’ll let my friends tell me—in the flesh!—how I’m committing social networking suicide.

I was there to present Witchlanders in a three-minute infomercial with 34 other authors at CANSCAIP’s annual OLA book launch for Canadian children’s books.

While there, I was delighted to learn that Witchlanders was chosen for inclusion on the prestigious OLA Best Bets for Kids and Teens List!  (When the full list is posted, I’ll add the link.)

Here are some photographs of the event.

Wonderful Authors:

Martin Springett signing posters for Kate & Pippin.

Sylvia McNicoll signing Crush. Candy. Corpse.

Marina Cohen signing Chasing the White Witch.

Kevin Sylvester signing his next Neil Flambé mystery.

Mahtab Narsimhan signing The Tiffin.

Editor Love!

Author Natalie Hyde with Fitzhenry and Whiteside editor, Christie Harkin.

Author Teresa Toten with Lynne Missen, publishing director of Penguin Canada Young Readers.

Librarian Love!

Author/Librarian Joel Sutherland and Scars author Cheryl Rainfield.

Publicist Love!

Here I am at the Simon & Schuster Canada booth with lovely marketing associate, Michelle Blackwell.

The CANSCAIP Launch

Crowds waited with baited breath for the CANSCAIP launch to begin.

Vladyana Krykorka presents her new board book series: Arctic Sea, Arctic Land and Arctic Sky with the help of CANSCAIP AD Jennifer Gordon.

Maureen McGowan presents Cinderella Ninja Warrior and Sleeping Beauty Vampire Slayer.

Later that weekend…

And then, because we just can’t get enough of each other, many of the same authors who were at OLA reconvened on Sunday at Bakka Phoenix Books for the launch of Megan Crewe’s chilling dystopian novel, The Way We Fall.

L-R: Helaine Becker, Mahtab Narsimhan, Jackie Garlick-Pynaert, Karen Krossing.

Megan Crewe

Awesome swag.

Phew!  Now I need another weekend to rest up!

I’ve updated my Upcoming Events section, but in case you are too tired, lazy or jaded to click on the link, here’s what I’ll be doing in February!

Friday, February 3rd, 2012

Going to OLA? Come see me and 25 other authors present their books!

This February 1st to 4th, the Ontario Library Association’s Super Conference 2012 will be in Toronto at the Metro Convention Centre.  CANSCAIP, the Canadian Society of Children’s Authors, Illustrators and Performers, will be hosting its annual mega book launch at noon on Friday the 3rd.  I’ll be there with Witchlanders in hand.  It should be awesome!
12:00 in the
EXPO Theatre

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

Canadian Kids’ Lit Quiz

I’m so excited! Have a look at the Kids’ Lit Quiz website to find out all about this exciting event.  I’ll be on the “Awesome Authors” team with Gillian O’Reilly, Anne Dublin and Philippa Dowding.  We are SO going to grind those kids into the ground.  Just kidding.  Not.

John Ross Robertson Public School
12:30 

That’s right, all you new followers from the Fairies and Fantasy Giveaway.  I’m a Brontë nerd.  Get used to it!

I took the test myself and I’m Charlotte.  (Whaaaa? I wanna be Emily!) As you can see, each result has a picture and a little bio at the end. I hope you enjoy it because I had a lot of fun making it.  Many thanks to the people at Rum & Monkey for making it so easy.  And free!

You are Charlotte Brontë!
Take Which Bronte Sibling Are You? today!
Created with Rum and Monkey‘s Personality Test Generator.

Valerie Redfern!!!  Woo-hooo!

Congratulations Valerie, and thank you all so much for entering!

Megan’s new book, The Way We Fall will be coming out on January 24th.  You can read more about it at the end of this post.

The Truth about Trends

by Megan Crewe

Hang out in writerly circles for very long, and you’ll hear conversation turn toward trends. What genres and topics are publishers scrambling to get more of? Which are almost impossible to sell? Should you try to match your writing to what’s currently hot, or veer off in a new direction?

It’s hard not to be tempted by the idea that there are strategies (beyond simply writing well) that will make it easier to get your book published. And authors don’t agree on the answer. Some attribute their success to paying attention to what’s selling and writing the sort of books publishers have shown they want. Others say that by the time you notice a trend, it’s likely too late to join in before the market’s saturated, so you’re just wasting your time.

I don’t think there is a right answer. Opinions are divided because experiences are divided. I’ve seen for myself that trends can both help and hurt your chances of getting published.

See, in 2008 I was feeling pretty confident about myself as a writer. I’d sold one book, and I figured that meant getting published would be a lot easier from here on. The next novel I wrote was a paranormal YA like my debut, but the story was bigger, and more action-y, and it was intended to be the first in a trilogy. My then-agent was super excited about it. She put it on submission at the end of the year.

At the time, paranormal was the biggest thing in YA fiction. But that book of mine was on sub for sixteen months, and never even made it as far as an acquisitions meeting. Editors were saying they had too much paranormal on their lists already, that there was no room for more.

Around the beginning of 2010, I started writing another book: a survival story about a girl in a quarantined island community struggling to survive a deadly epidemic. I hadn’t seen any recent YA books with a similar premise, and that made the idea all the more appealing.

I was about halfway through the first draft when the dystopian trend took off like a rocket. Suddenly there were several new dystopian YA sales being reported every week. My first response was panic. Even though my book wasn’t technically dystopian, I knew that with its end of the world scenario, it would be seen as part of that genre. I had the sinking feeling that by the time I got the book finished and polished, it would be like the paranormal book all over again–except worse, because this time I needed to find a new agent as well. I could already imagine both agents and editors saying, “Sorry, we’ve already got too many books like this.”

Despite those worries, I still loved the story. I didn’t have some other story I was equally excited about begging to get written. So I kept going, deciding I might as well give it a shot.

I started querying in the late spring of 2010. Three weeks later, I had a new agent. Less than a month after that, he’d sold THE WAY WE FALL at auction in a three book deal.

What was the difference between THE WAY WE FALL and my unsold paranormal, then? It was probably partly the age of the trend. When I was trying to sell the paranormal trilogy, that genre had been hot for a few years already, so there’d been lots of time for publishers’ lists to fill up. With TWWF, I happened to catch the dystopian wave close to the beginning. It might have been harder to sell now than it was a year and a half ago.

Or maybe not. Because I suspect another factor is that TWWF is a better book. Plenty of paranormal novels sold after mine was turned down. When you’re writing in a genre that’s trendy, lots of other people are too, and that means a book that’s not quite up to snuff will have a very hard time finding a home.

And of course there are always the mysterious factors of getting the book to the right editor at the right time in the right mood… Which is totally beyond the author’s control.

The lesson I’ve come away with is, yes, trends can help you, and they can hurt you. The problem is you can’t know which it’s going to be ahead of time. So my strategy is to write whatever story I’m most passionate about, without worrying about whether it’s too close to or too far from what’s currently trendy. I’m most likely to write a good story if I’m passionate about it, and a good story is always more likely to sell than a bad one. And hey, I’ll probably be happier along the way!

The Way We Fall
(from Goodreads)

It starts with an itch you just can’t shake. Then comes a fever and a tickle in your throat. A few days later, you’ll be blabbing your secrets and chatting with strangers like they’re old friends. Three more, and the paranoid hallucinations kick in.

And then you’re dead.

When a deadly virus begins to sweep through sixteen-year-old Kaelyn’s community, the government quarantines her island—no one can leave, and no one can come back.

Those still healthy must fight for dwindling supplies, or lose all chance of survival. As everything familiar comes crashing down, Kaelyn joins forces with a former rival and discovers a new love in the midst of heartbreak. When the virus starts to rob her of friends and family, she clings to the belief that there must be a way to save the people she holds dearest.

Because how will she go on if there isn’t?

Megan Crewe crafts a powerful and gripping exploration of self-preservation, first love, and hope. Poignant and dizzying, this heart-wrenching story of one girl’s bravery and unbeatable spirit will leave readers fervently awaiting the next book in this standout new series.