Galleys — “advance, uncorrected proof[s], not for resale” — for my next book arrived this week! The real deal has a publication date of next April, but I’ve already begun sending these early versions out into the world. Paul Hoppe’s illustrations are too good to keep to myself…
Two terrific things came my way this week. One of them, I’d been looking forward to for a while. The other was the sweetest of surprises.
First came the new issue of Hunger Mountain, the journal of the Vermont College of Fine Arts. The young adult and children’s literature section alone is packed with essays, excerpts, and poetry worth savoring, and I’m honored to be a contributor.
Here’s a peek at my essay, “Voice: I’ve Gotta (not just) Be Me”:
For Can I See Your I.D.? (Dial, 2011), a young adult collection profiling ten people who pretended to be someone they weren’t, the voice I use is as much a presence in each story as the person I’m writing about. That wasn’t an accident, but it also wasn’t something I had in mind at the outset of the project or deliberately worked to come up with.
As I remember it, I had stacks of research on two of my subjects, ideas for several other candidates, and not a single word written down. Then one night it occurred to me that maybe I could write these profiles in second person, the better to put the reader behind the mask of each masquerader. I tried it and liked the results, and although the editor who had first shown interest in the project was appalled, from then on, I couldn’t imagine not writing this book that way.
So, what’s my New York Times news? Shark Vs. Train has made the Times’ list of best-selling picture books! Thanks so much to all of you who have helped put it there, and especially to the independent booksellers who have been so wonderfully supportive of the book.
It’s too late for inclusion in my forthcoming book Can I See Your I.D.? True Stories of False Identities, but this past week’s story of how a 22-year-old basketball player passed himself off to Odessa Permian High School as teen phenom “Jerry Joseph” contains many elements familiar to me from my research.
You’ve got a person with a deep need — psychological, or professional, or simply for survival — to misdirect the people around him. And you’ve got those people around him with their all-too-human abilities to see what they are inclined to see and overlook what doesn’t add up.
My book will include ten such stories. Obviously, there were many more to choose from, and more of them being lived out all the time.
Several weeks ago, I finished the final revisions of my next book, Can I See Your I.D.? True Stories of False Identities, a YA nonfiction project coming next spring from Dial.
This past week, I finished the manuscript again.
Maybe.
The project was all done, as far as I knew, when I received a set of documents from the US Navy. I’d requested them — not knowing what was in them, only that they existed — via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). When they didn’t arrive in time for my deadline, I shrugged and moved on.
But when I saw one startling piece of information on one page of the FOIA documents, shrugging was not an option. It indicated that a transformative childhood event — the death of the sister of one of my subjects — had never occurred. I immediately found corroborating evidence online, and here let’s pause to appreciate just how amazing it is that a 65-year-old wedding announcement for total strangers in a far-off state can now be found in seconds.
[Pause]
So, then what? Well, if that sister hadn’t died as a teenager, and was married in the mid-1940s to a man whose name, college affiliation, and other biographical details I now knew, that meant I might be able to find her and ask her some questions about her definitely deceased brother’s upbringing and subsequent misadventures. Or, if she hadn’t survived until her 90s, maybe I could find her children or grandchildren to share some family lore regarding my subject.
Despite much advice and encouragement — especially from Marc Tyler Nobleman and Rebecca Smith Hurd — I got nowhere. Dead end followed dead end. Public records databases and online article archives offered not even a single reference to the sister or her husband. I gave up, and un-gave up, and gave up again until I remembered the library — the public library in my subject’s home town.
And there, I hit paydirt. Not only did I find a special collections librarian eager to do some digging on my behalf in the local archives, but the library director’s own mother grew up with my subject, had known him personally, and remembered him well.
I interviewed the director’s mother a couple of weeks ago, and in addition to being an absolutely delightful way to spend 20 minutes, it was also extremely useful. She corroborated some prior research that I’d come to have doubts about, and she also set me straight about the fate of the sister.
My subject’s sister did not die as a teenager, but she survived only another dozen years or so, dying not long after her marriage. She was gone. The children and grandchildren I had been seeking did not exist. I like to think that my sadness upon learning this was for her and those who loved her and not for the way it limited my ability to know my subject better still, but in all honesty it was probably some of both.
What I did get was useful, though, and it allowed me to fix a couple of paragraphs in that profile (one of ten included in the book) — maybe even in time to get the changes into the galleys scheduled to be printed later this month. And while it feels good to be done, again, I shouldn’t get too used to the feeling.
You see, the postal service seems to have gobbled up the documents that the special collections librarian sent my way. The replacement copies probably won’t arrive in time for the galleys. But, depending on what those documents contain, maybe I’ll get to finish the book yet again.
A neat piece of news about The Day-Glo Brothers came my way yesterday: Korean publisher Munhakdongne has bought translation rights. I don’t know how long it typically takes for a translated version to become available, but it’s a pretty safe bet that you’ll get to have a look at it here just as soon as I get my hands on a copy.
Shark Vs. Train had some great news of its own this week, in the form of its first review — and a starred one, no less, from Publishers Weekly:
This is a genius concept … Just when readers will think the scenarios can’t get more absurd, the book moves into even funnier territory. … Lichtenheld’s watercolor cartoons have a fluidity and goofy intensity that recalls Mad magazine, while Barton gives the characters snappy dialogue throughout.
(You should know that Tom Lichtenheld supplied lots of snappy dialogue himself.)
Finally — and I do mean “finally!” — it looks like my young-adult nonfiction project with Dial has a title that will stick, after having had several that turned out not to be so sticky. Can I See Your I.D.? True Stories of False Identities is scheduled to publish in spring 2011. I’ve spent the past week responding to final edits, and soon I’ll get to see sketches from illustrator Paul Hoppe.
But it’s Paul Hoppe, so really my only question is just how terrific they’re going to be…
A couple of Fridays ago, while my family and I were on the road to West Texas for a long — and long-anticipated — weekend in Fort Davis and Marfa, I received an equally anticipated message from my editor at Dial.
Paul Hoppe, she said, is on board to provide illustrations for my YA nonfiction book about impostors, masqueraders, what-have-you. How excited am I about this? Well, just know that it literally took maybe a second and a half of looking at his work for me to recognize that he was right for this project. Please, see his work for yourself.
So, while I was already eager to resume work on my manuscript revisions as soon as I got back from my vacation, knowing Paul’s going to be involved has given me even more of a boost. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to those…
Have you seen the terrific animation that Charlesbridge Publishing put together showing how regular color, fluorescence, and daylight fluorescence work? For all the words in The Day-Glo Brothers, and all the clever art, Charlesbridge rightly figured that a little something extra was the best way to get those concepts across.
Well, now Charlesbridge and I have come up with another little something extra: The Day-Glo Brothers Activity and Discussion Guide. In its four downloadable pages, you’ll find discussion questions for before and after reading, a bevy of activity ideas, a glossary, and links to other online resources. It’s absolutely free and available now, and I’d love to know what you think of it.
After a few months of careful consideration/dithering/hemming and hawing, I’ve added a few bookseller links to my site’s page for The Day-Glo Brothers.
I’ve wondered whether these links are even necessary. After all, doesn’t pretty much everybody know how and where to buy books online? And if I did provide links to some retailers, I wondered, how would I justify not linking to others?
Finally, I decided that although most if not all visitors to my site will indeed know some places where they can buy books online, they may not think of their local (nor not-so-local, but eager-to-ship) independent bookseller. So the first link I provided is to IndieBound, for reasons that can’t be stated often enough:
Why support independents?
When you shop at an independently-owned business, your entire community benefits:
- Spend $100 at a local and $68 of that stays in your community. Spend the same $100 at a national chain, and your community only sees $43.
- Local businesses create higher-paying jobs for our neighbors.
- More of your taxes are reinvested in your community–where they belong.
- Buying local means less packaging, less transportation, and a smaller carbon footprint.
- Shopping in a local business district means less infrastructure, less maintenance, and more money to beautify your community.
- Local retailers are your friends and neighbors—support them and they’ll support you.
- Local businesses donate to charities at more than twice the rate of national chains.
- More independents means more choice, more diversity, and a truly unique community.
It also helps that IndieBound offers an easy-to-join affiliate program, which means that I’ll get a little piece of each sale, a commission for the referral to go with my royalty as the author. Amazon.com has made its affiliate program simple as well, and the supplemental content surrounding the books it sells can’t be beat, so linking to Amazon seemed obvious.
That certainly wasn’t the case with Barnes & Noble and Borders, both of whose affiliate programs come off as complex and onerous and hardly worth the time for an author or illustrator to sign up for. But I linked to them anyway. Why? Because some folks are in the habit of buying books online from them, and I wanted to make it as easy as possible for visitors to my site to get a copy of my book from the most likely sellers.
Still, it’s no accident that the first bookseller link is to “a local bookstore”…
Inspired by this post over at ShelfTalker, I’ve changed my mind. Here’s what I wrote in the comments there:
I’m convinced. A day after reaching a long-considered decision to link from my site to IndieBound first, followed by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Borders, I’ve removed the links to those latter three and gone with only the one link to “your favorite local, independent bookstore.” It’s a matter of sales lost (minimal if any, I’m betting) vs. goodwill gained (how’m I doing so far?).
