Cynthia Leitich Smith

Today I’ve got a treat, an interview with an author who’s as warm and generous as a person as she is skilled and talented with words: Cynthia Leitich Smith.

Cynthia is the New York Times and Publishers Weekly best-selling author of Tantalize, Eternal, Blessed, Diabolical and Tantalize: Kieren’s Story (Candlewick). Her award-winning books for younger children include Jingle Dancer, Indian Shoes, Rain Is Not My Indian Name (all HarperCollins) and Holler Loudly (Dutton).

Her website at www.cynthialeitichsmith.com was named one of the top 10 Writer Sites on the Internet by Writer’s Digest and an ALA Great Website for Kids. Her Cynsations blog at cynthialeitichsmith.blogspot.com was listed among the top two read by the children’s/YA publishing community in the SCBWI “To Market” column.

Cynthia makes her home in Austin, Texas, with four writer cats and her husband, children’s-YA author Greg Leitich Smith.

With Diabolical, the fourth book in her Tantalize series, just launched, I picked Cynthia’s brain about the challenges of writing a series. Here’s her great insight:

Me: When you came up with the story of Tantalize (I so want to eat at Sanguini’s, by the way), did you envision it as a full series of books or did that idea come after the publication of that novel?

Cynthia: I had hopes, prayers, Snoopy dances of anticipation with regard to publishing related stories, but at the time, I was thought of as an author of contemporary, realistic Native American books for younger children [including Jingle Dancer]. So, it was something of a risk to try me as a YA Gothic writer, especially before the paranormal boom. It’s what you might call an “earned” series. The first three books were published as stand-alones before Candlewick Press and Walker Books began using the “s” word in marketing them.

Tantalize sold before Twilight was published, and some of the early feedback I received was to the effect that there wasn’t a market among YA girls for books with monsters in them. I know that sounds jarring in retrospect, but keep in mind that, back then, horror was associated with popular series by Christopher Pike and R.L. Stine, which were viewed more as “boy books.”

Also, my work tends to skew literary, employing sophisticated techniques like epistolary elements, alternating point of view and unreliable narrators that can challenge less experienced readers. They’re sometimes called “thinking readers” novels, which is quite flattering, but also means they’re less inherently commercial than they could be. That’s both a blessing and a curse.

Me: I’d say a blessing! How did you plan each book’s story as an individual novel as well as in context of the series?

Cynthia: My idea was to assume that Stoker’s classic, Dracula (1897) was loosely based on truth and then inch backward in time toward that source material.

So, book 1, Tantalize, offers up Quincie P. Morris, a many-times great niece of one of Van Helsing’s original vampire hunters. Book 2, Eternal, assumes that the vampire royalty of today has taken on “Dracul” as an honorific and introduces the divine warriors that battle them. In book 3, Blessed, the Count himself is summoned from the ether to merge briefly with the antagonist, and in book 4, Diabolical, we go to the Scholomance, the famed school where the Count was said to have learned his evil ways.

Though there will be more stories set in the universe, this quartet forms a super arc. Or in other words, each can stand alone, but they do build on one another toward the fiery, heaven vs. hell showdown in Diabolical.

That said, these aren’t “vampire” novels per se. Rather, they’re set in a multi-creature-verse, featuring not only vampires, but also angels, a variety of shape-shifters (werewolves, werecats, werebears, werearmadillos), ghosts, demons, pesky humans and others.

Also, these are “books set in a world” rather than a straightforward, linear series. You can turn a corner (or page) and run into a character from any of the previous novels. In addition, the cast is diverse (defined broadly) and both girl- and guy-powered. This is one of few successful YA series with both male and female protagonists as well as protagonists of color.

They’re basically genre benders: Gothic fantasies with elements of suspense, mystery, romance and some humor. Not slapstick — I play it straight — but not angst fests either.

Me: About the different points of view you use in the books, how did you choose which characters to show the story through, and when you were writing more than one in the same novel, how did you keep their voices different?

Cynthia: Tantalize was originally written from Kieren’s point of view, but I switched to Quincie’s because she was in greater danger and what she was going through spoke more to the adolescent experience. That said, over the next few years, I gained a deeper appreciation of what Kieren was doing during that period and revisited his perspective for the graphic novel adaptation.

Big picture, I look at whose story it really is — who grows and changes and whether additional points of view can be justified in terms of the internal and external story arcs.

I also consider whether any co-narrators work as mirror characters. Does the journey of one illuminate that of another?

Me: Makes sense. Diabolical is the fourth book in this series. Did you have any challenges writing this fourth installment that you didn’t have in the other three?

Cynthia: My deadline was tighter than it has been in the past, in part because of writing the Eternal graphic novel adaptation, illustrated by Ming Doyle, in the interim.

That said, I had more fun writing Diabolical than any of the other novels. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of humor, horror, romance and adventure in the previous three titles. They can be read on many levels. But Diabolical’s core theme of second chances is inherently optimistic, and it offered me a chance to stretch the heroes while also celebrating how far they’ve come.

In addition, Diabolical introduced several new characters who captured my imagination. I think my favorite may be Evie, the wereotter. It was also a fascinating experience to write scenes literally set in heaven and hell. It forced me to question my own beliefs, what best served the story/characters, and whether there actually might be the equivalent of an atrium hotel outside the Pearly Gates.

Me: Oooh, sounds like fun. I can’t wait to read it! Your next YA novel, Smolder, is due out from Candlewick Press in 2013 as part of a three-book deal. Will this one be in the Tantalize series as well, or will it start a new series?

Cynthia: Smolder is set in the Tantalize universe and features characters previously introduced in the series, but it is not part of the conversation themes that grew out of Stoker’s Dracula. It’s its own beast, so to speak, influenced most of all by questions and letters from YA readers. This one, more than any book I’ve written before, is for the YA fans (and the GenXers out there who thought Andie would’ve been better off with Duckie, at least in the short term). It’s about secrets and the surprises within ourselves.

Me: Wow! Fans will love that, getting their questions answered in a book inspired by them. 2013 can’t come soon enough.

Thanks, Cynthia.

What do you like best about books in a series?

So I was surprised — shocked was more like it — when author and former editor Lisa Graff said at the 2010 Austin SCBWI conference that once she’d finished her draft, she’d scrap it and start again. Scrap it? Start with a new blank document? No “save as”?

Last week, Cynthia Leitich Smith described the same revision strategy:

“writing the entire story with a beginning, middle, and end, and then printing it, reading it, tossing it and deleting the file.”

But Cynthia explained what seemed like madness to me in such a useful way:

“It’s a comforting strategy, one that takes a lot of pressure off (nobody but me was going to read it anyway) and offers the opportunity to get to know the characters and their world. You don’t commit to a working manuscript based on that first effort. (It would be a very shaky foundation.) Instead, you start over fresh, armed with lessons learned from the intensive pre-writing.”

Wise words indeed.

Personally, I don’t know if I could just scrap an entire draft — especially not delete it!

But in the last two revisions I’ve done, I can see that there’s something to this start-again strategy. As I edited my last novel, I began by reworking scenes sentence by sentence, but I started to get frustrated. The story wanted to move ahead, but my brain was saying, ‘hold on, we just have to figure out how to get this older sentence in there.’ Finally, I cut the older version and pasted it into a different file and rewrote the scene with the new focus I had in mind, with the plan that later I’d go through the “cut” file and see if there were any parts I particularly wanted to keep.

Not only did my writing go faster, but the scenes came out better than the earlier versions, with more depth and plenty of new parts that surprised me. When I was done, I started to look through the cut segments, but quickly realized I didn’t need to. If there was some excellent sentence in there, it no longer fit, and it was no longer needed.

Fear had kept me from trying this before. Fear of not being able to reproduce something that I thought was good. I figured, if I could keep what was good, I could make it better by just building up the weak spots, moving sections around and polishing up the sentences. Stick with the foundation and carve from there.

While that’s a perfectly good revision strategy, I learned that starting again from scratch gave me the freedom to explore my story and characters just like I would within a first draft but with all the knowledge I had gained during my earlier versions.

For chapters that needed minor work, I stuck to my old routine. But when I had an idea that would dramatically change a scene, I started it as if it was new.

So I understand what Lisa and Cynthia meant now, and while I still wouldn’t hit that delete button on a first draft, I do love being able to start over.

What are your strategies for revision?

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Between Us Baxters

Between Us Baxters is a middle-grade novel set in the fall of 1959, a time of racial tension in Holcolm County, Georgia. The story is told by 12-year-old Polly, who’s white, and looks at her relationships with her poor parents, her overbearing grandmother, and her best friend, 14-year-old Timbre Ann, who’s African-American. When thriving colored businesses start getting burned to the ground, Polly worries about losing her friendship with Timbre Ann.

Heavy subject matter indeed, as well as important and poignant.

Bethany begins the novel with writing that packs a punch. Reading it, you immediately get a sense of Polly, her character and her circumstances. For me, whose accent is far away from Southern, I even found my thoughts twinged with a twange.

Here’s the first page from Between Us Baxters:

Like Moses, Meemaw had ten commandments. On Sundays, I was bound as if by the Bible to a long list of rules. Before dinner, be seen and not heard. Once at the table, lay my napkin in my lap. Keep my elbows off the table, ankles crossed. Bow my head while Uncle Jimmy presides over the prayer. Pass the rolls to my right. Don’t talk with my mouth full. Use the soupspoon only for soup. Wipe my mouth with a napkin, not the back of my hand. And never leave the table before being excused.

Why, if Moses had a number eleven, Lord help me Jesus, Meemaw could have come up with another one. But Holcolm County, Georgia, beat her to it. Here we were all supposed to live by the “no befriending Negroes” rule.

Mama and I preferred to break a few commandments every now and again. And today we weren’t giving credence to the one unwritten law the entire South, not just Georgia, subscribed to. This morning, we were breaking bread with the Biggses.

Can’t you just see this character? Her voice is so strong. Her colloquialisms (“Lord help me Jesus”), her attitude (“Meemaw could have come up with another one”) and her principles (“we weren’t giving credence to the one unwritten law”).

We can also imagine Polly sitting at that Sunday table, trying her best to follow all of Meemaw’s rules — and hating every minute of it.

The first page of a novel can mean the difference between a sale and the book getting ignored. By studying Between Us Baxters, we can see a good example of a first page that works.

Have you read any brilliant beginnings lately? What are you favorites?

We’ve all heard those stories of great books getting turned down by agent/editor after agent/editor then going onto success as a self-published title. There’s Lisa Genova, who spent a year getting rejections from agents for her novel Still Alice, then finally self-published (ignoring advice from an agent who said it would kill her career) and building the novel’s sales into such a success, the book was picked up and published traditionally by Simon & Schuster.

Then there’s Amanda Hocking, who sold $2 million worth of her self-published her YA novels, attracted the attention of an agent, signed a four-book deal with St. Martin’s Press and has gone on to sell movie rights.

And J.A. Konrath, who was a traditionally published author before ebooks became viable, but has found much more success self-publishing his previously rejected novels than he ever did through traditional publishing.

Of course, these don’t represent the results for the typical self-published writer. Just like in the traditional publishing world, there are J.K. Rowlings as well as mid-list authors you’ve never heard of.

So, the question is, is self-publishing right for you? In an interview with WritingRaw.com, agent Eddie Schneider said he’s wary of writers who self-publish because it “implies that the author has poor impulse control.” But he goes on to say, “That being said, there are books that people (publishers and agents alike) just don’t get and have to be shown, by sales success, that they ought to get.”

In his keynote speech at the 2010 SCBWI summer conference, former publisher and now agent Rubin Pfeffer outlined the economic benefits for authors putting out their own ebooks.

Does this translate to: Getting rejections — just do it yourself? No. Absolutely not. Or maybe.

Rejections to query letters could mean a number of things: the query isn’t strong enough, the writing isn’t good enough, the story isn’t interesting enough, the characters aren’t developed enough. Let’s face it, plenty of us have sent out queries for a book we thought was ready only to look at it later and think it wasn’t.

Or the rejections could simply mean the agents/editors just think the book won’t sell, as in the case of Still Alice. With form-letter rejections and no-response policies, it’s hard to say what your specific rejections mean. So, this is where the hard work and gut come in.

Before you quit querying and consider self-publishing, think about these:

• Have you worked your novel over and over until the plot is brilliant, the characters come alive and the writing is spectacular?
• Have you gotten feedback from critique groups?
• Have you gotten feedback from a professional editor?
• Have you given yourself time away from your novel and then come back to it with a fresh eye?
• And, do you believe in this story? Truly, deeply, you’ve said yes to all the above and you really believe in this story.

If your answers to all the above are yes and you’re thinking about quitting the querying and self-publishing, consider this:

All the success story writers I’ve mentioned here worked hard not just writing their book, but also marketing it. As a self-publisher, you’re not only the author — you’re responsible for sales too. So, you’ll have to drum up attention in the online bookstores, get reviews, get interviews, build a buzz. And sure, nowadays, even traditionally published writers have to do the same, but they have an easier time getting reviews and notice just for having that publisher’s name behind them. And after all that marketing and building a following, you’ll have to write more books and market them, etc. It takes hard work, discipline and lots of passion. And success won’t happen overnight.

If you choose to go the self-publishing route, to be successful, you must treat it as any traditional publisher would. That means, get a good book cover, write great promotional copy and — most important — hire an editor. I suggest hiring a good content editor as well as a good copy editor.

Content editors will help with plot, character, tension, show you where you need to build up the action and when to add more description. Copy editors will make sure you have your commas in the right place, that sentences aren’t awkward, spelling and grammar is correct (your word-processor spell-check won’t catch the difference between “they’re” and “their”). Traditional publishers have a main editor for a book and a team of copy editors who go through the manuscript word by word. Even they miss mistakes occassionally, but you want your self-published novel to be at least as professionally produced as theirs. So hire good editors. That could be the best money you spend.

Is it time to quit querying and self-publish? That depends on the writer. Agents sign new clients every day, and Publishers Marketplace lists lots of book deals for debuting authors. It just takes one Yes, and the next query you send out could be the one. But if you think you have what it takes to produce a quality book and market it yourself, today’s technology has made it more accessible than ever.

Whatever you choose, don’t stop writing.

What are your thoughts on self-publishing?

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Brilliant beginnings aren’t easy. They have to give information about the story, set the tone of the book, introduce the main character and, of course, entice readers to keep going.

When I find books that do all that with a brilliant beginning, I love to celebrate them. The latest I’ve found is Jessica Lee Anderson’s Calli.

Here’s how the story begins:

A girl rushes to the tallest guy in tenth grade and reaches up to drape her thin, muscular arms around his neck. The girl’s shirt rises up while her baggy khakis slide down over her narrow hips, revealing the strings of her red underwear.

The guys keeps his hands tucked in his pockets as the girl tilts her head slightly. She leans in to kiss him.

She kisses him.

Cherish kisses Dub.

My foster sister, Cherish, kisses my boyfriend, Dub.

Oh. My. God. He’s not stopping her.

My blood feels like crude oil bubbling in a refinery furnace.

Inside me, the crude oil separates into toxic fuel. I want to yell at them to stop, to push each other away, but my words are trapped. My eyes and ears hurt from the pressure of holding back the tears. The hallway is full of students watching me, waiting for my reaction.

Like Cherish told me before, I’m a chicken turd. She thinks I won’t do anything. But she’s wrong.

That’s the first page of Calli, and as well as entertaining us with beautiful writing, it tells us so much about the story we’re about to read and the characters in it.

We know that our heroine, Calli, has a boyfriend, Dub, and a foster sister, Cherish, and that the relationship between Calli and Cherish is not exactly one of sisterly love. We learn that Calli is perhaps quiet or on the less confident side because she doesn’t rush up to them and shout, “What the hell?” Opposite to Cherish, who seems like she might enjoy letting the top of her red underwear peek out from her pants. But, with that last sentence, we also know that while Calli might not have the strength to do anything right now, she’s not a coward.

So we learn that this is a relationship story between two foster sisters, as well as the story of how one teen is going to gain the courage to stand up for herself.

And we got all that from the first page of the book.

On the subject of that beautiful writing, I love the way Jessica begins the scene describing just a boy and girl, any boy and girl, doing something that could be happy and celebratory, something that any boy and girl would love to be doing, an innocent kiss. But is it innocent? That red underwear suggests otherwise.

And Jessica wonderfully leads us from looking at the scene as if we’re hovering outside to in closer, then closer and finally so close that we’re seeing the scene through Calli’s eyes — and it’s anything but nice and innocent.

It’s lovely writing, brilliantly done by Jessica, and it made me want to read more.

As important as first pages are, the rest of the book must be equally amazing to keep readers — including agents and editors — turning pages. But knowing what a brilliant beginning is can help us create a brilliant book.

What was the last book beginning that made you go, “Wow! I have to read this?”

Despite what the Mayans and filmmaker Roland Emmerich think will happen in 2012, I think it’s going to be a great year. That’s the wonderful thing about a new calendar — possibilities to make everything better.

This year, I have my usual resolutions, to be a better person, be more patient, spread more love. But the new year is also a good time to make new goals for our writing, as well as plans to help us stick to them.

The key to making goals is to not make them too big. Make goals that are reasonable and reachable. Say “I want to be a best-selling author,” and you’ve set yourself up for a goal that’s hard to attain, especially as it takes the publishing industry a couple of years to get a book on shelves. But say “I want to write a novel” or “I want to improve my writing skills” and you’ve got a goal you can achieve in a year.

Once you’ve made your goal, break it down to smaller parts and put them in your schedule. You want to write a novel this year? Figure out your goal word count, based on the type of novel you want to write, then divide it by the number of weeks you want to write it in. You can even go further and divide it by days. If you miss a day, don’t worry, you can make it up the next day or sometime in the week to keep you moving toward your overall goal. Keep a word count calendar to track your progress.

If your goal is to improve your writing skills, make a list of the types of skills you want to work on then find classes, books and blogs that can help you. Break those down into smaller parts, for example, read a book on structure in January, take a class on dialog in February through March, read blog posts for an hour every Wednesday. Again, keep a calendar to track your progress.

So set your goals, make your plans and follow through. Making small goals that are easy to reach will help keep you motivated, and that’ll keep you writing. And that’s the most important thing.

My goal for 2012 is to write two novels, one in the first half of the year and one in the second. On to the planning!

I had heard that Amazon had closed its Kindle to outside bookstores, forcing users to only buy ebooks from Amazon. I dislike Apple and its closed ITunes system for the same reason, but it turns out that the reports about Amazon aren’t quite accurate.

For any tablet, to buy ebooks from independent bookstores, you need to use the IndieBound Reader app. (The bookstore you want to buy from must be a member of IndieBound and make their inventory available through the IndieBound Reader app, so check with your favorite indie bookstore.) While the default settings for the Kindle Fire don’t allow the installation of apps that are not in the Amazon Store, including the IndieBound Reader app, there’s a quick and easy way to allow your Kindle Fire to accept these outside apps.

Here’s how:

1. In your Fire, click on the Settings icon, the gear-looking symbol in the top-right corner, then click on More… in the drop-down menu.

2. Scroll down to Device and tap it to open those options.

3. Near the bottom, you’ll find “Allow Installation of Applications.” Change that from OFF to ON. You’ll get a warning that says that installing apps from unknown sources can be dangerous for your security. Tap that you accept that. (You should always be careful about what you install and install only apps that you trust, like the IndieBound Reader app.)

4. Tap the Home icon in the bottom-left corner, then Web in the menu at the top.

5. In the URL field, type: www.indiebound.org/reader.

6. Tap the “Download IndieBound Reader for Android” button near the bottom of the web page. It will look like nothing has happened, but tap the Menu icon at the bottom (the only that looks like a page) then tap Downloads.

7. In the Downloads menu, you should find IBReader-1.1.apk. If it’s not there, tap the back button to go back to the IndieBound web page and hit the download button again.

8. In Downloads, tap the IBReader-1.1.apk file and a menu will appear asking if you would like to Install or Cancel. Tap Install.

9. That’s it! Now you can go back to Home and you’ll see the IndieBound Reader icon, a big white i in a red square. It’s also accessible in your Apps menu. Tap the IndieBound Reader icon and follow the instructions. You can choose the independent bookstore you would like to buy ebooks from then shop away.

To test it out, I bought Adam Gidwitz’s A Tale Dark & Grimm. It works perfectly. The setup is a little difficult if you just want to browse, but if you already now what book you want, you can search for it. And you can’t read a sample, like you can with Amazon, but you do get the book cover and a brief description.

One point! Ebooks bought through the IndieBound Reader can only be read with the IndieBound Reader. So you won’t find them in the regular Books area on the Fire. To access the books, open the IndieBound Reader app and you’ll see them in the Books menu there.

The IndieBound Reader isn’t quite as smooth a reader as Kindle’s, but it works fine and allows you to support your local bookstore, which is always a good thing.

Thanks go to Tech & Trend, whose article helped me figure out how to easily allow outside apps to be loaded onto the Fire. Tech & Trend’s article recommends you look for apps at 4Shared.com. I tried to find the IndieBound Reader there but couldn’t. But going straight to the source worked perfectly, so follow the instructions I’ve listed above.

At the Teaching Authors blog, the six writers/teachers who contribute are offering to donate up to $225 to First Book with your help. For every comment submitted to the blog through Dec. 31, 2011, the writers will donate $1, up to $225. AND Disney Publishing will match every $1 donated with another book.

Every $2.50 donated to First Book provides a new book to a child in need. If Teaching Authors reaches 225 comments, for their $225 donation goal, their donation will mean 90 new books for children, plus 225 books from Disney Publishing, for a total of 315 books! A very worthy cause, so go to the Teaching Authors blog and comment. It’s that easy.

Schools are up for funding reauthorization and we want to make sure school libraries are included. ILoveLibrarians.org has posted great information about the federal action coming up and how you can help make sure that funding given to schools includes funds for school libraries.

Studies have shown that children who read have a higher chance of success as an adult, in all aspects of their life. But studies also show that having a library in a school, with good librarians, helps children reach higher academic achievements. So keeping libraries in schools helps our youth and our future. Go to ILoveLibrarians.org to see how you can help make sure the funding is there.

Finally, here’s a non-books-related way to give: Help Continental give 10 million miles to charities. Continental has listed a variety of charities, and you can go to the web page at 10MillionCharityMiles.com every day to vote for the one you think should get the most miles. The miles will be distributed proportionately to the amount of votes each charity receives.

Enjoy your giving and getting this Christmas!

While it seems a shame to tear up an old book, there’s no denying that if an old book is going to have a new life, it would love to be a Tyrannosaurus Rex, or a street scene with a moon, or a gorgeous wren with puffed up feathers.

This artist obviously loves books, allowing the old yellowing pages to tell a new story through sculpture. And then placing her artwork in the places that love books the most: libraries.

Reading this article made me feel nostalgic for libraries and printed books. This is premature, of course, as there are still plenty of both, but with the popularity of ebooks on the rise, the future is going to look much different.

I loved going to my local library when I was a kid. I still remember walking in, shaking the snow off my boots and pulling my hands out of my mittens (my memory is in winter, for some reason) so I could choose a new book to read. Seeing all those books on the library shelves, I felt like the Book Thief. So many choices. So many stories. I couldn’t wait to read them all.

In 20 years, how many physical libraries will be left, where young readers will be able to stare up at the shelves in awe? How will an inspired artist be able to sculpt a bee-colored glove out of a Kindle?

For all my nostalgia, I am a fan of ebooks. Ereaders save trees, and the production of ebooks is less expensive for the industry, which can allow more books to be published. On a practical side, ereaders are great for traveling (I bought my busy traveller dad a Kindle last year so he could stop lugging around 10 books with him every trip) and for the gym (one of the reasons I’d like to get an ereader one of these days).

And ereaders have encouraged gadget-loving former readers to come back to books, which is the best news of all. With their interactive capabilities, ereaders are going to allow authors and publishers to reach new levels with books, and that can only help reluctant readers to discover a love for stories.

It’s a new future and good things are coming. I only hope that libraries and paper books will still be a part of it.

Deborah Halverson

To celebrate the release of the trailer for her Writing Young Adult Fiction For Dummies book, writer/editor Deborah Halverson is giving away a critique of the first 20 pages of a manuscript. It must be fiction of any genre, but no picture books.

It’s a good deal. The first few pages of a book are perhaps the most important. If you don’t yet have an agent, those pages are the ones you’ll use to suck them in. If you’re trying to entice an editor, they’ll look at the first few pages too. And even after a book has been published, beyond the cover and jacket copy, the first page could mean the difference between a sale and the book being placed back on the shelf.

Deborah knows a thing or two about these first pages. She was an editor for many years and is the author of two fiction books and the nonfiction YA writing guide. I reviewed the book when it launched and found it to be a good how-to.

So, make sure your first pages are the best they can be by entering Deborah’s contest.