Readers’ Choice

Posted on by October 8, 2009
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Hello blog readers!

I have a number of guest blogs coming up in the next month, and while I could ramble on about whatever strikes my fancy, I thought it might be nice to find out what you all would like to see. 🙂

Topics could be about…

-Writing and/or publishing in general.

-Writing and/or publishing specifically paranormal or young adult fiction.

-Reading in general/paranormal/YA fiction.

-Anything to do with GIVE UP THE GHOST (writing it, issues it deals with, etc.).

Got a question you’d like answered? Ask it! Want my opinion on something? Tell me! What would you be interested in hearing about?

Anything you mention that I don’t end up covering in a guest post, I promise to talk about here–as long as it falls into one of the topic areas mentioned above.

Flashback: Friends and Point of View

Posted on by October 7, 2009
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January 19, 1996 (Megan is 15)

L also annoyed me today. Maybe I was just in an easily annoyed mood or something. Anyway, I was doing badly at volleyball, as usual, and L says to me ‘why don’t we switch places?’, ’cause she wants to win or something and I’m like, well, I’ll end up here again anyway, ’cause we rotate through the positions, you know. She is so critical of people sometimes, really quick to get annoyed when they’re not doing things right. (For example, I was telling her about the thing with that girl at lunch, and she was saying that if she wants to be with us in gym class, she’ll say no, ’cause she doesn’t like her and “she’s always causing trouble”. Personally I don’t mind the girl so much as long as she’s not being rude, and I don’t care about these things like doing well in gym. I mean, it’s just a game, who cares who wins?)

Anyway, I was thinking that if I wrote her as a character in a story, she probably wouldn’t recognize herself. Neither would most of my friends, or those who I know well enough to write (i.e., L, C, B, maybe Y, Z, [friend], [friend], or [friend]. [Friend].) oh yeah, and N, but I think she would recognize herself. But the thing is, would I recognize myself? Am I doing things that annoy people and just not realizing it? It’s very possible, and in a way that scares me, not to know what other people think of me. And I never will.

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An Introduction to Flashbacks
The Flashback Cast
The Flashback Timeline

Setting stories: Canada vs. US

Posted on by October 6, 2009
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I talked a little yesterday about the differences between Canada and the US that I keep in mind when writing for a US audience. Today I’ll discuss why GIVE UP THE GHOST is (theoretically–I don’t ever name the city) set in the States, even though I live in Canada.

When I started writing GHOST, I knew it was going to be set in a city a lot like Toronto, just because that’s the city I know best. And indeed, some of the settings in the story are based directly on places here.

But I also knew I didn’t want it to be Toronto. Why? Mostly because there are a lot of less-than-shining examples of human beings in Cass’s life, who are not based on any actual people who live here. It would have felt odd saying it was Toronto but then making up some streets and schools that didn’t actually exist here, but it would have felt even more awkward using specific schools and implying that teachers and students there got up to all sorts of unsavory things. The name of the city didn’t matter to the story, so it felt best just not to name it.

So that’s why the story isn’t set in Toronto. But why did I use wording and cultural norms that fit the US instead of Canada?

Well, since I wasn’t setting the story in a specific city, it didn’t have to be in one country or the other. And I knew I was going to be querying mostly US agents, and hoping to sell the book to a US publisher.

This is less about national pride (or lack thereof) and more about wanting to make some sort of a living as a writer. There are hundreds more agents in the US than in Canada. The population of the US is ten times larger than Canada, which suggests there are ten times as many readers. And US-published books show up in Canadian bookstores all the time, whereas Canadian-published books don’t usually make their way across the border unless the book is picked up by a US publisher as well. So it seemed like the best way to get my book to as many readers (American and Canadian) as possible was to have it published in the US. And I suspected it’d seem more appealing to US readers if the details (which didn’t affect the telling of the story) were American rather than Canadian.

Frankly, I probably wouldn’t have done this if I lived anywhere other than Canada. If I liked in the UK I suspect I’d have set my book in the UK; if I lived in Australia I’d have set it there. But Canadian culture and society, on the level that you see it in the book (it’s not as if I get into government policy), is very similar to American. I hardly had to change anything at all! So I didn’t feel I was sacrificing anything.

Does that mean I’ll never set a story in Canada? Unlikely! I’d love to write a novel that takes place here. Because if I was going to set a book in an actual city, Toronto is the only one I’d feel comfortable using. Because I am proud to be Canadian, and you don’t see many US-published books set here, and it’d be nice to be a part of changing that. The thing is, each story has its own demands of time and place. It will just have to be the right story, the Toronto story.

Because in the end, it’s telling the story the way it needs to be told that matters most, not where you tell it.

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I’d be curious to hear from writers and readers on this topic. Does it matter to you which country a book is set in? How do you decide where to set your books?

Oh Canada!

Posted on by October 6, 2009
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I’ve noticed from reading the comments on my interviews and guest posts that some people are surprised to realize I’m Canadian. It’s true! I’ve lived here (in the city of Toronto), quite happily, my whole life.

You generally won’t be able to tell it from my writing, though. I learned way back when I first started submitting short stories to US magazines that it was much easier to use US spellings than to worry that an editor would think I didn’t know how to spell. These days I switch back and forth almost automatically: when I’m writing prose, or writing for a general audience (like here on the blog), I type “center” instead of “centre” and “color” instead of “colour” automatically.

There are also a bunch of US-isms that are different from Canada, some of which I already knew and some of which my editor and copy-editor caught. A few that come up frequently:

–Eh. Yep, Canadians say this all the time. It’s a very handy syllable that turns any sentence into a question, inviting the listener to agree. “Quite the storm, eh?” “Wish you’d thought of that earlier, eh?” I still get the urge to have my characters use this in dialogue.

–Money. We haven’t had one dollar bills in Canada since… I can’t even remember when. And our two dollar bills were discontinued back when I was in high school. These days we have coins called loonies and toonies. So when writing a story theoretically set in the States, I have to remember to switch back to bills.

–Grades. Here in Canada (at least, any part I’m familiar with) we don’t use freshman/sophomore/junior/senior to divide up the grades in high school. “Freshman” gets used occasionally in university/college but nowhere near as often as in the US. When we say “juniors” and “seniors” it usually refers to a wide segment of the school (e.g., in an elementary school grades 1-3 will be primary students and 4-6 junior students; at my high school students in grades 11 & 12 were all called “senior students”).

I would also say “grade one” or “grade eleven,” whereas I’ve learned from the editing process that apparently you all south of the border would say “first grade” and “eleventh grade.”

–Non-class periods. Around here we have “spares” or “spare periods” in high school. If you don’t need a full course load in a given year (usually your last) to graduate, most people would choose to have a spare. During your spare you could go wherever you wanted (in or out of the school) and do whatever you wanted. If it was the last period of the day, you could head home.

Is there an equivalent in the US? From what I understand, the closest is study hall.

You might wonder, why do I bother to go to the trouble of swapping phrases and spelling? Why not just write all my stories set in Canada?

I’ll talk about that tomorrow. 🙂

—

Second post is now up!

GHOST on the ‘net, Part 4

Posted on by October 3, 2009
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Where GHOST and I made appearances this week:

Giveaways

Win a bunch of great ghostly books, including GIVE UP THE GHOST!

Guest Posts

At my agent (Kristin Nelson)’s blog, I discussed my publishing journey and the publishing connections myth.

Interviews

Discover…

The best writing advice I’ve heard.

The scariest thing I’ve ever done.

The naughtiest thing I did in high school.

What it’s like to have lunch with Cass.

How Cass would celebrate her debut.

My favorite part of being a writer.

What sort of endings I prefer.

My must-have writing gear.

More to come next week!

Five Books of Silence

Posted on by October 2, 2009
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Silent to the Bone by E.L. Konigsburg – Conner knows Branwell would never have hurt his baby sister, but to prove it he must find a way to get his now-mute best friend to speak again.

Sirena by Donna Jo Napoli – Sirena’s song can enchant any man, but she’d rather live alone in silence than lure someone to his death to win her own immortality.

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson – Ever since the horrible events at that end of summer party, Melinda has hesitated to talk to anyone–but some truths need to be spoken.

Hurt Go Happy by Ginny Rorby – Though she’s deaf, Joey has always accepted her mother’s insistence that she dismiss sign language–until she meets an eccentric neighbor and his chimpanzee companion.

Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock – There’s a lot of silence in D.J.’s family–and a lot of things left unsaid. Can D.J. find the courage to try to change that?

Launch Party Post!

Posted on by October 1, 2009
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This past Saturday, I got to celebrate the launch of GIVE UP THE GHOST with family, friends, and colleagues at Bakka-Phoenix Books. For those of you who couldn’t make it, let me recreate the experience for you…

First, approaching the store, I was greeted by this lovely display advertising the launch:

Inside there was a table set up with stacks of books (and bookmarks and buttons that I brought with me), and a few others with snacks and drinks that I didn’t get much of a chance to partake of. 🙂 People gradually made their way into the store, and then to the back where I was hanging out, and once we had a fair crowd, I gave a short talk about the book:

Some of the attendants, listening to the talk:

I read a short section (the same section you can hear for yourself here), and then got down to signing:

And in a brief lull in the midst of this, a family friend took a picture of me with my parents and younger brother: a very happy family portrait!

It was a wonderful two hours spent with friends from all the areas of my life, and catching up with former teachers and writers group members I hadn’t seen in years. Thank you to everyone who came to celebrate with me, and to my dad for taking the pictures!

If you wish you could have been there, take note — next week, I expect to be announcing a few more upcoming appearances, including one in the US!

Flashback: Flirting

Posted on by September 30, 2009
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April 26, 1997 (Megan is 16)

It’s funny how everything seems different at night. People are different, act differently than they usually would, at least in school. Perhaps that is why so many people like to go out to parties in the hopes of “meeting someone.”

What I am getting at is having to do with the play (THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST) which L and I went to see at the school yesterday night. The play itself was quite good, well acted and humorous, but that is not what I want to talk about. What I do want to talk about is a certain guy (names will be omitted for reasons for uncertainty of affections)* whom I talked to there.

Now, I should mention that I have noticed this particular gentleman previous to this occasion. I can’t remember why exactly, but a couple of times in the last few weeks, he talked to me in a way I interpreted as, possibly, somewhat flirtatious. Of course, I did not and am not considering this idea particularly seriously, as I am rather prone to noticing these kinds of things for no reason except my sadly deluded brain.

In any case, I arrived at the school early and was waiting for L. He and X (who L and I used to eat lunch with) were selling tickets nearby. X saw me and waved and he looked over and probably said hello or something and was telling me how the stage crew (which they’re part of) was the best part of the show, and we (L and I) should watch for him, and stuff like that. During the play, between the scenes, we did see him the one time, and he was looking at us, so I grinned and L waved.

After the play, L and I were sitting in the atrium, waiting for her father. He (not her father, but the guy) came over, sat down next to me, and was talking to us a bit. Then he got up and was kicking this bottle cap around, which soon evolved into a game of cap hockey between him and L & me. This went on for several minutes until L and I had to leave. It all seemed rather weird, because I was a little tired and a little hyper, and otherwise I likely would have been more restrained–which is not a good thing.

I know this is not to be taken seriously. The only reason I noticed was because until a few weeks ago I can’t remember when he’d spoken to me, let alone in a particularly friendly way. I don’t even know if I like him at all; I’ve never really talked to him.

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*This was the person referred to in The Cast as J; I refrained from naming him in my journal for a while but in all other entries after this that I post that mention him I’ll just use J, for reasons of avoiding confusion. 🙂

An Introduction to Flashbacks
The Flashback Cast
The Flashback Timeline

Share the GHOST Love Giveaway update!

Posted on by September 29, 2009
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Thank you to everyone who’s shared their love for GHOST so far!

I wanted to post a quick reminder for those who’ve picked up the book recently. Remember, if you enjoyed GHOST and review it on Amazon.com, I’ll happily send a copy to you (if you read an ARC or library copy) or a friend/family member/library/etc. you think would like to have it. There are 15 copies still up for grabs!

And there are also those ten great ARCs, including BEAUTIFUL CREATURES and FIRE, which could be won by anyone who shares their love on one or more of a variety of sites.

You have until October 15th to join in! Full details here.

That’s all for today — I hope to have launch party photos to share tomorrow! 🙂