Part of being a young adult is wishing you didn't have to go to school. And part of being an adult is wishing you could go to school instead of work. So sometimes I listen to the iTunes U classes online. And today I found one about young adult literature, offered by La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia.

I haven't finished listening to it, but I thought it might be of interest to some of my readers.

Fiction for Young Adults, From Pride and Prejudice to Twilight, Looking for Alibrandi to The Hunger Games, students in this subject will analyse factors affecting the emergence and development of fiction for young adults as a distinctive literature category over the last twenty years. Students will also focus on recent trends in this field, including the development of a range of critical perspectives for interpreting themes, issues and responses to this literature by adults and adolescents.

Conferences

I'm excited to announce that I will be attending two new (for me) conferences in upcoming months. If any of my blog readers are in the area, you should stop by!

The Write Stuff, Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group
Allentown, PA
Four Points Sheraton
March 22-23

Writers Digest East Conference, Writers Digest
New York, NY
Sheraton Hotel, NYC
April 6, 2013 

CAPA-U, Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association
Hartford, CT
Hartford Steam Boiler Convention Center
May 11, 2013

I hope to add more conferences to my schedule in coming weeks. Conferences are my only excuse to travel. :)

ETA: 

Not for Emetophobes.

I wanted to post to let you guys know that I am seriously behind on reading partial and full manuscripts. This is not a novel state of affairs. I'm almost always behind. But I recently contracted a series of illnesses. (Cold led to stomach virus, stomach virus migrated to throat infection. It's been a joy to live with me.)

I think (hope?) I'm better now. So no need to send well wishes. Just wanted to post my excuses publicly to those who might be impatiently waiting on something from me.

It's not you, it's me.

Backspace & Sandy

I've had a couple of lovely emails asking if I, and my colleagues at the L. Perkins Agency, are okay after Hurricane Sandy. Pleased to report that we're all fine. The office lost power for a bit, and I think fellow-agent Sandy Lu is in for a lot of awkward jokes in the future, but we're a lot better off than most. So thanks for your concern, now please direct it to people in need! (Red Cross website here.)

I'd also like to give public adulation to Karen Dionne, Christopher Graham and everyone who runs the Backspace Writers Conference here in New York. They worked magic and put on the conference Thursday and Friday despite a myriad of challenges. They are wizards. Not only did they arrange for conference calls so the agents who couldn't get in could still participate, they did it for all the writers too. I'm always super impressed by this conference and now I'm super duper impressed with it.

It's too bad Backspace is only in New York, because I think a lot of writers could benefit from the sessions, and not everyone can fly out. This thought prompted a mental image of Karen and Christopher taking a bunch of agents on tour in a van, like a garage band. I made myself laugh out loud.

Anyway, I was pleased to be there (in person). I got to do two panels with Jason Allen Ashlock and Madeleine Raffel. Jason has a great easy to remember theory about what needs to go in a query letter: your Hook, Book (synopsis), Look (word count, comp titles, etc) and Cook (about you). I liked it a lot.

Though I wish I would stop ending up on panels with people who are so much more eloquent and erudite than I am.

Celebrating Banned Book Week

It's Banned Book Week this week! I loved Banned Book Week because it reminds people that good books are worth fighting for.

The first time I experienced censorship was in 8th grade. Our English teacher always taught The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn but the year before I entered her classroom, there was a kerfuffle about it not being appropriate. Of course, we all immediately went out to read it because obviously if parents didn't want us reading it, then it was awesome.

Eventually the parents succeeded in getting Huck Finn out of our classroom. So during my year, she taught Fahrenheit 451.

It wasn't until I was older that I realized what a deliberate and awesome choice that was!

What we can learn from this is, that if a book is banned that means it is GOOD. So go check out the list of frequently challenged books from the ALA, and try to read them all. Or maybe go see "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" in theaters now.

Teens Can Write, Too!

This weekend, I'm one of the agents judging the pitch contest over at Teens Can Write, Too! Unfortunately, I'm late posting about this so it's too late for you to enter. But the contest was for writers between the ages of 13-20. The top ten pitches were posted on the site's blog, and have a chance of being read by agents.

I think it's a really cool thing, and I've already requested something. If I had been a teen writer (of more than crappy fanfic) then I would've love to participate in this. I definitely think writing is a muscle that has to be developed and all writers need encouragement.

So go and tell the winners how amazing their entries sound!

Rejections

If you are an author (or a human, really) you are going to have to find a way to deal with rejection. Please don't go attacking agents, or editors.  This sort of thing rarely helps your cause. I know it's not fun, so cry, beat pillows, eat ice cream, whatever helps you through. You've got to find something that doesn't involve assaulting people.

My first real taste of rejection was the college admissions process. Until then I'd been one of the smarter kids in my grade and felt I could do stuff pretty easily. I also had big plans about The Future--all of which involved me becoming Very Important. And then colleges I applied to said to me, "Actually, you're pretty average. Sorry."

I had this fantasy that one day they would be sorry. And since I was going to be Very Important, they would invite me to speak on their campus. I would respond by sending them a copy of the rejection letter they sent me. ("Due to the the strong pool of applicants, I regret to inform you that I will not be able to speak at your Very Important Thing...")

And I used that whole "prove them wrong" thing as motivation to do well at university and later at grad school. But I don't have copies of those rejection letters anymore. I guess that's why the "use it as fuel" metaphor is often used. Fuel is good to get you places, but eventually it burns away.

Louise, Louise, Louise

Last night, our own Louise Fury won Agent of the Year from the New York City Chapter of RWA.

I hoped to have pictures but my camera-phone made everything blurry. So you will just have to imagine. (The award is a golden apple and Louise is Louise.)

Louise is great. I'm lucky to work with her. And it was a great night to celebrate her, because she just posted a "major" deal on PublishersMarketplace to top it all off.

Widgets

Playing around with Amazon widgets. These are some books that my agency has worked on recently.

Bennett's 'Gaia Wars' finds Identity Films - Entertainment News, EXCLUSIVE, Media - Variety

Bennett's 'Gaia Wars' finds Identity Films - Entertainment News, EXCLUSIVE, Media - Variety

Very excited about this!