Vegemite sandwiches, that’s how.

Currently Reading: Callisto by Torsten Krol, and various manuscripts

Last week I had the opportunity to meet Gary Corby, a genius writer from Australia who is represented by the agency I currently intern with. He discussed his two manuscripts with us brilliant interns. He writes historical mysteries set in ancient Greece, and his main character is the older brother of Socrates. I read one of them, and it’s quite spectacular. His first book will be pubbed in Fall 2010. You should all buy it. Then he took our photo and wrote this awesome blog post about us, called “How to Poison an Intern.”

Note: Joanna, who is wearing the blue and gray stripped sweater, is not an intern but an agent. She also likes Vegemite.

Oh, and check this out. This is the annual fund-raiser/world-record-breaker “Thrill the World” dance. My sister Amanda participated this year. Watch this video. At about 1:10 in, you can see her doing the “booty bounce” and “swim together” parts of the dance. (And yes, those are the technical terms.) That’s her on the far right, wearing the red corset and black pants. She also gets screen time later, so watch the whole thing. And if you do, check out the young girl in the front row. Just awesome.

Edited: October 26th, 2009

He didn’t even have a telescope around his neck

Currently reading: The Prince of Frogs by Annaliese Evans

Last week I started interning for two literary agencies that share office space. Everyone who works there is odd in a good way, has unique tastes and areas of expertise when it comes to books, and is really nice and fun to work with. Even the other interns (there are 6 of us total) are totally fun. Especially when we’re sitting together reading query letters, passing around the ones with the most ridiculous contents, getting second opinions on the ones that seem like they might be worthwhile projects. I wish I could share with you all some of the amazingly stupid things I’ve read over the past two weeks, but unfortunately, I cannot. Not on the interwebz anyway.

Every time I go in there I know more and more that it’s what I want to be doing with my life. Reading manuscripts, talking about books, meeting new people… I’m even “required” to go to an industry schmooze fest with a bunch of Tor/Forge employees next week. At DBA. With Laura. Seriously. How could this non-job get any better? The long and short of it is that it couldn’t (well, I guess if I was getting paid, that might be an improvement, but I’ll take resume-improvement and school credit all the same).

Edited: September 17th, 2009

Hit ‘em low, Olive Oil.

The other night I went to the new “flagship” (i dislike that term) Barnes and Noble store on the Upper East. Apparently Marvel turned 70, and there were celebrations at comics retailers all across the nation. This particular B&N held a discussion panel with some of Marvel’s past and present bigwigs… Joe Quesada, Chris Claremont, Greg Pak, Fred Van Lente, and Klaus Janson.

I recognized at least two of those names, and I knew Chris Claremont to be funny and elusive with his question answering, from when I saw him at the “Comic Book Club” a few months ago. So I went, listened to them talk about previous and upcoming Marvel offerings for a bit, and then stayed to get the 70th Anniversary collection signed.

While they were talking, I looked around the room and realized I was the only female there ALONE. All the other girls, while many of them seemed like huge nerds, were there with other guys (mind you, not a single group had more than one female….) So when I was getting my stuff signed, all the Marvel guys were being super nice and extra smiley, like they’d never seen a girl before. Then the last of them, Klaus Janson, known for his inking (especially of Frank Miller’s works), flat out asked me if the autographed book was for me. Ummm, I know I don’t have the outward appearance of a comic book fan, but that doesn’t mean I’m not one. (not that I’m a really big into comics, but I like a good story, and Marvel has some of the best.) I honestly felt discriminated against. I was the minority in a room of fanboys, and let me tell you, I’ve never felt more inferior, yet surprisingly superior in my entire life.

What a strange yet satisfying experience.

Edited: August 14th, 2009

“A true ballad tells a story of real life.”

I decided, being in the publishing industry and all, that perhaps I should put my blog to use for something related to that. So here it is, my first serious book review. I definitely won’t turn this into an all-reviews-all-the-time blog, but I find it’s a nice outlet to share all the great (and perhaps not so great) stuff I’ve been reading with a wide(r) audience. Oh, also, I decided to post images of me with the book, if possible, rather than use copyrighted pics of the actual cover art from Amazon or wherever. I realize using them probably falls under “fair use” but whatever.

Title: Ballads of Suburbia
Author: Stephanie Kuehnert
Publisher: MTV Books
Length: 368
Age group/reading level: Young Adult (14+)

Summary: The summer before her senior year of high school, Kara nearly died from a heroin overdose. As a freshman, when she moved away from her best friend and then her family fell apart, Kara turned to music, booze, drugs, self-injury, and bad-boy Adrian to make everything better. Between all the parties and concerts, her friends collected their heartbreaking ballads of the moments that defined them. After four years away from her friends and family, Kara returns to Oak Park to confront her past, and to finally write her own ballad.

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Edited: July 23rd, 2009

Candor Book Trailer

The Messages made me post this. And now they’re telling you to watch it.

Edited: July 17th, 2009

You, read these.

Todays book recommendations, from me, courtesy of Caren Johnson Literary Agency (for allowing me the opportunity to read these before they’re released):

1. How to be a Hepburn in a Hilton World: The Art of Living with Style, Class & Grace by Jordan Christy (Available Aug. 13).  A humorous guide to not being a “stupid girl” a la Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan, etc.  I’m only on the first chapter, but already it echoes my thoughts about the behaviors and dress codes of a majority of young women today.  Christy gives advice on dressing well, expanding your vocabulary to include words other than “like,” finding, making and keeping good friends, and so on, all designed to make the females of the species more respectable.  Chapter two, which I look forward to reading, is titled “Keep Your Chin up and Your Skirt Down.”  Fantastic.

2. You Are So Undead to Me by Stacey Jay (out now!) Young adult fiction – “paranormal romance” according to the author herself.  Pretty much the complete opposite of the previous book, in that the main character, Megan, is all about getting the attention of dudes, being friends with the “popular” girls, and going to homecoming dances.  The only catch?  She’s a zombie settler, meaning the dead who aren’t completely satisfied at the time of their death, who have unfinished business, climb out of their graves and go to her to get their business in order.  They’re “friendly” zombies. Mostly. Except for the Reanimated Corpses, raised by somebody out to ruin Megan’s social life.  Jay’s first novel, You Are So Undead to Me has plenty of humor, suspense and zombies ON FIRE.  While this book is aimed at high school girls, I’m enjoying it because it puts a new slant on an old horror classic.

3. Candor by Pam Bachorz (Available Sept. 22, buy it for yourself on my birthday!) Young Adult Fiction.  Oscar’s dad founded the resort-like town of Candor to provide relief for families with “troubled” children.  How does he provide said relief?  By using subliminal messages to brainwash the children, and their parents, into behaving.  Except Oscar, having watched his father create these messages and their delivery system, has managed to overcome their effect.  He has the ability to push them away, to behave how he wishes.  Then Nia moves into Candor, and Oscar finds himself drawn to her.  Not wanting the Messages to wipe away the personality he’s so attracted to, Oscar uses his own Messages to counteract those of his father.  Everything is going Oscar’s way, until Nia discovers the truth, and Oscar must do everything in his power not to be discovered.

How can I even begin to explain the amount of love I have for this book.  Bachorz wastes not a single word in this novel.  Her sentences and paragraphs are short, to the point, but pack an amazing punch.  The transformation of all the characters from the beginning of the novel to the end is beautifully crafted.  When I finally figured out what was about to happen, in the second to last chapter, my eyes got watery.  When I got to the end of that last chapter, the one I described on twitter as “devastating” and “haunting,”  I was pretty much sobbing.  I’m telling every person who will listen that this book should not be missed.

(Just for the sake of full disclosure, the Literary Agency for which I intern represents all these books, although they were already sold and scheduled for publication when I started there. I’m not just praising these books because I work for CJLA.  I’m praising them because I really do like them!!)

Edited: June 28th, 2009

Hepburn, Hilton and… Johnson?

Ny Post’s Page Six Mentions How to Be a Hepburn in a Hilton World

The only reason I bring this up is that How to Be a Hepburn in a Hilton World was/is represented by the literary agency that I’m currently interning for.  The Caren Johnson Literary Agency is a fairly young agency, with not a whole ton of books under its belt, but the books they have worked on have been getting great reviews and quite a bit of publicity, so that’s pretty cool.

I’ve been reading a YA novel called Candor by Pam Bachorz.  It’s about brainwashing. It’s fantastic.  It doesn’t come out until September 22nd though (hmm, that date sounds familiar… ) but it was also represented by CJLA. And I get to work on coming up with content for the book’s website! Pretty awesome stuff.

Edited: June 16th, 2009

Making up for missed posts

I totally neglected this poor blog! Feeling super slackery and neglectful, but I know I haven’t written here for good reason, so I don’t feel too guilty. I’ve been way too busy reading. So here’s a very brief recap of the past few weeks.  But first, to make up for the following long, boring block of text, here’s a fun picture (courtesy of Agent M)

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Edited: June 12th, 2009

I wanna grow old with you

Haven’t updated in a while.  I’ve been busy with moving and work and school and Carrie and reading that I haven’t really used my computer too much in the past couple weeks.

Last week we had a Scholastic employee come to my Children’s Book Publishing course to talk.  Then she sent us advanced reader’s copies of a book called Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater. It’s a YA novel… and the best way to describe the content is by calling it Twilight but with werewolves.  I really liked the premise—Stiefvater took the classic werewolf mythology (that the moon is what affects them) and made it about weather instead (winter being wolf season, spring/summer being human seasons)—but a few of the characters weren’t as developed as I would’ve liked, and some of the events seemed kinda abrupt.  While I generally liked the writing and the style, some parts could’ve used a bit more work.  But I finished the almost-400 pages in about two days, so clearly it’s not bad. In fact, I think if I had taken more time to read it, I would’ve enjoyed it more. I don’t think I properly absorbed it all.

The book doesn’t come out until August, and I’m sad that it won’t get completely huge marketing from Scholastic because they have the sequel to the Hunger Games coming out in September, so that’s where all the big bucks are going.  I think it’ll find an audience, though.  All those teen girls who wish there were more Twilight books, or that whats-her-head from Twilight had ended up with the werewolf instead.

One more thing to mention for now. Brittney made This video. it is hilarious and cute. watch it.

Edited: April 26th, 2009

the man who owns the news

Today I started looking at craig’s list for apartments and room shares and etc etc etc. I decided that even if though I’ve paid for this place through May whatever (8th, 10th?), it might be beneficial to have a place starting April 1, or April 15, so that I don’t have to move out during exam times, and that I can have enough time to move all my stuff from here into the new place, cuz I don’t exactly have a place for storage, or a vehicle (i guess a taxi would work…) (huh, i already got a response to an email I sent. apparently I’m looking at a place tomorrow already… )

Currently I’m reading The Man Who Owns the News by Michael Wolff, about Rupert Murdoch. and I couldn’t be more uninterested. I’m seriously on page 22 (of just over 400) and I just can’t make myself read anymore. Not because the writing is bad or anything, just because I DON’T CARE. Stupid general publishing course and its making me read stuff about newspaper publishing. Good thing I have about 3 weeks to finish it. It’s supposed to be done by this coming tuesday, but this prof is so… unaware… that it doesn’t matter.

Anyway. Today is day two of my caffeine (and by extension, soda) detox. The headache is subsiding, but the sweet tooth is still nagging. I really want some candy!

Edited: March 17th, 2009